Adelphoe (The Brothers)
Adelphoe
Two brothers raised under opposite child-rearing methods, one strict and one permissive, force the audience to judge which kind of authority actually produces a decent son, and the play refuses to give an easy answer.
- strict versus permissive fatherhood as a live debate
- an ambiguous ending that resists a moral
- household discipline as a proxy for civic values
- Terence's characteristic blend of two Greek sources
Staged at the funeral games for Aemilius Paullus in 160 BC, Terence's last surviving play sets a stern, traditional father, Demea, against his indulgent, urbane brother Micio, who has raised Demea's other son with permissive kindness. Both sons get into trouble anyway, and the ending's abrupt reversal, Demea suddenly out-performing his brother's generosity to expose it as vanity, has divided readers since antiquity over whether the play endorses strictness, permissiveness, or neither. Adapted from Menander with an added scene from Diphilus, it is Terence's most philosophically probing comedy, using household discipline as a lens for debating how Roman character is actually formed.
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