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In what degree of faithfulness Terence copied Menander, whether, as he states of the passage in the Adelphi taken from Diphilus, verbum de verbo in the lovelier scenes the description of the last words of the dying Andrian, and of her funeral, for instance remains conjectural.
Some of the pieces of Plautus are taken from Diphilus and Philemon, but there is reason to believe that he added a considerable degree of coarseness to his originals; from whom he derived the others is unknown, unless, perhaps, the assertion of Horace, "It is said that Plautus took for his model the Sicilian Epicharmus," will warrant the conjecture that he borrowed the Amphitryo, a piece which is quite different in kind from all his others, and which he himself calls a Tragi-comedy, from that old Doric comedian, who we know employed himself chiefly on mythological subjects.
M. Bayle in his Dictionary, article 'Xenophanes', brings up sundry authorities against this, and among others that of the poet Diphilus in the Collections of Stobaeus, whose Greek might be thus expressed in Latin: Fortuna cyathis bibere nos datis jubens, Infundit uno terna pro bono mala.
People shrugged their shoulders at the interpolations, with which the homely popular wit of Rome had garnished the elegant comedies of Philemon and Diphilus.
As we pass from the shadows of the Acropolis and the Acrocorinthus to the crests and valleys of the Seven Hills, the tone is changed. We do not speak of the degenerate days when, after his indignant burst of Non possum ferre, Quirites, Græcam Urbem, Juvenal, in speaking of Rome itself, says, Non est Romano cuiquam locus hîc, ubi regnat Protogenes aliquis, vel Diphilus, aut Erimarchus,
Julius Caesar has honoured Terence with some verses, in which he calls him a half Menander, praising the smoothness of his style, and only lamenting that he has lost a certain comic vigour which marked his original. This naturally brings us back to the Grecian masters. Diphilus, Philemon, Apollodorus, and Menander, are certainly four of the most celebrated names among them.
By a happy chance, perhaps, rather than from any unwonted effort of skill, this translation of the play of Diphilus has kept in it something of the unique and unmistakeable Greek atmosphere the atmosphere of the Odyssey, of the fisher-idyl of Theocritus, of the hundreds of little poems in the Greek Anthology that bear clinging about their verses the faint murmur and odour of the sea.
People shrugged their shoulders at the interpolations, with which the homely popular wit of Rome had garnished the elegant comedies of Philemon and Diphilus.
The Athenians under Diphilus now sailed out against them with thirty-three ships from Naupactus, and the Corinthians, at first not moving, at length thought they saw their opportunity, raised the signal, and advanced and engaged the Athenians.
The Clizia is an imitation of the Casina of Plautus, which is itself an imitation of the lost kleroumenoi of Diphilus. Plautus was, unquestionably, one of the best Latin writers; but the Casina is by no means one of his best plays; nor is it one which offers great facilities to an imitator.
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