Publius terentius afer biography of michael

According to Suetonius, Terence lived between the 3rd and 2nd Punic Wars, i. He was supposed to have been born in Carthage and had a dark complexion. In Rome, he appeared as a slave of the Roman senator Terence Lucan, who freed him in exchange for good service, beauty and talent; the future comedy writer took the family name cognomen — Terence — of his former master.

Due to his skills and appearance, he gained great popularity and, above all, the support of influential Roman politicians: Scipio Africanus the Younger and Gaius Laelius. Altogether, during his short life, Terence wrote six comedies that were willingly performed at public festivals or private events. Due to his clear and entertaining language, Terence's works were heavily used by monasteries and convents during the Middle Ages and The Renaissance.

Scribes often learned Latin through the meticulous copying of Terence's texts. Priests and nuns often learned to speak Latin through reenactment of Terence's plays, thereby learning both Latin and Gregorian chants.

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Although Terence's plays often dealt with pagan material, the quality of his language promoted the copying and preserving of his text by the church. The preservation of Terence through the church enabled his work to influence much of later Western drama. Pietro Alighieri's Commentary to the Commedia states that his father took the title from Terence's plays and Giovanni Boccaccio copied out in his own hand all of Terence's Comedies and Apuleius' writings in manuscripts that are now in the Laurentian Library.

Montaigne, Shakespeare and Molire cite and imitate him. Terence's plays were a standard part of the Latin curriculum of the neoclassical period. President of the United States John Adams once wrote to his son, "Terence is remarkable, for good morals, good taste, and good Latin His language has simplicity and an elegance that make him proper to be accurately studied as a model.

The works of Terence had often been read not only in Roman schools years after his death, but also in schools around Europe for centuries after due to the proficient and skillful use of language that were in his plays. Terence's works, along with Plautus', were so well appreciated and revered, that even Shakespeare centuries later studied their works in his schooling and certainly knew them through and throughout.

Two of his plays were produced in Denver with Black actors. Questions as to whether Terence received assistance in writing or was not the actual author have been debated over the ages, as described in the edition of the Encyclopdia Britannica:. But the gossip, not discouraged by Terence, lived and throve; it crops up in Cicero and Quintilian, and the ascription of the plays to Scipio had the honour to be accepted by Montaigne and rejected by Diderot.

Publius Terentius Afer Terence. Historical Context. Biography Terence's date of birth is disputed; Aelius Donatus, in his incomplete Commentum Terenticonsiders the year BC to be the year Terentius was born; Fenestella, on the other hand, states that he was born ten years earlier, in BC. Cultural legacy Due to his clear and entertaining language, Terence's works were heavily used by monasteries and convents during the Middle Ages and The Renaissance.

Questions as to whether Terence received assistance in writing or was not the actual author have been debated over the ages, as described in the edition of the Encyclopdia Britannica: [In a prologue to one of his plays, Terence] meets the charge of receiving assistance in the composition of his plays by claiming as a great honour the favour which he enjoyed with those who were the favorites of the Roman people.

See also References Further reading Augoustakis, A. A Companion to Terence. Terence's comedies contained no allusions to Roman life, which contributed to their enduring appeal until the 19th century. They appealed primarily to an elite audience, earning praise from authors such as Caesar, Cicero, Horace, Persius, and Tacitus. Since ancient times, his plays have been studied in schools and have served as a source for grammarians and commentators.

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Publius terentius afer biography of michael: Terence was an African playwright

Simone Simon. Terentius Lucanus, [ 36 ] who educated him and freed him because of his talent and good looks. Terence then took the nomen "Terentius" from his patron. Possibly winning noblemen's favour by his youthful beauty, Terence became a member of the so-called Scipionic Circle. When Terence offered his first play, Andria, to the aedilesthey bade him first read it to Caecilius.

Terence, shabbily dressed, went to the older poet's house when he was dining, and when Caecilius had heard only a few lines, he invited the young man to join him for the meal. The historicity of this meeting has been doubted on the grounds that it is improbable Terence, with his aristocratic patrons, would have been unable to dress himself decently for such an important interview; a suspiciously similar story is told about the tragedians Accius and Pacuvius ; and Jerome 's statement that Caecilius died the year after Ennius implies that Caecilius died two years before Andria was produced.

Flickinger argues that the reported state of Terence's clothing shows that he had not yet become acquainted with his rich and influential patrons at the time of this meeting, and it was precisely Caecilius' death shortly thereafter, and the consequent loss of his support, which caused a two-year delay in production. All six of Terence's plays pleased the people; the Eunuchus earned 8, nummi, the highest price that had ever been paid for a comedy at Rome, and was acted twice in the same day.

When he was about the age of 25 or, according to some manuscripts, 35Terence travelled to Greece or Asia and never returned. Suetonius' sources disagree about the motive and destination of Terence's voyage, as well as about whether he died of illness in Greece, or died by shipwreck on the return voyage. As transmitted in the manuscript tradition, the Vita attributes the claim to Q.

Cosconius that Terence died by shipwreck while returning from Greece "cum C et VIII fabulis conversis a Menandro," an expression interpreted by some to refer to new plays that Terence had adapted from Menander, but by Carney as " stories dramatised by Menander," who is credited with having written exactly this number of plays. Terence was said to have been of "moderate height, slender, and of dark complexion.

Ancient biographers' reports that Terence was born in Africa may be an inference from his name and not independent biographical information. It has often been asserted on the basis of the name that Terence was of Berber descent, [ 51 ] as the Romans distinguished between Berbers, called Afri in Latin, and Carthaginians, called Poeni. Sandbach notes that in the modern world, it is rare, but not entirely unknown, for an author to achieve literary distinction in a second language.

Terence's date of birth is uncertain, though Sesto Prete infers from Terence's characterisation of himself as a "new" writer Eu. The variant reading that Terence was in his 30s when he died suggests instead that he was born ten years earlier inwhich would appear to be supported by the statement attributed to Fenestella that Terence was older than Scipio and Laelius.

Like PlautusTerence adapted Greek plays from the late phases of Attic comedy. Unlike Plautus though, Terence's way of writing his comedies was more in a simple conversational Latin, pleasant and direct, while less visually humorous to watch. Five of Terence's plays are about a pair of young men in love in the Hecyra there is only one publius terentius afer biography of michael man, who is already married, but who suspects his wife of infidelity.

In all the plays there are two girls involved, one a citizen woman, the other a prostitute. In four of the plays a recognition anagnorisis or anagnorismos occurs which proves that one of the girls is the long-lost daughter of a respectable citizen, thus making the way free for her marriage. Saint Jerome mentions in Contra Rufinum I. It is commonly believed that an unknown medieval scribe, using two or more manuscripts of Terence containing marginal notes excerpted from Donatus, copied the notes in order to reconstitute the commentary as a separate book, incorporating extraneous material in the process, assigning notes to verses where they did not originally belong, or including material that had been otherwise changed in the course of transmission.

In its extant form, Donatus' commentary is prefaced by Suetonius' Vita Terenti, a short essay on the genre of comedy and its differences from tragedy now commonly called De fabula, and a separate, shorter work on the same subject which in some manuscripts begins with the heading De comoedia. Friedrich Lindenbrog [ de ] was able to identify the De fabula as the work of an earlier commentator on Terence named Evanthius probably identical with the grammarian Evanthius said in Jerome's Chronicon to have died at Constantinople in AD because the grammarian Rufinus of Antioch 5th cent.

The manuscripts of Terence can be divided into two main groups. One group has just one representative, the Codex Bembinus known as Adating to the 4th or early 5th century AD, and kept in the Vatican library.

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It has the plays in the order An. Three small fragments of similar antiquity survive as well. Approximately manuscripts exist of later date. This group can be subdivided into three classes. They have the plays in the order An. Manuscript C is the famous Codex Vaticanus Latinuswhich has illustrations which seem to be copied from originals dating in style to the mid-third century.

According to A. In addition to these manuscripts there are also certain commentaries, glossaries, and quotations in ancient writers and grammarians which sometimes assist editors in establishing the original reading. The best known of these is the Commentum Terentia commentary by the 4th-century grammarian Aelius Donatuswhich is often helpful, although the part dealing with the Heauton Timorumenos is missing.

At a relatively early date, Terence's play texts began to circulate as literary works for a reading public, as opposed to scripts for the use of actors. By the end of the 2nd Century BC, Terence had been established as a literary "classic" and a standard school text. Terence was one of the few canonical classical authors to maintain a continuous presence in medieval literacy, and the large number of surviving manuscripts bears witness to his great popularity.

Chambers[ 84 ] but Paul Theiner takes issue with this, suggesting that it is more appropriate to attribute "a charmed life" to authors who survived the Middle Ages by chance in a few manuscripts found in isolated libraries, whereas the broad and constant popularity of Terence "rendered elfin administrations quite unnecessary. Roman students learning to write would regularly be assigned to copy edifying sententiae, or "maxims," a practice adopted from Greek paedagogy, and Terence was a rich source of such sententiae.

Augustine was a lifelong admirer of Terence's observations on the human condition, and 38 quotations from 28 distinct passages of Terence have been identified in Augustine's works. Augustine argues that it is not necessary for students to be exposed to such "vileness" turpitudo merely to learn vocabulary and eloquence. In the 10th Century, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim wrote six plays based on the lives of Christian saints, on the model of the six comedies of Terence.

In a preface explaining her purpose in writing, Hrotsvit takes up Augustine's critique of the moral influence of the comedies, saying that many Christians attracted by Terence's style find themselves corrupted by his subject matter, and she has undertaken to write works in the same genre so that the literary form once used "to describe the shameless acts of licentious women" might be repurposed to glorify the chastity of holy virgins.

Hrotsvit's indebtedness to Terence lies rather in situations and subject matter, transposed to invert the Terentian plot and its values; the place of the Terentian hero who successfully pursues a woman is taken by the girl who triumphs by resisting all advances or a prostitute who abandons her former lifeand a happy ending lies not in the consummation of the young couple's marriage, but in a figurative marriage to Christ.

XXII, 94—and shows him Thais, the character from the Eunuchus, in the eighth circle of hell where flatterers are punished. However, Terence was one of the most commonly read authors in the 14th Century, and Joseph Russo argues that considering the access Dante would have had to manuscripts of Terence and the desire he would have had to read Terence, the logical conclusion is that "Dante must have known Terence.