en he had not
passed his thirty-fifth year, in order to avoid suspicion, as he found
others publishing their works under his name, or else to make himself
acquainted with the modes of life and habits of the Greeks, for the
purpose of exhibiting them in his plays, he withdrew from home, to which
he never returned. Volcatius gives this account of his death:

Sed ut Afer sei populo dedit comoedias,
Iter hic in Asiam fecit. Navem cum semel
Conscendit, visus nunquam est. Sic vita vacat.

(535) When Afer had produced six plays for the entertainment of the
people,
He embarked for Asia; but from the time he went on board ship
He was never seen again. Thus he ended his life.

Q. Consentius reports that he perished at sea on his voyage back from
Greece, and that one hundred and eight plays, of which he had made a
version from Menander [940], were lost with him. Others say that he died
at Stymphalos, in Arcadia, or in Leucadia, during the consulship of Cn.
Cornelius Dolabella and Marcus Fulvius Nobilior [941], worn out with a
severe illness, and with grief and regret for the loss of his baggage,
which he had sent forward in a ship that was wrecked, and contained the
last new plays he had written.

In person, Terence is reported to have been rather short and slender,
with a dark complexion. He had an only daughter, who was afterwards
married to a Roman knight; and he left also twenty acres of garden ground
[942], on the Appian Way, at the Villa of Mars. I, therefore, wonder the
more how Porcius could have written the verses,

--------nihil Publius
Scipio profuit, nihil et Laelius, nihil Furius,
Tres per idem tempus qui agitabant nobiles facillime.
Eorum ille opera ne domum quidem habuit conductitiam
Saltem ut esset, quo referret obitum domini servulus. [943]

Afranius places him at the head of all the comic writers, declaring, in
his Compitalia,

Terentio non similem dices quempiam.
Terence's equal cannot soon be found.

On the other hand, Volcatius reckons him inferior not only (536) to
Naevius, Plautus, and Caecilius, but also to Licinius. Cicero pays him
this high compliment, in his Limo--

Tu quoque, qui solus lecto sermone, Terenti,
Conversum expressumque Latina voce Menandrum
In medio populi sedatis vocibus offers,
Quidquid come loquens, ac omnia dulcia dicens.

"You, only, Terence, translated into Latin, a