Download - TERENCE
LIFE
• Born in Cartage
• Educated by Terentius Lucanus
• Part of Scipio’s circle of intellectuals
• In 160 T. leaves Rome setting for Greece, and never comes back.
LIFE (deconstructed)
• Cartage: cf. Africanus
• Involvement: with aristocratic circles
• Time of intense Roman contact with mainland Greek civilization
Scipio Africanus Minor
• son of L. Aemilius Paulus,
• adopted by the older Africanus
• Terence is believed to have known him
Lucius Aemilius Paulus
• In 168 BCE wins the decisive battle of the Third Macedonian War
• Booty: 250 wagons of artifacts
• Greek art becomes fashionable among aristocracy
Cultural background
• 186 Worship of Bacchus suppressed
• 173: Epicurean philosophers banished from Rome
• But not without opposition
Plays
• Andria (166 BCE)
• Hecyra (165, 160)
• Heauton Timorumenos (163)
• Eunuchus (161)
• Phormio (161)
• Adelphi (160)
Pattern
• Young man falls in love but cannot marry until obstacles are overcome
• & a side-plot
• Focus on relationships & misunderstandings
• Interest in human nature; homo sum humani nil a me alienum puto.
“CONTAMINATION”
• Contaminatio has been practiced by Naevius, Plautus and Ennius (An. 15ff)
• — Terence’s art pleases the elite and he is proud of it (Ad. 15 ff)
• —Terence uses in his compositions the method of contaminatio, a practice of combining several Greek models into one Roman adaptation. Naevius, Plautus and Ennius did the same (An. 15ff)