Rothaus Caston (2014) Reinvention in Terences Eunuchus

1 Earlier versions of this paper were delivered in Michigan, Durham, Bristol, Cambridge, London, and Oxford, and I’m grateful to audiences there for their stimulating discussion. Several people offered more detailed comments on the paper: Simon Goldhill, Richard Hunter, David Konstan, Niall Slater, and especially Sander Goldberg, as well as the two anonymous referees and editor of TAPA who offered incisive and constructive remarks. The paper is much better for their suggestions and criticisms, and I thank all of them for their help.

1 That is, in all but the Phormio and Hecyra. The word contaminare, a word with little use outside of Terence’s prologues, is usually taken to mean “spoil” or “ruin”; on the term, see Beare 1964: 310–13 (and 96–108 on its role in individual plays) and Goldberg 1986: 94–96. The term has a pejorative meaning, as the prologue—and Terence’s defensive-ness—clearly show. But we need to distinguish the phenomenon that is being denigrated here from the terms in which it is being described: what Terence calls contaminatio is something he champions. The sort of thing that is being labeled as contaminatio occurs frequently in Roman tragedy (see n69) and can be understood to reflect Terence’s inter-est in intertextuality, a pervasive phenomenon in Roman literature. It is important to

summary: The Eunuchus thematizes the problem of not being first and offers a distinctive solution. In the prologue, Terence laments his position as a late-comer to comedy and complains that there is nothing new to say. Characters within the play resent being typecast and fated to repeat the same old part. But through reinvention, these characters alter their standing, asserting both their autonomy and individuality. In the same way, Terence will insist on his agency as a playwright to blend and manipulate familiar comic conventions in order to create something new. What gets called contaminatio is a solution, not a problem.

in the prologue to the eunuchus, terence addresses objections from

a rival playwright that he is guilty of the contaminatio, or “spoiling,” of Greek plays, a criticism that recurs in the prologues to four of his six plays.1 The

Reinvention in Terence’s Eunuchus*

ruth rothaus castonUniversity of Michigan

Transactions of the American Philological Association 144 (2014) 41–70

© 2014 by the American Philological Association

42 Ruth Rothaus Caston

retain the Roman term with which Terence is concerned while at the same time recogniz-ing the broader tradition and positive uses that Terence wants to make of intertextuality in order to turn the charge of contaminatio on its head.

2 Cf., e.g., An. 18–23, Haut. 16–21, Phorm. 19–24, and Ad. 15–21. The prologue to the Hecyra also asks for indulgence rather than lashing out, perhaps because of the special circumstances of this play’s performances and the fact that the prologue is not delivered from the playwright’s own perspective.

3 See Eun. 42–43: qua re aequom est vos cognoscere atque ignoscere/ quae veteres facti-tarunt si faciunt novi.

4 See J. Wright 1974: 128, who suggested that Terence “rejects the traditions and con-ventions of the Roman stage.”

5 See Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004 on tradition and innovation in Hellenistic poetry. D’Angour 2011: 25 and 228 notes the different meanings of “new,” “novelty,” and “in-novation,” but emphasizes the ways in which all three “build on the past.”

6 Wessner 1962: 1.309. All translations are my own.

critic who raises these charges, Luscius Lanuvinus, is said to be preoccupied with Terence’s fidelity to his sources. Terence acts defensively and answers these charges without the defiance he shows in other prologues.2 Instead, he feigns resignation and begs forgiveness.3 But closer attention to the play shows that, whatever the truth of the story, contaminatio is not the problem, but a solution. Terence presents himself as preoccupied with coming later in a tradition, especially one as dependent on earlier plots and characters as New Comedy. But his interest is not in which sources he uses, but in what he makes of them. The manipulation of comic conventions and blending of different plays are the very means of exercising agency within a circumscribed tradition. Terence uses being late to his advantage, by playing on our expecta-tions of earlier comedy to highlight the possibility of change, one that has both dramatic and ethical ramifications.

Terence thematizes the problem of not being first, not only for himself in the prologue, but also for his characters in the play. He then raises repeatedly the possibility of reinvention as a solution. In speaking of reinvention, I mean something quite specific. In fact, Terence does make genuine innovations: his use of a non-expository prologue and double plot are just the most obvious examples of the ways in which his plays differ from earlier New Comedy.4 But these sorts of novelties should be contrasted with cases where he takes elements from a tradition and uses them in new ways, either by blending them with other works or by modulating or varying them, a practice that is also sometimes referred to as innovation.5 In his comments on Thais’s monologue at Eunuchus 197–201, Donatus perfectly captures this idea6:

43Reinvention in Terence’s Eunuchus

7 Goldberg 1986: 121 argues that the play is unified by the characters’ self-interest. In my view it is less self-interest than a desire to be free of constraints. Cf. also Goldberg 1993: 60–1 on the Adelphoe for the suggestion that the play “rewards action, mocks passivity.”

8 Cf., e.g., Haut. 385–87 and several cases in the Hec.: 66–71, 274–80, 734–35, 756–57, and the rejection of a standard comedic ending at 865–67. While the Hecyra is clearly interested in the themes of repetition and stereotypes, it does not offer the possibility of a solution, as the Eunuchus does. On the way in which Terence’s meretrices often distin-guish themselves from stereotype, perhaps the most familiar example of this pattern, see Demetriou 2010, who discusses it together with Donatus’s remarks about comic illusion.

Hic Terentius ostendit virtutis suae hoc esse, ut pervulgatas personas nove inducat et tamen a consuetudine non recedat, ut puta meretricem bonam cum facit, capiat tamen et delectet animum spectatoris.

Here Terence shows that this is one of his talents, to bring on stage familiar characters in a fresh way and nonetheless not retreat from custom, as when he creates a good courtesan, while captivating and pleasing the mind of the spectator.

But what the quote from Donatus does not indicate is that this kind of innova-tion is not made by the playwright “behind the scenes,” but is instead pointed out by Thais herself. And the same is true of a number of other characters in the Eunuchus, for whom the modification of their role is both deliberate and self-conscious and unfolds while we watch. It is this emphasis on self-awareness and agency that is one of the distinguishing hallmarks of what I am calling reinvention. Characters in the play complain about the constraints of their social role and the expectations that people have of them. But they also begin to assert their autonomy and show their individuality by appropriat-ing these roles in their own distinctive way. By thematizing this issue in the Eunuchus, Terence is not simply employing reinvention; he is talking about it.

In what follows, I examine two means of reinvention in the Eunuchus. The first shows up in characters who point explicitly to their own transformation. Though taken by others to be a stereotype—the rejected lover, deceptive courtesan, or subservient parasite—several characters in the Eunuchus assert themselves as individuals and agents who seek to reverse their inferior stand-ing.7 This is not entirely peculiar to the Eunuchus: in other plays of Terence, too, we find characters making note of the way in which they depart from stereotype.8 What is unusual about the Eunuchus is that the issue is thematized throughout the play, and is not only one of individual versus stereotype, but of dependence versus agency. A second means of reinvention is tied to plot and involves the appropriation of tragic models. Some of the tragic material in


9 I am not claiming that combining comedy with tragedy is itself a novelty, but rather that Terence uses this technique as a way of demonstrating his agency as a playwright. Combination allows the playwright to make his own choices, but doing it with tragedy is a particularly striking way of making that point. On tragedy in Terence, see n72 below and Sharrock 2013: 55–61.

10 See Goldberg 1986: 32. Sharrock 2009: 78–83 has recently added a new dimension to this view by suggesting that the prologues resemble not only Aristophanes’ parabaseis but also Callimachus’s programmatic remarks in the Aetia and Hymn to Apollo; see now also Sharrock 2013: 52–55. But she also sees a connection between prologue and play, on which see next note.

11 Gowers 2004 was the first to illuminate how this might work in all six plays. Dessen 1995 had earlier pointed to such a relationship for the Eunuchus. All of the suggestions about a link between prologue and play center on Chaerea and the rape scene: Dessen 1995: 137 draws a connection between the charge of theft in Terence’s practice and the rape of the virgo Pamphila, while Gowers 2004: 157–58 focuses on the language of vis in prologue and play. More recently, Sharrock 2009: 90 has suggested that it is Luscius’s

the Eunuchus concerns myths of eternal punishment, the endless repetition of the same task over and over again without hope of escape. These descriptions, strategically placed at the beginning and end of the play, evoke the feeling of being trapped by having to play the same role or reuse the same material again and again without relief. But a more liberating possibility is presented in the central scene of the play, where we find a fusion of comedy and tragedy that releases both characters and playwright from constraint and dependence.9 The use of a tragic model is the strongest way for Terence to assert his agency as a playwright and make his case for what was criticized as contaminatio, for it allows him to draw upon a wider range of source material and incorporate it in a way that is more obvious than the combination of comic models alone.

i. on being a latecomer (the prologue)I begin with the prologue, where the problem of doing something original is raised and then left unresolved, or so it seems, until this very question is picked up and answered by the dramatic action itself. This relationship between prologue and play in Terence deserves some comment, since, until recently, the prologues were taken to say nothing directly relevant to the play itself. Rather than offering a summary of the plays, they seemed only to address contemporary literary debates.10 Several studies have now challenged this view, arguing that they are not only about Terence’s relationship with other comedic playwrights. Instead, the central problem exposed in the prologues often turns out to be reflected in the subject matter of the play.11 In the case of the Eunuchus, I believe this point can be taken even further.


preview and attack of Terence’s play that resembles Chaerea’s rape of Pamphila, while Dufallo 2013: 34 compares the complaint in the prologue that everything has already been said before with Chaerea’s use of the Danae myth. I argue that the relationship between prologue and play is more extensive and thematized in the play as a whole.

12 See the excellent discussion of Terence’s use of the Kolax to enrich his adaptation of the Eunuchus in Goldberg 1986: 105–22. Paradoxically, the combinations that Terence implies made his originality suspect are, in fact, the very means of his originality. See also McGill 2012: 121–36, who examines the prologue to the Eunuchus as part of a wider discussion of plagiarism in Roman literature.

13 This marks the difference between contaminatio (“blending”) and furtum (“theft” or “plagiarism”). On this, see Goldberg 1986: 91–97. With the Kolax, Terence seems to have chosen a play that was frequently in circulation, suggesting there really was nothing new to be done with it. Terence leads us to expect something well worn in order to surprise us with a play that is actually novel in several respects. Contrast the emphasis on forms of novus in the prologues to the Haut. (7, 29, 34, 43) and Hec. (second prologue: 2, 5; third prologue: 4, 6, 11).

14 See Sharrock 2009: 92 on lines 35–41: “This highly conventional list actually high-lights the ways in which Terence’s construction of character and plot in fact deviates from the norms at the same time as depending on them.”

15 The only studies I have been able to find which discuss primacy are Sharrock 2009: 88–89 on lines 6 and 10–12 of the prologue, and Fontaine 2013: 186–92, in connection with Gnatho and Thraso and lines 35–43 of the prologue. I think even more can be made of this theme in the play as a whole.

16 Quotations from Terence follow the OCT of Kauer and Lindsay.

Terence answers charges in the play’s prologue that he has blended a scene from Menander’s Kolax with an adaptation from Menander’s Eunuchos.12 It is not only the additions from a second play that are a problem, but the fact that the Kolax had already been translated into Latin twice, by Naevius and Plautus (lines 23–25).13 Terence defends himself by saying that he was un-aware that there were already Latin versions of this play (line 27), and thus that he did not include it knowingly. But he goes on to say that even if he had known, reusing comic material should not be objectionable. If one were to apply this rule consistently, we would have to abandon most of the stock characters from New Comedy. As Terence puts it in lines 35–41, “no one could ever portray a courtesan, or a clever slave, or love, suspicion or hatred.” And this is obviously absurd.14

The accusation that he reworks old material, and his response to it, reveals a worry about belatedness: he is too late, perhaps always too late.15 In fact the problem of others’ being first comes up repeatedly in the prologue (4–6, 19–21, 31–34, 40–43)16:


17 See also the threat of a later attack (post, 18) by Terence if Luscius persists in his criticism. The language of priority occurs another time in the prologue as well, though here it describes Luscius’s own play rather than Terence’s position as playwright (10–13): atque in Thesauro scripsit causam dicere | prius unde petitur, aurum qua re sit suom | quam illic qui petit, unde is sit thensaurus sibi | aut unde in patrium monumentum pervenerit. (“In his Treasure, he had the defendant argue his case that the gold was his first, before the plaintiff made his case that the treasure belonged to him and explained how it ended up in his father’s tomb.”) This reordering is counterintuitive and confusing and shows how much Luscius fails to respect the proper sequence of things. Sharrock 2009: 88 connects this with the priority of Luscius’s attack raised in line 6. Luscius is confused about order

tum siquis est qui dictum in se inclementiusexistumavit esse, sic existumetresponsum, non dictum esse, quia laesit prior.

quam nunc acturi sumusMenandri Eunuchum, postquam aediles emerunt,perfecit sibi ut inspiciundi esset copia.

eas se non negatpersonas transtulisse in Eunuchum suamex Graeca; sed eas fabulas factas priusLatinas scisse sese id vero pernegat.

deniquenullumst iam dictum quod non dictum sit prius.qua re aequom est vos cognoscere atque ignoscerequae veteres factitarunt si faciunt novi.

If someone [i.e., Luscius Lanuvinus] believes that he has been attacked too harshly, let him rather judge that this is a response, not an attack, since he lashed out first.

The play we will perform is the Eunuchos of Menander. After the aediles had purchased it, he arranged to find an opportunity to see it.

The playwright does not deny that he transferred these characters into his Eu-nuch from the Greek play. But he does firmly deny that he knew those earlier Latin plays existed.

In short, nothing is now said which has not been said before. It is right for you to understand and forgive new writers if they do what the old ones repeatedly did.

Someone else always beats Terence to it.17 Luscius, eager to keep ahead of his rival, is the first to attack and even manages to see a preview of Terence’s


yet again when he charges that Terence’s methods of composition break with tradition, when in fact Terence claims that his practice is consistent with that used by earlier writers of comedy (see Eun. 43 and An. 18–20).

18 See Goldberg 2005: 48–50 on the availability of plays in this period, both what kind of opportunities Luscius would have had to see the Eunuchus and Terence’s own access to earlier plays.

19 See Gowers 2004: 151: “We will see how Terence’s aggrieved rhetorical persona—misunderstood, unacknowledged, confused with other people, the victim of ignorant stereotyping—finds soulmates in the aggrieved personalities he puts on stage.”

play before its first performance.18 Besides this contemporary who is trying to outdo him, Terence has to contend with earlier playwrights as well. With so many Greek plays already adapted into Latin, Terence claims it is virtually impossible to find anything new to say.

Terence provides a glimpse of what it means to work within a tradition that is in danger of becoming rote and predictable. He affects concern about what is left to do as a comic playwright, especially the possibility that it will be the same old thing. How can one be innovative while writing a play that fits the requirements of the genre? What should be done about this situation is a problem left unanswered at the end of the prologue. Here Terence merely asks for forgiveness, as if he has no choice but to follow tradition (42–43). But the fact that the play itself immediately addresses this question in the lives of its characters suggests that Terence’s apparent resignation in the prologue is more a posture designed to throw us off than any real sentiment.19 As we shall see, the prologue is not so much a foreshadowing of the play as a question or challenge. In response to the doubts over whether the playwright can reverse his latecomer status, the play offers a positive demonstration of how at least some of its characters can reverse their own repetitive and predictable roles, and this has implications for the play in which they appear.

ii. always second, never first (the play)I turn now to look at a number of instances in which characters in the play feel they are trapped in second place because of other people’s expectations. Their position is thus comparable to that of Terence in the prologue, though here it is the relationship to other characters, not other playwrights, that is at issue. The play opens with a scene introducing us to the rivalry of the young lover Phaedria and the soldier Thraso over their love of Thais, a courtesan. Phaedria is in a dejected state of mind after Thais has asked him to go out of town for a few days, to take second place, so that she can make her other lover and financial supporter, Thraso, feel first in her affections. The reason is not


20 See Barsby 1999 on 49. On the trope more generally, see Copley 1956. 21 Lines 67–70.

that she loves Thraso more or wants to hurt Phaedria. When pressed, Thais will tell the story of Pamphila and why Thraso’s good will is important for getting the girl back under Thais’s protection. After consulting with his slave Parmeno, however, Phaedria attributes Thais’s behavior to the deceit typical of courtesans and mocks her earlier promises (88–90):

th. quid taces?ph. Sane quia vero haec mihi patent semper fores aut quia sum apud te primu’. TH. missa istaec face.

thais: Why are you quiet?phaedria Why of course because these doors are always open for me or because I come first with you.thais: Stop this.

Phaedria is angry at being displaced in Thais’s affection, at being made an exclusus amator.20 Once he has spent a little time in Thais’s company, how-ever, Phaedria cannot keep up his irritation, just as Parmeno had predicted.21 Phaedria follows expectation, succumbing to the courtesan’s charms and bow-ing to her request. Given how soon this comes after the prologue, it is difficult not to feel that Phaedria’s annoyance at being in a second and dependent position echoes that of the playwright, who has also described frustration at the need to contend with others’ preferences. The situations are not exactly parallel, to be sure: for Phaedria, the problem is not being first in Thais’s affec-tion, while for Terence, it is not coming earlier in a literary tradition. Yet both Phaedria and Terence are represented in fairly close succession as constrained by other people’s desires and unable to act freely on their own behalf.

Doubts about Thais’s character and motivations arise throughout this scene. Later, when she is alone, Thais worries about this negative reputation. She is concerned that Phaedria misunderstands who she really is, that he, like Parmeno, considers her a stereotypical courtesan, the kind who will do anything for gifts and money (197–98):

th. me miseram, fors[it]an hic mihi parvam habeat fidem atque ex aliarum ingeniis nunc me iudicet.

thais: Oh wretched me, perhaps he doesn’t believe me and judges me by the character of other women.


22 See also lines 422–29, where Gnatho encourages Thraso to take credit as the author of a joke that is in fact an old one, and which Gnatho calls in primis (“one of the best”).

Thais does not use the language of being first or second. Nevertheless, her role, like that of Phaedria, is affected by certain expectations and prejudices that limit her agency. Thais’s ability to help Pamphila will depend upon others’ trust in her. If Thais has barely persuaded Phaedria to believe her, then she may not be able to persuade another crucial figure, Pamphila’s brother, whom she is meeting later the same day (202–6). As much as Phaedria is constrained by wanting to please Thais, the very same scene suggests how much Thais’s ability to act is restricted by unflattering judgments of her character.

Another passage that hinges on first and second place occurs in Act II, which features Gnatho, Thraso’s colorful parasite and one of the imported characters from Menander’s Kolax. In a lengthy monologue, Gnatho relates an encounter he had in the street with an old acquaintance that has fallen on hard times. When the other man envies Gnatho’s success, Gnatho explains that it derives from knowing how to make his master feel first in importance. Gnatho has learned to play second fiddle and affirm everything Thraso says and does (248–49, 251–53):

gn. est genus hominum qui esse primos se omnium rerum volunt nec sunt: hos consector ... ... quidquid dicunt laudo; id rursum si negant, laudo id quoque;negat quis: nego; ait: aio; postremo imperavi egomet mihiomnia adsentari.

gnatho: There’s a kind of man who wants to be considered first in everything, but isn’t. I pursue this type .... Whatever they say, I praise. If on the other hand they deny it, I praise that, too. Someone says no, I say no. He says yes, I say yes. In the end I have taught myself to agree to everything.

We hear again about Thraso’s supposed primacy, this time from another char-acter’s perspective.22 Gnatho is defined by his servile nature: he has no voice of his own, but only echoes his patron, replicating the views and preferences of another. Like Phaedria and Thais, Gnatho will later reverse this stand, in his case by showing how much his promotion of Thraso is in fact a sign of his own ingenuity and inventiveness as a parasite. But here, early on in the play, what matters for my point is the way that characters reiterate the pro-logue’s language of coming first or second (or being typecast, in Thais’s case)


23 The eunuch is a gift to Thais from Phaedria: see the excellent analysis of Konstan 1986 on the carefully intertwined relationship between gifts and love in the play. The idea to take the eunuch’s clothes is suggested jokingly by Parmeno, but then taken up in earnest by Chaerea (369–78). On the tension between impulse and calculation in the play, see Saylor 1975, esp. 298 and 302–3.

24 Germany 2008: 167–69 traces more widespread mimesis on Chaerea’s part, but he does not distinguish between the adoption of the eunuch’s disguise and Jupiter’s role in the painting, which I see as two separate types of roles. See now Dufallo 2013: 33, who also distinguishes between the two roles adopted by Chaerea.

25 So Parmeno at 375: praeterea forma et aetas ipsast facile ut pro eunucho probes (“Besides, with your age and build, you’ll easily pass for a eunuch”). Frangoulidis 1994a: 124 points to the fact that Antipho immediately recognizes Chaerea when the latter emerges from Thais’s house, suggesting how much he looked like himself, even “in disguise.” See also Konstan 1986: 388 on the ways in which Chaerea’s disguise does not indicate any “moral or personal complexity”; it is, in effect, superficial.

26 See Dessen 1995: 124–25 on a eunuch’s ability to have sex if castration was performed after puberty. Eunuchs were still useful as guardians since they could not cause pregnancy.

27 See filium minorem (289) and ecce autem alterum (297).28 Lines 302–3 and 337–42.29 Line 310.

to describe themselves as subservient and obedient rather than independent agents acting freely of their own will.

A final example comes in the figure of Chaerea, Phaedria’s younger brother, who fell in love with Pamphila when he caught sight of her being transported to Thais’s house. In order to get close to her, Chaerea will exchange places with the eunuch who has been entrusted with her care.23 Thus Chaerea be-comes a copy, a second.24 Later in the play there is another, equally striking impersonation when Chaerea is inspired by a painting to assume the role of Jupiter in the rape of Danae. I discuss this second impersonation later in the paper as a genuine act of reinvention. Chaerea’s disguise as a eunuch, however much it may look like a transformation, is in fact barely a disguise. As the slave Parmeno says, Chaerea can get away with the deception because of his immature and underdeveloped form.25 To be sure, Chaerea is rather oversexed for a eunuch.26 Yet much of what we learn about Chaerea at this point in the play points to his childish and dependent role. When Parmeno announces his arrival on stage, he labels him as the younger brother and the second to fall in love.27 Chaerea lost sight of Pamphila because he was sidetracked by his father’s friend and asked to give his father a message, something that reminds us of his junior status.28 And he contrives to get Parmeno’s help by invoking an image of himself as a child, sneaking food into the slave’s room.29 For Chaerea, this helplessness will be remedied by taking someone else’s part.


30 Contra Dessen, who argues that the figure of the eunuch offers space to bring about change and negotiate differences in sexuality and power. Yet it is only when Chaerea sheds this role for the part of Jupiter that he is able to transform himself from observer to actor.

31 The infrequency of Terence’s use of myth makes these references all the more note-worthy, as does the fact that they all concern punishment and repetition. I have found only a few other mythical allusions: Eun. 817, where Thais asks Pythias not to speak in riddles (perplexe), a reference no doubt to the Delphic oracle; An. 194 and Davos’s quip that he is not Oedipus; and a further reference to the Oedipus myth with Clitipho’s questions about his parentage at the end of the Heauton Timorumenos.

32 For suggestive remarks on repetition and novelty in Greek comedy, see D’Angour 2011: 52 and 53, and note especially his discussion about the ways in which using old jokes in Greek comedy can be manipulated to appear a form of originality. See also M. Wright 2012, Ch. 3 on the problematic nature of Aristophanes’ claims of novelty.

33 For Parmeno’s feelings about courtesans, see 79–80, his exchange with Phaedria in II.i and 926–40. Chaerea also gives a negative assessment at 382–87. Some have argued that Thais’s exclusion from the arrangement with Thraso at the end of the play points to the victory of this kind of thinking and the playwright’s pessimistic view of society; see, e.g., Smith 1994 and James 1998.

Yet instead of any truly transformative role, he chooses the part of a eunuch, a sterile creature who is emblematic of the inability to create anything new.30

iii. fated to repeatI now turn to a second group of characters that describe themselves as locked in place, though here the problem is not merely a lack of agency, but enslave-ment and punishment. Parmeno, Thraso, and Gnatho compare themselves to different mythological figures, all of whom have been punished, one by having to perform a debasing act and the other two by performing the same given act in perpetuity. These allusions, each of them quite brief, have not received much attention, certainly nothing like the interest paid to the myth of Danae that motivates Chaerea to rape Pamphila.31 The connection of all three passages to the themes of repetition and punishment suggests that they are bound up with Terence’s own predicament described in the prologue, where the neces-sity of reusing stock figures and scenes has become an unending burden.32

I begin with Parmeno and his self-comparison to a leaky jar at line 105, an image that has provoked speculation but little consensus in the second-ary literature. The relevant scene occurs in a portion of Act I we have already discussed, the confrontation between Phaedria and Thais, at which the slave Parmeno is also present. While Phaedria gives in to Thais in the course of the exchange, Parmeno does not, and his hardened feelings towards courtesans emerge both here and in later passages.33 When Thais asks them both to keep


34 Barsby on 105. He points as well to Horace’s reference to a leaky ear at Sat. 2.6.46. On the characterization of Parmeno at the opening of the play, Barsby 1990: 10 concludes that he is a “pompous parader of metaphors and clichés” rather than a truly wise or clever slave. But if I am right about the allusion to the Danaid myth, then there is more to Parmeno’s choice of metaphor than Barsby allows.

35 Konstan 1986: 380.36 Dessen 1995: 129. 37 The story and ancient sources are thoroughly discussed in Bonner 1902, who dis-

cusses the punishment at pp. 164–73 and argues that it is a later addition to the myth. 38 See Plato Grg. 493a–494b and Lucr. 3.931–65, 1003–10 and the discussion of both

passages in Görler 1997. The language makes clear that the myth of the Danaids is the inspiration for the metaphor (see the reference to Hades at Grg. 493b and to puellas in Lucr. 3.1008). Cf. also an earlier passage in Lucr. (3.870–73), where jars or pottery are associated with “ringing true” or sincerum sonere (873) and the discussion of this in Görler 1997: 194–95.

the girl’s identity secret for the time being, Parmeno says that he will, but only according to certain rules (102–5):

verum heus tu, hac lege tibi meam adstringo fidem:quae vera audivi taceo et contineo optume;sin falsum aut vanum aut fictumst, continuo palamst:plenus rimarum sum, hac atque illac perfluo.

Listen, I can keep my word, but on this condition: when I’ve heard something true, I keep quiet and I hold it in. But if on the other hand it’s false or ground-less or made up, it’s out in the open immediately: I’m full of cracks and leak on all sides.

In his commentary, Barsby calls this image of a leaky vessel “striking” and points to a parallel in Cato where he describes a wooden container for a mixture of wine and water that allowed only the wine to leak out.34 Konstan suggests that the reference reflects the “inwardness or subjectivity” of the love Phaedria desires from Thais.35 Dessen compares the image to a womb and views it as part of a pattern of gender reversals caused by the ambiguity of the eunuch figure.36

But a far more natural way of interpreting Parmeno’s remark is to con-nect it with the story of the Danaids, in particular their punishment in the Underworld where they had the job of filling leaky jars with water for eternity.37 Other examples of a metaphorical use of the Danaids’ punishment can be found in Plato and Lucretius, both of whom adopt the image of the leaky jar to represent the soul of the needy person who is never satisfied.38 For Parmeno, the analogy has a certain personal significance. Just as the Danaids have to


39 In order to punish him for his role in the rape, Pythias tells him that Pamphila has been discovered to be a citizen, and that Chremes is about to castrate Chaerea for what he has done. This leads Parmeno to reveal everything to Demea, Chaerea’s father, thereby incriminating himself (V.iv).

40 See n73 below.41 Both myths, those of Sisyphus and of Hercules and Omphale, were the subjects of

satyr plays, and it may be significant that Terence chooses stories that had been dramatized in a form characterized by its blend of comic and tragic features.

keep filling their jars to no avail, so, too, the poor slave has the never-ending task of helping his masters’ sons in their foolish love affairs. It is a job that involves knowing how much to reveal and when, and despite Parmeno’s boast, this is the very issue on which he will be humiliated at the end of the play.39 The fact that he compares himself to the jar itself rather than to one of the Danaids further emphasizes the way in which Parmeno feels he is merely an instrument or tool at the disposal of others.

But there is more to the allusion than Parmeno’s own situation. The story may have also occurred to Parmeno because of other connections between the Danaid myth and the plot of the Eunuchus. Indeed, although the myth was a popular subject of both Greek and Roman tragedy, the themes of mar-riage, female deception, and domineering fathers fit well within a plot of New Comedy.40 Parmeno is suspicious about Thais, who he suspects is leading Phaedria on—even if he does not suspect she is contemplating murder. He is undoubtedly worried as well what will happen when Phaedria’s father finds out about the love affair. Parmeno’s comparison to the leaky vessel thus raises questions about the type of characters we meet in the Eunuchus and how closely they will align with our expectations from other New Comedy: how suspicious should we be of Thais’s motives? How severe a man is Phaedria’s father? The question of stereotypes and the possibility of their modification are here specifically embedded in a story about punishment and endless repeti-tion, raising early on in the play the very problems addressed in the prologue.

The other two examples of characters adopting mythic parts occur near the conclusion of the play, and the location of these allusions is equally sig-nificant.41 In Act V, Thraso is in a weakened position, unable to take Pamphila back once her freeborn status has been revealed and unsure about his standing with Thais. After his humiliating attempt to storm Thais’s house, he returns there in order to surrender himself to her. When Gnatho asks him what he has in mind, Thraso answers by comparing himself to Hercules (1027–28):


42 On Thraso’s ineptitude, see Gilmartin 1975/76: 265, who contrasts the characters Chaerea and Thraso to show how much it is the actions of Chaerea, not Thraso, which are violent and destructive. See also Frangoulidis 1994b.

43 Cf., e.g., Ov. Fast. 2.318–26.44 See Frangoulidis 1994b: 593–94.45 On this, see Frangoulidis 1994b: 591–92 and Dessen 1995: 131. See also Thraso’s

attraction to the eunuch/Chaerea at line 479.

th. qui minu’ quam Hercules servivit Omphalae? GN. exemplum placet.(utinam tibi conmitigari videam sandalio caput!)

thraso: How should I be any less a slave to Thais than Hercules was to Omphale?gnatho: A good parallel. (Would that I might see your head beaten to a pulp by her sandal!)

In describing himself as Hercules, Thraso magnifies and deflates himself at the same time, the fate of the miles gloriosus whose boasts reveal only hollow glory.42 He has chosen to compare himself to a hero with a complex history, a figure known for his courage and repeated punishments but also his exces-sive desire and comic potential. Thraso comes up with a rather unflattering episode, the time when Hercules was made the slave of the Lydian queen Omphale in retaliation for the murder of Iphitus, prince of Oechalia. Omphale and Hercules traded roles in some versions of the story, with Hercules dressing up in women’s clothes and performing women’s work, while Omphale put on his club and lionskin.43

Like the links between Parmeno’s life and the Danaid story, this reference has special meaning for Thraso. The soldier is willing to debase himself because of his love for Thais. Indeed, he tells Gnatho he is willing to do or pay anything to have some role in her life (1055).44 The gender inversion in Hercules’ story may pick up a sneer made about Thraso’s sexuality at an earlier point in the play, where Thraso recounts a joke that reveals his willingness to be a sexual partner to just about anyone.45 Although he wants to be seen as a powerful figure that makes his own choices, Thraso is in fact as much enslaved by his lust as he is by the need to feel that he is first. Although he desperately needs to devise some new way in which he still matters, he ends up drawing only upon his past actions and mistakes.

The last example involves Gnatho, who has played an instrumental part in ensuring that Thraso is not left out in the cold at the play’s end. Now that Thais has found favor with the father of Phaedria and Chaerea, and Chaerea has learned he can marry Pamphila, Gnatho persuades the two brothers to


46 Saxum is also used to describe the soldier in Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus (line 1024), as Barsby 1999 points out.

47 Contra Barsby 1999: 282, who describes Gnatho’s role at the end of the play as the “victory” of the parasite who understands the dependent lifestyle.

48 On the reflective use of tragic allusion or metatheater in Menander, see the discus-sions in Goldberg 1980: 13–28, Hunter 1985, Ch. 5, and Gutzwiller 2000.

49 Compare Jacques in Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste, who believes that everything that happens to him is predetermined. I am grateful to David Konstan for bringing this paral-lel to my attention.

keep Thraso on as a rival in order to hold on to his financial support. Having managed this unusual arrangement for his patron, Gnatho then asks for a place for himself. He complains that he is exhausted after all he has done for Thraso (1085):

sati’ diu hoc iam saxum vorso.

I’ve been rolling this rock a long time already.

This remark clearly refers to the imminent conclusion of the play, just ten lines away. But it is also an allusion to Sisyphus and thus yet another collocation of myth, punishment, and repetition. Given Sisyphus’s reputation for deceit, there may be a hint of pride in Gnatho’s words as he considers his success in fooling Thraso once again. But his comment also reveals the weariness of those who serve others, especially one as dense as Thraso.46 The invocation of suffering is surely intended to garner sympathy from Phaedria and Chaerea at a time when Gnatho needs their help if he is to continue his parasitic lifestyle. Gnatho has exposed Thraso’s dependence upon him, but he cannot escape his own groveling role.47

We tend to laugh when comic characters dramatize their situation and describe it in tragic terms. The grandiose view of their suffering is at odds with the comic setting, allowing the audience to feel pleasure as they look upon such mistaken self-importance. Yet however humorous, the tragic al-lusions also reveal something essential about the characters’ state of mind.48 Their adoption of these roles conveys how trapped they feel, how much their obligation to others has emasculated and exhausted them. They see themselves as fated to serve others, and their subservience is linked closely to punishment.49 Terence positions these expressions of helplessness at the beginning and end of the play as a way of warning against endless repetition. Just as Parmeno, Thraso, and Gnatho complain about the monotony of their lives, the playwright, too, paints himself as unable to escape the replication


50 Of course the prologues and their defense of Terence’s technique are themselves an example of repetition, as Sharrock 2009: 63–64 points out.

51 See Hunter 1985: 93 and also Konstan 1986: 376–78, who offers a perceptive analysis of the sincerity of feeling and “romantic” quality of the sentiment.

inevitable in composing New Comedy in the 160s b.c.e.50 Whether you are a character or a playwright, being obligated to do the same thing over and over again is a form of punishment and torment.

iv. reinventionIf being first or original is what matters, then there is no solution available, either for Terence or the characters we have examined. But if what matters instead is that what you do is truly your own rather than something com-pelled by circumstances, then there is a way out. Unlike the subservience and repetition we have seen at the beginning and end of the play, Terence suggests inside of these borders that it is possible to take certain roles and put your own distinctive stamp on them, adapting them in ways that are expressive of yourself. Being first is only one way of being an agent, and Terence offers other possibilities.

In the conversation we saw earlier between Thais and Phaedria, for example, Phaedria finally agrees to Thais’s request that he go away for a few days. Just as he is about to leave, however, he lingers and insists that she make him first, even in his absence (191–96):

ph. egone quid velim?cum milite istoc praesens absens ut sies;dies noctesque me ames, me desideres,me somnies, me exspectes, de me cogites,me speres, me te oblectes, mecum tota sis: meu’ fac sis postremo animu’ quando ego sum tuos.—

phaedria: What do I want? That you be absent in mind when you are physically present with the soldier, that you love me day and night, that you desire me, dream about me, long for me, think about me, hope for me, delight in me, and that you be all mine: see that you are my heart since I am yours.

Commentators usually note the spiritual dimension to Phaedria’s love here, especially in contrast to the physical desire of his brother Chaerea or rival Thraso.51 But in describing his love this way, Phaedria also asserts his presence both verbally and symbolically, emphatically rejecting his identification as


52 See lines 629–42 on Phaedria’s early return from his trip to the country.53 See Flury 1968: 25–27, Fantham 1972: 82–91, Konstan 1986: 376–77. J. Wright 1974:

135 shows how unusual Phaedria is through comparisons with lovers in Plautus.54 See Barsby 1999: 207 on IV.iii: “... in this and the following scene we see a different

side of Phaedria’s character: he is no longer the helpless lover but the active investigator of his brother’s behaviour.”

55 See Goldberg 1986: 115: “The willing subservience so explicit in Gnatho and Thraso thus lies just beneath the surface in the other characters until it surfaces in the finale.”

exclusus amator.52 The heavy anaphora of me insists that he comes first, while his demand that she think about him constantly ensures that they will not be truly separated: Thais will be with him in mind, if not in body. Phaedria recreates his presence out of his anticipated absence and thus ensures that he will remain and Thraso be pushed aside. Phaedria has also reversed Thais’s order that he leave by suggesting that she should be absent when together with the soldier. Though earlier he was passive and obedient to Thais’s wishes, now he has reinvented himself with a forceful statement of what Thais owes him.

This highly unusual expression of reciprocal love highlights the extent to which Phaedria’s decision to assert his agency coincides with a display of personal and individual qualities. When Phaedria shifts from thinking about his own love sickness to the effect he wants to have on Thais, he uses romantic language of a kind that will become familiar only later in Roman love elegy.53 Phaedria’s reinvention means not only reversing his subordinate position, but developing a distinctive vision of love in which there is a fusion of two souls. He will remain a more assertive and independent character, too, later handling his brother and other characters with control and assurance.54 At the end of the play, of course, he agrees with Gnatho’s plan to share Thais with Thraso, something that may seem to undermine his independence and the kind of romantic relationship he has fought for. Yet his return to a subordinate position at the end of the play is the fate of all of the characters, not just Phaedria.55 It is not a negation of the change he has achieved, but instead a final reminder to the audience of the dangers of repetition and loss of agency.

Thais, too, asserts her individuality after expressing her worry about whether Phaedria sees her as a typical courtesan. She insists upon her differ-ence from such women (199–201):

th. ego pol, quae mihi sum conscia, hoc certo scio neque me finxisse falsi quicquam neque meo cordi esse quemquam cariorem hoc Phaedria.

thais: I know myself and am sure that I’ve not said anything false and that there is no one dearer to me than my Phaedria.


56 The question should not be only whether Thais is a bona or mala meretrix (see, e.g., Gilula 1980, Anderson 1984, Traill 2008: 3–9), but how Terence manipulates our view of her character throughout the play. Christenson 2013: 275 suggests that Thais is different from other prostitutes in her “inability to seize control of the play in the manner of a clever slave.”

57 The fact that she does so in a monologue, a truthful speech according to convention, carries more weight than if she had said it to him directly. One of the anonymous referees suggests, however, that this could be a case where Terence undermines that convention. Perhaps one could stage the play by, for example, having Thais make this remark for an eavesdropping lover off to the side, but I do not believe it changes the more fundamental point that Thais expresses her desire not to be constrained by type. Even if Thais made the remark for effect, she would not only be giving expression to the notion of agency, but she would also be manipulating a convention for her own ends.

58 See Saylor 1975: 301–2 and 308–9 on Thais and consilium. 59 Line 887: te mihi patronam capio (“I take you as my patron”).

Thais wants to make sure that Phaedria knows the “real Thais,” not some predictable meretrix who cheats and lies, but the caring and genuine Thais who worries about those she loves.56 Although Thais does not express these thoughts to Phaedria directly, she registers with the audience that this more correct view should replace the traditional one aired by Phaedria and Parmeno.57 By expressing a wish about how she wants to be understood, Thais takes steps towards changing the perception others have of her. She would like to think that she has always been this way. But here she makes a decision about her reputation affirming that this is the person she wants to be.

As in the case of Phaedria, the assertion of her own position allows her individual traits to emerge. Thais affirms her feelings for Phaedria and estab-lishes herself as a bona meretrix like Habrotonon in Menander’s Epitrepontes or Chrysis in the Samia. But she is more than just a sincere and loving cour-tesan. Words like conscia and certo scio in line 199 reveal how self–assured and reflective she is, qualities that contribute to her ability to navigate her course through a variety of obstacles.58 In the end, not only does she win over Pamphila’s suspicious brother Chremes, but she is even called patrona by Chaerea, a mark of the respect she wields.59 In articulating here the gap between worn-out stereotypes and who she really is, Thais displays the de-termination and confidence that she will use to establish Pamphila’s citizen status and a more secure position for herself.

We also need to return to the parasite Gnatho, not his line about being a Sisyphus at the end of the play, but the passage where he admitted that his success relied on playing second and making Thraso appear to be first. His acquaintance from the marketplace had assumed that Gnatho’s success


60 Saylor 1975: 300 suggests that Gnatho is preoccupied with thinking. Sharrock 2009: 219–20 describes him instead as the “‘knowing character’ who does not know that he is not in fact a very good example of the ‘knowing character’.” By contrast, Fontaine 2013: 191, 195 sees him as very self-aware; see n62 below.

61 Running a school may be a point of pride here, but it can also be a form of insult elsewhere in Terence: see Hec. 204, where Laches tells his wife Sostrata that she is so good at playing the mother-in-law that she could head up a school for them.

62 On Artotrogus as a model for Gnatho, see Duckworth 1994: 267 and Sharrock 2009: 220. Michael Fontaine 2013: 191 argues that Gnatho deliberately points to the Miles Gloriosus when he uses the phrase primus inveni viam, a formulation which, as Stephen Hinds has shown, allows a speaker to put himself at the forefront of a tradition while simultaneously alluding to his predecessors (see Hinds 1998: 52–63). I am suggesting that the pattern of reading one’s own character against earlier models is not limited to Gnatho, but something much more widespread in the Eunuchus.

depended upon playing the fool or being beaten, but Gnatho clears things up by describing a more civilized way of playing the parasite. For all that it involves being in second place, Gnatho has framed this as a new method and himself as its inventor (246–47):

gn. olim isti fuit generi quondam quaestus apud saeclum prius: hoc novomst aucupium; ego adeo hanc primus inveni viam.

gnatho: Once in an earlier generation there was a living to be had in that kind of approach. But this is the new way to catch your prey: I was the first to find this way of life.

Gnatho has turned around his second-place position and made himself first. He does not abandon his parasitic role, but describes himself as fully in charge of the rules, asserting his agency and control over the part. His new sense of self is so exciting that when his friend begs him to share his technique, Gnatho immediately creates a pseudo-philosophical school of parasites and a name for his followers: the Gnathonists (264).60 In fashioning himself as the head of an Institute of Parasites, Gnatho rather suggestively imagines an audience for his lessons on how to be first.61 He is boastful and smug, and yet his claims of novelty can be easily disproven. As commentators point out, Gnatho is not really the first to have discovered the art of flattery, an honor that must go instead to Artotrogus, the parasite in Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus.62 But the point is not whether Gnatho is really first at anything. We already know that he is a true inventor or master only in his boasts: what he has invented is still a way of being second. But this is exactly what reinvention is. Gnatho has adapted his old role to a new strategy, one that emphasizes agency and self-determination


63 See especially Smith 1994 and James 1998. 64 See, e.g., Frangoulidis 1993 and 1994a, Knorr 2007, Germany 2008, Sharrock 2009,

Papaioannou 2010. 65 See Gilmartin 1975/76 on the contrast between Chaerea’s rape of Pamphila and

Thraso’s storming of the house. For other violence in the play, see the beating of the eunuch at lines 669 and 716.

66 According to Donatus, Terence has invented Antipho to break up a long monologue by Chaerea in Menander’s play. For more on the relationship between the two versions of the Eunuchus, see Lowe 1983: 428.

67 See Papaioannou 2010: 153 and also Germany 2008: 186–87, who stresses the impact that the painting would have had on a Roman audience.

rather than subordination and humiliation. The fact that others may have exercised agency before him does not make Gnatho passive in choosing for himself. The important thing is not being first, but being an agent, and owning your own choices rather than weakly submitting to circumstances.

In Chaerea’s transformation at the center of the play, the character’s change from a passive to an active role is even more deliberate and elaborate, and marks not only a transformation of a character, but a reinvention of the plot as well. In Act III.v, Chaerea describes how he gained access to Pamphila after taking the place of the eunuch, his brother Phaedria’s gift to Thais. Once alone with Pamphila, he saw a painting of Jupiter’s rape of Danae that inspired him to rape her. Many interpretations of the scene have focused on Chaerea’s cal-lousness and the way he mostly escapes confrontation and blame.63 Recent critics have been drawn to other elements, in particular the metatheatrical dimensions of a character who changes costume mid-stream, models his be-havior on a scene from tragedy, and is fixated on seeing and being seen.64 But there is a way to take account of both Chaerea’s impunity and the significance of the dramatic allusions. The scene involves reinvention of both the central character and the comedic material. Chaerea’s actions are the result of his refashioning himself after the model of Jupiter, a transformation that liberates him from the kind of punishment endured by characters who are trapped in their repetitious lives. At the same time, Terence reworks the central scene of his comedy by blending it with tragic elements, and this attention to the dramatic stage more broadly and the combination of two types of role result in many of the self-conscious features of the passage.

The rape is not depicted of course but retold, and the details emerge only as Chaerea leaves the house in which it was committed.65 When he sees his friend Antipho, he cannot stop himself from telling his friend what he has just done.66 He makes clear that a painting inside the house was the inspiration for his violent act.67 First Pamphila was looking at it, then Chaerea (583–91):


68 See Smith 1994: 27 on Chaerea’s weak skills at reasoning.69 Donatus says that sonitu concutit is Ennian and calls the rest of the line tragice.

The preserved line from Naevius’s Danae is suo sonitu claro fulgorivit Iuppiter (TrRF 3). Naevius’s play may have been a blend of Sophocles and Euripides’ Danae; see Boyle 2005 on contaminatio in Republican tragedy. It is worth asking whether Terence might have borrowed the technique from tragedy, as it does not seem to occur in Plautus.

dum adparatur, virgo in conclavi sedetsuspectans tabulam quandam pictam: ibi inerat pictura haec, Iovemquo pacto Danaae misisse aiunt quondam in gremium imbrem aureum.egomet quoque id spectare coepi, et quia consimilem luseratiam olim ille ludum, inpendio magis animu’ gaudebat mihi,deum sese in hominem convortisse atque in alienas tegulasvenisse clanculum per inpluvium fucum factum mulieri.at quem deum! “qui templa caeli summa sonitu concutit!”ego homuncio hoc non facerem? ego illud vero ita feci—ac lubens.

chaerea: While preparations were being made, the girl sat in the room looking up at a painted wall. There was a picture there of how they say that Jupiter once sent a golden rain into the lap of Danae. I myself began to stare at it, and because he had once played a similar game, I rejoiced all the more that a god had changed himself into a man and come through someone else’s roof through the skylight to play a trick on a woman. And what a god! “He who shakes the highest regions of heaven with his thunder!” Was I, a mere mortal, not to do the same? I did indeed do it—and gladly.

We are told nothing about what the girl saw in the painting or what she might have felt. Chaerea, however, immediately identifies with Jupiter and feels omnipotent. The point of having such a painting in a courtesan’s bedroom was presumably to create some kind of identification. As Donatus explains, the suggestion was that the man needed to shower the courtesan with gold, that is, to pay for sex. Chaerea completely misses this more obvious sense.68 Instead, he magnifies himself and sees himself as masterful and entitled to satisfy his every desire. Unlike Parmeno, Thraso, and Gnatho, whose read-ings of myth, though exaggerated, reflect a deeper truth about their present condition, Chaerea invokes the myth of Danae as a model to aspire towards and escape his present condition.

This newly inflated sense of self leads him to use tragic diction in line 590, in words that, according to Donatus, recall Ennius (or, as recent scholars have thought, perhaps Naevius’s Danae)69:


70 It is clear from lines 610–12 that Chaerea is still dressed as a eunuch, even after he mimics Jupiter and rapes the girl. But this is part of the comic treatment of Chaerea, which brings out the ridiculous nature of his self-comparison with Jupiter. Whatever transformation he has made in terms of his own agency, he is obviously not as powerful as a god who can change his shape.

71 See Germany 2008: 184–87 on the doubling of Jupiter in Roman wall paintings of the Danae myth.

72 I take this engagement with tragedy to be serious, not parodic. See Petrides 2010: 100: “for New Comedy, tragedy is no longer merely a ‘competitor’, but a genetic compo-nent, which provides possibilities of variation, innovation and ironic double play with a view to stratifying the plot and universalising its meaning.” Cf. Sharrock 2009: 221, who describes Terence’s engagement with tragedy as “half-jokingly, half-seriously entangling the play with tragedy.”

73 On the similarities between the plots of Euripidean tragedy and New Comedy in general, cf., e.g., Hunter 1985, Ch. 5, Nesselrath 1993, and Bowie 2010.

74 Papaioannou 2010: 156–57 also compares the Eunuchus and the Samia, and then goes on to argue that mythical comedy is the most likely source for Terence’s allusion to

at quem deum, qui templa caeli summa sonitu concutit!

And what a god, who shakes the highest vaults of heaven with his thunder!

The elevated tragic tone perfectly captures and satirizes Chaerea’s excessive self-aggrandizement. The gap between his sense of himself and the audience’s perception of him could not be greater. But as ridiculous as it is, Chaerea has transformed himself and demonstrated an increased sense of agency. Whereas earlier he let a family connection get in the way of pursuing Pamphila or begged Parmeno for his help, here Chaerea takes action unconstrained by his previous life, though with grave consequences for the girl. He has found a way to escape the pattern in which he had been confined, and it is the tragic material that emphasizes this reinvention.

Chaerea has reinvented himself as a second Jupiter, a far cry from the tattered clothes he put on for his disguise as a eunuch.70 Jupiter is described in different guises in the painting: he appears both as a golden shower (585) and as a man (588), and this ability to metamorphosize himself seems to be part of what appeals to Chaerea.71 But the point of the scene is not simply to reveal Chaerea’s delusion. His adoption of tragic diction in this scene also points to how Terence has reworked comic material in a manner more familiar from tragedy.72 To be sure, many of the elements in this scene—money, rape, and an angry father—can be found in other plots from New Comedy.73 In fact, Menander uses the myth of Danae in the Samia, in a scene that I discuss below.74 Terence’s use of it, however, is entirely different from these comic an-tecedents and has more in common with the way the story is retold in tragedy.


the Danae myth. Sharrock 2009: 223–26 introduces the possibility that the scene alludes to Euripides’ Bacchae on the basis of several verbal and thematic parallels.

75 See James 1998: 40 on the significance of rape and violence in both the Eunuchus and the Hecyra. I disagree with Philippides 1995, who argues that elements of the scene recall the wedding ceremony. Frangoulidis 1993: 147 views the rape scene as a comedy within a comedy and thus emphasizes metatheater rather than any violence.

76 It is impossible to tell just what was portrayed in Menander’s Eunuchos, and whether there was a rape and if so, where it occurred in the play. Donatus comments only on dif-ferences between Menander and Terence’s presentation of Chaerea’s speech. Even if there was a rape in Menander’s play, however, what we know is the way in which Terence treats it, and how it is emphasized rather than papered over.

77 See n80 below.78 For discussions of this scene, cf. Hunter 1985: 124, Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004:

429–30, and Gutzwiller 2000.

To begin with, Terence does not adapt the rape to the comic setting.75 Its placement at the very center of the play is noteworthy, since in no other comedy does a rape take place during the narrative action of the play.76 Terence makes the violence more immediate, and will choose to allow the uncomfortable tragic aspects to be present rather than past in the scenes that follow.77 Terence’s treatment of the rape itself is also different. In the Samia, Menander handles Danae’s rape in a light and humorous fashion.78 The story is brought up by Demeas as part of a strategy to win Niceratus over to a marriage between his son Moschion and Niceratus’s daughter. In trying to pacify Niceratus, who is distraught over the birth of the couple’s child, Demeas appeals to the story of Jupiter’s rape of Danae (589–91):

οὐκ ἀκήκοας λεγόντων, εἰπέ μοι, Νικήρατε,τῶν τραγωιδῶν ὡς γενόμενος χρυσὸς ὁ Ζεὺς ἐρρύη διὰ τέγους καθειργμένην τε παῖδ’ ἐμοιχευσέν ποτε;

Tell me, Niceratus, haven’t you heard the tragedians say how Zeus became gold and slid through the roof and seduced a locked-up virgin?

Niceratus does not immediately catch Demeas’s drift. Demeas continues by asking him if his roof leaks, then continues in this ludicrous vein by suggest-ing that Zeus sometimes comes as water, sometimes as gold. In response to Niceratus’s skepticism, he goes on to say that given Niceratus’s own nobility, it is surely not impossible to imagine that Zeus would have found his daughter worthy to be a second Danae. Throughout the conversation, Niceratus gradu-ally shifts from sensing that he is being made a fool of to feeling flattered at his comparison to the figures in the myth. Demeas’s use of this myth finally succeeds in soothing Niceratus’s anger and he agrees to a marriage between his


79 See IV.iii. Her description of Pamphila functions as a kind of messenger speech (noted as well by Christenson 2013: 272), one that tells the girl’s side of the story just as Chaerea’s conversation with Antipho had portrayed his version of events. Barsby 1999 notes her unusual language in 643–44 and throughout the scene, while Moore 2013: 107–10 details the complexities of the metrical features of her speech. See also Rosivach 1998: 48–49 on Pythias’s role more generally.

80 Contrast, e.g., Ter. Ad. 470 and Men. Sam. 38–53, where rapists are ashamed for what they have done. On Moschion’s shame and the connection with his anger at the end of the play, see Konstan 2010: 45–49. Although Chaerea shows no remorse, the reac-tion of Thais’s servant Pythias shows that his actions were perceived as a wrong and a violation. On the uniqueness of this rape scene in New Comedy, see James 2013: 187 and Christenson 2013: 264 and 267.

81 See Smith 1994: 23–24.

daughter and Moschion. In the Samia, the story of Jupiter’s rape of Danae is an attempt to normalize rape and pregnancy as inevitable and even becomes part of a shared joke and resolution between the two families involved.

By contrast, in Terence’s Eunuchus, the myth is not told in jest, but appar-ently in earnest. It is told by the rapist himself as a kind of justification, rather than by a father who is trying to excuse or paper over his son’s misdeeds. Both Chaerea and the girl gaze upon the painting together, but there is no coming to terms or resolution between them like we see in the Samia. Instead Chaerea dominates and violates her. We learn later in some detail about the girl’s distress from Pythias, one of Thais’s servants.79 Terence seems intent on bringing out the destructive and aggressive dimensions of the rape rather than attempt to make it more explicable or forgivable, as it is handled elsewhere in New Comedy.80 Even the customary excuse, that the rapist was intoxicated, is absent in the Eunuchus.81 By not diminishing the violence of the act or its effects on the girl, Terence emphasizes the uncomfortable aspects of the rape and gives them due weight. The only thing comic in the scene is Chaerea’s self-comparison to Jupiter, but that only underscores the inappropriateness of his action.

Terence himself draws attention to this blending of tragic and comic ele-ments in the speech he has Chaerea deliver before recounting the rape. When he comes out of Thais’s house, he wonders if he will run into anyone. He wants someone to talk to so that he can enjoy boasting about his exploits, but is also afraid of doing so since he assumes he will be punished for his misdeed. He speaks explicitly of how these two emotions are blended and how one may spoil the other (550–52):


iamne erumpere hoc licet mi gaudium? pro Iuppiter,82

nunc est profecto interfici quom perpeti me possum,ne hoc gaudium contaminet vita aegritudine aliqua.

Is it safe to express my joy? By Jupiter, now is the time when I’m ready to endure death, so that life doesn’t spoil my joy with any anguish.

The reference to joy and pain in the last line of the quote obviously points to how pleased Chaerea is with himself and his natural fear of getting caught.83 Yet that is not all that is going on in line 552. The verb Terence uses, contami-net, is also significant, as it is the same word he uses in several prologues to describe the accusations made against his blending of sources.84 It is not out of the question to see what is blended here, namely gaudium and aegritudo, as emblematic of comedy and tragedy. This is all the more so when we consider how much the blending of various sources has been present throughout the scene. In addition to being represented in a painting, itself suggestive of the stage, the description of the rape includes both comic and tragic elements and possibly an allusion to the practice of contaminatio in Roman tragedy.85 Chaerea’s exclamation about the contaminatio of joy and pain looks ahead to the scene in which he begins playing a tragic part in the middle of a comedy.

Chaerea’s reinvention is thus the most elaborate case we have examined, both in its explicitness about his transformation and its relevance to the larger question of the playwright reworking comic material within the dra-matic tradition. Unlike the eunuch’s costume, a disguise that achieved no real change in status, Chaerea’s adoption of Jupiter’s role enables him to act upon his own desires. Out of the synthesis of two genres, Chaerea appears not as a repetitive copy, but as an independent and self-determining character. In just this way, a play based too closely on its original is fated to replicate its source, while a combination of plays and genres allows an opportunity for choice and creativity.

82 The address to Jupiter is unusual in comedy, but here anticipates Chaerea’s appropria-tion of Jupiter’s role when he is left alone with Pamphila. See also Chearea’s exclamation o Iuppiter at line 1048 when he learns he will marry Pamphila.

83 Barsby 1999 points to two other uses of this antithesis in Terence (An. 961 and aegri-tudo and laetitia in Haut. 679–80) and suggests it was a “commonplace” for the overjoyed exclamations of lovers. The use of the verb contaminare distinguishes the example here.

84 See n1 above. Germany 2008: 204–7 also notes the presence of contaminet here, though he discusses it in connection with the changes Terence has made to Menander’s Eunuchos, in particular the addition of Antipho and the shift from a monologue to a dialogue.

85 That is, if line 590 is a combination of both Ennius and Naevius. See also n69 above on the possibility that Naevius’s Danae was itself a contamination of two Sophoclean plays.


v. conclusionsBoth Chaerea and Terence are freed from the burden of their former roles through blending, Chaerea by blending different social roles, Terence by his use of sources. But the similarities between their positions do not indicate any straightforward equivalence between the two. Some have suggested that Chaerea is a stand-in for the playwright, others that Thais is, or Gnatho, or even Parmeno.86 The very number of proposals suggests that none of these theories can be correct. We do not need to identify Terence with any of his characters, and should not. The fact that we have four different cases of re-invention points to a range of possibilities for change and transformation.87 Chaerea’s case may be the most explicit about combining different source materials, but we need not assume that the playwright uses Chaerea as a model for himself. What is important is how pervasive reinvention is in the play as a whole. It operates at a metapoetic level and also as the subject matter of the play, showing Terence’s preoccupation with it both as an artist and in his art.

In any case, the parallels here cannot be strict, because a character’s re-inventing himself or his social role is not the same as Terence reinventing comedy. The metaphor of blending is not sufficiently descriptive for what happens at the level of the play, since different source materials cannot simply be poured like liquids into a smooth mixture. By bringing together elements from different sources, it is possible to structure and arrange them in many different ways, with profound consequences for both character development and the overall thrust of the play.88 Terence places Chaerea’s transformation

86 Sharrock 2009: 153–54 proposes a sequence of contenders: first Thais, who tells a story resembling a plot of New Comedy, then Parmeno, and then Chaerea, who wrests the idea of the eunuch disguise from Parmeno.

87 Each case of reinvention is different, but we can observe certain patterns among them. In three cases—Phaedria, Thais and Gnatho—we have a figure that is initially characterized in terms of a stereotype, but then rejects it in favor of a role that is much more personal and independent. These cases of reinvention take place soon, sometimes immediately, after the stereotype is announced. Chaerea’s case is different, since there is a gap between his playing a eunuch and playing Jupiter. Gnatho and Chaerea also stand apart from Phaedria and Thais in their self-importance and arrogance and use of allu-sions to other plays.

88 See the suggestive remarks of Armstrong 1995: 211–13 on ancient poetic theories of metathesis, in particular the fragment of Democritus about composing a kosmos out of different words (B 21 Diels-Kranz) and the idea attributed by Aristotle to Democritus and Leucippus that tragedy and comedy are both composed of the same elements/letters (Arist. Gen. corr. 1.2, 315b6–15). In speaking of Homer as constructing a kosmos from his words, Democritus suggests a parallel to his own conception of the construction of kosmoi of worlds out of the recombination of atoms.


from a passive and immature younger brother to a bold and aggressive agent right in the middle of the play, and the inclusion of the rape within dramatic time gives this event a prominence and significance that it does not have in other plays. Terence has transformed rape, a standard feature of New Comedy, from something that is largely a plot device to what becomes instead the dramatic center of attention. By reordering the sequence of the plot, he has produced something distinctive and new that offers different opportunities for reflection and critique.89

Perhaps the greatest effect is on how we read the ending of the play. In one way, it seems to fulfill the generic expectation that the girl will be revealed to be a citizen and the boy’s father will give permission for a wedding. But the conclusion is also jarring, since the unrepentant Chaerea has not expressed humility or learned any lesson.90 Paternal authority here has been eclipsed by Chaerea himself, who does much of the negotiating with Thais.91 And it is not only the father’s role that is diminished. Phaedria and Thais submit to an arrangement that will include Thraso and Gnatho, negating the steps towards agency and exclusivity that were taken earlier in the play and mark-ing a return to subservience. Terence demonstrates forcefully at the borders of his play how easy it is to slip back into dependent roles.

Terence confronts us with a stark contrast between the rape and the mar-riage and between Chaerea’s success and Phaedria and Thais’s regression. This kind of dissonance was present already in the central scene, which juxtaposed comic moments like the absurdity of Chaerea modeling himself on Jupiter with the raw violence of rape and its emotional consequences for the girl. In describing how Terence mixes tragic or dark elements and comedy, I do not mean to suggest that he is writing a tragedy, or even that he writes comedy with a tragic strain.92 The occasions on which Terence uses both tragic and comic elements point instead to another way in which comedy has become predictable. The genre depends heavily on stock characters and themes, as we learned in the prologue. But it has also become formulaic in the way it resolves

89 See Sharrock 2009: 274–75, who describes a farcical ending but one that also contains “the seed of social comment” (275).

90 See Christenson 2013: 269 and 273 on how Chaerea’s behavior might have affected an audience’s response to the ending.

91 It is Chaerea who establishes the bond between his family and Thais. He also plays middle-man between Thais and his father, both assuring Thais that his father will agree to a wedding and then reporting back to her that he has. See lines 872–75, 889–90, 1039, 1083.

92 Cf. Sharrock 2009: 221: “This [the Eunuch] is one of Terence’s most adventurous pieces of writing, not just because it offends against comic convention, but more particu-larly because it does so by half-jokingly, half-seriously entangling the play with tragedy.”


certain ethical problems. The references in the Eunuchus to myth and tragic plays, stories which share certain features with comedy, raise the possibility that there need not be only one way for the plot of the Eunuchus to develop. The comic resolution is not inevitable.

In the prologue, Terence may have posed as the passive recipient of a tradition who had nothing to do but follow in the footsteps of others. But by the end, he has made the case for a wide range of changes. Some of these, like the escape from the predicament of feeling trapped, are positive; others, like the overturning of social customs, are problematic and even disturbing. Terence’s central point is that reinvention is possible and that we do not have to be trapped by the past. But to escape it, we must free ourselves from being merely passive spectators to being more actively engaged and reflective about circumstances and the alternatives. The same is true for spectators of the play. Not only does Terence present characters who confront this dilemma in their own lives, but he provokes his audience to consider what is conventional and what is questionable in the comic tradition. Terence thus suggests that escap-ing comedy’s past depends not solely on the playwright and his choices, but also on whether the audience is capable of thinking critically about comic convention and its ethical import.

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Documents

Rothaus Caston (2014) Reinvention in Terences Eunuchus