Terence Interrupted: Literary Biography and the Reception of the Terentian Canon

Abstract

Inconsistent and contradictory accounts of Terence’s death conclude his biography in Suetonius’ De Viris Illustribus . Many of these narratives originated in the work of scholar-poets active at the end of the second century b.c.e. This article shows that the numerous versions of his death are interpretations of the formation of his canon from the retrospective viewpoint of his late second-century readers. These death scenes dramatize the construction of Terence’s literary legacy in its reception. Furthermore, they elucidate the role that the nascent genre of Roman literary biography played in enacting and articulating literary-critical debates among Terence’s readers.