Publius Terentius[2], born at Carthage, in Africa, was slave to Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator: who, justly appreciating his great abilities, gave him not only a polite education, but also his liberty in the earlier part of his life. He is supposed by some to have been made a prisoner of war: but Fenestella[3] refutes this opinion; as [4]Terence was born after the conclusion of the second Punic war, and died before the commencement of the third: neither, if he had been made a captive by the [5]Numidians, or Getulians, could he have fallen into the hands of the Romans, as there was no commerce between the Italians and Africans, before the destruction of Carthage. Terence lived in the closest intimacy with many of the Roman nobility, but particularly with Scipio Africanus[6] and Caius Lælius[7], who were about his own age[8], though Fenestella makes Terence rather older than either of them. Portius[9] commemorates their friendship in the following verses: Dum lasciviam nobilium; et fucosas laudes petit: Dum Africani vocem divinam inhiat avidis auribus: Dum ad Furium se cœnitare et Lælium pulchrum putat: Dum se amari ab hisce credit, crebro in Albanum rapi Ob florem ætatis suæ, ipsus sublatis rebus ad summam Inopiam redactus est. Itaque e conspectu omnium abiit in Græciam in terram ultimam. Mortuus est in Stymphalo Arcadiæ oppido: nihil Publius Scipio profuit, nihil ei Lælius, nihil Furius; Tres per idem tempus qui agitabant nobiles facillime, Eorum ille opera ne domum quidem habuit conductitiam, Saltem ut esset, quo referret obitum domini servulus. “While Terence joins in the pleasures of the nobles, and seeks their empty praise; while he listens with delight to the divine voice of Africanus; and thinks himself most happy to sup with Lælius and with Furius[10]; while he believes them to be his true friends; while he is frequently carried to the [11]Albanian villa; his property is spent, and he himself reduced to the greatest poverty: on which account he goes, avoiding all mankind, to the most distant parts of Greece, and dies at Stymphalus[12], a town in Arcadia: his three great friends Scipio, Lælius, and Furius, give him no assistance; nor even enable him to hire a house; that there might, at least, be a place where his slave might announce to Rome his master’s death.”