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Terence - Andria - Prologue

The poet wrote plays to please the public, but has found himself wasting time writing prologues to defend against slander from an old malevolent poet. He is accused of mixing plots from Menander's plays Andria and Perinthian into his own play, though the plots are similar and were adapted to different languages and styles. However, the poet argues that earlier playwrights like Naevius, Plautus, and Ennius who he emulates also adapted the works of others, and that his accusers understand little. He advises them to stop slandering lest their own faults be revealed, and asks the audience to judge fairly whether his future plays should be permitted or banned.

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Armando Rotondi
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154 views1 page

Terence - Andria - Prologue

The poet wrote plays to please the public, but has found himself wasting time writing prologues to defend against slander from an old malevolent poet. He is accused of mixing plots from Menander's plays Andria and Perinthian into his own play, though the plots are similar and were adapted to different languages and styles. However, the poet argues that earlier playwrights like Naevius, Plautus, and Ennius who he emulates also adapted the works of others, and that his accusers understand little. He advises them to stop slandering lest their own faults be revealed, and asks the audience to judge fairly whether his future plays should be permitted or banned.

Uploaded by

Armando Rotondi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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P.

Terentius Afer (Terence), Andria: The Fair Andrian


Henry Thomas Riley, Ed.

THE PROLOGUE.

THE POET, when first he applied his mind to writing, thought that the only duty which devolved on
him was, that the Plays he should compose might please the public. But he perceives that it has fallen
out entirely otherwise; for he is wasting his labor in writing Prologues, not for the purpose of relating
the plot, but to answer the slanders of a malevolent old Poet.1 Now I beseech you, give your attention
to the thing which they impute as a fault. Menander composed the Andrian2 and the Perinthian.3 He
who knows either of them well, will know them both; they are in plot not very different, and yet they
have been composed in different language and style. What suited, he confesses he has transferred into
the Andrian from the Perinthian, and has employed them as his own. These parties censure this
proceeding; and on this point they differ from him, that Plays ought not to be mixed up together. By
being thus knowing, do they not show that they know nothing at all? For while they are censuring
him, they are censuring Naevius, Plautus, and Ennius,4 whom our Poet has for his precedents; whose
carelessness he prefers to emulate, rather than the mystifying carefulness5 of those parties. Therefore,
I advise them to be quiet in future, and to cease to slander; that they may not be made acquainted with
their own misdeeds. Be well disposed, then; attend with unbiased mind, and consider the matter, that
you may determine what hope is left; whether the Plays which he shall in future compose anew, are
to be witnessed, or are rather to be driven off the stage.

1 A malevolent old Poet: He alludes to Luscus Lanuvinus, or Lavinius, a Comic Poet of his time,
but considerably his senior. He is mentioned by Terence in all his Prologues except that to the Hecyra,
and seems to have made it the business of his life to run down his productions and discover faults in
them.

2 Composed the Andrian: This Play, like that of our author, took its name from the Isle of Andros,
one of the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea, where Glycerium is supposed to have been born. Donatus,
the Commentator on Terence, informs us that the first Scene of this Play is almost a literal translation
from the Perinthian of Menander, in which the old man was represented as discoursing with his wife
just as Simo does here with Sosia. In the Andrian of Menander, the old man opened with a soliloquy.

3 And the Perinthian: This Play was so called from Perinthus, a town of Thrace, its heroine being a
native of that place.

4 Noevius, Plautus, and Ennius: Ennius was the oldest of these three Poets. Naevius a contemporary
of Plautus. See a probable allusion to his misfortunes in the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus, l. 211.

5 The mystifying carefulness: By "obscuram diligentiam" he means that formal degree of precision
which is productive of obscurity.

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