So far as it can be so, comedy was in the hands of Terence an instrument of moral teaching, for it can only be so indirectly by painting men and manners as they are, and not as they ought to be. It is said that the patrons of Terence assisted him in the composition of his comedies, or, at least, corrected their language and style, and embellished them by the insertion of scenes and passages. An anecdote is related by Cornelius Nepos,[208] which, if true, at once proves the point. He says that Lælius was at his villa near Puteoli during the festival of the Matronalia. On this holiday the power of the Roman ladies was absolute. Lælius was ordered by his wife to come to supper early. He excused himself on the ground that he was occupied, and begged not to be disturbed. When he appeared in the supper-room, he said he had never been so well satisfied with his compositions. He was asked for a specimen of what he had written, and immediately repeated a scene in the “Self-Tormentor”[209] of Terence. Terence, however, gently refutes this story in the prologue to the “Adelphi,” and gives it a positive contradiction in the prologue to the comedy in which the passage occurs. Perhaps he may at first have permitted the report to be credited for the sake of paying a compliment to his patron. There is a tradition that he lived and died in poverty, and this tale is perpetuated in the following lines by Porcius Licinius:—— Nil Publius Scipio profuit, nihil ei Lælius, nil Furius, Tres per idem tempus qui agitabant nobiles facillume, Eorum ille opere ne domum quidem habuit conductitium Saltem ut esset quo referret obitum domini servulus. Nothing did Publius Scipio profit him; Nothing did Lælius, nothing Furius; At once the three great patrons of our bard. And yet so niggard of their bounty to him, He had not even wherewithal to hire A house in Rome to which a faithful slave Might bring the tidings of his master’s death. _Colman._ The patrons of Terence, however, never deserved the reproach of meanness. Nor could the comic poet have been very poor. He received large sums for his comedies; he had funds sufficient to reside for some time in Greece; and at his death he possessed gardens on the Appian Way twenty jugera in extent. A mystery hangs over his death, which took place B. C. 158.[210] It is not known whether he died in Greece, or was lost at sea, together with all the comedies of Menander, which he had translated whilst in Greece, or whether, after embarking for Asia, he was, as Volcatius writes, never seen more:—— Ut Afer sex populo edidit comœdias Iter hinc in Asiam fecit, navim cum semel Conscendit visus nunquam est. Sic vitâ vacat. One daughter married to a Roman knight survived him.