CHAPTER VI.
THE COMEDIES OF TERENCE.
I.—THE MAID OF ANDROS.
'The Maid of Andros'—the earliest in date of Terence's comedies with which we are acquainted—is confessedly founded upon two plays of Menander, his 'Andria' and 'Perinthia;' and the Roman dramatist tells us, in his prologue, how certain critics complained that in this adaptation he had spoilt two good pieces to make a single indifferent one. How much truth there may he in the accusation we cannot even guess. But there seems to have been generally a lack of incident in the comedies of his great original, which, supposing such adaptation to he permissible at all, would quite justify a writer who had to make his own work effective in supplying himself with sufficient material from as many separate pieces as he thought proper. Even as we have the play, the incidents are so few and simple, that its defect, if acted before a modern audience, would be the want of sufficient interest in the plot. A lady named Chrysis has come from the island of Andros to Athens, and there, from lack of money or friends, after
