Author: TERENCE
Biography:
TERENCE (c. 195-159 BCE: Grafton)
In a short life of him by Suetonius we are told that Terence (Publius Terentius Afer) was born in Carthage, brought to Rome as a slave by his owner Terentius Lucianus, and there educated and freed; also that he died on a visit to Greece in 159. Between 166 and 160 he produced six comedies, all of which survive, all of them adapted from Greek models by Apollodorus of Calystos or Menander to represent characters and settings of contemporary Rome. He was well rewarded by his patrons and his plays for the most part were popular in their own time. His Latin style was admired by such later judges as Cicero for its ease and urbanity; his translator Englefield praises its “exquisite elegance.” Besides their influence on the history of theatre, his plays became staples in the classroom well into the nineteenth century. Of the two verse translations included here, both appeared anonymously but that of The Andrian (“The Girl from Andros”) was by Sir Henry Charles Englefield (c. 1752-1822), a Catholic baronet of wide-ranging interests best known for his antiquarian and scientific pursuits. He was the seventh and last baronet in the family, since he never married and his only son was illegitimate. Englefield, the eldest child of Sir Henry Englefield (1715-80) and his second wife Catharine Buck, was educated abroad, probably in France. He succeeded to the baronetcy in 1780 but chose not to live at the family seat of White Knights, Sonning, Berkshire, but rather at 5 Tilney St., Mayfair, London, where he died on 21 Mar. 1822. The mother of his son was Milburgh Alpress, Mrs. Crewe, who was his mistress from 1794 or earlier. (He was obliged to pay damages to her husband and was cited in the divorce proceedings in 1800.) Both the Crewe and the Alpress families were slave-owners. Mrs. Crewe died in 1803. A later mistress, Mary Anne Clere (“Mrs. Sutton”), a black woman from Haiti, was named a beneficiary in his will though his son Henry inherited the bulk of his estate. Englefield published extensively on topics such as the movement of comets and ecclesiastical architecture, but is not known to have published other literary work. (OCD 1 Apr. 2025; ODNB 1 Apr. 2025; Harvey; Grafton et al., The Classical Tradition [2010]) HJ
Other Names:
- Publius Terentius Afer