Plot of Terence’s Adelphoe: the comedy that deals with the theme of the education of children, first performed in 160 BC.
Adelphoe by Terence: plot
Adelphoe (The Brothers) by Terence : the old Demea has a brother named Micio and two sons, Ctesiphone and Aeschinus. Ctesiphone is raised by his father with Catonian severity: in the countryside, according to the most rigid rules of the mos moiorum while Aeschinus is entrusted to his uncle, in the city and according to much more flexible and comprehensive canons (“in the Greek way”). At the beginning of the action, Aeschinus loves Panfila, an honest, poor girl who is about to give him a son; Ctesiphone loves the prostitute Bacchis. Aeschinus, generous and self-confident, undertakes a forceful action in favor of his timid brother: he goes to the pimp and takes Bacchis away from him.
Appearances accuse Aeschinus, Panfila sees a very bleak future looming for herself and her little son, and Mieschinus’ pedagogical methods seem to be heading for failure. A family friend, Egione, helps to shed light on the truth. Things would get really bad for Ctesiphone if his father, tired of the unpopularity he enjoys, did not decide to radically change his attitude and method. But the generosity – almost excessive – that he displays in this “new course” is not entirely spontaneous.
Demea in fact renounces his principles out of tactics, not conviction, and in the end he experiences a real thrill in taking revenge on his too popular brother: naively supported by Aeschinus, he forces Micyon, until now a convinced and hardened bachelor, to marry Panfila’s old mother, to give a large estate to his poor friend Egione, to give freedom to the servant Syrus and his companion Phrygia, to advance in the form of a loan an initial sum for the first needs of the two new freedmen. In the end Micyon, somewhat dazed, cannot help but ask him the reason for the sudden change. Demea replies that he wanted to demonstrate that it is easy to be liked by young people by practicing compliance and indulgence; as for his children, let them spend and squander as they please, but know that he is always ready to give them some good advice.
The conclusion is that the unpleasant Catonian has learned something, but even the pleasant supporter of living in the Greek way is called to review his educational methods. From the comedy of the same name by Menander but, as the prologue states, with the insertion of the episode of the rape of the prostitute, taken from another Menandrean comedy, Synapothnéskontes (Those who die together), which Planto had imitated in his Commorientes , a comedy now lost, leaving out that one episode.
