Terentianus, Maurus

, was a Latin poet and grammarian, whose age is not exactly known, unless he was the Posthumus Terentianus to whom Longinus dedicated his admirable treatise on the sublime, and whom Martial celebrates as praefect of Syene, in Egypt. Both these things are uncertain, but both have been affirmed by Vosius, and others. Some have also called him a Carthaginian; that he was a Moor, he himself tells us, and thence he is called Maurus. Certain it is, that he was earlier than St. Augustin, who quotes him, Da Civ. Dei, vi. 2. He wrote a most elegant poem in various measures, “De literis, syllabis, pedibus, et metris,” addressed to his son Bassinus, and his son-in-law Novatemus, which gives a truly pleasing impression of his genius, and admirably exemplifies the precepts it delivers. This poem is still extant, having been found in a monastery at Bobbio, in the Milanese, by G. Merula. It was first published by him at Milan, with Ausonius, in 1497; afterwards by Janus Parrhasius, and Nic. Brissaeus; then by Jacobus Micyllus, at Francfort, 1584, in 8vo. It appeared also in the “Grammatici veteres,” of Putschius, published at Hanau, in 1605, 4to; and in the “Corpus omnium veterum Poetarum Romanorum,” Geneva, 1611, 2 vols. 4to. ³