The second Punic war ended 201 B. C. in the year of Rome 553: and the third commenced 150 B. C. in the year of Rome 604, about three years before the destruction of Carthage. Terence was born 189 B. C., which was 12 years after the termination of the second Punic war, and he died at the age of 36, three years before the beginning of the third Punic war. If we suppose Terence to have been a freeborn Carthaginian, it is very difficult to account for his being a slave at Rome; because the Romans could not have taken him prisoner in war, as they were at peace with the Carthaginians during the whole of his life. Neither is it probable that he was made a prisoner, and sold to the Romans either by the Numidians, or by the Gætulians, as his perfect knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages, at twenty-five years of age, is a most forcible reason for believing that he was removed to Rome in extreme youth: long before he could have been able to undergo the fatigue attendant on a military life. I can solve this difficulty in no other way than by supposing, either that the parents of Terence were themselves slaves at Carthage, and consequently he also was the property of their master; (as the children of slaves shared the fate of their parents;) or that he was sold to the Carthaginians by the Numidians, or by the Gætulians. In either of these cases, it is by no means improbable that during the peace which followed the second Punic war, Terence might in his infancy have been sold by his Carthaginian master to one of those Romans who visited Carthage during the peace. NOTE 5. _The Numidians or Gætulians._ Numidia and Gætulia, or Getulia, at the time of Terence’s birth, formed a part of the dominions of the celebrated African prince Masinissa, who so eminently distinguished himself as the firm and faithful ally of the Roman Republic: and as the formidable enemy of the Carthaginians. Numidia was situated S.W. of the territories of Carthage; and is now that part of Southern Barbary, known by the name of Biledulgerid. Gætulia (the boundaries of which were afterwards regulated by Marius) was a most extensive country, and lay S.W. of Numidia: it is now very little known, and reaches from the south of Barbary, or the country of Dates, across the Great Desert or Sahara, almost as far south as the river Niger. It may be conjectured that the northern region only of this vast country was subject to the control of King Masinissa. NOTE 6. _Scipio Africanus._