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Pro Caelio by Cicero (56 BC)

Background

Marcus Tullius Cicero gave the speech known as Pro Caelio on 4 April 56 BC in defence of his young protegé and one-time friend, Marcus Caelius Rufus, generally known as Caelius.

The full background to the trial is staggeringly complicated. It is explained in great detail and with admirable clarity by D.H. Berry, editor and translator of the excellent Oxford University Press edition of (five) Defence Speeches by Cicero (2000).

The Cataline conspiracy

In 63 BC Cicero was consul during the crisis of the Cataline Conspiracy i.e. the attempt of the disgruntled aristocrat to lead an armed overthrow of the Roman state. He was in north Italy raising an insurrectionary army when five leading conspirators, including some senators, were caught in Rome and implicated by letters and then confessed. Cicero led a debate in the senate about what to do with them which concluded by voting to execute them and Cicero led them straightaway to the state execution or carnifex who did the deed.

In the years that followed various of Cicero’s enemies developed the accusation that, because the five had never been granted a full (long and probably delayed) trial, they had been illegally killed – and that Cicero was therefore guilty of murder and treason (killing senators).

One of the lead proponents of this view was the nasty piece of work known as Publius Clodius Pulcher, an eccentric scion of the distinguished Claudius clan, who had arranged to be adopted by a plebeian family in order to stand for office as tribune of the plebs. He used this office to pass measures designed to appeal to the people and made rabble-rousing speeches. He developed a following of thugs who terrorised the streets of Rome and even beat up senators and other magistrates.

Cicero sent into exile

In 58 BC, while serving as tribune, Clodius got a law passed declaring it treason to have any Roman citizen put to death without a trial. Everyone knew this was directed at Cicero and his precipitate action in having the five high-ranking Catiline conspirators executed – so he swiftly packed up his things and went into exile, in Greece.

He was gone for a long, miserable 18 months during which Clodius had his house in Rome torn down and had a temple to Liberty build over the ruins, as well as having Cicero’s other properties around Italy looted and sacked.

But the mood in Rome changed. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, known in English as Pompey, had acquiesced in Cicero’s exile but then Clodius got above himself and started attacking Pompey verbally and attacking some of his lieutenants in the street. Pompey and the other members of the triumvirate realised they’d let Clodius get out of control. Pompey signalled to his followers that he would support Cicero’s exile being ended and so a law was raised and passed declaring Cicero innocent of any wrongdoing.

So Cicero made a triumphant return to Brundisium and the a triumphant progress across south Italy feted in every town as the Father of the Nation. In his absence Clodius had not only destroyed his homes but sponsored mistreatment of his wife, Terentia. So the two men were at daggers drawn.

Marcus Caelius Rufus

Now to Marcus Caelius Rufus. Born in 82 BC, and so 24 years younger than Cicero, Caelius had been Cicero’s pupil and protégé, learning the arts of politics and oratory at first hand. In 63, however, he was intoxicated, like many others, by the revolutionary rhetoric of the half-mad Cataline and supported his bid to become consul (the same election which was won by Lucius Licinius Murena, who Cicero had defended in another famous speech).

He appears to have abandoned the Cataline cause when the latter when postal and decided to launch an all-out insurrection. Instead Caelius went off to serve as assistant to the governor of Africa from 62 to 60. Back in Rome he began to make a name for himself as a lawyer by launching a prosecution against Gaius Antonius Hybrida, the man who had been co-consul with Cicero in 63, and who had ‘led’ the army which finally defeated Catalina in the field.

Cicero didn’t much like Antonius but figured the state owed him a debt of gratitude and so defended him – but Caelius won the case, defeating his old master. Inspired by his success, Caelius moved to the smart set on the Palatine Hill and rented a room from Clodius, close to the residence of his sister, Clodia. Clodia’s husband had recently died (59 BC) and it was widely rumoured that Caelius became her lover.

As described above, in 58 Clodius held office as tribune and got Cicero exiled; 18 months later in 57 Cicero was triumphantly recalled. Then at the end of 57 or beginning of 56 Caelius broke with the Clodiuses. Did she dump him, did the men fallout? We don’t know, but Berry thinks the most likely reason is that Caelius had switched his political allegiance from the Clodii to Pompey, who was increasingly antagonistic to them. Whatever the exact reason, in their venomous way the brother and sister decided to take revenge.

Lucius Calpurnius Bestia

The proximate cause of the trouble was the trial of Lucius Calpurnius Bestia. Caelius was prosecuting Bestia for malpractice in the elections for the praetorship of 57, in which Bestia stood unsuccessfully. Now this Bestia had been on trial no fewer than four times previously, and Cicero had defended and got him acquitted on each occasion. So now he defended Bestia against his old protégé, Caelius, and won again. However, Caelius was not daunted. Bestia was planning to stand for the praetorship this year as well and so Caelius launched yet another prosecution against him.

But at this point Bestia’s son, Lucius Sempronius Atratinus, got involved. He realised the best form of defence is attack and so launched a pre-emptive prosecution against Caelius. If Caelius was convicted he would be unable to take forward his prosecution of Bestia. Atratinus needed to move fast to protect his dad and so launched the prosecution in the violence court (quaestio de vi) which, unlike other courts, sat during public holidays. (This fact would be central to Cicero’s speech.) And, crucially, Atratinus’s attack on Caelius attracted the support of Clodius and his sister. They agreed to be witnesses against Caelius and suggested some additional charges against him (see below for the charges).

Caelius was an experienced orator and so elected to defend himself – but he also managed to persuade the richest man in Rome, Marcus Licinius Crassus to join him. Improbably, he also persuaded Cicero to join his defence. You’d have thought there was no love lost between Cicero and his protégé who had betrayed him twice over, once joining the diabolical Catalina, and then allying with his nemesis, Clodius. But it seems that Cicero invoked that timeless equation, my enemy’s enemy is my friend: anyone who Clodius hated must be worth defending.

Ptolemy XII of Egypt

There’s more? Yes, involving – bizarrely enough – the king of Egypt. In 80 BC Alexander of Egypt died and bequesthed his nation to Rome. The throne was usurped, however, by Ptolemy XII ‘Auletes’ who proceeded to rule with the nervous knowledge that at any moment Rome might step in to claim its prize. Thus he sucked up to the Romans at every turn, much to the dislike of his people. When the triumvirate of Caesar, Crassus and Pompey took power in 60 BC Ptolemy offered to pay them the huge sum of 6,000 talents in exchange for formal recognition of his title. But when he tried to collect it from h is people they rebelled and expelled him from the kingdom.

Ptolemy took refuge in Rome where he borrowed and got into debt lobbying and bribing Roman politicians to raise an army to restore him to power. But the Egyptians didn’t want him back and so in 57 sent a deputation of their best men, led by the Academic philosopher Dio, to put their case before the senate. Ptolemy’s response was to try and get the leading men assassinated, to organise an uprising against them when they stopped in Naples and to bribe slaves in the noble houses where they stayed in Rome to kill them.

At the end of 57 the senate finally found in Ptolemy’s favour but then someone found a reference in the Sibylline books which allegedly forbade it, so the senate rescinded its gesture. Pompey was lobbying to be appointed general in charge of restoring Ptolemy against his rebellious population when, early in 56, Dio was murdered.

Everybody suspected everybody else – the killing obviously suited Ptolemy who wanted the delegation to fail and Pompey who wanted the generalship of imposing Ptolemy on his reluctant people – and a number of prosecutions swiftly followed.

First an agent of Pompey’s, Asicius, was tried for the murder of Dio; Cicero defended him and he was acquitted.

Next we come to the case brought against Caelius by Atratinus. As we have seen this was predominantly motivated by Atratinus’s wish to have Caelius convicted so he wouldn’t be able to prosecute his (Atratinus’s) father, Bestia, for the sixth time. The Clodii were persuaded to join the prosecution against Caelius because a) they had a personal grudge against him, mixed up with the way he had ceased to be Clodia’s lover, nobody knows the details but it obviously left them both furious; and b) it was a way of getting at Pompey, who Clodius now hated.

The charges

The prosecution brought five charges against Caelius, all relating to the disturbances surrounding Dio’s embassy to Rome, namely:

  1. the civil disturbances which affected the Egyptian delegation in Naples
  2. assaults on the delegation at Puteoli
  3. damage to the property of Palla (nobody knows who Palla is but presumably something connected with the above)
  4. taking gold for the attempted murder of Dio and then the attempted poisoning of Clodia: in more detail the charge was that Caelius borrowed gold from Clodia under false pretences, with the intention of using it to bribe servants at the house where Dio was staying to murder him; then, when Clodia discovered what Caelius was planning, Caelius attempted to bribe some of her slaves to poison her in order to shut her up
  5. the murder of Dio – Caelius was accused of being in league with Asicius to have Dio murdered (despite the illogic of the fact that Asicius had, by the time of the trial, been qcuitted – and by Cicero, who therefore had intimate knowledge of all the circumstances surrounding the murder

The preceding speeches

Prosecution

Atratinus spoke first and made an extended attack on Caelius’s character, calling him a ‘pretty boy Jason’, a loose-living, immoral lover of luxury, corrupt and used to committing bribery and violence.

Clodius Confusingly, Berry thinks the ‘Clodius’ who spoke at the trial was not the Clodius but someone who shared the name or a freed slave. We don’t have a transcript but it is likely he deplored the treatment of the Egyptian delegation, criticised Pompey for his support for the corrupt and unpopular Ptolemy, and referred to the evidence Clodia would give at the end of the trial to the effect that a friend of Caelius’s was caught handing poison to some of her, Clodia’s, slaves, having bribed them to poison her with it.

Lucius Herrenius Balbus closing the case for the prosecution, Balbus repeated the accusations of immorality against Caelius, and therefore his unfitness to be continuing the prosecution of Bestia (i.e. fulfilling the core aim of Atratinus who brought the prosecution in the first place.)

Defence

Caelius spoke in his own defence, wittily referring to Clodia as a ‘one-penny Clytemnestra’ i.e. a loose women who murdered her husband (she was suspected of poisoning him). We don’t have his speech either, but it is logical to imagine that he defended himself against all five of the charges.

Crassus ditto, presumably addressed the charges.

Cicero’s speech pro Caelio

Cicero was (as he preferred to be) the third and final of the three defence speakers.

Cicero takes advantage of the fact that the trial was taking place on the first day of the Megalensian games. While everyone else was watching the games in the circus the jury of 75 was stuck all day in the forum listening to this legal case. Therefore Cicero sets out to entertain them, by adopting a jocular tone throughout, telling jokes, impersonating famous people.

Above all it is a relentlessly ad hominem attack on the plaintiffs. In this respect it is a classic example of misdirection. Instead of answering any of the prosecution’s arguments, Cicero turns his speech into a) a defence of Caelius’s character but above all b) a devastating attack on one of the chief movers of the case, Clodia.

In this trial, members of the jury, everything has to do with Clodia, a woman who is not only of aristocratic birth, but notorious. (31)

an impetuous, capricious and angry woman (55)

With a woman like that anything is possible (69)

He is witheringly insulting. The prosecution had painted Rufus as a pretty-boy Jason, but in the ancient story Jason was seduced by the monster of anger and revenge, Medea, and so Cicero is not slow to compare Clodia to Medea, calling her the ‘Medea of the Palatine’ (18). He compares her to a prostitute (1, 37, 48, 49, 50, 57) and a sex-starved matron. He accuses her of incest (32, 34). He says the entire case only exists because of her ‘insupportable passion and bitter hatred’ (2), ‘to gratify the whim of a licentious woman’ (70), that it originates from:

a malevolent, disreputable, vindictive, crime-ridden, lust-ridden house (55)

and:

a household like this in which the lady of the house behaves like a prostitute, in which nothing that goes on is fit to be made public, in which perverted lusts, extravagant living, and all kinds of outlandish vices and outrages are rife (57)

The prosecution had calculated that Caelius would not reveal that he was actually Clodia’s lover and he apparently didn’t – but Cicero did, and depicted Clodia as a nymphomaniac who, if she was spurned, lied, bribed and cheater her way to revenge. Cicero admits their liaison but in such a way as to make Clodia seem the main mover of it, an immoral seducer and then, once spurned, a vengeful harpy. By sleight of hand, or deft presentation, Cicero manages to reveal the affair but have Caelius emerge unblemished. Thus Cicero didn’t address any of the charges, but dismissed them all as the pretexts of a deranged nymphomaniac.

He associates Clodia with Baiae, the southern resort which had become associated with decadence and immorality:

Baiae talks all right, and not only that, it resounds with this report – that the lusts of a single woman have sunk to such depths that she does not merely decline to seek seclusion and darkness with which to veil her immoralities, but openly revels in the most disgusting practices amid crowds of onlookers and in the broadest light of day! (47)

Cicero does address the two specific charges that Caelius took gold from Clodia under false pretences to pay for the murder of Dio, and that, when she found out, he tried to poison her. But he very effectively destroys the plausibility of both charges. Why on earth did she give him such a large amount of gold, unless he was her lover? And as to the entire story about Caelius attempting to poison Clodia when she discovered what he was really using the gold for, Cicero subjects this to a long forensic deconstruction, which demolishes every step of the supposed narrative as wildly improbable until the whole story collapses (56 onwards).

But he goes one further. He pounces on the entire notion of poison and makes the prosecution realise they made a terrible mistake raising it: because Clodia herself was suspected of poisoning her husband, and Cicero describes the death bed scene of this husband, Quintus Metellus, in harrowing detail and in a subtle way so as to implicate Clodia in his death – all in such a way as to completely distract attention away from Caelius.

But far longer is the passage where he ridicules the entire notion of Clodia recruiting men friends to wait concealed in the public baths till they say Lucinius hand over the famous box of poison to one of her slaves. Where are these brave hiders, Cicero asks. What are their names, why have they not been produced by the prosecution, where did they hide, in an actual bath or was there a wooden horse nearby, like at Troy? You can imagine the jury rocking with laughter. Over 2,000 years later it’s still funny and funnier because Cicero keeps piling on the comic exaggeration and ridiculous variations on the prosecution’s narrative, reducing it to smoking wreckage.

This itself is a triumph of the barrister’s manipulating art. But the OUP editor Berry makes a further point. The entire case had a very fraught political significance. The Roman public had been outraged by the shameless murder of an emissary from a foreign country who had come to live, unprotected, among them. It breached very profound codes of hospitality and civilisation. Everyone knew that Pompey supported Dio’s enemy, Ptolemy, and so the case had the serious potential to badly unravel and make Pompey very unpopular.

By focusing on Clodia alone, Cicero managed to contain this: he eclipsed the genuine outrage felt by many over the murder with a pantomime act. Personalising it depoliticised it. It also meant Cicero didn’t have to take a view either way, doing which would have risked alienating either the people or Pompey. Instead he ignored the charges and produced a Carry On entertainment which gave everyone a good laugh.

Each of the Cicero speeches in this volume has a moment when the argument ends, and the conclusion begins. Having read two of them I can begin to see how each speech ends with a description of the distressed family of the accused, and a sentimental appeal to the jury not to condemn the wife, children, mother or father of the accused to misery and shame, in Caelius’s case, Cicero paints a heart-breaking portrait of Caelius’s father as an old man with no-one else to look after him.

The result

Caelius was acquitted which allowed him, against Atratinus’s plans, to proceed with his prosecution of Bestia. Once again Cicero defended Bestia but lost. Bestia went into exile.

The next year, 55, Ptolemy was restored to the Egyptian throne by bribing the governor of Syria, Aulus Gabinius with the eye-watering sum of 10,000 talents. On his return to Rome Gabinius was prosecuted for this, Cicero defended him but lost and Gabinius also was sent into exile.

Ptolemy ruled until his death in 51 when he divided the throne between his son, Ptolemy XIII and daughter Cleopatra VII. It was his deep involvement in the cause of their father, which led Pompey, after his disastrous defeat at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48, to decide to make his way to Egypt to seek sanctuary with Auletes son. This was a fateful decision because Ptolemy XIII’s advisers told him Julius Caesar would like it if he eliminated his rival – and so Pompey was brutally murdered as he set foot ashore in Egypt (Plutarch’s Life of Pompey, chapter 79).

Caelius was elected tribune in 52. This was the year when Clodius was finally murdered, by his longstanding rival Titus Annius Milo, and Caelius helped Cicero defend his killers (see another of Cicero’s best-known speeches, Pro Milone).

In 51 Cicero reluctantly acquiesced in being sent by the senate to be governor of Cilicia, now south-west Turkey. Caelius was elected aedile, in Rome, while he was away and any reader of Cicero’s letters is familiar with the way Cicero had him promise to send him all the news and gossip he could gather. Caelius memorably keeps needling Cicero to send him some panthers so he can make a splash at the public games which he, as aedile, was charged with organising.

When the civil war broke out Caelius made the right call and supported Caesar and was appointed one of the praetors. However, he put forward radical plans for debt relief against the wishes of his fellow praetors, which caused a riot and he was suspended from office. He fled Rome and, along with Milo, who he had helped defend 4 years earlier, tried to foment a revolt against Caesar, but they were both killed by Caesar’s troops. Few, if any, happy endings in ancient Rome.

Credit

Defence Speeches by Cicero, translated and edited by D.H. Berry, was published by Oxford University Press in 2000.

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Posted by Simon on July 18, 2022

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Eunuchus (The Eunuch) by Terence (161 BC)

‘Whatever’s happened here, it wasn’t my fault.’
(The cowardly servant Parmeno to his master Demea, page 212)

In her introduction, the editor and translator of the Penguin edition, Betty Radice, observes that The Eunuch was Terence’s most popular play and is also the most Plautine of his plays, as if these are coincidental facts. When I opened the The Ghost by Plautus I was laughing by the end of the first page. By contrast, wading through Terence’s play, The Self-Tormentor, made me want to stop reading Terence altogether, it was so contrived, impenetrably complex, and without a single laugh in the entire text. Plautus is my man.

Fortunately, The Eunuch is a lot clearer and a lot funnier than The Self-Tormentor. According to Suetonius’s life of Terence, it was performed twice in one day at the Megalensian Games in 161 BC and won its author 8,000 sesterces, ‘the highest fee ever paid for a comedy’. Like all Plautus and Terence’s plays, it is based on a Greek original, in this case by the Greek playwright Menander.

Incidentally, this play is apparently the earliest surviving Latin text to use the word ‘eunuch’, making it an important resource for academic histories of the (very varied roles played by) ‘the eunuch’ in the ancient world.

The plot

As usual, the scene consists of a street and two houses, showing the front doors of Demea, father of two errant sons, and Thais, a courtesan. As usual, the worthy father, Demea, is struggling to cope with two sons who have made inappropriate love matches: Phaedria is in love with a courtesan, Chaerea is in love with a slave girl.

Phaedria and Parmeno

Parmeno is the elderly family servant. When Phaedria tells him he is mad with love for Thais, Parmeno tells him to grow up, pay up and get rid of her.

Enter Thais

Phaedria goes weak at the knees. Thais apologises to him for locking him out of her house the day before but then goes on to give some key exposition. Thais says her mother came from Samos and lived on Rhodes. A merchant made her a present of a little girl stolen from the area where the play is set, Attica. The little girl knew her father and mother’s name but not where she came from or whether she was free or slave. The merchant had bought her off pirates who claimed to have stolen her from Sunium. This kidnapped girl was brought up alongside Thais as her sister. Then Thais found a ‘protector’, a soldier, Thraso, who brought her here to Athens (where the play is set) and set her up as his courtesan. is soldier, Thraso, then went off to Caria and Thais has found a new protector/sponsor/lover in Phaedria. And that brings the backstory up to date.

But there’s more. Recently Thais’s mother died, leaving the house and goods to her brother, including the foster sister. Since the latter was pretty and could play the lyre, Thais’s brother put her up for sale and, in a spectacular coincidence, she was bought by Thais’s very same protector, the soldier Thraso. He has recently returned to Athens, intending to give Thais the girl as a servant but, when he found out that Thais has been seeing another man (i.e. Phaedria) Thraso changed his mind. He won’t come to see her or hand over the slave girl while Phaedria is on the scene.

So now she gets to the point: will Phaedria agree to lie low for several days so that Thraso can resume his position as her lover, and give her the gift of the slave girl – so that Phaedria can then do a good deed and track down the girl’s family and return her to them?

Phaedria is angry. He thinks it’s all a story to cover wanting to go back to the soldier. Hasn’t he bought her everything? Only yesterday he paid 2,000 drachmas for an Ethiopian slave girl and a eunuch Thais said she wanted. Doesn’t he buy her whatever she wants?

Thais begs, pleads and wears him down and eventually Phaedria promises to leave town for a couple of days so the soldier can return and give Thais the slave girl. But he begs her to remain loyal in her heart. Then Phaedria turns and walks back into his father’s house. Nothing especially funny about this, is there?

Thais tells the audience one further fact, which is that she thinks she’s already identified and contacted the slave girl’s brother and he’s coming to meet her (Thais) today to discuss the matter. Then she goes into her house.

Re-enter Phaedria and Parmeno

Phaedria weeps and wails but we aren’t to take his anguish seriously; he is played for a figure of fun. He instructs Parmeno to fetch the eunuch and Ethiopian slave girl and give them to Thais and to keep an eye on his rival. Then he shoulders his bag and walks offstage, planning to stay out of town for the two days he agreed with Thais.

Enter Gnatho

Gnatho is the bumptious servant of the soldier Thraso. He is bringing the slave girl Pamphila to give to Thais. Parmeno is impressed and says the slave girl is even more beautiful than Thais.

Gnatho soliloquises, saying how proud he is of his status and profession of sponger and hanger-on. He gives a little explanation of the key requirements of the trade, namely to agree shamelessly with whatever your patron says.

The old servant Parmeno overhears all this, then cocky Gnatho spots him and likes the way he looks glum, indicating that he and his master (Phaedria) are not doing well with Thais. Good. Gnatho shows off the slave girl to Parmeno and teases him and then goes into Thais’s house. Having delivered the slave girl, he makes a few choice comments to Parmeno then exits.

Enter Chaerea

Chaerea is Demea’s other son, younger brother to Phaedria. He is a very young man in a frenzy about his new love. Parmeno overhears him talking, rolls his eyes, and pities his poor master (Demea) for having two such lovestruck puppies for sons. Chaerea announces he’s in love with a plump and juicy girl. Parmeno asks how old. 16. Parmeno rolls his eyes. As Chaerea goes on to describe falling in love with her in the street, and that she was accompanied by one of those spongers, Parmeno realises he’s talking about Pamphila, the slave girl who Gnatho has just delivered to Thais.

Parmeno explains all this and that she’s been given as a present to Thais by her soldier lover. ‘What, the rival to his brother?’ says Chaerea. ‘Yes,’ replies Parmeno. Parmeno goes on to explain that Phaedria is giving Thais the old eunuch he brought home yesterday. Not that smelly old man, Chaerea says. How unfair it is that he’ll get to be under the same roof with the fair Pamphila etc.

At which Parmeno jokes that maybe he, Chaerea, could pretend to be a eunuch and gain access to Thais’s house. YES, shouts Chaerea, yes, he can wear a eunuch outfit and pretend to be the gift from Phaedria to Thais. That way he can be close to his new beloved all day long, yes, YES! And he bundles Parmeno into Demea’s house to help dress him up as a eunuch, despite all the latter’s protestations that it was only a joke, he didn’t mean it seriously, he’ll be the one to suffer when it’s all found out etc.

Enter Thraso

Thraso is the middle-aged soldier and lover of Thais. He is a version of that well-established type, the miles gloriosus, full of sound and fury about his brave military exploits, while in fact being a pompous coward and bore.

Thraso enters accompanied by his sponger, Gnatho. Parmeno hears them arrive and opens Demea’s front door to spy on them. He watches while Gnatho shamelessly sucks up to Thraso, laughing at all his bad jokes and nodding at his stories about being the favourite of the king of Caria.

GNATHO: Heavens above, what wisdom! Every minute spent with you is something learned. (p.202)

Thraso asks Gnatho whether Thais loves him and the sponger, of course, insists that she is devoted to him i.e. reassuring Thraso’s delicate ego, as spongers are paid to do.

Enter Thais

Thais enters from her house and encounters Thraso and Gnatho. The soldier says he hopes she likes the slave girl Gnatho gave to her a bit earlier on and invites her for dinner. Parmeno takes the opportunity to present Phaedria’s gifts to Thais. He calls for the Ethiopian slave girl to be brought out, and Thraso and Gnatho make comedy insults about how relatively cheap she looks. Then Parmeno has Chaerea dressed as a eunuch brought out and presented to Thais. She is struck by how handsome Chaerea is, as are Thraso and Gnatho. I think Thraso makes a joke to the effect that, given half a chance, he’d have sex with this handsome eunuch (p.186).

Thais takes her new properties into her house while Thraso tries to mock Parmeno for having a poor master, but Parmeno easily gets the better of him, and strolls away. Gnatho quietly laughs at Thraso being mocked but hurriedly adopts a straight face when Thraso turns to him.

Thais re-enters with an elderly woman slave, Pythia. Thais tells Pythia to take good care of the new acquisitions and that, if Chremes turns up, to tell him to wait. Then she goes off to dine with Thraso and Gnatho, leaving the stage empty.

Enter Chremes

Chremes is the young man who Thais thinks is the next of kin of the slave girl she grew up with and who Thraso has just given to her, Pamphila. He enters and delivers a long speech explaining he’s puzzled why Thais contacted him, asked him a load of questions about a long lost sister, and then asked him to come see her today. He wonders whether Thais is going to pretend that she’s the long lost sister, but Chremes knows the sister would only be about 16, and Thais is much older, so it can’t be her.

Chremes knocks on the door, Pythia opens it and asks Chremes to wait for her mistress but he, suspicious and irritated, says no, so Pythia calls for another servant to take Chremes to see Thais at Thraso’s dinner, and they exit.

Enter Antipho

Antipho is a friend of Chaerea’s. A bunch of the lads had decided to club together for dinner and Chaerea’s meant to be organising it but he’s disappeared, so the lads chose Antipho to find him and ask what’s going on. At just this moment Chaerea emerges from Thais’s house but dressed as a eunuch so Antipho is understandably astonished. But Chaerea explains to him the whole scam, how he’s madly in love with the young slave who’s just been given to Thais as a present, how Parmeno suggested he pretend to be the eunuch Phaedria planned to give to Thais, how it’s worked like a dream, how he’s even been tasked with looking after her, how she’s had a bath and emerged fragrant and beautiful.

Chaerea goes on to explain how all the other serving girls left them to go off and bathe so he…locked the door and…apparently had sex with Pamphila!

This is quickly skipped over as Antipho is interested in the dinner. Chaerea says he rearranged it to take place at Discus’s house. Antipho invites Chaerea to come to his place and change out of the eunuch’s clothes first, and off they both go.

Enter Dorias

Dorias is a maid of Thais’s. She’s just come back from the dinner party where things turned sour. When Chremes turned up, Thais insisted he be brought in. But Thraso thought he was a rival for Thais’s affections, got very angry and insisted that Pamphila be brought in, in retaliation. Thais insisted that a slave girl should not be invited to a dinner and so they had a big argument.

Enter Phaedria

Phaedria should, of course, be at the family farm in the country, as he’d promised Thais. But he couldn’t keep away and has come all the way back to town, casual-like, just to catch a glimpse of his beloved.

Enter Pythias

Which is the exact moment when Pythias, Thais’s head slave, comes bursting out of her house, livid with anger. She explains to an astonished Phaedria that the eunuch who he, Phaedria, recently gave to Thais was no eunuch at all but has raped Pamphila, tearing her clothes and messing her hair. She’s inside now, in floods of tears. Pythias blames Phaedria but Phaedria disavows any knowledge that the eunuch was not a eunuch, and says he’ll go look for the eunuch straightaway. Maybe he’s in the family home, so he goes into Demea’s house to see.

Re-enter Phaedria

Phaedria almost immediately re-enters dragging the real eunuch, Dorus, out of his house. Dorus is wearing Chaerea’s clothes (Chaerea having insisted they do a swap) so Phaedria mistakenly accuses him of stealing his brother’s clothes and making ready to flee. But when he presents Dorus to Pythia and Dorias, Thais’s servants, they both claim never to have seen him before. This is not the rapist!

They all cross-question the eunuch who quickly explains that Parmeno and Chaerea came and ordered him to swap clothes with Chaerea, then they both left. Now they all understand. Chaerea impersonated the eunuch in order to be near Pamphila and then raped her.

Phaedria is terribly embarrassed. It looks like he might be in on the scam, and it certainly reflects badly on his family. So in an aside he tells Dorus to reverse his story and deny everything he’s just said. When the bewildered man does so, Phaedria says the man is an obvious liar and he’ll take him into his house to ‘torture’ him to find out the truth

Re-enter Chremes

Pythias and Dorias are just wondering whether to tell Thais about all this when Chremes re-enters. He’d got drunk at Thraso’s dinner party and now he makes a bit of a pass at Pythias (Thais’s female head slave) who primly fends him off. Instead she extracts from Chremes the fact that there was a big argument at Thrasos’s dinner party.

Enter Thais

Thais is still angry from the argument at Thrasos’s dinner party. She warns her servants that Thraso is on his way to reclaim Pamphila but that he’ll do so over her dead body. She’ll have him horsewhipped first.

First of all she briskly tells Chremes that Pamphila is his long lost sister. Not only that, but Thais hereby gives her to him, free, gratis. Chremes is immensely grateful though not quite as surprised or emotional as you might expect.

Then Thais tells Pythias to hurry inside and fetch the box of ‘proofs’ which prove Pamphila’s identity. But just then Thraso approaches.

Thraso is, of course, a seasoned soldier, albeit a bullshitting braggart. Thais instructs Chremes to stand up to him and hands him the proofs of Pamphila’s identity that Pythias has just fetched out of the house. There is comedy in the way Chremes is a complete milksop, refuses to face Thraso and wants to run off to the market to fetch help, but Thais physically restrains him and tells him to be a man.

THAIS: My dear man, you’re not afraid are you?
CHREMES: [visibly alarmed]: Nonsense. Who’s afraid? Not me. (p.200)

Thais and all her people go into her house.

Enter Thraso and followers

Enter Thraso and Gnatho with six followers. There is quite a funny parody of a military campaign, with Thraso bombastically issuing complex orders for storming Thais’s house to his motley crew of incompetent ‘soldiers’. Thais and Chremes appear at a window overlooking the action. Chremes is fearful while Thais gives a fearless and comic commentary on Thraso’s cowardly and ineffectual ‘military’ orders.

Thraso now parleys with Thais at her window. He reminds her that she promised him the next couple of days, no? And has gone back on her word? So that’s why he wants Pamphila back.

Now Chremes steps forward and confronts Thraso with the new facts: Pamphila is a) a free-born citizen b) of this region, Attica and c) Chremes’ sister. Therefore she cannot be anyone’s property. Thraso thinks he’s lying, but Chremes sends for the box of proof documents.

This is sort of funny if we buy into the play’s premises, but it is also a fascinating slice of social history on a huge subject, namely the definition and rights of free citizens and slaves in the ancient world.

Disheartened Thraso hesitates about what to do next. At which point his parasite, Gnatho, suggests they make a tactical withdrawal on the basis that women are well known for being perverse and so, if Thraso stops asking for something (which is making Thais obstinate), if he changes his approach, maybe Thais will change hers and come round. Rather doubtfully, Thraso calls off the ‘assault’ and he and his men all leave.

Enter Thais and Pythias

With Thraso gone, Thais turns her thoughts to Pamphila who she has discovered in her house with torn clothes and inconsolably weeping i.e. having been raped. Thais is furious with Pythias for letting it happen but Pythias explains that they’ve established it wasn’t the eunuch Phaedria gave her who raped Pamphila, it was Phaedria’s younger brother impersonating the eunuch who did it. At which point the culprit, Chaerea himself, strolls onstage, wearing the eunuch’s clothes.

Enter Chaerea

Chaerea had gone along to Antipho’s house to change for the lads’ party, but Antipho’s parents were home so he was scared to go in and has returned to Thais’s house by backstreets in case anyone recognises him. Now he sees Thais standing in her doorway and momentarily hesitates but decides to brazen it out and continue in character as the eunuch Dorus, so he steps forward.

But after a few exchanges of him pretending to be Dorus, Thais drops all pretences and calls him by his real name, Chaerea. About this point it began to dawn on me that Thais is the real ‘hero’ of this play, easily the most manly, resolute, strong and decisive character on the stage – and that, by the same token, all the men (Thraso, Chremes, Chaerea) are weaker and feebler and morally flawed than she is.

Thais and Chaerea come to an arrangement. Chaerea insists he meant no disrespect to Thais and that he genuinely loves Pamphila. Grudgingly, Thais accepts his apology, despite the scorn of her aggrieved servant, Pythias. In fact, Chaerea grovellingly offers to put himself completely under Thais’ guidance. She is a strong woman.

At this point they both see Pamphila’s brother Chremes approaching and Chaerea begs to be let inside so he can change out of his shameful costume. Thais laughingly agrees and they all go into her house.

Enter Chremes and Sophrona

Sophrona was Chremes’ and Pamphila’s nurse when they were small. Chremes has shown her the tokens Pamphila had and the nurse recognised them all. Now he’s brought the nurse along for the final ‘recognition scene’. The servant Pythias welcomes them and tells them to go into Thais’ house.

Enter Parmeno

As mentioned, Thais has emerged as the main driver of the plot. Usually it’s the cunning slave, in this case Parmeno, but in this play he has been totally overshadowed by Thais’ control of the narrative.

There follows a carefully staged and prepared scene in which Parmeno gets his comeuppance. He had swaggered onstage feeling very pleased with himself because his ruse (disguising Chaerea as the eunuch) had secured Chaerea his beloved, and he had also educated the young man in the ways of courtesans and their wicked ways (by which he is casting a slur on the house of Thais who is, we are reminded, a courtesan by trade).

Pythias, the angry housekeeper overhears all this, including the slur on her mistress and household, and decides to take Parmeno down a peg or two. She comes onstage pretending not to see Parmeno and lamenting and bewailing. When Parmeno asks her what the matter is, Pythias tells him that the young man he introduced into Thais’s household, Chaerea, assaulted Pamphila but now it has emerged that the latter is a free citizen, and has a well-born brother, and the brother has found out and had Chaerea tied up and is about to administer the traditional punishment for adultery and rape – castration!!!

Parmeno is devastated and thrown into a complete panic about what to do, specially when Pythias goes on to tell him that everyone blames him for what’s happened, and are looking to punish him, too. At this moment they both see the two errant sons’ father and Parmeno’s master, Demea, coming up the street. Pythias advises Parmeno to tell Demea everything, before disappearing back onto Thais’ house.

Enter Demea

Parmeno greets his old master and tells him everything (one son in love with Thais, the other in love with a slave woman who’s in Thais’s house, impersonated a eunuch to gain admission, was caught in a rape and is tied and bound and about to be punished). Suitably appalled, Demea rushes into Thais’ house to rescue his son.

Enter Pythias

Re-enter Pythias crying with laughter. Oh, she tells the audience, the comedy of misunderstandings she has just seen! And only she understood why Demea was in a panic about his son being castrated (because she’d just invented it). Hardly able to speak for laughing, she tells Parmeno she properly took him in and made him look a right fool. Now both son and master are furious with him, Parmeno, blaming him for everything. She stumbles back into the house, helpless with laughter.

Enter Thraso and Gnathos

The braggart soldier and his parasite. Thraso has decided to throw himself on Thais’ mercy but they haven’t gone far before Chaerea bursts out of Thais’ house, delirious with happiness. He rushes up to a surprised Parmeno and hugs him and calls him the ‘author and instigator and perfecter’ of all his joys. Obviously the ‘recognition scene’ has just taken place and Pamphila has been confirmed as a free citizen of Attica and therefore an entirely eligible woman for Chaerea to marry. Also, Thais has agreed to marry Phaedria, and thus put herself and her household under Demea’s protection and patronage. It is an entirely happy ending for both sons and the father.

Parmeno dashes into Demea’s house and returns with Phaedria who they tell the good news: he is going to be married to his beloved Thais!

Thraso and Gnatho have overheard all this and Thraso drily remarks that it looks like all his hopes of winning Thais have been dashed. For once Gnatho can’t find words of sycophantic support. But Thraso asks him to make one last sally and see if he can remain in Thais’s good books, if only as a friend. Gnatho extracts a promise from Thraso that, if he pulls this off, Thraso’s house and table will be open to him (Gnatho) for evermore, which Thraso agrees to. Then Gnatho goes up to the two happy brothers.

Phaedria’s first response of Thraso’s offer of friendship is to tell Thraso to clear out and if he ever sees him in this street again, he’ll kill him (!).

Gnatho asks him to calm down, ushers Thraso aside, and speaks confidentially to Phaedria. He proposes a very cynical offer. He suggests that Phaedria accepts Thraso as his rival i.e. a sort of official lover for Thais. ‘What? Why?’ Phaedria asks.

Because Thraso is such a dimwit he presents no threat whatsoever to Thais and Phaedria’s love, but he is very prodigal with gifts and money. These he will lavish on Thais and thus keep her in the manner to which she is accustomed and which, let’s face it, Phaedria can’t afford. Hmm. The brothers confer. It is quite a tidy plan and they agree on it.

Lastly, Gnatho asks if he can be accepted into their circle of friends. Again the brothers agree, and with that, Gnatho mockingly presents them with Thraso! ‘For the laughs and everything else you can get out of him’ (p.218).

Gnatho calls Thraso over and announces that the deal has been struck. Thraso recovers his composure and starts to strut and swank, and the two brothers laugh at his pompousness and foresee years of milking him for his money and mocking his pretensions.

And that is the end. Phaedria abruptly turns to the audience, asks for their applause and they all go into Thais’s house.

*******

Dark thoughts

The Eunuch has plenty of genuinely funny moments, the increasingly funny role of the bombastic soldier Thraso, the comedy swapping of the eunuch’s identity, Chremes’ cowardice, Pythias’s humiliation of Parmeno and so on.

But at the same time, I struggled to get past the ‘otherness’ of Roman society. I can’t really get past the way the entire story rest on the buying and selling of slaves and giving and receiving them as gifts.

Then, when Chaerea rapes the sleeping Pamphila, the entire tone changed for me, and I found it difficult to find anything after that very funny.

And the casual way Phaedria remarks that the only thing which will extract the truth from Dorus is ‘torture’, the casual way Pythias declares that Chaerea is about to be castrated, and the casual references to the way slaves are routinely whipped as punishment – once again I found myself being brought up short and the smile being wiped right off my face by the casual references to hyper violence (torture, whipping, chains, even crucifixion) in these Roman plays.

Sunny thoughts

If you can manage to put those dark thoughts aside then, yes, this is a funny play, by far the funniest of the three I’ve read so far. I think this is because, even though the plot is quite convoluted, of two things:

  1. Once the backstory of the abandoned slave girl and the two brothers in love with two girls is established, everything follows reasonably logically from those premises.
  2. Second reason is that the scenes are quite long and leisurely meaning that – crucially, for me at any rate – the characters thoroughly explain what is going on, what is happening and what they intend to do. For example, the idea for Chaerea to dress up as a eunuch develops quite naturally out of Parmeno’s joke suggestion which then, as it were, gets out of hand. This scene has great psychological and/or comic realism, in the sense that all of us know the experience of making a jokey, off-hand remark which our interlocutor picks up and takes far more seriously than we’d intended, and which we then regret ever mentioning. 2,200 years ago the same experience was common enough to be a comic gag in onstage.

Compare and contrast these two attributes with Terence’s play The Self-tormentor where the plot very much does not follow from the basic premise, but is 1. the result of a whole series of ad lib schemes dreamed up by the naughty slave Syrus and 2. which he keeps to himself; which he does not explain; which may well keep the characters comically in the dark about what he’s up to, but also had the result that I couldn’t follow what was happening half the time and so gave up on the play and almost gave up on Terence as a whole.

The Eunuch restored my faith in Terence as a comic playwright and confirmed my determination to continue and read all six of his plays.

Credit

Page references are to the 1976 Penguin paperback edition of Terence: The Comedies, edited and translated by Betty Radice.

Roman reviews

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by Simon on April 13, 2022  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on April 13, 2022

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2022/04/13/eunuchus-the-eunuch-terence/

Andria (The Girl from Andros) by Terence (166 BC)

‘There’s scarcely a man to be found who’ll stay faithful to a woman.’
(Mysis the servant)

‘A father shouldn’t be too hard on his children whatever their faults.’
(Chremes)

The astonishingly detailed production notes, attached to the play in antiquity, tell us that Andria was first performed at the Megalensian Games in 166 BC. It is based on an original but unnamed play by the Greek playwright, Menander.

The set consists, as usual, of the front doors of two houses set next to each other, the house of Simo, father of the hero, and of Glycerium, the young female ‘love interest’

Back story

The play is set in Athens. There are two middle-aged men, Simo and Chysemum. Simo has a son, Pamphilus. Pamphilus has seduced and impregnated a young woman named Glycerium and has promised to marry her. But his father, Simo, has other ideas and has promised Pamphilus in marriage to the daughter of his friend Chremes, Philumena.

Everyone has always assumed that Glycerium was the sister of the girl she came to Athens with three years earlier, who was named Chryses. They came to Athens together from the island of Andros (hence ‘the girl from Andros’). Chryses set up as a courtesan and acquired a devoted following of young gentlemen. Sadly, she got sick and died just before the action of the play starts.

It was at the funeral of Chryses that Pamphilus first publicly revealed his loved for Glycerium when the latter ventured a little too close to the funeral pyre on which her friend was burning, and Pamphilus promptly leapt forward, embraced her, pulled her back and ended up kissing her in full sight of all the other mourners. His father, Simo, witnessed this and was appalled.

Meanwhile, young Pamphilus has a friend, Charinus, who is himself in love, with a young woman named Philumena, the daughter of Pamphilus’s father’s friend, Chremes. That’s what the ‘double plot’ means in practice – two young men in love with two young women; both in similar plights which are then ‘treated’ differently by the plot.

It’s worth noting that Glycerium, Pamphilus’s lady love and, in a sense, the crux of the plot, never actually appears onstage. She does, however, have one line – when she cries out from inside her house as she gives birth (exactly like Phaedria, another invisible love interest, does in Plautus’s Aulularis).

But this is one more line than Charinus’s lady love Philumena, the daughter of Chremes, is awarded, as she never appears at all. They are almost invisible cogs in the machine of the plot.

Rather than the love interests, the central figure of the play, as so often, is the canny slave, in this case Pamphilus’s slave, Davos, who devises a cunning plan to rescue his master and unite him with his girl. This plan goes badly wrong to begin with but he manages to recover it at the last minute, so that the play ends with a happy marriage.

The plot

Sosia and Simo

Simo, the father, explains the backstory of the play to the elderly family freed slave Sosia: the story of Chryses coming to Athens, her success in garnering lovers, how Simo knows that his son Pamphilus hung round in their set but wasn’t actually in love with her. How Simo’s neighbour Chremes has offered his daughter’s hand in marriage to Pamphilus, and that today is the day set for the wedding feast.

Simo goes on to say that a few days after he and Chremes sealed the deal, this neighbouring courtesan Chryses passed away. Simo attended the funeral and it was there that he saw his son dash forward to prevent Glycerium getting too close to Chryses’ pyre. Then Chremes got to hear about Pamphilus’ love for Glycerium and so called off the wedding of Pamphilus and his own daughter.

Sosia is confused: if the wedding has been called off, how come caterers are arriving and setting up for the wedding feast? Simo replies that he has two very specific aims: one, if Pamphilus refuses to take part in the wedding feast he’s staging, then he’ll have a real reason to rebuke him; two, if his rogue of a servant Davos has any tricks up his sleeve, Simo hopes he’ll deploy them here, at the fake wedding, rather than at the real one. [This slightly convoluted logic explains why a wedding feast is in preparation, even though the bride’s father, Chremes, has cancelled her participation in it.]

So the upshot of this rather complicated story is that Simo wants Sosia to supervise the setting up of the feast and keep his eye open for scams. So, with these instructions the freed slave Sosia goes through the door into Simo’s house.

Enter Davos

Davos is Pamphilus’s smart young slave who will emerge as the main driver of the play. Simo warns him that if he tries to pull off any smart tricks to help Pamphilus, Simo will have him whipped senseless then sent to the mills. As with all of Plautus’s plays, I am appalled at the way extreme violence is routinely threatened to all the slaves and for laughs! Simo exits leaving Davos alone onstage.

Davos soliloquises

Davos explains he wants to help his master, Pamphilus, but is understandably worried about getting into trouble with his actual owner, Simo – the man who just threatened him with a whipping!

Davos goes on to explain that Pamphilus and Glycerium are behaving like naughty children, specially as Glycerium is pregnant. They’re promoting the story that Glycerium isn’t Chryses sister at all, that she was shipwrecked as a baby off the coast of Andros. She was in the care of a merchant and they were both taken in by a kindly local. The merchant then died leaving the local to raise the orphan girl Glycerium alongside his own daughter, Chryses. But – and this is the important point – not only are the girls not sisters, but Glycerium is a freeborn Athenian. This, apparently, really matters. If she was the daughter of a slave and had grown up to become a courtesan, she would be no fit wife for a wealthy man’s son like Pamphilus. But if it can be proven that she is freeborn, that changes everything. She would be a worthy bride.

Having explained all this to the audience, Davos exits.

Enter Mysis

Mysis is a maid of Glycerium. She comes out of Glycerium’s house, as so often in these plays, calling back something to someone inside. She is being sent to fetch a noted midwife, Lesbia, to handle the delivery of Glycerium’s baby.

Enter Pamphilus

Pamphilus has heard from his father that the latter has organised his wedding today, without even telling him! He rants and raves and says he is cursed since he can’t refuse his father but doesn’t want to go through with marriage to a woman he doesn’t love.

Mysis steps forward and Pamphilus asks how her mistress i.e. Pamphilus’s beloved, Glycerium, is. Mysis replies that Glycerium is scared to death of giving birth and that she’ll be abandoned by Pamphilus. Upset, Pamphilus swears he will stick by her. He quotes the deathbed scene in which ailing Chrysis left Glycerium to Pamphilus’s care to protect and look after.

PAMPHILUS: Oh Mysis, Mysis, the words Chryses used of her are forever written in my heart. (p.51)

Pamphilus regards it as a sacred duty. Exit Mysis to fetch the midwife, Pamphilus moves to the side of the stage.

Enter Charinus

Enter Charinus and his servant Byrria. Charinus is Pamphilus’s best friend. He is in love with Philumena, who is a) the daughter of Chremes, Simo’s best friend and b) the very woman Pamphilus is supposed to be marrying today. He has just heard the news about the wedding feast and is distraught. Byrria is his down to earth slave, delivering cynical punchlines to Charinus playing the distraught lover.

Charinus and Pamphilus

Pamphilus moves back to centre stage and Charinus confronts him. Begs him not to marry Philumena today, as he himself is in love with her. Tells Pamphilus if he married Philumena it is the last he’ll see of him. Pamphilus quickly assures Charinus he is not in love with Philumena and has no intention of marrying her if he can help it. They make a pact: Pamphilus will do everything he can to avoid marrying Philumena if, at the same time, Charinus does everything he can to win her.

Enter Davos

Davos is excited to find his master and Charinus. He thinks he has the solution to their problems. He’s been hanging round Chremes’ house and there’s absolutely no preparation for a wedding there. So he tells Pamphilus and Charinus that the wedding feast is a fake. Simo is faking a wedding feast so that, if Pamphilus pulls out, he can land all the blame on him.

Charinus is delighted to learn it isn’t a real wedding, but Davos points out that just because Pamphilus is not marrying Philumena doesn’t necessarily mean Charinus will win her. He needs to go and ‘canvas’ her father’s friends. [Interesting insight into ancient marriage practices.]

Davos now proposes his plan. He tells Pamphilus to agree to the marriage. That way his father can have absolutely no reproach against him. ‘But what if I end up accidentally being married to Philumena?’ Pamphilus protests. Davos insists there’s no danger of that, because Chremes won’t let her marry him, because of his public display of affection for Glycerium. With Davos’s plan,:

  • Pamphilus will gain his father’s good wishes
  • all the blame for the failed wedding will fall on Chremes
  • and his father will be all the more favourable to finding him another bride

At that point they’ll manoeuvre him into accepting Glycerium. Pamphilus is understandably very doubtful about all this, but Davos talks him into it.

Enter Simo, shadowed by Byrria

Pamphilus’s father enters, but he is being tailed by Byrria, who’s been told by Charinus to follow him about and report everyone’s actions and responses. So he spies on the others while himself invisible.

1. When Simo tells Pamphilus that today is the day of his wedding, Pamphilus astonishes him by saying he will be guided by him in everything and will marry whoever he wants. Simo is astonished and Pamphilus meekly goes into the family house.

2. Byrria spied all thus, unseen, and is horrified because he thinks Pamphilus is reneging on his deal with his master. Byrria goes off to tell his master the bad news, leaving just Davos and Simo onstage.

Simo cross-questions Davos, convinced something is going on but Davos remains straight-faced and says he’s sure Pamphilus will obey his father. Davos tries to throw Simo off the scent by telling his son does have one grudge against him – that he’s tight with money and scrimping on this wedding feast. That nettles Simo.

Enter Mysis and Lesbia

Things are going just right when enter Mysis the serving girl who’s fetched Lesbia the midwife. As they go into Glycerium’s house they chatter for just long enough to blow up Davos’s plan, because Mysis tells Lesbia what a lovely young gentleman Pamphilus is, how he has sworn to remain loyal to her, and how she is about to have his baby!!!!

They enter the house and Simo explodes with indignation. But…at that moment Glycerium calls out in her labour pains to the goddess Juno Lucina and…Simo decides it’s all a con. It’s too contrived. She isn’t really having a baby, this is all some scam of Davos’s to horrify Chremes into cancelling the marriage.

Davos takes advantage of Simo’s misinterpretation to say that, ‘Yes, Simo is correct, it’s all a cunning scheme hatched by Glycerium to wreck the marriage and steal Pamphilus. Her next step will be to borrow a baby from somewhere and place it on Simo’s doorstep as if it is hers and Pamphilus’s.’

Simo thanks Davos for his loyal service and the latter goes into the house, leaving Simo to tell the audience that his next step is to ask Chremes to agree to hand over his daughter for the wedding.

Enter Chremes

Simo describes how he and Chremes have been friends since boyhood, and now he wants his daughter to marry Pamphilus. Chremes is sceptical, what about the foreign woman. Simo assures him that the young couple have fallen out, been trading insults, and so now is the time to quickly marry him to Philumena, and get him to redirect his affections into a respectable channel. Chremes asks how he knows this. Simo replies that Davos told him and he calls Davos out of his house.

Enter Davos

Simo tells Davis he has now, reluctantly, come round to trusting him and believes him when he says his son, Pamphilus, is a reformed character and definitely wants to marry Philumena. And that he’s just persuaded Chremes, here, to marry her off today! (Chremes exits to go home and prepare Philumena for the wedding.)

Davos keeps up a running commentary of asides to the audience in which he comically reacts to this disastrous news. Chremes agreeing to marry off his daughter?! The wedding going ahead?! This is a catastrophe. What can he do?

Exit Simo, enter Pamphilus

Simo goes into his house to tell Pamphilus the good news, while Davos laments that he’s going to get the blame for everything. And sure enough a few moments later Pamphilus bursts out of the house, furious. He accuses Davos of screwing everything up and asks him what punishment he thinks he deserves? Davos astonishes me by saying ‘Crucifixion’ (p.69). The casualness with which these violent punishments of slaves are tossed about never ceases to flabbergast me.

Enter Charinus

Charinus has just received Byrria’s mistaken report that Pamphilus intends to go ahead with the wedding, and now runs onstage to deliver a soliloquy on the perfidy of friends. Now he intends to find Pamphilus and heap abuse on him.

Pamphilus hears all this from the side of the stage then steps forward and apologises to Charinus. Charinus accuses Pamphilus of only falling in love with Philumena after he, Charinus, had declared his love for her. Pamphilus tells him he’s got it all wrong. It was Davos who persuaded him to agree to the marriage. They then both turn on poor Davos, who tries to defend himself, saying he’s a loyal slave and works day and night in his master’s best interests. Anyway, has anyone else got a better plan?

Enter Mysis

Mysis comes out of Glycerium’s house [the reader tries to ignore the absurdity of everyone discussing the inconvenience of Pamphilus’s foreign lover when her house is right next door to Pamphilus’s.] Mysis tells Pamphilus her mistress is desperate for him. Pamphilus assures Mysis that he will remain loyal to Glycerium no matter what.

During all this Davos comes up with another plan. He tells the two men he’s in a hurry to implement it so Pamphilus goes into Glycerium’s house to see his beloved. Charinus then pesters Davos to help him. Davos says his first loyalty is to his master but he’ll see what he can do. And Charinus exits, going home.

Davos tells Mysis to wait here for him and pops into Glycerium’s house. He re-emerges with the newborn baby and gives it to Mysis and tells her to lay it on Simo’s front door. He wants her to do it so that, later, if anyone asks him whether he did it, he can answer with a clear conscience that he didn’t.

Enter Chremes

But his cunning plan is interrupted when along comes old Chremes, father of the bride. Davos runs off, leaving Mysis alone.

Chremes is congratulating himself on having made all the preparations for the marriage of his daughter when he sees the baby on Simo’s doorstep. What is all this?

At this point Davos re-enters, talking out loud and pretending to have just come from the busy market. He spots the baby on the doorstep and loudly asks Mysis who the baby is and what it’s doing there (in order to persuade Chremes he has nothing to do with it). Davos cross questions Mysis very loudly for the benefit of Chremes who is listening. Mysis is bewildered by Davos asking questions he knows the answer to but he hisses at her to play along.

And so Chremes overhears Mysis explain that this baby is Glycerium’s and that Pamphilus is the father. Davos denies it and pretends to accuse Mysis of being part of a monstrous plot, saying the baby was smuggled in by the midwife and is not Pamphilus’s and is part of a plot to discredit Pamphilus and put Chremes off allowing his daughter to marry him.

Of course Chremes has overheard all this, in fact Davos staged the loud dialogue for his benefit. Now he steps forward and Davos play acts surprise that he’s been here all along. Chremes is predictably outraged by all he’s heard and insists on going into Simo’s house to confront him.

Enter Crito

At just this moment when things are hanging in the balance, enter Crito. He is a middle-aged man from Athens, cousin to the dead Chryses. He tells us that Chryses’ friend Glycerium appears to have inherited Chryses’ property but it should really go to him by rights. This is because Glycerium has always been thought of as Chryses’ sister but she isn’t. Crito is here to prove the story that she is not Chryses’ sister but an unrelated foundling. Of course he’s got a vested interest in doing so because then, as her nearest kin, he’ll get Chryses’ inheritance.

He’s already known to Mysis, who welcomes him and then takes him into the house to see Glycerium.

Simo and Chremes

Simo and Chremes come out of Simo’s house. Chremes is upset by what Simo is asking him, namely to marry his daughter to Pamphilus who is clearly in love with another woman – to marry his daughter into a loveless marriage, purely in an attempt to ‘reform’ young Pamphilus.

Chremes was willing to go along with it out of their old friendship, but now he hears rumours that the woman is a free citizen of Attica (the wider region surrounding Athens) and not only, that, but has had a baby by Pamphilus!

Enter Davos

At just this moment Davos comes out of Glycerium’s house rubbing his hands with glee because of the impact Crito’s arrival is going to have on everything.

Davos comes out the front door and stumbles into Simo and Chremes who promptly accuse him of lying when he said Pamphilus had argued with Glycerium, lying about their baby, and lying about Glycerium’s status as an Attican citizen.

Davos stutters with excuses and then blusters on about Crito having arrived and declaring that Glycerium is a free citizen of Attica, but Simo has had enough and calls out another one of his slaves, big lumbering threatening Dromo, to grab Davos and ‘string him up’ ready for a whipping. Dromo hustles Davos off into Simo’s house to be tied up.

At all these moments of physical threats to slaves I remember Mary Beard’s words that a working definition of a slave was someone you could offer physical violence to with no comeback (as long as it was your slave, that is).

Enter Pamphilus

Simo yells into Glycerium’s house for his son who comes out. They are both ready to give up. Simo is exhausted and tells his son that, since he is ready to disobey his father and shame his homeland in his infatuation with this woman, then why not just do it. He washes his hands of him (p.83).

SIMO: Why harass my old age with the folly of a boy like this?

Instead of yelping with joy, Pamphilus is overcome with remorse and offers to give up his beloved and do whatever his father wishes (p.84).

Simo accuses him of having arranged for this witness to appear to prove that Glycerium is freeborn as if it’s a really big deal. Pamphilus swears he hasn’t, that it’s only a coincidence and asks to call Crito out to prove so.

Chremes persuades Simo to accede to this wish. In fact it’s really notable how mellow and forgiving Chremes becomes. As father and son recriminate each other, Chremes intervenes to tell Simo he ought to be more forgiving. All the characters are, deep down, nice and well meaning.

Re-enter Crito

Turns out that Crito and Chremes know each other, so Crito’s bona fides are established from the start. Nonetheless, Simo is witheringly scornful and accuses him of being paid to bear witness that Glycerium is a freeborn woman because that makes Pamphilus’s marriage to her socially acceptable.

For his part, Crito gets very cross at being treated like a liar and proceeds to tell the key backstory which transforms the situation: 20 years ago a citizen of Attica was shipwrecked on the coast of Andros. With him was a small girl. The traveller lost everything in the wreck and the first person to offer help was the father of the little girl who grew up to be Chrysis. Well, this benefactor who helped the shipwreckees out was a relative of Crito (who is telling the story). The shipwrecked man died.

Suddenly Chremes becomes very interested and begs Crito to tell him the name of the shipwrecked man. When Crito reveals it was Phania, who claimed to be a citizen of Rhamnus, Chremes is thunderstruck: Phania was his brother! And he was taking Chremes’s young daughter to come and meet him (Chremes) when they were shipwrecked.

The identification is clinched when Pamphilus tells Chremes that Glycerium is not the girl from Andros’s original name – her original name was Pasibula. In other words – Glycerium is Chremes’s long-lost daughter!!!

At a stroke:

  1. Simo is reconciled to his son marrying Glycerium (‘The truth has reconciled me to everything’)
  2. Chremes is delighted to be reunited with his long-lost daughter
  3. Chremes is double delighted to have such a worthy son in law, Pamphilus, and offers him a dowry of 60,000 drachmas on the spot, which he accepts
  4. and Pamphilus:

Oh, I’m beside myself, my head’s in a whirl with hope and fear and delight at this marvellous, unexpected, immense good fortune! (p.86)

Pamphilus says Davos must help Glycerium over to their house for a celebration. ‘Oh, er, well, he’s a bit tied up,’ his father replies. He runs inside to get his slaves to untie him and a few moments later Davos comes out rubbing his arms and shoulders.

Charinus enters but unobserved by the other two, while Pamphilus is telling Davos that all his troubles are over – that Glycerium has been revealed as Chremes’s long-lost daughter and that both Chremes and Pamphilus’s dad have agreed to their marriage.

Davos is delighted, but not as much as Charinus for this means Pamphilus won’t be marrying Philumena after all, leaving her free for him!

Rush ending

The play ends in a spectacularly hurried flurry of phrases because Pamphilus announces they can’t wait for Chremes to come out of the house and have to go through the whole fol-de-rol of Charinus asking for the hand of his other daughter in marriage. Instead Pamphilus and Charinus both hurry into Glycerium’s house to fetch her to the feast, leaving Davos onstage to wind up with the extremely brief words:

You needn’t wait for them to come out again; the other betrothal and any other business will take place in there. Now give us your applause! (p.90)

Thoughts

Double plot

I’ve read that Terence’s contribution to dramaturgy was developing the ‘double plot’ which a) makes the plays more complicated and sophisticated b) gives more scope for comedy. But as you can see, although there’s a sort of parallel between the two young men Pamphilus and Charinus being in love with two young women, Glycerium and Philumena, it’s very one-sided. All the emphasis is on the Pamphilus-Glycerium story and Charinus only has a handful of scenes, in most of which he whines unattractively, and Philumena never makes an appearance.

Above all, none of it is very funny, certainly not as laugh-out-loud funny as Plautus. Probably in performance a lot of the scenes which feature asides, especially the ones featuring Davos, these might be funny if done well by a good comic actor. But there is nothing intrinsically funny in any of the scenes. It’s cleverly and elaborately constructed, it moves at a cracking pace, but it lacks the wisecracking, rackety, gagfest feel of a Plautus play.

Related to this is the way the characters are all, at bottom, nice and well meaning. Their opinions, like the two I’ve quoted as epigraphs to this review, are eminently sensible. This explains why Terence’s plays were recommended to be taught in schools by no less of an earnest figure than Martin Luther. The ending doesn’t come as a shock and comic surprise – it feels more like the inevitable conclusion given that everyone is so basically nice. There is no wicked baddie driving the action, just a few genuine misunderstandings and misaligned intentions which take a little sorting out and then everyone can be happy.

Credit

Page references are to the 1976 Penguin paperback edition of Terence: The Comedies edited and translated by Betty Radice.

Roman reviews

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by Simon on April 4, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Ancient history, Comedy, Play, Slavery, Theatre
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Posted by Simon on April 4, 2022

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2022/04/04/andria-the-girl-from-andros-terence/