It should be emphasized that this highly concentrated rhetorical style is confined in Terence to the prologues. In general he avoids giving elaborate set speeches to the characters of his plays, preferring to turn monologue into dialogue by adding an interlocutor (Donatus on An. 14 and Eun. 539). Dialogue is less conducive to elaborate rhetoric than monologue, and it is interesting that Terence’s three longest uninterrupted monologues (Gnatho at Eun. 232-69, Pamphilus at Hec. 361-414,
Micio at Ad. 26-80) all contain the reported speech of a second person, so that they too become virtual dialogues.
Nonetheless, there is a good deal of unobtrusive rhetoric in the speeches of Terence’s characters. It has been claimed that Terence in fact uses more rhetorical devices than his chief Greek model Menander (Ludwig 1968: 179), who, as Plutarch long ago pointed out (Mor. 853B), uses such devices as antithesis, homoeoptoton, and paronomasia sparingly and with proper restraint. The following monologue may perhaps be regarded as reasonably typical of Terence: it combines two modes of speech, deliberation and narrative. The context is that the slave Sosias has learned that his older master, Simo, is planning a marriage for his younger master, Pamphilus, who is in love with an Andrian woman who is pregnant with his child.
Enimvero, Dave, nil locist segnitiae neque socordiae,
Quantum intellexi modo senis sententiam de nuptiis.
Quae si non astu providentur, me aut erum pessum dabunt.
Nec quid agam certumst, Pamphilumne adiutem an auscultem seni.
Si illum relinquo, eius vitae timeo; sin opitulor, huius minas, 210
Quoi verba dare difficilest. primum iam de amore hoc comperit;
Me infensus servat ne quam faciam in nuptiis fallaciam.
Si senserit, perii; aut si lubitum fuerit, causam ceperit
Quo iure quaque iniuria praecipitem in pistrinum dabit.
Ad haec mala hoc mi accedit etiam. haec Andria, 215
Si ista uxor sive amicast, gravida e Pamphilost.
Audireque eorumst operae pretium audaciam.
Nam inceptiost amentium, haud amantium.
Quidquid peperisset decreverunt tollere.
Et fingunt quandam inter se nunc fallaciam 220
Civem Atticam esse hanc. ‘‘fuit olim quidam senex mercator. navem is fregit apud Andrum insulam. is obiit mortem.’’ ibi tum hanc eiectam Chrysidis patrem recepisse orbam parvam. fabulae!
(Terence, Andria 206-24; tr. Barsby 2001)
Well, Davus, there’s no room here for idleness or procrastination, if I understood the old man’s intention about the marriage just now. If this business isn’t managed with some skill, it’ll be the ruin either of myself or of my master. I can’t decide what to do, whether to help Pamphilus or obey the old man. If I abandon Pamphilus, I fear for his life; if I assist him, I’ve the old man’s threats to fear, and he’s a difficult man to deceive. For a start he’s already found out about the love affair: he’s watching me like an enemy in case I play some trick over the wedding. If he catches me, I’m lost; in any case, if the fancy takes him, he’ll find a reason for dispatching me hotfoot to the mill, whether I deserve it or not. (206-14)
On top of all this there’s a further problem. The Andrian woman, whether she’s a wife or a mistress, is pregnant by Pamphilus. And you should just listen to their effrontery. They’re scheming like lunatics rather than lovers. They have decided to raise the baby, whatever it is. And they’re now concocting a story between them that the woman is an Athenian citizen. ‘‘Once upon a time there was an elderly merchant. He was shipwrecked off the island of Andros and died. The girl was washed ashore and Chrysis’ father took the little orphan in.’’ What nonsense! (215-24)
The deliberative section of this speech (206-14) is in iambic octonarii, which is significant because in Roman comedy the longer recitative meters tend to attract the more elaborate language. In this passage, however, the rhetorical effects are fairly unobtrusive. There is constant mild alliteration and assonance, often allied with other figures: segnitiae...socordiae a doublet of synonyms with homoeo-ptoton (206); senis sententiam with paronomasia (207); providentur...pessum dabunt (208); dare difficilest (211); faciam...fallaciam with paronomasia (212); causam ceperit with homoeoteleuton fuerit...ceperit (213); iure ...iniuria with antithesis (214), praecipitem...pistrinum (214). There are two examples of antithetical or balanced clauses: Pamphilumne adiutem an auscultem seni with chiasmus (209), and si illum relinquo, eius vitae timeo; sin opitulor, huius minas (210) with variation of case (vitae / minas) and ellipse. The most prominent rhetorical flourishes are the paronomasia faciam...fallaciam (212) and the audacious addition of quaque iniuria (‘‘by wrong of which,’’ 214) to quo iure (‘‘by right of which’’) to mean ‘‘on the basis of which, rightly or wrongly.’’ In short, what Terence is doing here is using various figures which, apart from the parallel clauses, chiefly amount to playing with the sounds of similar words. The effect of all this is polished and playful rather than striking or insistent.
The second section of the speech is in iambic senarii, which is the standard meter in comedy for narrative. In general narrative does not lend itself to rhetorical flourishes: the one that stands out here is the paronomasia amentium haud amantium (218), with a milder example audire... audaciam in the previous line (217). But it is noticeable that, while there is nothing naive about Terence’s own narrative here in terms of the variety of structures or the length of the units, the alleged story of the lovers (221-3) is very naive in its expression, with its mechanical use of temporal adverbs as connectives (olim, ibi tum), its three short parallel main clauses all in the perfect tense, and its two examples of the anaphoric is where no pronoun is in fact necessary. This naive style is typical of early Latin prose narrative, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Terence is here gently mocking it from the point of view of a writer who can himself do better. We shall return to narrative style later.
Before we leave Terence and the Andria, and with reference to the ‘‘missing’’ partitio noted above in the Eunuchus prologue, it is worth pointing out that Cicero in the De Inventione (1.33) specifically commends the ‘‘brief and appropriate’’ partitio at the beginning of Simo’s narrative to his freedman Sosia (An. 48-170), where Simo sets out what he is going to say:
Eo pacto et gnati vitam et consilium meum cognosces et quid facere in hac re te velim
(Terence, Andria 49-50; tr. Barsby 2001)
This way you’ll understand my son’s behavior and my own scheme and how I’d like you
To help me.
He carries through this tripartite division in the following lines (51-156, 157-67, 168-70), and then winds up the speech.
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