The Roman critics discerned as a weakness in Terence his lack of the power, or virtue, of comedy. This adverse opinion is found in some celebrated verses attributed to Caesar, and is perhaps the reason why the grammarian Volcatius Sedigitus, in drawing up a hierarchy of the comic poets, assigned to Terence only the sixth place, Caecilius getting the first and Plautus the second. The author of these verses deplored the fact that because in him comic power was not superadded (adjuncta) to his verses, sweet or delicate (lenibus) as they were, therefore Terence was held of little account (despectus) and could not equal the Greeks, remaining a dimidiatus Menander. And because none the less Terence inspired in him sympathy and affection he sighed: "Atque utinam", and lamented: "Unum hoc maceror et doleo tibi deesse, Terenti." But how can one love a poet while feeling that something substantial is missing in him? Is not that which we admire in a poet precisely that which is essential, the soul, the poetry, which is either there or not there? That purus sermo and lenitas in his composition, was it not the manifestation of the poetry itself, in the appropriate and necessary tone? But if that which was found lacking in him was not an essential, but an "adjunct", something whose presence or absence was equally possible, why lament so much over its absence? Why call the poet of one's affections a "half man", which is as much as to say a eunuch?

Not one of the many who have quoted those verses seems to me to have asked these reasonable questions. Whoever had done so could not perhaps have found any answer except this, which rises out of the root of the matter, namely that the author of the verses was caught up in the theory of the "genres tranchés", the clear-cut poetical genres, according to which comedy was no comedy unless it was comic and mirth-provoking. But this theory conflicted painfully with the author's own feelings, and while he would not sacrifice the theory, neither would he fully sacrifice his feelings, whence the inner contradiction in the judgement contained in the verse. It was very similarly that Francesco De Sanctis felt the power of Machiavelli's Mandragola, but in view of Machiavelli's abstention from working up a gaily confidential atmosphere around the plot and the characters, treating them rather with an air of disgust and detachment, De Sanctis concluded that the work was an artistic failure because it was not a comedy. But if in fact it were a tragedy where would the harm be? (So I myself once enquired [in Poesia popolare e poesia d'arte, 1946].) And no more would there be any harm if Terence's comedy were not comedy but something else. Surely there is nothing strange about such a suggestion, now that the links between Euripides' tragedies and the New Comedy have so often been recognized and stressed. One finds in some literary histories a similarity traced between the comedy of Terence and the "bourgeois" comedy of the sixteenth century, as indeed was recognized at the time by an Italian writer, Signorelli, who in the Hecyra found "an excellent model for tender comedy such as calls for a poet of sensitive and delicate heart. This sort of comedy", he added, "has across the Alps degenerated into an unpersuasive and halting comédie larmoyante" [Pietro Napoli Signorelli, Storia critica dei teatri antichi e moderni, 1813. A first succinct edition appeared in 1771]. But perhaps these comparisons across the centuries are better avoided lest one fall into the way of infecting the spontaneous and naive sentiment of the Roman poet (a sentiment not lacking in Roman restraint) with the sensiblerie of the Enlightenment.

Terence was still more adversely judged by critics and historians of the nineteenth century. Roman comedy, indeed Roman poetry in general, and together with this the comedy of the Italian Renaissance, and other art forms of that epoch, were despised as unoriginal because evidently modelled upon Greek comedy. As though the art of a later age were not always, in one way or another, based upon what went before! The critics and historians in question did not altogether deny this, but in their view the Roman poets ought to have based themselves on such indigenous traditions as the Atellan mimes (described by Valerius Maximus as genus delectationis italica severitate temperatum), and the Renaissance Italians should have sought their basis in the religious plays, so rich in profane and comic elements, and the popular farces. By so doing both would have been in line with the Romantic theory of the organic and autochthonous development of literature and of everything else, a theory which in its zeal for nice explanations of the facts seemed to require the facts to fall in with its own view of how they should have come about. If they erred against nature by failing to do so, all the worse for them, and they were duly arraigned and punished. The only thing would have been to tell Plautus and Terence to their faces that they must refrain from reading those seductive authors Menander, Diphilus, and Apollodorus, and to tell Bibbiena and Machiavelli not to read the two Romans but to fix their attention on strolling players and the actors of the sacred confraternities, on the Macci, the Pappi, the Bucconi, the Dossenni. They of course would have shrugged their shoulders at this preposterous proposal that they should drop the works which spoke to their mind and feelings and artistic sense and abase themselves to bear company with popular and plebeian mimes whose very existence they had forgotten.

This false idea of originality which clamours for an art unrelated to the art which went before it, for a purely national or purely provincial art, is now rarely found in the criticism and history of modern literatures, but it persists or at least lingers on in regard to ancient literature, without heed for the results of the long and now antiquated discussions of other times on the independence of French from Greek tragedy and so on.

The other adverse judgement levelled against Terence suggests that the pleasure he gives us, the reputation he enjoys, are all due to our having no access to the Greek originals from which he more or less freely translated. If ever the ignorance is made good by the discovery of those originals, then, it is suggested, the pleasure will cease, the borrowed glory will slip away. Well, let us for argument's sake assume that the dramas of Terence are just translations, very fine translations, no doubt, exquisitely phrased in pure Latin. Why should the discovery of the originals impair their reputation? The Greek text of Homer is known but this does not render Vincenzo Monti's Italian version of the Iliad less admirable, it being beautiful in itself as well as a medium serving the needs of those unable to read Homer himself. Shakespeare's English text is known to the Germans, but Schlegel's German translation remains a classic. Beautiful translations are always the work of some poetic spirit who embraces the original and warms it with his own life. Why should the fact that Terence's "translations" stand to some extent in lieu of the lost Greek comedies be viewed as a weakness and detract from their merit? August Wilhelm Schlegel, with his cultivated dislike or Romantic prejudice against everything Roman and Italian, in his lectures on dramatic poetry made no more than a bare and disdainful allusion to Plautus and Terence ("no creative artists"), but spread himself on the Greek comedy, forgoing mention of the two authors still living in their works in order to treat of authors whose works are non-existent (in Schlegel's time much less of them had been discovered than now). But numberless are the blunders of critics who, when discoursing of art, often forget the subject of their discourse. One almost blushes to recall them and to confute them. For example the charge is blunderingly laid against Terence that the dramas which pass under his name are really by Scipio or Laelius, or by one of the two in collaboration with Terence. Antiquity too had its "Baconians", the sort of people who would attribute Shakespeare's dramas to the most un-poetical of lords of his time if thereby they could wrest them from the poor actor, "sweet William". In antiquity such people wished to strip the wreath of Apollo from the brow of an African, a slave, a freed-man, and the initiated whispered it around that this wreath properly belonged to illustrious personages who, disdaining or blushing to appear before the public as theatrical authors, had brought in some poor fellow of their acquaintance to stand for them. That Terence's comedies should be the fruit of a collaboration must seem unlikely to anyone who appreciates what style is. But even were it so, and even if the author's name has been deliberately falsified, what has that to do with a judgement on poetry? Are we giving marks to Terence in an examination or competition, and trying to make sure that his answers have not been cribbed from another candidate? Professors, when they engage in criticism, find it difficult to drop the attitude of the examiner. This accounts for a certain suspicion and disapproval shown by them towards Terence.

So I have for the sake of argument accepted the worst that the critics can or could bring against the works of Terence—that they are translations and not written by Terence—and I have shown that it has no significance for the appreciation and judgement of the works themselves as poetry. That does not mean that I myself think they are straight translations from Greek originals. Terence, of course, himself says that he took this or that comedy from Menander or another Greek. The old stage directions confirm this and name the other Greek, Apollodorus. The approved and required method in the Roman theatre was to take the schemes or frames of the Greek comedies and to keep their location in Greece. In fact, to judge from Terence's apologies, it seems to have been considered improper to fuse two or more of these well-known schemes together, though once one was adopted great liberty was allowed in tacitly recasting it, introducing variations, and extra episodes and personages. However, what matters for us is not the frame, but the embroidery, not the argument or fable, but the flow of poetry infused in it. This was understood during the many centuries of European literature in which the word "imitation" had a significance, at the same time humble and noble, as the acceptance of a traditional outline to serve as a frame to support the embroidery, the creation of beauty.

But in later times the philologians, untrained for the judgement of art, if not actually deaf to poetry, gave great and primary importance to the canvas, and ended by glorifying the weaving of the canvas itself with the scientific-sounding but in this context unscientific term of "technique". So nowadays, instead of enquiring after poetry, they pronounce judgement and allot retribution on the good or bad technique of the work, with an air of knowing the job, which, since we are here discussing drama, would mean being expert stage-managers or actor-managers, with a sound knowledge of theatrical continuity and effect. It was therefore inevitable, when some papyrus discoveries brought to light several long fragments of Menander and a good part of one of his comedies, that they should soon weight up and pass judgement that the "technique" of Menander was superior to that of Terence, whom they regard as little better than a bungler. Be that as it may (and personally I feel this also to be a prejudiced assessment), the point is that the canvas or technique in poetry is a secondary matter. I will here enlist the assertion of this simple truth, so hard to put across to the stiff minds of the philologians, made by Michel de Montaigne in reference precisely to Terence. Montaigne had a great affection for the Roman comic poet, calling him "admirable à représenter au vif les mouvements de l'âme et la condition de nos mœurs". Montaigne had little use for those whose interest lay and was centred in the plot, the accidents, the complications, the diverting adventures. "Il en va de mon aucteur tout au contraire: les perfections et beautez de sa facon de dire nous font perdre l'appetit de son subject: sa gentillesse et sa mignardise nous retiennent partout; il est partout si plaisant, liquidus puroque simillimus amni, et nous remplit tant l'âme de ses graces que nous en oublions celles de sa fable" [Essais]. As Montaigne says, we forget it, or rather we take no heed of it. What does it matter to us that the usual slave, the Know-all or Think-of-all, produces the usual shrewd devices for getting cash for the young master and hoodwinking the old? What does it matter that the sweetheart turns out to be a daughter of the old man's friend and marriage supplies a happy ending? Our eye follows something which arises out of this tale and leaves it behind and dances above it.

Moreover, it is improbable that Terence's plays are mere or even free translations of Greek plays, with at the most some well-conceived changes of detail, but having no originality save that poetic quality which always pertains to the work of the artistic translator or adaptor, and without which he could not accomplish it. But the scholars wish to deny Terence the authorship even of the changes of detail. Where the sources relate that a given character or scene was introduced by Terence, they reply that these are too fine and masterly to be flour from the mill of Terence, and that the old commentator must have made a mistake or has been misunderstood or his text meddled with, since those sections also are certainly by Menander or some other Greek comediographer overlooked by the commentator. This seems to me, I confess, arguing in a vicious circle. In any case the fact is that Terence and Plautus had before them more or less the same models: and what a difference divides their two temperaments and respective dramatic output! In the plays of Terence there is a unity of feeling, a steady and coherent personality, an artistic chastity and nobility, a shyness about leaving his own range and breaking or straying into those of others. Translators, on the contrary, are usually versatile, and in this versatility display their artistic sensitiveness and their prowess. Why did Terence compose only "sex comoedias"? Probably because "son verre n'était pas grand mais il buvait dans son verre". The tale, so often foolishly repeated, originating in the misreading of a page of Suetonius, that after publishing his six comedies, Terence went on a trip to Greece where he translated and adapted no fewer than a hundred and eight comedies of Menander, but was shipwrecked and died of grief for the loss of the novas fabulas among his baggage, might smack of mockery at the smallness of his literary output. But the relation of Terence to Menander may be other than the modern grammarians suppose. The right idea may be that which is perhaps suggested in a well-known passage of Saint Jerome, who knew and valued both authors, and advised enquiring students to accept as the four standards of poetical style Homer and Virgil, Menander and Terence, a hint, maybe, that as Virgil stands to Homer so—in the other couple, for whom, as Petrarch remarked, the "altitudo stili" of the epic does not obtain—Terence stands to Menander.

In truth, the increased but by no means voluminous stock which we now have of Menander's writings is far from confirming the view of Terence as being merely a graceful and gifted translator. Rather, it serves to emphasize the differing features of the lively, impetuous, smiling Greek, so agreeable and witty, though he can also be warmhearted and pathetic as with Glycera and the soldier of the Perikeiromene and Abrotonon and Carisio of the Epitrepontes; and on the other hand of Terence, with his deep humanity and feeling, not easily moved to mirth and laughter. Maybe further discoveries of other Menander plays, permitting a fuller valuation of Menander's personality, will indicate a closer connexion between the two authors, but at this moment I do not think that there is ground for going beyond what was already known because recounted by Terence himself: that Terence took some plots from Menander. The copious literature, still piling up, which busies itself with cataloguing all the scenes which he took from Menander, with the changes and adaptations which he introduced, is altogether conjectural and sterile, and, frankly, seems to me just so much scholarly raving. If tantus amor spurs on the scholars to acquire knowledge of this sort (as though there were not already an excess of it in regard to other poets, and very little of it—as has been found—of any use for the interpretation of the poets), then on with the business of digging up more papyri, and mean-while, a little patience!

Still less does the comparative study of the new fragments authorize conclusions as to a superiority of Menander as a true poet over Terence as a mere man of letters, or of Menander as a creative mind over Terence as a mechanical mind. Or is one to try and take seriously the absurd pastime in which the philological scholars, taking on the air of philosophers, and thus degenerating into bad philosophers, have begun to indulge with such zeal and pleasure, the game of supposing that the discussion of certain moral, political, or other concepts underlies the poets's works, constituting what is with heavy emphasis called their "problems"? By such devices a German scholar [K. Stavenhagen, in Hermes, XLV (1910)] showed the gulf which divides an "artist of genius" like Menander and a "clever comedy writer" like Terence, or rather, (since even this rank was denied to him) Terence's immediate model Apollodorus of Karystos. Just think of it: Menander in the Epitrepontes felt and propounded, according to this scholar, the moral problem of the duty of chastity for the male, equally with the female, before marriage. This tremendous and sublime problem Terence-Apollodorus threw aside for the petty pleasure of changing the scene and resolving a "technical problem". Our Italian Pasquali, hotly pursuing the German, put the essential greatness of Menander in this self-revelation in the Epitrepontes as a "thinker absorbed in problems of social ethics" including a problem such as that of pre-matrimonial male chastity which is "eminently modern, Kantian, Ibsenic"; and although Menander "did not actually solve it" (alas, he sighs, it has not even yet been solved), yet, we are told, he was able to develop it in the way that Ibsen would have done, which Pasquali proceeds to divine and describe. In reality, this problem belongs not to the Kant of philosophy, but if at all to the Kant of the casuistic exercises, and the mental atmosphere of this problem is lacking in Ibsen. (Nora in the Doll's House has nothing to do with the case.) Where it is found is in such an abstract and insipid moralist as Björnson, whose drama on the subject (The Glove of 1883) Pasquali should, if necessary, have called in to support his odd thesis. It would be superfluous here to explain once again that the existence of a conceptual problem (moral, political, or otherwise) so far from confirming the presence confirms the absence of poetry: and in any case not only is the problem in question not enunciated in Menander's comedy, but the particular case cited by the German scholar and his Italian follower does not arise. What Carisio reproaches himself with is a fault quite different from that of not having retained the flower of chastity to offer to his bride.

I have confuted these distorted judgements which it is now fashionable to pile up against the art of Terence, in the interests of truth and logic. In the same way the preceding objections and reserves which I expressed on the theory that Terence was a mere translator are the fruit of a methodic doubt and critical caution. Yet once again I will be prepared for the sake of argument to admit the improbable hypothesis that the six comedies attributed to Terence are simple translations from Greek comedies. For that is not the point. Translations or originals, these six comedies are present and expressive and they reveal to us the soul of a poet having his own accent, his own music, his own prevailing feeling. The reader of poetry asks the critic to remove the obstacles and help him to enjoy the poetry; that, and nothing else. Other questions, even if they are sensible and soluble, yet since they relate to something outside and apart from the poetical work, do not meet the reader's need, but on the contrary overlook it, and are therefore tiresome or at least otiose. I suggest that after so much irrelevant comment it is time to tackle that which alone is relevant. It is time, after lingering so long with his scholarly commentators, to turn directly to himself, and to learn from him his "dominating feeling", which fortunately is something very dear and precious-human goodness. The human goodness in question can be more closely described as one which is well aware of human weaknesses, but would rather trace and observe the spontaneous awakening and development of the finer affections, thereby placing bounds upon those which are less noble and pure, so as to offset them and elude their dominance.

The first and most obvious example of this is the manner of his treatment of the shameless wench, the "meretrix mala" of the other comic dramatists. Terence never shows this character as totally and utterly "mala". With him, she always exhibits some inclination to good and generous behaviour, some disposition or longing for virtue, some feeling of humility regarding her position. Terence seems not to believe that a human being can be radically wicked, and seems unwilling to exclude any one of them from the pale of humanity.

Thus we hear of the young Chrysis migrating from Andros to Athens under the spur of need and neglect at home. She has no thought or desire of vice, indeed at first she lives by the hard work of spinning and weaving. Then she yields to the temptations which beset youth and beauty where the helps and hindrances of family and social links are lacking. She yields to the lure of pleasure and sinks gradually to the position of a courtesan. But she still arouses feelings of friendship and strong affection, and when near to death she is in a position to call on a young man who is like a brother to her, and to entrust a young girl whom she has treated as a sister to his faith and honour, placing her hand in his as in that of a husband, friend, brother, father, in fact as the representative of all institutions and moral relations. The young man, who was never her lover, follows her bier weeping with the others, and his father too, responding to these marks of gentleness which he sees with pleasure in his son, joins in the mourning.

Bacchis, in the Hecyra, had been warmly loved by young Pamphilus. But Pamphilus, at his father's orders, marries against his own will. He leaves his bride untouched, with the firm intention of restoring her as a virgin to her parents, and he continues his amour with the other. The lover, now that she no longer has the young man all to herself, becomes ill-tempered and overbearing, so that by contrast the gentle yieldingness of the bride wins him over, and little by little he shifts his love and ends by dropping Bacchis. But the bewildered relatives, at the height of the painful and hopeless tension between the young husband and wife, suspect that Pamphilus is still in the sway of his old mistress. Pamphilus' father proceeds to question her and is ready to pass on to threats. But Bacchis takes no malevolent pleasure in the troubles of the young couple and their families, harbours no vengeful feelings against the lover who has left her or the bride who is the cause of this, but says truthfully that Pamphilus is no longer visiting her. The father asks her to repeat this to his womenfolk, and she, who is no better than she should be, feels a mingled pride and shyness at being required to appear before a bride who must necessarily look on her with hostility, in a respectable house which in itself is a reproach and humiliation for her; and she knows that no other girl in her position would do it. But her good heart prevails, and a sort of natural honesty, and she goes. As luck will have it, at the encounter she is able to produce evidence which, much better than her own statement, cuts the knot and allays the painful tension between the young husband and wife. And great is her joy.

Quantam obtuli adventu meo laetitiam Pamphilo  hodie!Quot commodas res attuli! Quot autem ademi  curas!Gnatum ei restituo, paene qui harum ipsiusque  opera periit:uxorem, quam nunquam ratus posthac se habiturum,  reddo:qua re suspectus suo patri et Phidippo fuit,  exolui …

She rejoices and congratulates herself upon being the one chosen to dispel such great troubles, to bring about so much joy in a family which certainly did not expect this from her. At this point one of those excellent scholars who cannot admire one poet without running down another, affirms that Bacchis is "much inferior" to Abrotonon in the Epitrepontes, whom Terence must have had in mind, because Bacchis "talks too much of her generosity, laying on an excessive air of modesty", particularly in the verses just quoted, whereas Abrotonon "who felt that she had served as a decoy for herself, instead of indulging in self-praise, works out her plans carefully and proceeds to put them into action without talking too much about herself." Here there are misstatements of fact, for if Abrotonon had quickly lost the affections of Carisios, Bacchis, too, after repeated declarations of love and a long attachment had been abandoned by Pamphilus. And if Bacchis is pleased with what she has done, but neither asks nor expects a reward, Abrotonon had in mind the reward of winning her freedom. Nor is it possible to point to a passage in which Bacchis "lays on an excessive air of modesty" and at the same time "talks too much of her own generosity". The satisfaction which she shows, even if she wears it a little bit like a halo, becomes her well, for the poet never claimed to be depicting a woman of exquisite fineness and austere perfection. Let us, however, ignore these details. The point is that poetically the two characters are quite different. Abrotonon is a poor creature, a little cocotte usually down on her luck, who cannot herself make out how Carisios came to pick her up, and comically complains that he does not even want her company at meals and has already left her in "unmarried purity" for as long as three days. She is also a good creature who makes haste and takes pains to discover whether the exposed child is or is not the son of Carisios, and who was its mother. All this she does and says pleasantly, shrewdly, and amusingly. What has this to do with Bacchis? Bacchis refuses to be like the other courtesans with their cold crude selfishness, their hatred and vengefulness against anyone who has escaped from their clutches and is no longer any use to them. Her behaviour at that meeting, I think, has no need to be judged by these moralizing scholarly gentlemen, for it had already been fittingly judged and understood and felt by young Pamphilus in his expression of warm gratitude and tenderness when after her saving action she comes up to him with a plain greeting.

O Bacchis, mea Bacchis, servatrix mea!

He calls her "his" Bacchis, "his" in a different sense from before, "his" as she now speaks to his heart; his old feeling for her being restored and purified, and changed in its quality and savour. The words which they now exchange are not those of the former lovers, but of two beings who have been raised on to another plane. He still finds in her the charm that renders her delightful to look at and speak with wherever it may be, while she still admires in him the manners and the mind which make of him the most charming young man in the world. And she wants him to be happy in his new condition and affectionately recommends him to be good to his wife, who well deserves this "Recte amasti, Pamphile, uxorem tuam". The wife, whom she has just seen for the first time strikes her as most charming, "perliberalis". The two leave their common past behind them and find each other on a new and higher level in the present.

There is a similar kindly disposition, at bottom, in Bacchis' girl friend Philotis, who, though amazed and outraged by Pamphilus' desertion of Bacchis, rejects the lesson inferred by the old hag that girls should feel no pity for any man; but should despoil them, mutilate them, injure them all, not excepting anyone, when they hold them in their power. What, asks Philotis "eximium neminem habeam?"—not even one of them? And to the old woman's repeated arguments she objects again. "Tamen pol eandem injuriumst esse omnibus", as if to say that one could not and should not be as vindictive as that.

The other Bacchis (the character in the Heautontimorumenos) is shown as a courtesan in the full display and zeal of one greedily pursuing her business interests. Yet she too feels the need to explain to young Antiphila, who is on her way to meet her bridegroom, that she behaves like this not out of sheer viciousness but because she is caught up helplessly in the logic of her situation. "Nam expedit bonas esse vobis: nos quibuscum est res, non sinunt." It is the selfishness of the male, she means, which brings this about, seeking nothing else but voluptuous beauty and turning the back when this fades. And Thais in the Eunuchus, Thais whose name thanks to Dante has come in the Italian language to designate the most shrewish sort of whore, is in Terence just one of those who follow the iron logic of the life to which they have given themselves, and think and provide against future woes. But she is not a bad woman. Thais, in her way, feels affectionately for young Phaedria, and if she courts the soldier, it is because she expects to win from him the gift of a young slave whom she hopes to restore to the bosom of her family and thus to gain for herself some goodwill to console her solitude in the city. I recall how in the expurgated text of Terence (that of Monsignor Bindi) which I was given at school the episode of Bacchis' success in getting herself by that means received into the household and home of Laches "in clientelam et fidem", contrary to good family morality, received a pained comment on the lines that the "corruption of those pagan times" could alone excuse Terence. The good Monsignor Bindi had already transformed Phaedria and Thraso into two suitors for "the hand of Thais", which Phaedria had the good luck to obtain! For all that Monsignor Bindi understood and enjoyed his Terence much more sensibly than many modern scholars.

In view of this handling of the figure of the courtesan in the Terentian plays I cannot help wondering that these eminent scholars have missed the occasion for congratulating not of course Terence (that mere "santo pequeño"), but Menander, on the discovery and exploration of the "problem" of the "redemption" of the fallen woman, foreshadowing a favourite theme of the French Romantics. As a matter of fact they have not wholly overlooked this, and let us hope that they will follow it up with their customary intuitive penetration into broad issues and delicacy of interpretation of particulars. Thus Lafaye says that Terentius-Apollodorus "semble avoir voulu, comme les romantiques, rajeunir les types traditionnels en leur prêtant des sentiments contraires à l'idée que l'on se faisait géneralement: de là la bonne courtisane, fine, sensible, désintéressée. According to this critic Terence was unconventional for love of novelty, not, then, in a Romantic but at most in a Baroque spirit. For the Romantics were drawn to paradoxical characterizations by the spirit of revolt against society with its conventions and laws. But in truth it was neither the spirit of revolt nor a Baroque love of the amazing and the bizarre that guided the straightforward and delicate Terence.

Naturalness, indulgence, goodness of heart pervade other scenes and other characters also in the plays of Terence. Nowhere in the pages of Giovanni Boccaccio - eager expert though he was in all the paths which natural love finds for surmounting hindrances, winning its ends by the subtlest tricks and eluding all precautions - is there any such humane moral atmosphere as in the first scene of the Andria. The father has very sensibly decided that the best way of deterring young Pamphilus from getting into mischief is to leave him entirely free; and observing him in his youthful occupations and amusements, his delight in horses and hunting, his interests too in philosophers and their disputations, and his social activities, is delighted to see him behaving temperately and tactfully, surrounded by popularity and affection. The father observes that he also frequents the house of Chrysis, joining in talks and supper-parties but without committing himself or scorching himself with the flames of love. The father is pleased with this too, for his son's and his own sake, and when he sees the boy distressed at the death of this woman, he approves of that proper sentiment and joins respectfully in his grief and tears. But at the funeral he sees among the other women one that he does not know, a pretty, shy, attractive girl, who they tell him is the dead woman's sister. This is somewhat of a shock. A veil drops from his mind, there is a flash of comedy in this dissipation of a comfortable illusion, leaving him surprised, but at the same time seriously concerned. Tut-tut - so that is at the root of the affair, is it?

           Attat, hoc illud est,hinc illae lacrimae, haec illast misericordia!

The two young persons' love soon after reveals itself infallibly without any need of words from them or from others when, as the flames lick the pyre and the girl ventures too close, Pamphilus, greatly alarmed,

adcurrit: mediam mulierem complectitur:Mea Glycerium" inquit "quid agis? quor te is perditum?"Tum illa, ut consuetum facile amorem cerneresrejecit se in eum flens quam familiariter.

Four verses which are a picture in themselves, a poem of inconsolable grief, of watchful loving care, as the woman gives way to her feelings and seeks and finds comforting protection from the man she loves. The youth is worthy of this trusting abandon, he feels the responsibility which falls on him for this girl who has given herself to him, whom if he were to throw aside in order to fulfil the marriage arranged for him by his father, he would not only consign to utter despair, but would expose her to corruption in the corrupt world, so that for his fault that innocent and charming nature would be ruined:

     Hem, egone istuc conari queam?Egon propter me suam decipi miseram sinam,quae mihi suom animum atque omnem vitam  credidit,quam ego animo egregie caram pro uxore habuerim!Bene et pudice eius doctum atque eductum sinamcoactum egestate ingenium inmutarier?

The vow made to the dying Chrysis was sacred, and he will not loosen his grip upon that hand which she placed in his, and which he gripped as he swore the oath.

Quite a different note of passion is portrayed in young Phaedria (in the Eunuchus), a passion without ethical content, all feeling and desire, greedy and violent, steadily persistent, however badly the woman behaves and however much he himself tries to free himself from the coils. Phaedria and Thais, one may say, are on the same level. Parmeno sums up his situation for him, and tells him what to do:

Quid agas? nisi ut te redimas captum quam queas minumo: si nequeas paululo, at quantum queas: et ne te adflictes …

This tries to compromise between her preference for him and her own needs and ambitions which require her to give some satisfaction also to the other man, the rich soldier who was formerly her lover. In her words there is a resignation bordering upon melancholy:

Ne crucia te, obsecro, anime mi, Phaedria.
Non pol, quo quemquam plus amem aut plus diligam,eo feci: sed ita erat res, faciundum fuit.

And Phaedria ends by acquiescing, in order not to have to sever relations with the woman, only begging and insisting that he is not to be kept waiting more than two days, during which he goes off to his farm, but cannot stay there more than an hour or two before he is back in the town hanging round Thais. Once again Parmeno cannot resist philosophic reflections on the oddity of poor mankind, and sees no remedy:

Di boni, quid hoc morbist? adeon homines inmutarierex amore, ut non cognoscas eundem esse! Hoc  nemo fuitminus ineptus, magis severus quisquam, nec  magis continens …

Phaedria, that is to say, was not a blind and crude slave of the senses, but a man who had fallen into a net and was struggling in it and simply drawing it tighter. For the moment he was in the sway of an inebriation which one day, however, would be dissolved.

In the same spirit (I use this expression advisedly, for surely those pretended eulogies of a poet, be it Terence, Menander, or any other, for depicting "daily life as it really is in itself " or for "competing with nature and beating her at her own game" are quite senseless), in the same spirit, I say, the dramatist delineates the passionate old man Menedemus (in the Heautontimorumenos), that father who cannot forgive himself for having by his strictness caused his son to go off on military service, and now himself works furiously on the land, anxiously avoiding the slightest pleasure or relaxation, for that would seem to him time stolen from the son whom his behaviour had thrown into the fatigues and harshness of military life. The contrast in the educational methods of the two fathers in the Adelphoi is not, as some moralizing commentators would have it, designed to inculcate the lesson of avoidance of extremes, but serves to illustrate and to express wonderment at the variety of human conduct and its unforeseeable consequences. Terence really does not know what to think of the two respective methods and takes sides for neither, least of all for a schoolmaster's synthesis of the two. Demea, who has seen his strict methods frustrated in the outcome, proceeds to adopt the opposite method which he previously denounced and opposed, but does so in a mood of angry exasperation as if wishing it to do its worst, and to end in disaster. He violently exaggerates the easy-going methods of his brother, punishing him by forcing him also to practise his indulgence on a new and widened scale, and making him reel with the mounting measure of his liberalities. He wishes thereby to demonstrate to him that the praise and the advantages which he has hitherto enjoyed were not won ex aequo et bono, but simply by yielding to the interests and passions of others. War-weary, he drops the reins and spurs his horse to a precipitous and disorderly gallop, but all the time he clings to the opinion that his method was the right one and will have to come into its own again. On the other side the indulgent brother does not really cease to believe in his method, or consent to forswear it. There is no question, then, of a "problem" or an educational programme, but simply of a clash of temperaments and feelings, and a tangle of chances, eluding all educational theory.

Alongside of the contrast between the two father-brothers, the two mothers are shown in the Hecyra as placed in different circumstances, indeed, calling for different attitudes, but equally disposed for self-effacing maternal sacrifice, one for her son and the other for her daughter. This harmonious correspondence between the minds of two mothers has astonishingly been dubbed a mere "duplication", and more or less blamed on the usual presumption that Terence must always and in everything be inferior to the great Menander. The unfortunate Philumena, too, innocent victim who confides the secret of her shame to the mother only, concealing it from husband and father, must, it seems, be judged inferior to Pamphila of the Epitrepontes. But in truth these girls and brides of the Terentian comedies are delineated in their innocency with delicate simplicity. I will end this brief series of illustrations of Terence's handling of the human affections with a reference to the parasite in the Eunuchus, so different a figure from the cut-and-dried caricatures of the other comic writers (Ergasilus in the Captivi of Plautus, for example). He is as amusing as a Casanova when he sets forth his guiding principle that fools are sent into the world solely for the benefit of clever fellows. Since the world contains such a soldier as Thraso, living on boasts, longing to be recognized as brave, far-sighted, clever, brilliant, why not at his side a Gnatho to humour him and so make a living for himself? There can be no question of altering him, changing him for the better. The utmost that would be possible would be to leave this rich soil uncultivated, unharvested, for someone else to exploit, and that would be a pity. So Gnatho follows up the soldier's boasts with approval, applause, epigrams, confirmations and corollaries of what he says, laughs at the quips which Thraso thinks must be amusing, bears with endless repetitions of the soldier's exploits, asks to have them repeated as though he had forgotten the details and would love to hear them again. But Thraso is also the poor fellow who, however much he is wronged and fooled, cannot give up Thais, but creeps back to her and as usual recalls the example of his peers in heroism. "Qui minus quam Hercules servivit Omphalae?" Gnatho approves: "Exemplum placet." Gnatho's masterpiece as a knowing and competent man of the world is when he gets the warrior, and himself too, accepted into the new combine formed by Phaedria and Thais, by dint of the prudent counsel that Thais is too extravagant to be kept by one man and that since a partner must be found none could be better than this rich spendthrift fool who is already on the spot. Even Thraso and Gnatho are not villains, they are poor devils who get on as best they can. True, Pasquali complains that Terence has spoiled the delicate delineation of Thais by Menander (in a comedy which is lost so that no one can say what that delineation was: a new proof of the abounding but peculiar imagination of the scholars). He spoiled it, according to Pasquali, in this last scene "quite unworthy of the charming creature (Thais)" and thereby, "though he may not have offended the majority of the spectators, he certainly must have offended the more refined even of his contemporary readers", for the scene was a contradiction "not only by logical but by psychological and artistic" standards, and "Terence's Eunuch thus ends on a note of disharmony". If Dante treated poor Thais with unmeasured contempt, Pasquali seems to have become captivated by her wiles and to have forgotten, as amorous dreamers do, what she really was and what she is shown to be by the words of Phaedria and Parmeno and in her own words to them. On the other hand Pasquali also displays an erudite moral zeal blind to the feelings which, in all their gradations and complications and interplay, are the stuff of life and the stuff of poetry too, which is free of such scruples and niceties. Whatever the unknown Thais of Menander's unknown comedy may have been like, Terence's Thais is quite all right as she is, and excites our human understanding and compassion.

These are the mainsprings of the poetry of Terence's comedies, among which the palm used to be given to the Eunuchus, so full of life and with a good deal more of that comic and sometimes farcical element in it than in the other comedies, where this is slight or almost wanting. Perhaps it would be better to give the first place to the Hecyra, followed by the Eunuchus, the Andris, the Adelphoi, the Heautontimorumenos, and last, because having more the character of a mere comedy of intrigue, the Phormio.

Thanks to the kindly feeling which he shows in observing and depicting human life, and an occasional touch of something like Christian charity - and by no means, therefore, simply for his excellent Latin - Terence had his warm admirers in antiquity and was among the most read Roman authors in the Middle Ages, and was as dear to Petrarch as afterwards to Montaigne, Erasmus, and Carlo Borromeo, and for his mildness and suavity and artistic clarity seemed almost the Virgil of the Roman comic theatre. In later times familiarity with him, as with all Latin authors, has declined, with the particular assistance in his case of the depreciatory attitude of the professional scholars. But whoever reopens his pages will find his attraction undiminished, and will forget the passage of the centuries.