Suetonius' Life of Terence, trans. J Rolfe.

https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/ANCIENT/suet-viribus-rolfe.asp#De Vita Terenti

[Note: We cannot be sure that this ancient biography of Terence is factually true. It may just be extrapolating from things Terence said in his own plays about being accused of getting too much help with playwriting from his famous friends. Still, it is useful to see the kinds of events in a life story that an ancient audience would find plausible. CMC]

De Vita Terenti (The Life of Terence).

Publius Terentius Afer, born at Carthage, was the slave at Rome of Terentius Lucanus, a senator, who, because of the young man's talent and good looks, not only gave him a liberal education, but soon set him free. Some think that he was taken in war, but Fenestella shows that that could not possibly be, since Terentius was born and died between the end of the second Punic war and the beginning of the third [201-149 B.C.E.]; and even if he had been taken by the Numidians and Gaetulians, he could not have come into the hands of a Roman general, since commerce between the Italic and the African races did not begin until after the destruction of Carthage [146 B.C.E.]. He lived on intimate terms with many men of high rank, in particular with Scipio Africanus and Gaius Laelius. It is even thought that he won the favor of these two men by his youthful beauty, but Fenestella denies this too, maintaining that he was older than either of them. Nepos, however, writes that they were all three of an age, and Porcius rouses a suspicion of too great intimacy in the following words: "Though he courted the wantonness of great men and their counterfeit [vocem divinam inhiat, Muretus; voce dum et inhuius et, A; the other manuscripts have voce divina inhiat] praise, though with greedy ears he drank in the divine voice of Africanus, though he thought it fine to frequent the tables of Philus and Laelius, though he was often taken to the Alban villa because of his youthful charms, he later found himself stripped of his all and reduced to utmost want. So he withdrew from the sight of men to a remote part of Greece and died at Stymphalus, a town of Arcadia. Naught availed him Publius Scipio, naught Laelius, naught Furius, the three wealthiest nobles of that time. Their help did not give him even a rented house, to provide at least a place where his slave might announce his master's death."
He wrote six comedies, and when he offered the first of these, the "Andria," to the aediles, they bade him first read it to Caecilius. Having come to the poet's house when he was dining, and being meanly clad, Terentius is said to have read the beginning of his play sitting on a bench near the great man's couch. But after a few lines he was invited to take his place at table, and after dining with Caecilius, he ran through the rest to his host's great admiration. Moreover, this play and the five others were equally pleasing to the people, although Vulcatius in enumerating them all, writes thus:

"The sixth play, the 'Hecyra,' will not be included" [text and meaning are uncertain; Dziatzko suggested "submaeret poeta Hecyra sextaa exclusa fabula"]. The "Eunuch" was even acted twice in the same day and earned more money than any previous comedy of any writer, namely eight thousand sesterces; and for this reason the sum is included in the title-page [the didascalia]. Indeed Varro rates the beginning of the "Adelphoe" above that of Menander [that is, presumably, the beginning of the play of Menander on which the Adelphoe is based].

III. It is common gossip that Scipio and Laelius aided Terentius in his writings, and he himself lent color to this by never attempting to refute it, except in a half-hearted way, as in the prologue to the "Adelphoe": "For as to what those malicious critics say, that men of rank aid your poet and constantly write in concert with him; what they regard as a grievous slander he considers the highest praise, to please those who please you all and all the people, whose timely help everyone has used without shame in war, in leisure, in business." Now he seems to have made but a lame defense, because he knew that the report did not displease Laelius and Scipio; and it gained ground in spite of all and came down even to later times. Gaius Memmius in a speech in his own defense says: "Publius Africanus, who borrowed a mask from Terentius, and put upon the stage under his name what he had written himself for his own amusement at home." Nepos says that he learned from a trustworthy source that once at his villa at Puteoli Gaius Laelius was urged by his wife to come to dinner at an earlier hour than common on the Kalends of March, but begged her not to interrupt him. When he at last entered the dining-room at a late hour, he said that he had seldom written more to his own satisfaction; and on being asked to read what he had written, he declaimed the lines of the "Heautontimorumenos," beginning: "Impudently enough, by Heaven, has Syrus lured me here by promises."

Santra thinks that if Terentius had really needed help in his writing, he would not have been so likely to resort to Scipio and Laelius, who were then mere youths, as to Gaius Sulpicius Gallus, a scholarly man, at whose consular games he brought out his first play, or to Quintus Fabius Labeo and Marcus Popillius, both of whom were ex-consuls and poets; and that it was for that reason that he spoke, not of "young men" who were said to help him, but "men whose mettle the people had tried in war, in leisure, in business." After publishing these comedies before he had passed his twenty-fifth year, either to escape from the gossip about publishing the work of others as his own, or else to become versed in Greek manners and customs, which he felt that he had not been wholly successful in depicting in his plays, he left Rome and never returned. Of his death Vulcatius writes in these words: "But when Afer had presented six comedies to the people, he journeyed from here to Asia, but from the time he embarked was never seen again; thus he vanished from life."
Quintus Cosconius writes that he was lost at sea as he was returning from Greece with one hundred and eight plays adapted from Menander; the rest of our authorities declare that he died at Stymphalus in Arcadia, or at Leucadia, in the consulship of Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella and Marcus Fulvius Nobilior [159 B.C.E.], having fallen ill from grief and annoyance at the loss of his baggage, which he had sent on to the ship, and with it of the new plays which he had written. He is said to have been of moderate height, slender and of dark complexion. He left a daughter, who afterwards became the wife of a Roman eques; also gardens twenty acres in extent on the Appian Way, near the villa of Mars. This makes me feel the more surprised that Porcius should write: "Naught availed him Scipio, naught Laelius, naught Furius, the three wealthiest nobles of that time. Their aid did not even give him a rented house, to provide at least a place where his slave might announce his master's death." Afranius ranks Terentius above all other writers of comedy, writing in his "Compitalia": "Declaring that no one is the equal of Terentius." But Vulcatius a puts him not only below Naevius Plautus, and Caecilius, but even below Licinius and Atilius. Cicero in his "Limo" ["Meadow", a fanciful title for a book of miscellaneous contents, like the "Sylvae" of Statius, the "Pratum" of Suetonius, and the like] gives him this much praise: "You, Terentius, who alone do reclothe Menander in choice speech, and rendering him into the Latin tongue, do present him with your quiet utterance on our public stage, speaking with a certain graciousness and with sweetness in every word." Also Gaius Caesar: "You too, even you, are ranked among the highest, you half-Menander, and justly, you lover of language undefiled. But would that your graceful verses had force as well, so that your comic power might have equal honor with that of the Greeks, and you might not be scorned in this regard and neglected. It hurts and pains me, my Terentius, that you lacked this one quality."