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Publius Terentius Afer ( / t ə ˈ r ɛ n ʃ i ə s , - ʃ ə s / ; c.  195/185 – c.  159 BC ), better known in English as Terence ( / ˈ t ɛr ə n s / ), was a playwright during the Roman Republic . He was the author of six comedies based on Greek originals by Menander or Apollodorus of Carystus . All six of Terence's plays survive complete and were originally produced between 166–160 BC.

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143-698: According to ancient authors, Terence was born in Carthage and was brought to Rome as a slave, where he gained an education and his freedom; around the age of 25, Terence is said to have made a voyage to the east in search of inspiration for his plays, where he died either of disease in Greece, or by shipwreck on the return voyage. However, Terence's traditional biography is often thought to consist of speculation by ancient scholars who lived too long after Terence to have access to reliable facts about his life. Terence's plays quickly became standard school texts. He ultimately secured

286-455: A cardinal . He "saw himself as the reviver of the ancient Christian Church of Africa, the Church of Cyprian of Carthage", and, on 10 November 1884, was successful in his great ambition of having the metropolitan see of Carthage restored, with himself as its first archbishop. In line with the declaration of Pope Leo IX in 1053, Pope Leo XIII acknowledged the revived Archdiocese of Carthage as

429-848: A Terentian performance in the 9th century (possibly earlier). Beatus Rhenanus writes that Erasmus , gifted in his youth with a tenacious memory, held Terence's comedies as closely as his fingers and toes. In the De ratione studii (1511), a central text for European curricula, Erasmus wrote, "among Latin authors, who is more useful for learning to speak than Terence? He is pure, concise, and near to everyday conversation, and pleasant to youth as well for his genre of plot." Martin Luther wrote that "I love Terence" and considered his comedies useful not only to help schoolboys improve their language skills, but also to teach them about society, because Terence "saw how it goes with people"; even if there were some "obscene" passages in

572-491: A base by a hostile power again. It also continued to function as an episcopal see . The regional power shifted to Kairouan and the Medina of Tunis in the medieval period , until the early 20th century, when it began to develop into a coastal suburb of Tunis , incorporated as Carthage municipality in 1919. The archaeological site was first surveyed in 1830, by Danish consul Christian Tuxen Falbe . Excavations were performed in

715-426: A better text than Σ, which has a number of changes designed perhaps to make Terence easier to read in schools. Both A and the now lost Σ are believed to be derived from an even earlier archetype known as Φ ( phi ), the date of which is unknown. In addition to these manuscripts there are also certain commentaries, glossaries, and quotations in ancient writers and grammarians which sometimes assist editors in establishing

858-431: A core school author while other Republican authors were displaced from the curriculum by Vergil and other Augustan poets. By the late 4th Century AD, Terence had become one of the four main canonical school authors (the others being Cicero , Sallust , and Vergil ), canonised in a celebrated work by Arusianus Messius , and later referred to by Cassiodorus as "Messius' quadriga ." St Jerome , St Augustine of Hippo , and

1001-722: A daughter who later married a Roman knight, and was said to have left 20 acres of gardens on the Appian Way, a report contradicted by another of Suetonius' sources who says that Terence died poor. Ancient biographers' reports that Terence was born in Africa may be an inference from his name and not independent biographical information. His cognomen Afer ("the [North] African") may indicate that Terence hailed from ancient Libya . However, such names did not necessarily denote origin, and there were Romans who had this cognomen who were not Africans, such as Domitius Afer . It has often been asserted on

1144-403: A detrimental influence on students' morals, but praised his father's project, writing, "You have indeed skimmed the cream of Terence and sent it to my boys—I trust they will preserve it and that it will aid them in drawing all the solid benefit from the amanuensis of Laelius and Scipio, which he can afford to their future lives." When Adams sent his grandson Charles Francis Adams his excerpts from

1287-639: A given performance. Admission was free to the entire population, seemingly on a first-come-first-served basis, except for the reservation of seats for members of the Senate after 194 BC; descriptions of 2nd Century theatre audiences refer to the presence of women, children, slaves, and the urban poor. In Greek New Comedy, from which the Roman comic tradition derived, actors wore masks which were conventionally associated with stock character types. Ancient authors make conflicting statements on whether Roman actors also wore masks in

1430-728: A half months ahead of the Sun in the 160s, Terence's plays that premiered at the Megalensia, though officially scheduled in April, would actually have premiered in late January. There was no permanent theatre in Rome until the construction of the Theatre of Pompey in 55 BC, and Terence's plays would have been performed on temporary wooden stages constructed for the occasion. The limited space available would probably have accommodated an audience of less than 2,000 persons at

1573-506: A limited area: the north coastal tell , the lower Bagradas river valley (inland from Utica), Cape Bon , and the adjacent sahel on the east coast. Punic culture here achieved the introduction of agricultural sciences first developed for lands of the eastern Mediterranean, and their adaptation to local African conditions. The urban landscape of Carthage is known in part from ancient authors, augmented by modern digs and surveys conducted by archeologists. The "first urban nucleus" dating to

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1716-425: A man entering a brothel disguised as a lover in order to win a woman to repentance and a life of continence. Robert Talbot reads Hrotsvit's plays as a Christian allegorisation of Terence designed to rehabilitate the comedies themselves, as Hrotsvit's reconfiguration of the genre to demonstrate the superiority of heavenly love to earthly love will enable readers to read Terence in a new way, with their minds directed from

1859-584: A manuscript that is now in the Laurentian Library . The first printed edition of Terence appeared in Strasbourg in 1470, while the first certain post-antique performance of one of Terence's plays, Andria , took place in Florence in 1476. There is evidence, however, that Terence was performed much earlier. The short dialogue Terentius et delusor was probably written to be performed as an introduction to

2002-404: A member of the so-called Scipionic Circle . When Terence offered his first play, Andria, to the aediles , they bade him first read it to Caecilius . Terence, shabbily dressed, went to the older poet's house when he was dining, and when Caecilius had heard only a few lines, he invited the young man to join him for the meal. The historicity of this meeting has been doubted on the grounds that it

2145-402: A month-long project to go through the plays excerpting approximately 140 passages that he considered illustrative of human nature as it is the same in all ages and countries, adding translations and comments explaining the moral lessons his grandsons should draw from the texts. John Quincy believed the manners and plots of Terence's plays were too remote from modern life for there to be a danger of

2288-577: A more serious rift among Christians was the Donatist controversy , against which Augustine of Hippo spent much time and parchment arguing. At the Council of Carthage (397) , the biblical canon for the western Church was confirmed . The Christians at Carthage conducted persecutions against the pagans , during which the pagan temples, notably the famous Temple of Juno Caelesti , were destroyed. The Vandals under Gaiseric invaded Africa in 429. They relinquished

2431-454: A pair of young men in love (in the Hecyra there is only one young man, who is already married, but who suspects his wife of infidelity). In all the plays there are two girls involved, one a citizen woman, the other a prostitute. In four of the plays a recognition ( anagnorisis or anagnorismos ) occurs which proves that one of the girls is the long-lost daughter of a respectable citizen, thus making

2574-538: A place as one of the four authors taught to all grammar pupils in the Western Roman Empire , and retained a central place in the European school curriculum until the 19th Century, exercising a formative influence on authors such as William Shakespeare and Molière . The manuscripts of Terence's plays contain didascaliae , or production notices, recording the dates, occasions, and personnel of early productions of

2717-495: A practice adopted from Greek paedagogy, and Terence was a rich source of such sententiae. Scores of Terentian maxims enjoyed such currency in late antiquity that they often lost nominal association with their author, with those who quoted Terence qualifying his words as a common proverb. Through the Middle Ages, Terence was frequently quoted as an authority on human nature and the mores of men, without regard for which character spoke

2860-446: A retired army general ( c.  300 ), was translated into Latin and later into Greek. The original and both translations have been lost; however, some of Mago's text has survived in other Latin works. Olive trees (e.g., grafting ), fruit trees (pomegranate, almond, fig, date palm), viniculture , bees, cattle, sheep, poultry, implements, and farm management were among the ancient topics which Mago discussed. As well, Mago addresses

3003-465: A rival poet as "old" ( Hau. 23), that Terence was young when he wrote his plays in the 160s. Suetonius' statement that Terence died at about the age of 25 in 159 BC would imply that he was born in 184 BC, the same year as the death of Plautus , and was only 18 years old when he produced his first play. The variant reading that Terence was in his 30s when he died suggests instead that he was born ten years earlier in 194, which would appear to be supported by

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3146-404: A roadway consisting of clay; in situ stairs compensate for the slope of the hill. Construction of this type presupposes organization and political will, and has inspired the name of the neighborhood, " Hannibal district", referring to the legendary Punic general or sufet (consul) at the beginning of the second century BC. The habitat is typical, even stereotypical. The street was often used as

3289-532: A separate, shorter work on the same subject which in some manuscripts begins with the heading De comoedia. Friedrich Lindenbrog  [ de ] was able to identify the De fabula as the work of an earlier commentator on Terence named Evanthius (probably identical with the grammarian Evanthius said in Jerome's Chronicon to have died at Constantinople in AD 358) because the grammarian Rufinus of Antioch (5th cent. AD), in

3432-528: A standard part of the Latin curriculum of the neoclassical period. In a letter prescribing a course of education for his nephew Peter Carr , Thomas Jefferson listed Terence among classical poets Carr already had read or would read at school. Jefferson copied four extracts from the Andria into his literary commonplace book , seemingly in the late 1760s and 1770s, and the presence of three different editions of Terence in

3575-438: A storefront/shopfront; cisterns were installed in basements to collect water for domestic use, and a long corridor on the right side of each residence led to a courtyard containing a sump , around which various other elements may be found. In some places, the ground is covered with mosaics called punica pavement, sometimes using a characteristic red mortar. Punic culture and agricultural sciences, after arriving at Carthage from

3718-507: A town has no need of an estate in the country." "One who has bought land should sell his town house, so that he will have no desire to worship the household gods of the city rather than those of the country; the man who takes greater delight in his city residence will have no need of a country estate. The issues involved in rural land management also reveal underlying features of Punic society, its structure and stratification . The hired workers might be considered 'rural proletariat', drawn from

3861-401: A town under Ottoman rule in the 18th century. Le Kram was developed in the late 19th century under French administration as a settlement close to the port of La Goulette . In 1881, Tunisia became a French protectorate , and in the same year Charles Lavigerie , who was archbishop of Algiers, became apostolic administrator of the vicariate of Tunis. In the following year, Lavigerie became

4004-602: A work On the Metres of Terence, quotes the De fabula and ascribes it to Evanthius. Evanthius' work is otherwise lost. The De comoedia has continued to be considered the work of Donatus. The manuscripts of Terence can be divided into two main groups. One group has just one representative, the Codex Bembinus (known as A), dating to the 4th or early 5th century AD, and kept in the Vatican library. This book, written in rustic capitals,

4147-528: Is attributed to one Eugraphius, of whom nothing is known but his authorship of this commentary. Donatus' commentary on the Heauton timorumenos is lacking, but his references to this play in his commentary on other parts of the corpus and Eugraphius' commentary help to make up the gap. In its extant form, Donatus' commentary is prefaced by Suetonius' Vita Terenti, a short essay on the genre of comedy and its differences from tragedy now commonly called De fabula, and

4290-426: Is improbable Terence, with his aristocratic patrons, would have been unable to dress himself decently for such an important interview; a suspiciously similar story is told about the tragedians Accius and Pacuvius ; and Jerome 's statement that Caecilius died the year after Ennius implies that Caecilius died two years before Andria was produced. However, Thomas Carney argues that Jerome's dating of Caecilius' death

4433-405: Is improbable that Terence worked at such a rate after having previously finished less than one play a year, and some editors delete the number, supposing that the numeral CVIII is simply a double copying of the preposition CVM, subsequently rationalised as a number. Terence was said to have been of "moderate height, slender, and of dark complexion." Suetonius' description of Terence's complexion

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4576-512: Is interesting, and many of the Sentiments are fine", and though he found the plot highly improbable, "the Critic can never find Perfection, and the person that is willing to be pleased with what he reads, is happier than he who is always looking for faults." In 1816, John Quincy's son George Washington Adams performed in a school production of Andria in the role of the old man Crito, to the relief of

4719-474: Is known about Sedigitus beyond that Pliny calls him illustrem in poetica and states that he got his cognomen because he was born with six fingers (Latin sex digitī ) on each hand. This rare state, known as polydactyly , is caused by a dominant gene . The Romans did not avoid openly referencing blemishes and personal infirmities in the names they gave to public figures. (See Roman naming conventions .) His origin may have been lowly or from outside

4862-436: Is known of this individual. They date from the 9th century onwards and are written in minuscule letters. This group can be subdivided into three classes. The first class, known as γ ( gamma ), dates to the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries and includes manuscripts P (Parisinus), C (Vaticanus), and possibly F (Ambrosianus), and E (Riccardianus) among others. They have the plays in the order An., Eu., Hau., Ad., Hec., Ph. . Manuscript C

5005-403: Is likely an inference from his supposed African origin, and his description of the poet's physique may have originated as a metaphor for the "lightness" of his verse style, just as the poet Philitas of Cos was said to have weighted his shoes with lead lest he blow away in the wind. Likenesses of Terence found in medieval manuscripts have no authenticity. Suetonius says that Terence was survived by

5148-408: Is not above suspicion, and besides, a delay of several years between this meeting and production is entirely plausible, as Caecilius may have been impressed by the novice playwright's work even while the discussion showed Terence the need for revision. R. C. Flickinger argues that the reported state of Terence's clothing shows that he had not yet become acquainted with his rich and influential patrons at

5291-656: Is often construed as conjecture based on the play texts and didascaliae. In the 2nd Century BC, plays were regular features of four annual Roman festivals: the Ludi Romani (September), the Ludi Plebeii (November), the Ludi Apollinares (July), and the Ludi Megalenses (April); plays would also be staged at votive games, triumphs , and the more elaborate aristocratic funerals. Because the Roman calendar ran some two and

5434-460: Is one of the earliest surviving manuscripts of any Latin writer. It has the plays in the order An., Eu., Hau., Ph., Hec., Ad. Three small fragments of similar antiquity survive as well. Approximately 650 manuscripts exist of later date. These are often known as the "Calliopian" manuscripts, based on subscriptions to the plays found in several of the earlier manuscripts indicating the text had been corrected by someone named Calliopius; nothing further

5577-453: Is taken by the girl who triumphs by resisting all advances (or a prostitute who abandons her former life), and a happy ending lies not in the consummation of the young couple's marriage, but in a figurative marriage to Christ. Whereas in the Eunuchus, Chaerea entered a courtesan's home disguised as a eunuch to gain access to his beloved, two of Hrotsvit's plays ( Abraham and Paphnutius ) feature

5720-402: Is the famous Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3868 , which has illustrations which seem to be copied from originals dating in style to the mid-third century. Another group, known as δ ( delta ), has the plays in alphabetical order: An., Ad., Eu., Ph. (=F), Hau., Hec. This consists of 3 or 4 10th-century manuscripts: D (Victorianus), G (Decurtatus), p (Parisinus), and perhaps also L (Lipsiensis). All

5863-560: The Atlas Mountains . An imperial fleet arrived and retook Carthage, but in 698, Hasan ibn al-Nu'man returned and defeated Emperor Tiberios III at the 698 Battle of Carthage . Roman imperial forces withdrew from all of Africa except Ceuta . Fearing that the Byzantine Empire might reconquer it, they decided to destroy Roman Carthage in a scorched earth policy and establish their headquarters somewhere else. Its walls were torn down,

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6006-870: The Byzantine period . The city was sacked and destroyed by Umayyad forces after the Battle of Carthage in 698 to prevent it from being reconquered by the Byzantine Empire . It remained occupied during the Muslim period and was used as a fort by the Muslims until the Hafsid period when it was taken by the Crusaders with its inhabitants massacred during the Eighth Crusade . The Hafsids decided to destroy its defenses so it could not be used as

6149-501: The Eunuchus points to Shakespeare's familiarity with the play as a whole. Chaerea's exultation upon coming out of Thais' house after the rape, declaring himself content to die in that blissful moment, also seems to be echoed in Othello II.1 and The Merry Wives of Windsor III.3. Shakespeare's encounter with Terence in grammar school introduced him to comedy and scenic structure, laying the foundations for his art. Terence's plays were

6292-641: The Phormio, he remarked, "in these Plays of Terence ... Are not the Slaves Superior Beings to the Citizens? Every Smart Expression; every brilliant Image, every Moral Sentiment is in the Mouth of a Slave." In 1834, when Charles read the works of Terence, copying in his grandfather's comments and making other notes, he responded, "In returning to answer these questions, I must disagree with the sentiment. I cannot overlook

6435-618: The Punic qrt-ḥdšt ( 𐤒𐤓𐤕 𐤇𐤃𐤔𐤕 ‎) "new city", implying it was a "new Tyre ". The Latin adjective pūnicus , meaning "Phoenician", is reflected in English in some borrowings from Latin – notably the Punic Wars and the Punic language . The Modern Standard Arabic form Qarṭāj ( قرطاج ) is an adoption of French Carthage , replacing an older local toponym reported as Cartagenna that directly continued

6578-552: The Third Punic War in 146 BC. It was re-developed a century later as Roman Carthage , which became the major city of the Roman Empire in the province of Africa . The question of Carthaginian decline and demise has remained a subject of literary, political, artistic, and philosophical debates in both ancient and modern histories. Late antique and medieval Carthage continued to play an important cultural and economic role in

6721-535: The Tyrians were hard at work: laying courses for walls, rolling up stones to build the citadel, while others picked out building sites and plowed a boundary furrow. Laws were being enacted, magistrates and a sacred senate chosen. Here men were dredging harbors, there they laid the deep foundations of a theatre, and quarried massive pillars... ." The two inner harbors, named cothon in Punic, were located in

6864-529: The primatial see of Africa and Lavigerie as primate. The Acropolium of Carthage (Saint Louis Cathedral of Carthage) was erected on Byrsa hill in 1884. The Danish consul Christian Tuxen Falbe conducted a first survey of the topography of the archaeological site (published in 1833). Antiquarian interest was intensified following the publication of Flaubert's Salammbô in 1858. Charles Ernest Beulé performed some preliminary excavations of Roman remains on Byrsa hill in 1860. In 1866, Muhammad Khaznadar

7007-458: The unity of time or other ancient dramatic conventions, it has been argued that Terence's influence on Hrotsvit is superficial, and the only similarity between them is that they each wrote six plays. Hrotsvit's indebtedness to Terence lies rather in situations and subject matter, transposed to invert the Terentian plot and its values; the place of the Terentian hero who successfully pursues a woman

7150-420: The 10th Century, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim wrote six plays based on the lives of Christian saints, on the model of the six comedies of Terence. In a preface explaining her purpose in writing, Hrotsvit takes up Augustine's critique of the moral influence of the comedies, saying that many Christians attracted by Terence's style find themselves corrupted by his subject matter, and she has undertaken to write works in

7293-467: The 140s. Patrick Tansey has argued that the didascalia to Phormio in the codex Bembinus contains garbled names of the consuls in 106 BC, which would be the last attested production of Terence before the Renaissance, though the consuls of 141 BC had similar names. The Greek plays which provided the Roman comedians with their material typically had a prologue which either preceded the play, or interrupted

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7436-399: The 16th-century Ralph Roister Doister and Gammer Gurton's Needle , are thought to parody Terence's plays. Montaigne and Molière cite and imitate him. Based on what is known about a typical curriculum at a grammar school such as William Shakespeare went to, it may be considered certain that Shakespeare must have studied Terence as a boy. In Shakespeare's day, a typical schoolboy at

7579-423: The 2nd Century BC, Terence had been established as a literary "classic" and a standard school text. Cicero (born 106 BC) recalls that when he was a boy, his education in rhetoric included an assignment to recount Simo's narrative from the first scene of the Andria in his own words. Throughout the imperial period, Terence was second only to Vergil as the most widely known and read of Latin poets, and he remained

7722-464: The 4th and 3rd centuries, the sculptures of the sarcophagi became works of art. "Bronze engraving and stone-carving reached their zenith." The elevation of the land at the promontory on the seashore to the north-east (now called Sidi Bou Saïd ), was twice as high above sea level as that at the Byrsa (100 m and 50 m). In between runs a ridge, several times reaching 50 m; it continues northwestward along

7865-622: The African was born in Carthage. The Medina of Tunis , originally a Berber settlement, was established as the new regional center under the Umayyad Caliphate in the early 8th century. Under the Aghlabids , the people of Tunis revolted numerous times, but the city profited from economic improvements and quickly became the second most important in the kingdom. It was briefly the national capital, from

8008-469: The Arab period and the eleventh-century historian Al-Bakri stated that they were still in good condition at that time. They also had production centers nearby. It is difficult to determine whether the continued habitation of some other buildings belonged to Late Byzantine or Early Arab period. The Bir Ftouha church may have continued to remain in use although it is not clear when it became uninhabited. Constantine

8151-526: The Bishop of Rome, the first archbishop and chief metropolitan of the whole of Africa is the bishop of Carthage. Later, an archbishop of Carthage named Cyriacus was imprisoned by the Arab rulers because of an accusation by some Christians. Pope Gregory VII wrote Cyriacus a letter of consolation, repeating the hopeful assurances of the primacy of the Church of Carthage, "whether the Church of Carthage should still lie desolate or rise again in glory". By 1076, Cyriacus

8294-507: The Empire. Among its major monuments was an amphitheater . Carthage also became a center of early Christianity (see Carthage (episcopal see) ). In the first of a string of rather poorly reported councils at Carthage a few years later, no fewer than 70 bishops attended. Tertullian later broke with the mainstream that was increasingly represented in the West by the primacy of the Bishop of Rome , but

8437-502: The Hafsids. After repelling them, Muhammad I al-Mustansir decided to raze Cathage's defenses in order to prevent a repeat. Carthage is some 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) east-northeast of Tunis; the settlements nearest to Carthage were the town of Sidi Bou Said to the north and the village of Le Kram to the south. Sidi Bou Said was a village which had grown around the tomb of the eponymous sufi saint (d. 1231), which had been developed into

8580-465: The Italiote Greek population enslaved by Hannibal, as this would explain his proficiency in Latin and Greek. F. H. Sandbach notes that in the modern world, it is rare, but not entirely unknown, for an author to achieve literary distinction in a second language. Terence's date of birth is uncertain, though Sesto Prete infers from Terence's characterisation of himself as a "new" writer ( Eu. 43), and of

8723-500: The Latin name. Carthage was built on a promontory with sea inlets to the north and the south. The city's location made it master of the Mediterranean's maritime trade. All ships crossing the sea had to pass between Sicily and the coast of Tunisia, where Carthage was built, affording it great power and influence. Two large, artificial harbors were built within the city, one for harboring the city's prodigious navy of 220 warships and

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8866-560: The Roman Carthage. The neighborhood can be dated back to early second century BC, and with its houses, shops, and private spaces, is significant for what it reveals about daily life of the Punic Carthage. The remains have been preserved under embankments, the substructures of the later Roman forum, whose foundation piles dot the district. The housing blocks are separated by a grid of straight streets about 6 m (20 ft) wide, with

9009-657: The Roman Empire. His nomen gentilicium , "Volcacius", may be derived from the Volcae , a Celtic people. From his work Dē Poētīs Aulus Gellius ' Noctēs Atticae preserves 13 iambic senarii in didascaly , in which "Canon", as it has been termed, the principal Latin comics are enumerated in order of merit, from greatest: Caecilius , Plautus , Naevius , Licinius , Atilius , Terence , Turpilius , Trabea , Luscius , Ennius . Historian Suetonius ' work Vita Terentii ( Life of Terence ) quotes "Vulcacius" as having given

9152-479: The Tunisian mountains caused large amounts of silt to erode into the river. This silt accumulated in the harbor until it became useless, and Rome was forced to rebuild Carthage. By 122 BC, Gaius Gracchus founded a short-lived colony , called Colonia Iunonia , after the Latin name for the Punic goddess Tanit , Iuno Caelestis . The purpose was to obtain arable lands for impoverished farmers. The Senate abolished

9295-701: The Western Mediterranean culminating in the Sicilian Wars and the Pyrrhic War over Sicily , while the Romans fought three wars against Carthage, known as the Punic Wars , from the Latin "Punicus" meaning "Phoenician", as Carthage was a Phoenician colony grown into an empire. The Carthaginian republic was one of the longest-lived and largest states in the ancient Mediterranean. Reports relay several wars with Syracuse and finally, Rome, which eventually resulted in

9438-511: The actors wore masks in the original productions of the Eunuchus and the Adelphoe. According to the didascaliae, each of Terence's plays was originally produced by the acting company of Lucius Ambivius Turpio , and musical accompaniment for each of the plays was provided by a tibicen named Flaccus, a slave in the service of a certain Claudius. The traditional and generally accepted chronology of

9581-714: The age of 9 would begin to memorise a great part, if not all, of Terence. A quote from the Eunuchus in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is not taken direct from the play, but quoted in a form in which it is found in William Lily 's Latin Grammar and Nicholas Udall 's Floures for Latine spekynge, with the syntax adapted to form an independent sentence. However, the indebtedness of the character of Armado in Love's Labour's Lost to Thraso in

9724-416: The ancient city under the name of Cartagenna (i.e. reflecting the Latin n -stem Carthāgine ). Volcacius Sedigitus Volcacius Sedigitus ( Latin pronunciation: [wɔɫˈkaːki.ʊs seːˈdɪɡɪtʊs] ) (alternative spelling Volcatius ) was the titulus of a Roman literary critic who flourished around 100 b.c. , noted for his ranking of those he considered the best Latin comics. Nothing

9867-511: The basis of the name that Terence was of Berber descent, as the Romans distinguished between Berbers, called Afri in Latin, and Carthaginians, called Poeni. However, lexicographic evidence does not support the validity of this distinction during Terence's lifetime. If Terence was born as a slave in Carthage, it is possible his mother was an ethnic Italian brought there as a war captive by Hannibal . Carney argues that Terence must have been born from

10010-487: The capital city of the civilisation of Ancient Carthage and later Roman Carthage . The city developed from a Phoenician colony into the capital of a Punic empire which dominated large parts of the Southwest Mediterranean during the first millennium BC. The legendary Queen Elissa, Alyssa or Dido , originally from Tyre , is regarded as the founder of the city, though her historicity has been questioned. In

10153-464: The carefully selected second Monticello library is a clear indication that Terence formed a part of Jefferson's retirement reading. In 1781, John Adams offered his son John Quincy Adams a copy of Anne Dacier 's edition of Terence with a parallel French translation, writing, "Terence is remarkable, for good Morals, good Taste and good Latin—his Language has a Simplicity and an elegance, that makes him proper to be accurately studied, as A Model." This

10296-544: The characters of Menedemus and Chremes, of Micio and Demea which contain more moral sentiment than all the Slaves in the six Plays." American playwright Thornton Wilder based his novel The Woman of Andros on Terence's Andria . Due to his cognomen Afer, Terence has long been identified with Africa and heralded as the first poet of the African diaspora by generations of writers, including Juan Latino , Alexandre Dumas , Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou . Phyllis Wheatley ,

10439-495: The city of Carthage c. 310 BC: It was divided into market gardens and orchards of all sorts of fruit trees, with many streams of water flowing in channels irrigating every part. There were country homes everywhere, lavishly built and covered with stucco. ... Part of the land was planted with vines, part with olives and other productive trees. Beyond these, cattle and sheep were pastured on the plains, and there were meadows with grazing horses. Greek cities contested with Carthage for

10582-418: The colony some time later, to undermine Gracchus' power. After this ill-fated effort, a new city of Carthage was built on the same land by Julius Caesar in the period from 49 to 44 BC, and by the first century, it had grown to be the second-largest city in the western half of the Roman Empire , with a peak population of 500,000. It was the center of the province of Africa , which was a major breadbasket of

10725-524: The comedies, Luther insisted that they were no less appropriate for young people to read without censorship than the Bible, which "contains amatory things everywhere." The indexes of the Weimar edition of Martin Luther's works note nearly 200 references to Terence and his plays. The preservation of Terence through the church enabled his work to influence much of later Western drama. Two of the earliest English comedies,

10868-490: The darkest ages of learning," a remark approved by E. K. Chambers , but Paul Theiner takes issue with this, suggesting that it is more appropriate to attribute "a charmed life" to authors who survived the Middle Ages by chance in a few manuscripts found in isolated libraries, whereas the broad and constant popularity of Terence "rendered elfin administrations quite unnecessary." Roman students learning to write would regularly be assigned to copy edifying sententiae, or "maxims,"

11011-594: The defeat and destruction of Carthage in the Third Punic War. The Carthaginians were Phoenician settlers of primarily Southern Mediterranean and Southern European ancestry. Phoenicians had originated in the Mediterranean coast of the Levant . They spoke Canaanite , a Semitic language , and followed a local variety of the ancient Canaanite religion , the Punic religion . The Carthaginians travelled widely across

11154-457: The eastern Mediterranean, gradually adapted to the local conditions. The merchant harbor at Carthage was developed after settlement of the nearby Punic town of Utica , and eventually the surrounding African countryside was brought into the orbit of the Punic urban centers, first commercially, then politically. Direct management over cultivation of neighbouring lands by Punic owners followed. A 28-volume work on agriculture written in Punic by Mago ,

11297-428: The efforts of the actors than of the author. ( Ph. 9–11) According to Suetonius, Terence was born in Carthage . He came to Rome as a slave in the household of an otherwise unknown senator named P. Terentius Lucanus, who educated him and freed him because of his talent and good looks. Terence then took the nomen "Terentius" from his patron. Possibly winning noblemen's favour by his youthful beauty, Terence became

11440-540: The end of the reign of Ibrahim II in 902, until 909, when the Shi'ite Berbers took over Ifriqiya and founded the Fatimid Caliphate . Carthage remained a residential see until the high medieval period , and is mentioned in two letters of Pope Leo IX dated 1053, written in reply to consultations regarding a conflict between the bishops of Carthage and Gummi . In each of the two letters, Pope Leo declares that, after

11583-457: The facade of their allied status to Rome and defeated the Roman general Bonifacius to seize Carthage, the once most treasured province of Rome. The 5th-century Roman bishop Victor Vitensis mentions in his Historia Persecutionis Africanae Provincia that the Vandals destroyed parts of Carthage, including various buildings and churches. Once in power, the ecclesiastical authorities were persecuted,

11726-510: The family, who had worried he might be given a less "respectable" part. George's grandmother Abigail Adams , having read the play, took exception to "the manners and morals". Grandfather John, after rereading all six of Terence's comedies, also expressed apprehension about whether they were fit to be taught or exhibited to impressionable youths, who lacked sufficient life experience to recognise certain characters and their deeds as morally repugnant and react appropriately. Accordingly, Adams undertook

11869-450: The first act after one or two scenes. In the plays of Plautus, the prologue usually, but not invariably, provides exposition of the plot; Terence abandons the traditional expository function of the prologue entirely and uses it to provide a different kind of entertainment centring on replies to criticism of his work. Terence particularly refers the "slanders" he has suffered to a certain "old" and "spiteful" poet. Because Terence says this man

12012-513: The first published African-American poet, asked why the Muses had inspired "one alone of Afric's sable race." Thomas Jefferson , on the other hand, in an attempt to prove that African-Americans were naturally incapable of poetry, claimed that Terence had been "of the race of whites." Two of his plays were produced in Denver with black actors. Questions as to whether Terence received assistance in writing or

12155-564: The history of Herodian , Carthage rivaled Alexandria for second place in the Roman empire. The Punic Carthage was divided into four equally sized residential areas with the same layout. The Punic had religious areas, market places, council house, towers, a theater, and a huge necropolis ; roughly in the middle of the city stood a high citadel called the Byrsa . Surrounding Carthage were walls "of great strength" said in places to rise above 13 m, being nearly 10 m thick, according to ancient authors. To

12298-555: The limited materials at his disposal. As transmitted in the manuscript tradition, the Vita attributes the claim to Q. Cosconius that Terence died by shipwreck while returning from Greece "cum C et VIII fabulis conversis a Menandro," an expression interpreted by some to refer to 108 new plays that Terence had adapted from Menander, but by Carney as "108 stories dramatised by Menander," who is credited with having written exactly this number of plays. If this number refers to new Terentian plays, it

12441-554: The line or the original dramatic context, as long as the quotation was sententious in itself when separated from the rest of the play. Augustine was a lifelong admirer of Terence's observations on the human condition, and 38 quotations from 28 distinct passages of Terence have been identified in Augustine's works. Notwithstanding his respect for Terence's moralising, when Augustine writes in the Confessions about his school days, he quotes

12584-417: The local Berbers. Whether there remained Berber landowners next to Punic-run farms is unclear. Some Berbers became sharecroppers. Slaves acquired for farm work were often prisoners of war. In lands outside Punic political control, independent Berbers cultivated grain and raised horses on their lands. Yet within the Punic domain that surrounded the city-state of Carthage, there were ethnic divisions in addition to

12727-521: The locals were aggressively taxed, and naval raids were routinely launched on Romans in the Mediterranean. After a failed attempt to recapture the city in the fifth century, the Eastern Roman Empire finally subdued the Vandals in the Vandalic War in 533–534 and made Carthage capital of Byzantine North Africa . Thereafter, the city became the seat of the praetorian prefecture of Africa , which

12870-441: The motive and destination of Terence's voyage, as well as about whether he died of illness in Greece, or died by shipwreck on the return voyage. Suetonius places Terence's death "in the consulship of Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella and Marcus Fulvius Nobilior," i.e., in 159 BC. It is possible that the fateful voyage to Greece was a speculative explanation of why he wrote so few plays inferred from Terence's complaint in Eunuchus 41–3 about

13013-473: The myth, Dido asked for land from a local tribe, which told her that she could get as much land as an oxhide could cover. She cut the oxhide into strips and laid out the perimeter of the new city. As Carthage prospered at home, the polity sent colonists abroad as well as magistrates to rule the colonies. The ancient city was destroyed in the nearly three year siege of Carthage by the Roman Republic during

13156-451: The naval and commercial harbors, and another two were further up the hill toward the Byrsa citadel. Sites of pottery kilns have been identified, between the agora and the harbors, and further north. Earthenware often used Greek models. A fuller 's shop for preparing woolen cloth (shrink and thicken) was evidently situated further to the west and south, then by the edge of the city. Carthage also produced objects of rare refinement. During

13299-434: The ninth-best Latin comic poet (and Terence the sixth-best). Terence's description of Luscius as "old" may refer to a style of play-writing that Terence considered old-fashioned rather than to advanced age. Terence's judgement of Luscius' work is that "by translating them well and writing them badly, he has made good Greek plays into Latin ones that aren't good" ( Eu. 7–8), and that Luscius' theatrical successes were due more to

13442-428: The north east. Houses usually were whitewashed and blank to the street, but within were courtyards open to the sky. In these neighborhoods multistory construction later became common, some up to six stories tall according to an ancient Greek author. Several architectural floorplans of homes have been revealed by recent excavations , as well as the general layout of several city blocks . Stone stairs were set in

13585-563: The notes in order to reconstitute the commentary as a separate book, incorporating extraneous material in the process, assigning notes to verses where they did not originally belong, or including material that had been otherwise changed in the course of transmission. Citations from Donatus' commentary which are not found in the extant redaction occur in Priscian and in scholia to the Codex Bembinus and Codex Victorianus. Another ancient commentary

13728-401: The occurrence of child sacrifice, as claimed in the Bible and Greco-Roman sources, although there has been considerable doubt among archeologists as to this interpretation and many consider it simply a cemetery devoted to infants. Probably the tophet burial fields were "dedicated at an early date, perhaps by the first settlers." Recent studies, on the other hand, indicate that child sacrifice

13871-517: The original reading. The best known of these is the Commentum Terenti , a commentary by the 4th-century grammarian Aelius Donatus , which is often helpful, although the part dealing with the Heauton Timorumenos is missing. At a relatively early date, Terence's play texts began to circulate as literary works for a reading public, as opposed to scripts for the use of actors. By the end of

14014-400: The other for mercantile trade. A walled tower overlooked both harbors. The city had massive walls, 37 km (23 mi) long, which was longer than the walls of comparable cities. Most of the walls were on the shore and so could be less impressive, as Carthaginian control of the sea made attack from that direction difficult. The 4.0 to 4.8 km (2.5 to 3 mi) of wall on the isthmus to

14157-409: The plays established according to the didascaliae is as follows: The didascalia for each play also identifies its position in the corpus by chronological order. The didascaliae state that Eunuchus was the second play ( facta II ), and Heauton timorumenos was the third ( facta III ), testimony seemingly contradicted by the dates of production, as well as by Donatus' statement that the Eunuchus

14300-596: The plays, and identifying the author of the Greek original. Other traditional information about the life of Terence derives from the Vita Terenti, a biography preserved in Aelius Donatus ' commentary, and attributed by him to Suetonius . However, it is not likely that Terence's contemporaries would have considered a dramatist important enough to write down his biography for posterity, and the narrative given by Suetonius' sources

14443-492: The price that Suetonius says was paid for the Eunuchus as 8,000 sesterces . However, Dwora Gilula argues that the term nummus, inscribed on the title page in 161 BC, would refer to a denarius , a coin containing a much larger quantity of silver, so that the price paid for the Eunuchus was really 32,000 sesterces. When he was about the age of 25 (or, according to some manuscripts, 35), Terence travelled to Greece or Asia and never returned. Suetonius' sources disagree about

14586-468: The pupils of a "grammarian" friend of St Sidonius Apollinaris were all set to read the Eunuchus in school, and in another of his letters, Sidonius describes reading the Hecyra together with his son at home. Terence was one of the few canonical classical authors to maintain a continuous presence in medieval literacy, and the large number of surviving manuscripts bears witness to his great popularity. Adolphus Ward said that Terence led "a charmed life in

14729-468: The remaining manuscripts belong to the "mixed" group and contain readings copied from both γ and δ, and so are of little value in establishing the text. It is thought that the γ group and the δ group go back to two archetypes, both now lost, called Γ ( Gamma ) and Δ ( Delta ), and that both of these were copied from a single archetype, also now lost, known as Σ ( sigma ). According to A. J. Brothers, manuscript A, although it contains some errors, generally has

14872-434: The sake of their own 'utilitarian' interests, to treat carefully and well their managers and farm workers, or their overseers and slaves. Yet elsewhere these writers suggest that rural land ownership provided also a new power base among the city's nobility, for those resident in their country villas. By many, farming was viewed as an alternative endeavour to an urban business. Another modern historian opines that more often it

15015-458: The same genre so that the literary form once used "to describe the shameless acts of licentious women" might be repurposed to glorify the chastity of holy virgins. As Terence's subject matter is trivial while Hrotsvit's is important, his plays are in verse while hers are in prose, her plays are written in the same style as other medieval literature and lack verbal reminiscences of Terence apart from some oaths and interjections, and she does not respect

15158-399: The scene from the Eunuchus where Chaerea recounts how he and Pamphila looked together at a painting of Zeus intruding in the home of Danaë , after which Chaerea, emboldened by the example of the pagan god, took the opportunity to rape Pamphila. Augustine argues that it is not necessary for students to be exposed to such "vileness" ( turpitudo ) merely to learn vocabulary and eloquence. In

15301-455: The seas and set up numerous colonies. Unlike Greek, Phoenician, and Tyrian colonizers who "only required colonies to pay due respect for their home-cities", Carthage is said to have "sent its own magistrates to govern overseas settlements". The fall of Carthage came at the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC at the Battle of Carthage . Despite initial devastating Roman naval losses and Hannibal 's 15-year occupation of much of Roman Italy, who

15444-447: The seashore, and forms the edge of a plateau-like area between the Byrsa and the sea. Newer urban developments lay here in these northern districts. Due to the Roman's leveling of the city, the original Punic urban landscape of Carthage was largely lost. Since 1982, French archaeologist Serge Lancel excavated a residential area of the Punic Carthage on top of Byrsa hill near the Forum of

15587-444: The second half of the 19th century by Charles Ernest Beulé and by Alfred Louis Delattre . The Carthage National Museum was founded in 1875 by Cardinal Charles Lavigerie . Excavations performed by French archaeologists in the 1920s first attracted an extraordinary amount of attention because of the evidence they produced for child sacrifice . There has been considerable disagreement among scholars concerning whether child sacrifice

15730-586: The seventh century, in area about 10 hectares (25 acres), was apparently located on low-lying lands along the coast (north of the later harbors). As confirmed by archaeological excavations, Carthage was a "creation ex nihilo ", built on 'virgin' land, and situated at what was then the end of a peninsula. Here among "mud brick walls and beaten clay floors" (recently uncovered) were also found extensive cemeteries, which yielded evocative grave goods like clay masks. "Thanks to this burial archaeology we know more about archaic Carthage than about any other contemporary city in

15873-461: The several growing regions that surrounded the city wrote admiringly of the lush green gardens, orchards, fields, irrigation channels, hedgerows (as boundaries), as well as the many prosperous farming towns located across the rural landscape. Accordingly, the Greek author and compiler Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st century BC), who enjoyed access to ancient writings later lost, and on which he based most of his writings, described agricultural land near

16016-774: The sinful content to a higher Christian meaning. Hrotsvit did not exercise a significant influence on European literature before her works were rediscovered and printed in 1501. In the Divine Comedy , Dante 's guide Vergil tells him that Terence is in Limbo among the virtuous pagans ( Purg. XXII, 94–105), and shows him Thais, the character from the Eunuchus, in the eighth circle of hell where flatterers are punished. ( Inf. XVIII, 133–5) It has been claimed that Dante did not know Terence directly, and his references to Terence are derived from citations in Cicero or medieval florilegia. However, Terence

16159-459: The son of the Prime Minister of Tunisia , carried out the first locally led excavations. A more systematic survey of both Punic and Roman-era remains is due to Alfred Louis Delattre , who was sent to Tunis by cardinal Charles Lavigerie in 1875 on both an apostolic and an archaeological mission. Audollent cites Delattre and Lavigerie to the effect that in the 1880s, locals still knew the area of

16302-455: The south of the city. Considering the importance of the Byrsa , the citadel area to the north, our knowledge of it is patchy. Its prominent heights were the scene of fierce combat during the fiery destruction of the city in 146 BC. The Byrsa was the reported site of the Temple of Eshmun (the healing god), at the top of a stairway of sixty steps. A temple of Tanit (the city's queen goddess)

16445-465: The southeast; one being commercial, and the other for war. Their definite functions are not entirely known, probably for the construction, outfitting, or repair of ships, perhaps also loading and unloading cargo. Larger anchorages existed to the north and south of the city. North and west of the cothon were located several industrial areas, e.g., metalworking and pottery (e.g., for amphora ), which could serve both inner harbors, and ships anchored to

16588-435: The statement attributed to Fenestella that Terence was older than Scipio and Laelius. Jerome 's Chronicon places Terence's death in 158 BC. Like Plautus , Terence adapted Greek plays from the late phases of Attic comedy . Unlike Plautus though, Terence's way of writing his comedies was more in a simple conversational Latin, pleasant and direct, while less visually humorous to watch. Five of Terence's plays are about

16731-485: The streets, and drainage was planned, e.g., in the form of soakaways leaching into the sandy soil. Along the Byrsa's southern slope were located not only fine old homes, but also many of the earliest grave-sites, juxtaposed in small areas, interspersed with daily life. Artisan workshops were located in the city at sites north and west of the harbors. The location of three metal workshops (implied from iron slag and other vestiges of such activity) were found adjacent to

16874-580: The time of Terence. For a time, Christian Hoffer's 1877 dissertation On the Use of Masks in Publius Terentius' Comedies won universal acceptance for the view that masks were not worn at the original performances of the plays of Terence. However, most more recent authorities consider it highly likely that Roman actors of Terence's time did wear masks when performing this kind of play, and "hard to believe" or even "inconceivable" that they did not. Donatus states that

17017-451: The time of this meeting, and it was precisely Caecilius' death shortly thereafter, and the consequent loss of his support, which caused a two-year delay in production. All six of Terence's plays pleased the people; the Eunuchus earned 8,000 nummi, the highest price that had ever been paid for a comedy at Rome, and was acted twice in the same day. Donatus, who appears to understand that Terence himself received this entire amount, interprets

17160-468: The usual quasi feudal distinctions between lord and peasant, or master and serf. This inherent instability in the countryside drew the unwanted attention of potential invaders. Yet for long periods Carthage was able to manage these social difficulties. The many amphorae with Punic markings subsequently found about ancient Mediterranean coastal settlements testify to Carthaginian trade in locally made olive oil and wine. Carthage's agricultural production

17303-468: The water supply from its aqueducts cut off, the agricultural land was ravaged and its harbors made unusable. The destruction of the Exarchate of Africa marked a permanent end to the Byzantine Empire's influence in the region. It is clear from archaeological evidence that the town of Carthage continued to be occupied, as did the neighborhood of Bjordi Djedid. The Baths of Antoninus continued to function in

17446-482: The way free for her marriage. Terence's six plays are: Saint Jerome mentions in Contra Rufinum I.16 that "my teacher Donatus " had written a commentary on the comedies of Terence. Donatus' commentary does not survive in the form in which he originally wrote it. It is commonly believed that an unknown medieval scribe, using two or more manuscripts of Terence containing marginal notes excerpted from Donatus, copied

17589-456: The west were truly massive and were never penetrated. Carthage was one of the largest cities of the Hellenistic period and was among the largest cities in preindustrial history. Whereas by AD 14, Rome had at least 750,000 inhabitants and in the following century may have reached 1 million, the cities of Alexandria and Antioch numbered only a few hundred thousand or less. According to

17732-493: The west, three parallel walls were built. The walls altogether ran for about 33 kilometres (21 miles) to encircle the city. The heights of the Byrsa were additionally fortified ; this area being the last to succumb to the Romans in 146 BC . Originally the Romans had landed their army on the strip of land extending southward from the city. Outside the city walls of Carthage is the Chora or farm lands of Carthage. Chora encompassed

17875-600: The western Mediterranean." Already in the eighth century, fabric dyeing operations had been established, evident from crushed shells of murex (from which the 'Phoenician purple' was derived). Nonetheless, only a "meager picture" of the cultural life of the earliest pioneers in the city can be conjectured, and not much about housing, monuments or defenses. The Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BC) imagined early Carthage, when his legendary character Aeneas had arrived there: "Aeneas found, where lately huts had been, marvelous buildings, gateways, cobbled ways, and din of wagons. There

18018-404: The wine-maker's art (here a type of sherry ). In Punic farming society, according to Mago, the small estate owners were the chief producers. They were, two modern historians write, not absent landlords. Rather, the likely reader of Mago was "the master of a relatively modest estate, from which, by great personal exertion, he extracted the maximum yield." Mago counselled the rural landowner, for

18161-468: Was sown with salt after being razed, but there is no evidence for this. When Carthage fell, its nearby rival Utica , a Roman ally, was made capital of the region and replaced Carthage as the leading center of Punic trade and leadership. It had the advantageous position of being situated on the outlet of the Medjerda River , Tunisia's only river that flowed all year long. However, grain cultivation in

18304-490: Was "published third" ( edita tertium ). Some scholars have explained the discrepancy by positing an unsuccessful production of Eunuchus in 165 or 164 BC, or by interpreting the numbering in reference to the order of composition rather than the order of production. The didascalic numbering, seemingly discounting the unsuccessful productions of Hecyra, reckons it the fifth play. The didascaliae also appear to record some information about revival performances at least as late as

18447-450: Was declined, as John Quincy believed his teacher would not like him to have a translation "because when I shall translate him he would desire that I might do it without help." John Quincy eventually read the Andria over three evenings in February 1786, and was not impressed with the pace of his Harvard class, which finished the play three months later. He recorded in his diary that "The Play

18590-462: Was held in high regard by the ancients, and rivaled that of Rome – they were once competitors, e.g., over their olive harvests. Under Roman rule, however, grain production (wheat and barley) for export increased dramatically in 'Africa'; yet these later fell with the rise in Roman Egypt 's grain exports. Thereafter olive groves and vineyards were re-established around Carthage. Visitors to

18733-648: Was likely situated on the slope of the 'lesser Byrsa' immediately to the east, which runs down toward the sea. Also situated on the Byrsa were luxury homes. South of the citadel, near the cothon was the tophet , a special and very old cemetery , which when begun lay outside the city's boundaries. Here the Salammbô was located, the Sanctuary of Tanit , not a temple but an enclosure for placing stone stelae . These were mostly short and upright, carved for funeral purposes. The presence of infant skeletons from here may indicate

18876-600: Was made into an exarchate during the emperor Maurice's reign, as was Ravenna on the Italian Peninsula. These two exarchates were the western bulwarks of the Byzantine Empire, all that remained of its power in the West. In the early seventh century Heraclius the Elder , the exarch of Carthage, overthrew the Byzantine emperor Phocas , whereupon his son Heraclius succeeded to the imperial throne. The Roman Exarchate of Africa

19019-504: Was not able to withstand the seventh-century Muslim conquest of the Maghreb . The Umayyad Caliphate under Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan in 686 sent a force led by Zuhayr ibn Qays , who won a battle over the Romans and Berbers led by King Kusaila of the Kingdom of Altava on the plain of Kairouan , but he could not follow that up. In 695, Hassan ibn al-Nu'man captured Carthage and advanced into

19162-654: Was not the actual author have been debated over the ages, as described in the 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica : Carthage Carthage was an ancient city in Northern Africa, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia . Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classical world . It became

19305-464: Was on the brink of defeat but managed to recover, the end of the series of wars resulted in the end of Carthaginian power and the complete destruction of the city by Scipio Aemilianus . The Romans pulled the Phoenician warships out into the harbor and burned them before the city, and went from house to house, capturing and enslaving the people. About 50,000 Carthaginians were sold into slavery . The city

19448-450: Was one of the most commonly read authors in the 14th Century, and Joseph Russo argues that considering the access Dante would have had to manuscripts of Terence and the desire he would have had to read Terence, the logical conclusion is that "Dante must have known Terence." Renaissance humanists delighted in Terence. Giovanni Boccaccio copied out in his own hand all of Terence's comedies in

19591-601: Was practiced by ancient Carthage. The open-air Carthage Paleo-Christian Museum has exhibits excavated under the auspices of UNESCO from 1975 to 1984. The site of the ruins is a UNESCO World Heritage Site . The name Carthage ( / ˈ k ɑːr θ ɪ dʒ / KAR -thij ) is the Early Modern anglicisation of Middle French Carthage /kartaʒə/ , from Latin Carthāgō and Karthāgō (cf. Greek Karkhēdōn ( Καρχηδών ) and Etruscan * Carθaza ) from

19734-499: Was practiced by the Carthaginians. According to K.L. Noll, the majority of scholars in believe that child sacrifice took place in Carthage. Between the sea-filled cothon for shipping and the Byrsa heights lay the agora [Greek: "market"], the city-state's central marketplace for business and commerce. The agora was also an area of public squares and plazas, where the people might formally assemble, or gather for festivals. It

19877-465: Was set ablaze and razed to the ground, leaving only ruins and rubble. After the fall of Carthage, Rome annexed the majority of the Carthaginian colonies, including other North African locations such as Volubilis , Lixus , Chellah . Today a "Carthaginian peace" can refer to any brutal peace treaty demanding total subjugation of the defeated side. Since at least 1863, it has been claimed that Carthage

20020-469: Was set free, but there was only one other bishop in the province. These are the last of whom there is mention in that period of the history of the see. The fortress of Carthage was used by the Muslims until Hafsid era and was captured by the Crusaders during the Eighth Crusade . The inhabitants of Carthage were slaughtered by the Crusaders after they took it, and it was used as a base of operations against

20163-411: Was the site of religious shrines, and the location of whatever were the major municipal buildings of Carthage. Here beat the heart of civic life. In this district of Carthage, more probably, the ruling suffets presided, the council of elders convened, the tribunal of the 104 met, and justice was dispensed at trials in the open air. Early residential districts wrapped around the Byrsa from the south to

20306-501: Was the translator of Menander's Phasma and Thesaurus ( Eu. 9–10), Donatus (or an earlier commentator from whom Donatus gleaned this information) was able to identify him as Luscius Lanuvinus, although no names are used in the prologues. Nothing survives of Luscius' work save two lines of the Thesaurus quoted by Donatus, nor is anything known about Luscius independently of Terence's prologues except that Volcacius Sedigitus rated Luscius

20449-413: Was the urban merchant of Carthage who owned rural farming land to some profit, and also to retire there during the heat of summer. It may seem that Mago anticipated such an opinion, and instead issued this contrary advice (as quoted by the Roman writer Columella): The man who acquires an estate must sell his house, lest he prefer to live in the town rather than in the country. Anyone who prefers to live in

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