Andria (comedy)

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

By the time of Cicero, roughly a century later (56 BC), the play had evidently become—or, perhaps, was still—well-known, as the orator made use of a line therefrom (hinc illae lacrimae: "hence those/these tears!") in a speech; thirty-six years thereafter (20 BC), the play and the phrase seem to have retained currency enough that Horace could use the latter 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.