Author: Terence

Terence (Publius Terentius Afer) was born in North Africa around 195 or 185 BC and brought to Rome as a slave, where the senator Terentius Lucanus educated him and set him free. His six comedies were staged between 166 and 160 BC, each of them reworked from Greek originals by Menander or Apollodorus of Carystus. He used his prologues to answer critics rather than to summarize the plot, so they read as a running defense of how he wrote. He died in 159 BC, still young, on or after a journey to Greece, and his Latin went on being copied and taught in schools for more than a thousand years.