_Heautontimorumenos_. The chief plot of this play, which I think on the whole the least happy effort of Terence’s imitation, and which, of all his plays, is the most foreign from our manners, is taken, like the last-mentioned drama, from Menander. It derives its Greek appellation from the voluntary punishment inflicted on himself by a father, who, having driven his son into banishment by excess of severity, avenges him, by retiring to the country, where he partakes only of the hardest fare, and labours the ground with his own hands. The deep parental distress, however, of Menedemus, with which the play opens, forms but an inconsiderable part of it, as the son, Clinia, returns in the second act, and other incidents of a comic cast are then interwoven with the drama. The plan of Clitopho’s mistress being brought to the house both of Menedemus and his neighbour Chremes, in the character of Clinia’s mistress, has given rise to some amusing situations: but the devices adopted by the slave Syrus, to deceive and cheat the two old men, are too intricate, and much less ingenious than those of a similar description in most other Latin plays. One of his artifices, however, in order to melt the heart of Chremes, by persuading him that Clitopho thinks he is not his son, has been much applauded; particularly the preparation for this stratagem, where, wisely concluding that one would best contribute to the imposition who was himself deceived, he, in the first place, makes Clitopho believe that he is not the son of his reputed father. Terence himself, in his prologue, has called this play _double_, probably in allusion to the two plots which it contains. Julius Scaliger absurdly supposes that it was so termed because one half of the play was represented in the evening, and the other half on the following morning(307). It has been more plausibly conjectured, that the original plot of the Greek play was simple, consisting merely of the character of the Self-tormentor Menedemus, the love of his son Clinia for Antiphila, and the discovery of the real condition of his mistress; but that Terence had added to this single fable, either from his own invention, or from some other Greek play, the passion of Clitopho for Bacchis, and the devices of the slave in order to extract money from old Chremes(308). These two fables are connected by the poet with much art, and form a double intrigue, instead of the simple argument of the Greek original.