Terence shares with Plautus the throne of Roman comedy. He was a Carthaginian slave, and was born B.C. 160, but was educated by a wealthy Roman, into whose hands he fell, and ever after associated with the best society, and traveled extensively into Greece. He was greatly inferior to Plautus in originality, nor has he exerted a lasting influence like him; but he wrote comedies characterized by great purity of diction, and which have been translated into all modern languages. [Footnote: Coleman's _Terence_; Dryden, _On Dram. Poet._; Mommsen, vol. iii. b. v. ch. xiii.] Anterior to the Augustan age, no tragic production has reached us, although Quintilian speaks highly of Accius, [Footnote: Quint., x. 1. Section 97.] especially of the vigor of his style. But he merely imitated the Greeks. Terence closely copied Menander, whom Mommsen regards as the most polished, elegant, and chaste of all the poets of the newer comedy. Unlike Plautus, he draws his characters from good society, and his comedies, if not moral, were decent. Plautus wrote for the multitude; Terence for the few. Plautus delighted in a noisy dialogue and slang expressions; Terence confines himself to quiet conversation and elegant expressions, for which he was admired by Cicero and Quintilian, and other great critics. He aspired to the approval of the good, rather than the applause of the vulgar; and it is a remarkable fact that his comedies supplanted the more original productions of Plautus in the latter years of the republic, showing that the literature of the aristocracy was more prized than that of the people, even in a degenerate age. The "_Thyestes_" [Footnote: Hor., _Sat_. I 9; Martial, viii. 18.] of Varius, was regarded in its day as equal to Greek tragedies. Ennius composed tragedies in a vigorous style, and was regarded by the Romans as the parent of their literature, although most of his works have perished. [Footnote: Born B.C. 239.] Virgil borrowed many of his thoughts, and he was regarded as the prince of Roman song in the time of Cicero. The Latin language is greatly indebted to him. Pacuvius imitated Aeschylus in the loftiness of his style. [Footnote: Born B.C. 170] The only tragedy of the Romans which has reached us was written by Seneca the philosopher. [Sidenote: The Aeneid.] [Sidenote: Virgil.]