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Editor’s Introduction
Preface to Terence
Preface to Plautus
Augustan Reprints
Note on Pagination
Typographical errors are shown in the text with mouse-hover popups. In thePrefaces, errors were corrected only if a later edition showedthe same correction. All brackets are in the original.
George Robert Guffey, University of California, LosAngeles
Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, LosAngeles
Robert Vosper, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia
Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Earl Miner, University of California, Los Angeles
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles
Lawrence Clark Powell, William Andrews Clark MemorialLibrary
James Sutherland, University College, London
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, LosAngeles
Edna C. Davis, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Perhaps no higher praise can be paid a translator than posterity’sacceptance of his work. Laurence Echard’s Terence’s Comedies,first printed in 1694 in the dress and phraseology of Restorationcomedy, has received this accolade through the mediation of no less amodern translator than Robert Graves. In 1963 Graves edited atranslation of three of Terence’s plays. His Foreword points to theextreme difficulty of translating Terence, and admits his ownfailure— “It is regrettable that the very terseness of his Latinmakes an accurate English rendering read drily and flatly; as I havefound to my disappointment.” Graves’s answer was typicallyidiosyncratic. “A revival of Terence in English, must,I believe, be based on the translation made . . . .with fascinating vigour, by a young Cambridge student Laurence Echard. . . .”1