Literature and history dot come. Oh, Hello and welcome to literature and history.

Episode 44, Homo Sum.

This show is on the Roman playwright Terence, who lived from about 184 to 159 b.C.

This program will first introduce you to Terence and his world, and the central part of it will be devoted to exploring Terence's final play and probably his masterpiece, The Brothers.

And lastly, as we usually do in this podcast, we'll consider the historical background of the literature

that we're going to read together, how Terence's work reflects the culture and time period

in which he lived.

I read Terence for the first time in my last year of college. There used

to be a microfilm and microfiche compound off the east side of the first floor of the Doe Library at UC Berkeley.

It was my preferred place to read as an undergrad.

It had moldering green paint the color of key lime pie, corroded cement all over the place and ugly

scarred pitted tables. And even better, this huge microfilm compound had a basement where the walls were even more decrepit, the tables

even more ramshackle, and in total it was all so ugly and silent that no matter what I brought

down there to read, my books were always more interesting than my surroundings.

I must be the only living being who has happy memories of that hideous basement because of all the great stuff I read down there but anyway let's get to Terence

When I read Terence down there down in the furthest dingiest corner of that microfilm basement, I kept stopping. I'd read a monologue and shake

my head and mutter, no way. Or, wow, or most often, really this was written in the 160s BC. I mean there was no

one down there I could talk to myself with impunity and I kept stopping with incredulity to reread soliloquies and rapid

back and forth dialogues and I must have gone through a pen or two underlining passages I loved in drawing little smiley faces and exclamation points next to them.

I read an older translation back then, Betty Radises, and while writing this show I re-read some Terence plays in a more recent translation by Peter Brown.

And in both cases I would describe the experience of reading Terence as follows.

It was like someone had taken a play modeled on Greek new comedy

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