Terence and Non-Comic Intertexts

Terence, "the poet," as he regularly called himself in his prologues, was an important aesthetic predecessor of Catullus and the Augustans. His poetry was immersed in the burgeoning intellectual and artistic hothouse that was mid-second century BCE Rome. When Terence sets out to write a Roman comedy which corrects the dominant mode of Republican comedy by means of a more restrained and, in some sense, more Menandrian style, he also adopts a stance which draws on tragedy for serious tone as well as for parody. There is a long tradition of moralizing, ethical, and even philosophical readings of the comedies of Terence. This is in part because such readings of Menander are prevalent, and sadly much reading of Terence has been vicarious attempts at reading Menander; in part also, it is because of the strand in ancient thought which gave moral acceptability to comedy only through its potential didactic effects. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.