Heauton Timorumenos
Heauton Timorumenos (Ancient Greek: Ἑαυτὸν τιμωρούμενος, Heauton timōroumenos, The Self-Tormentor)[1] is a play written in Latin by Terence (Latin: Publius Terentius Afer), a dramatist of the Roman Republic, in 163 BC; it was translated wholly or in part from an earlier Greek play by Menander.
The play concerns two neighbours, Chremes and Menedemus, whose sons Clitipho and Clinia are in love with different girls, Bacchis and Antiphila.
He adds: "Yet the Self-Tormentor, for all its occasional imperfections, in many ways shows Terence at his best; the plot is ingenious, complex, fast-moving, and extremely skilfully constructed, its characters are excellently drawn, and the whole is full of delightful dramatic irony.
However, due to the scant survival of Menander's play of the same name, there is no simple way to judge how much of Terence's version is translation and how much is invention.
Menedemus explains that he had reproached his son Clinia for his having a relationship with a penniless girl, and had held up his own youth as a soldier as a virtuous contrast.
By coincidence, immediately after Menedemus exits, Chremes encounters his own son, Clitipho with Clinia, who has returned from the East.
When Chremes returns to his house, he suggests to Syrus that he ought to find some trick to get the money out of Menedemus; it is the duty of slaves sometimes, he says, to deceive their masters.
Syrus tells Chremes that Antiphila had been pawned to Bacchis by the old weaveress in return for a loan, and that Bacchis is willing to release her for 1000 drachmas (10 minae); he advises Chremes to tell Menedemus to buy Antiphila as she is a good bargain: a captive from Caria whose friends will pay handsomely for her release.
Menedemus repeats the advice that Chremes gave to him at the start of the play: he should make his son abide by his wishes.
But he asks Menedemus to help save his son by pretending that he, Chremes, is giving away all his estate to make a sufficient dowry.
Clitipho is distraught when he hears this news, but his father tells him he would rather have his estate be thus disposed of than go to Bacchis by way of his heir.
In its original context it is a defensive reply by the busybody old man Chremes to his neighbour Menedemus, who says "Have you got so much free time as to concern yourself with other people's affairs which have nothing to do with you?
However, in later centuries, it received a much wider interpretation:[11] Some would see in it, as Michel de Montaigne did, a man's confession of his emotional and spiritual weakness.
Most would say that it had to do with being 'humane' in some very positive sense of this much used word...Among English authors who quoted it was Henry Fielding in Tom Jones (1749, Book XV, ch.
VIII) who applies the quotation to his hero: “He was one who could truly say with him in Terence, Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto”[12] A shortened version of the line, HVMANI NIHIL ALIENVM, is used as the motto of various institutions, such as the Law Society of Scotland and the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Another, less well known, quotation from the play is referenced in George Eliot's epigraph to Chapter 25 of her novel Daniel Deronda: nam deteriores omnes sumus licentiae (line 483)"For all of us are worse for licence" i.e. "if we are given free rein to do as we like".
