The Comedies of Terence: Literally Translated into English Prose, with NotesTerence
General
The Comedies of Terence: Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes
Terence
Latin drama (Comedy) -- Translations into English; Terence -- Translations into English
[Footnote 21: _If there is one who thinks_)--Ver. 4. He alludes to
his old enemy, Luscus Lavinius, the Comic Poet, who is alluded to
in the Prologue to the Andria, and has since continued his attacks
upon him.]
[Footnote 22: _By translating literally_)--Ver. 7. “Bene vertendo,
at eosdem scribendo male.” This passage has greatly puzzled some
of the Commentators. Bentley has, however, it appears, come to the
most reasonable conclusion; who supposes that Terence means by
“bene vertere,” a literal translation, word for word, from the
Greek, by which a servile adherence to the idiom of that language
was preserved to the neglect of the Latin idiom; in consequence of
which the Plays of Luscus Lavinius were, as he remarks, “male
scriptæ,” written in bad Latin.]
[Footnote 23: _Has published the Phasma_)--Ver. 9. The “Φασμά,” or
“Apparition,” was a play of Menander, so called, in which a young
man looking through a hole in the wall between his father’s house
and that next door, sees a young woman of marvelous beauty, and is
struck with awe at the sight, as though by an apparition; in the
Play, the girl’s mother is represented as having made this hole in
the wall, and having decked it with garlands and branches that it
may resemble a consecrated place; where she daily performs her
devotions in company with her daughter, who has been privately
brought up, and whose existence is unknown to the neighbors. On
the youth coming by degrees to the knowledge that the object of
his admiration is but a mortal, his passion becomes so violent
that it will admit of no cure but marriage, with the celebration
of which the Play concludes. Bentley gives us the above
information from an ancient Scholiast, whose name is unknown,
unless it is Donatus himself, which is doubtful. It would appear
that Luscus Lavinius had lately made a translation of this Play,
which, from its servile adherence to the language of the original,
had been couched in ungrammatical language, and probably not
approved of by the Audience. Donatus thinks that this is the
meaning of the passage, and that, content with this slight
reference to a well-known fact, the author passes it by in
contemptuous silence.]
[Footnote 24: _And in the Thesaurus has described_)--Ver. 10. Cook
has the following appropriate remark upon this passage: “In the
‘Thesaurus,’ or ‘Treasure’ of Luscus Lavinius, a young fellow,
having wasted his estate by his extravagance, sends a servant to
search his father’s monument: but he had before sold the ground on
which the monument was, to a covetous old man; to whom the servant
applies to help him open the monument; in which they discover a
hoard and a letter. The old fellow sees the treasure and keeps it;
the young one goes to law with him, and the old man is represented
as opening his cause first before the judge, which he begins with
these words:--
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