While Caesar as man of letters is most famous for his commentarii, it should not be forgotten that he also wrote two volumes on Analogy and was the author of various verses, one set of which, on the comic playwright Terence and his relationship to Menander, runs as follows (fr. 1 Courtney):Footnote ¹

These lines are found alongside some of Cicero (fr. 2 Courtney)—also on the subject of Terence's relationship to Menander and also beginning tu quoque—in Suetonius' Life of Terence (7).Footnote ³ Some scholars infer from Caesar's first two words that the lines are extracted from a longer piece, such as that in which Volcacius Sedigitus ranked ten Latin comic poets, including Terence (fr. 1 Courtney).Footnote ⁴ Although Caesar's lines have recently attracted scholarly attention,Footnote ⁵ their humour is yet to be fully appreciated.

The point of the lines rests on the similarity between Terence, whose address constitutes an outer frame (1–2 and 5–6), and his writings, which are referred to in the centre: that is, the poem assumes that the nature of the poet can be inferred from his words, a commonplace which happens to have been expressed both by Terence himself (Haut. 384 nam mihi quale ingenium haberes fuit indicio oratio) and by his model, Menander (fr. 66 K-T² [= 72 = 143] ἀνδρὸς χαρακτὴρ ἐκ λόγου γνωρίζεται).Footnote ⁶ The point is developed over the course of successive sentences until by the end the full extent of Caesar's humorous accusation is revealed.

In the first two lines Terence is praised as a canonical author for the purity of his speech,Footnote ⁷ but the praise is off-set by his description as only ‘half Menander’. Although dimidiatus can mean ‘imperfect’ in a loose sense (OLD 2), its more common meaning is strictly ‘half’ (OLD 1): if Terence is one half of Menander, it follows that he is missing the other half; but what can this conundrum mean? It is suggestive, as we shall see, that Menander's name in its Greek form (Μένανδρος) falls into two halves, μένος and ἀνδρός (‘manly strength’ or ‘strong man’),Footnote ⁸ an ironical designation for one who acquired a reputation for effeminacy and was dubbed a cinaedus (cf. Phaedr. 5.1.12–15 unguento delibutus, uestitu fluens, | ueniebat gressu delicato et languido |… cinaedus ille).

The two elements of praise and criticism in lines 1–2 are explained by the wish directed at Terence's writings in line 3: in addition to his soft words, his writings are missing strength (uis), and, since lenibus … scriptis clearly corresponds to puri sermonis, it follows that the missing uis corresponds chiastically to Terence's missing half of Menander. Since uis is the Latin translation of μένος, it follows that Terence is a Menander who lacks strength:Footnote ⁹ he is, as it were, ‘not-strong man’, his masculinity even more defective than that of his famously effeminate model.Footnote ¹⁰

The language of masculinity and its antithesis is sustained (and confirmed) by the reference to uirtus in lines 4–5: if Terence's writings possessed uis, his comic uirtus would be powerful enough to match the Greeks,Footnote ¹¹ neue hac despectus parte iaceres. What does this clause mean? hac … parte seems strikingly vague, while the choice of iacere to express failure looks oddly specific. When the clause is considered in the light of the preceding context, however, Caesar's delectus uerborum is explained. iacere is almost a technical term for an impotent person (as Prop. 2.15.8 sicine, lente, iaces?) or his wilting penis (as Ov. Am. 3.7.69 quin istic pudibunda iaces, pars pessima nostri), and pars, as indeed the passage of Ovid indicates, is a regular euphemism for the genital area.Footnote ¹² Terence is an effeminate who is impotent.

There can be various reasons why a man is impotent or effeminate, but Caesar repeats in the last line of the poem what he had already said implicitly in line 1 and had hinted at more explicitly in line 3, namely, that Terence has something missing: unum hoc … tibi deesse, Terenti. If Terence's impotence is caused by a deficiency, the accusation is that he is a eunuch.Footnote ¹³ Eunuchism is a humorous way of impugning masculinityFootnote ¹⁴ and familiar from colloquial speech (for example, Petron. 44.14 si nos coleos haberemus).Footnote ¹⁵ Literary criticism often resorts to sexual imagery, as is well known, and Dio Chrysostom likens an ineffective sophist precisely to a eunuch (Or. 4.35–8);Footnote ¹⁶ and, since a common Latin term for eunuch is ‘half-man’ or semiuir, the revelation of the last line of verse takes us back to dimidiate Menander in the first.Footnote ¹⁷

Caesar will have relished the humour of using suggestive language to address an author whose most successful play was the Eunuchus and who was famous for his purity of speech.Footnote ¹⁸ Indeed, Caesar's own commentarii were arguably described in not dissimilar terms by Cicero (Brut. 262).Footnote ¹⁹