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The Invention of Sosia for Terence's First Comedy, The Andria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

William S. Anderson*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

In connection with the beginnings of the Andria, there have been anecdotes and scholarly theories ever since the time of Suetonius and his sources for the Life of Terence, and they intrigued Donatus in his commentary. Naturally, then, they have developed their own influence in the scholarly tradition. An anecdote recounted by Suetonius, who does not name his source, reports that when Terence delivered his play to the aediles of 166 BCE (who would be producing the comedy at the Megalensian Games), he was ordered (or invited, iussus) to read it first to Caecilius Statius (the current grand old man of Latin Comedy). It happened that Caecilius was dining when Terence appeared, dressed with no distinction and therefore earning the coolness of Caecilius. The old man treated him like a servant and had him seat himself on a stool next to his couch and start reading, so as to disturb his dining as little as possible. However, once Terence began reading his play, after only a few verses, he was invited up to Caecilius' couch and proceeded to read through the remainder of the play to the considerable admiration of his host. Now, scholars have had several things to say about this story. First and most commonly, they have pointed out that good evidence fixes the death of Caecilius in 168, roughly two years before the performance of the Andria; and accordingly this story has no factual substance. Good, there is no reason to try to combat facts: this interesting meeting of Caecilius and Terence never happened. However, we do not need to throw away the Suetonian story as useless trivia. The reason someone devised the story was evidently to bring the older generation of comic poetry into contact with the new and to voice its strong approval of its successor's first product, the Andria. Although Caecilius himself may never have known Terence, the plays of the two were linked by a common impresario, Lucius Ambivius Turpio. The didascaliae to all six plays of Terence credit him with being the producer, and in the so-called second prologue of the Hecyra Ambivius reports that he had troubles producing the plays of Caecilius, as he had recently had with Terence's.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 2004

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References

1. This anecdote appears in lines 26–31 of Suetonius’ Life of Terence.

2. Evidence for Caecilius Statius– date of death comes from Jerome, who used Suetonius. Jerome reports that Statius died a year after Ennius, whose death is pretty reliably set at 169 BCE.

3. Hec. 14–27.

4. Donatus on line 14: conscius sibi estprimam scenam de Perinthia esse translatam, ubi senex ita cum uxore loquitur, ut apud Terentium cum liberto. at in Andria Menandri solus est senex.

5. The best of these MSS, Vat. Lat. 3638, has an excellent rendering of these servants in the folium for 28ff.

6. Dohm (1964).

7. Treggiari (1969), esp. 112f. on Terence as freedman (primarily from Suetonius).

8. It is obvious that a wife, as in the Perinthia, would know already most of these details. They are for a man like Sosia, who has not lived in the house or neighbourhood, and of course for the audience. See the excellent analysis of Terence’s two Menandrian sources by Richardson (1997).

9. Donatus on line 40: improbatur a sapientibus haec sententia, nam obsequium adsentor debet, amicus ueritatem (‘This sentiment is condemned by wise men, for a yes-man owes obsequious agreement, but a friend owes the truth’). Cicero in De amicitia 89 had been one of the first wise men to condemn the speech of Sosia here, using Laelius, a friend of Terence, as his mouthpiece: molesta ueritas, siquidem ex ea nascitur odium, quod est uenenum amicitiae; sed obsequium multo molestius, quod peccatis indulgens praecipitem ferri sinit (‘Truth is troublesome if in fact there springs from it hatred, which is poison to friendship; but compliance is much more troublesome because by indulging faults it allows a friend to be carried away headlong’).

10. Ashmore (1908), 20, ad 169.

11. Ashmore (1908), 9, in his introduction to lines 28ff.