But the
condition of honest women in his day did not permit of the freedom of
action and fencing dialectic of a Celimene, and consequently it is below
our mark of pure Comedy.
Sainte-Beuve conjures up the ghost of Menander, saying: For the love of
me love Terence. It is through love of Terence that moderns are able to
love Menander; and what is preserved of Terence has not apparently given
us the best of the friend of Epicurus. [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced] the lover taken in horror, and [Greek text] the damsel shorn
of her locks, have a promising sound for scenes of jealousy and a too
masterful display of lordly authority, leading to regrets, of the kind
known to intemperate men who imagined they were fighting with the weaker,
as the fragments indicate.
Of the six comedies of Terence, four are derived from Menander; two, the
Hecyra and the Phormio, from Apollodorus. These two are inferior in comic
action and the peculiar sweetness of Menander to the Andria, the Adelphi,
the Heautontimorumenus, and the Eunuchus: but Phormio is a more dashing
and amusing convivial parasite than the Gnatho of the last-named comedy.
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