evalent and popular. Its representative Terentius (558-595) is
one of the most interesting phenomena, in a historical point of
view, in Roman literature. Born in Phoenician Africa, brought in
early youth as a slave to Rome and there introduced to the Greek
culture of the day, he seemed from the very first destined for the
vocation of giving back to the new Attic comedy that cosmopolitan
character, which in its adaptation to the Roman public under the
rough hands of Naevius, Plautus, and their associates it had in
some measure lost. Even in the selection and employment of models
the contrast is apparent between him and that predecessor whom
alone we can now compare with him. Plautus chooses his pieces from
the whole range of the newer Attic comedy, and by no means disdains
the livelier and more popular comedians, such as Philemon; Terence
keeps almost exclusively to Menander, the most elegant, polished,
and chaste of all the poets of the newer comedy. The method of
working up several Greek pieces into one Latin is retained by
Terence, because in fact from the state of the case it could not be
avoided by the Roman editors; but it is handled with incomparably
more skill and carefulness. The Plautine dialogue beyond doubt
departed very frequently from its models; Terence boasts of the
verbal adherence of his imitations to the originals, by which
however we are not to understand a verbal translation in our sense.
The not unfrequently coarse, but always effective laying on of
Roman local tints over the Greek ground-work, which Plautus was
fond of, is completely and designedly banished from Terence;
not an allusion puts one in mind of Rome, not a proverb, hardly
a reminiscence;(2) even the Latin titles are replaced by Greek.
The same distinction shows itself in the artistic treatment. First
of all the players receive back their appropriate masks, and greater
care is observed as to the scenic arrangements, so that it is no
longer the case, as with Plautus, that everything needs to take
place on the street, whether belonging to it or not. Plautus ties
and unties the dramatic knot carelessly and loosely, but his plot
is droll and often striking; Terence, far less effective, keeps
everywhere account of probability, not unfrequently at the cost of
suspense, and wages emphatic war against the certainly somewhat
flat and insipid standing expedients of his predecessors, e. g.
against allegoric dreams.(3) Plautus paints his ch