Page:Plautus and Terence.djvu/107



generation elapsed between Plautus and Terence; for the latter was only ten years old at the date of Plautus's death. The great name which filled the interval in the annals of Roman comedy was that of Cæcilius; but of his works nothing remains except a few disjointed passages to be found here and there in the works of other authors. Horace mentions him with approval, while Cicero accuses him of bad Latin. Cæcilius, too, was a copyist from Menander, and a very indifferent copyist in the opinion of Aulus Gellius, who gives us an additional testimony to the genius of the Greek dramatist, when, in comparing a passage from one of his lost comedies with the imitation of it by Cæcilius, he says that the difference in brilliancy is that of the golden armour of Glaucus compared with the bronze of Diomed.

Such biographical record as we have of Terence is mainly derived from a source which is very apocryphal. There is a "Life" of him, ascribed to Suetonius, but more probably written by the grammarian Donatus: we do not know what authority the