Page:Comedies of Publius Terentius Afer (1870).djvu/15

Rh Molière has an enormous advantage over Terence in having educated heroines to grace his wit. The age, too, of Louis Quatorze furnished materials for polished pleasantry, which the granitic age of the Roman Commonwealth did not supply. But the bare fact that Terence portrays the true manners of an age of which we know very little, whilst Molière has travestied the absurdities of his own, gives to Terence a value and an interest far above that which Molière wins from the exquisite fooling of his renaissance age.

Terence has no Lucile to reply to Eraste in a "Dépit Amoureux," nor a Marinette to make love to Gros René. Although the same play, which gives us Thais, gives us also the clever Pythias, who pegs into Parmeno, not by love, but jeering him. This is an exception in Terence, whilst female wit is the charm and the rule with Molière.

Neither does Terence ever descend to anything not possible, such as the statue of the warrior supping with Don Juan. His facts are all such as were probable, and find their main plot in infanticide; and the recognition by means of the token appended to obtain their funeral rites; and in the paucity of women, which affords a sufficient cause for a forcible abduction of the wife.

The Hecyra, or Stepmother, is not included, mainly because it does not contain any new point which is not to be found in the others; secondly, because the