Andria (comedy)

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Andria (English: The Woman from Andros) is a Roman comedy adapted by Terence from two Greek plays by Menander the first being Samia and the other being Perinthia. It was the first play by Terence to be presented publicly, and was performed in 166 BC during the Ludi Megalenses.^[1]

By the time of Cicero, roughly a century later (56 BC), the play had become well-known as the source of (or along with) the line "Hinc illae lacrimae!" ("hence those tears!"; act 1, scene 1, v. 126), as the orator made use of this latter in a speech (Pro Caelio) defending his erstwhile student Marcus Caelius Rufus; and even thirty-six years thence—in 20 BC—the play and the phrase were evidently still popular enough that Horace could quote it in his Epistulae I and expect the allusion to be recognized.

Andria became the first of Terence's plays to be performed post-antiquity, in Florence in 1476, and it was adapted by Machiavelli, whose Andria was likewise the author's first venture into playwriting and was the first of Terence's plays to be translated into English ca. 1520. The second English translation was by the Welsh writer Morris Kyffin in 1588.