In using his Greek models, apart from "contamination" referred to above, he permits himself various liberties. Names are altered, individual scenes remodelled, e.g., Eunuchus, 539 seq. or abbrevi ated, cf. Hecyra, 825, and new characters, e.g., Charinus and Burria in the Andria, introduced.
The judgment of Caesar already quoted seems to have been pretty generally endorsed in antiquity. Varro found his chief merit in the exhibition of character (in ethesin Terentius poscit palmam) ; Cicero in his choice language.
In another passage—De optimo genre oratorum, i.—Cicero speaks of Terence as generically differing from Accius ; Horace, Epist., ii. 1.59 quotes as a received opinion that Caecilius (who, according to legend, Sueton Vit. Ter., encouraged the young poet) excelled in dignity, Terence in art. Ovid, Trist. ii. 359 seq. con trasts him with Accius : Accius esset atrox, conviva Terentius esset. Quintilian (x. 1.99) says that the Romans make a poor show in comedy . . . "though the writings of Terence are ascribed to Scipio Africanus—writings which in this kind are most elegant and could have been still more pleasing if they had been confined to trimeter lines"—a criticism which seems to refer to some de partures in prosody from the strict Menandrian model. According
to Servius, Terence is preferred to the other comic poets solely on the ground of propriety, being in other respects inferior. Aulus Gellius, xv. 24 has preserved some lines of Vulcatius Sedigitus, in which the Roman writers of comedy are arranged by him in order of merit, thus—Caecilius, Plautus, Naevius, Licinius, Atilius, Terence. Turpilius, Trabea, Luscius and lastly, added, causa antiquitatis, Ennius. In England and on the Continent, Terence has been popular and influential and imitations of his plays have been numerous, e.g., the Andria was copied in the Conscious Lovers of Sir Richard Steele, the Heautontimorumenos in the All Fools of Chapman, the Eunuchus in Sedley's Bellamira, and La Fon taine's L'Eunuque, the Phormio in Moliere's Les Fourberies de Scapin, the Adelphoe in the same author's Ecole des Mdris.
See Editio princeps: Strasbourg (1470 ; R. Bentley (Cambridge, 1726) ; Fleckeisen (Leipzig, 1898). Editions of single plays are numerous. (A. W. MA.)