adolescent sons should be handled with openness and tolerance.
Micio's method seems to be presented for most of the play as the more humane and sympathetic one, and also the
more successful. Demea's blind confidence makes him an appropriate comic butt, and Micio seems much more in
control of events. But towards the end of the play there is a startling reversal: Demea starts to dominate at the
expense of Micio, forcing him to agree to a number of unwelcome proposals (not least that he should marry a
'decrepit old woman'); and it looks as if the final judgement of the play is that Micio's approach was over-indulgent
and excessively easy-going. This is very hard to reconcile with the rest of the play. Demea turns the tables on Micio
and makes us laugh; but we are left uncertain where our sympathies should lie. Many scholars feel that Menander
would not have written an ending so much at odds with the bulk of the play and that it is Terence who has sacrificed
consistency to a desire to entertain or satisfy his Roman audience. But Adelphoe is not only about tolerance and
strictness; it is also concerned with love between father and son and with lack of self-knowledge. Its handling of
these themes combines comedy with telling characterization. It is precisely because the play is otherwise so
successful that the ending has been found a puzzle; and the merits of the ending have long been hotly debated and
will long continue to be so.
Plautus and Terence have survived; and they have influenced the European dramatic tradition. Ralph Roister Doister
makes use of Plautus' Miles Gloriosus and Terence's Eunuchus; The Comedy of Errors is based on Plautus'
Menaechmi and Amphitruo. Molicre is one of many playwrights to have adapted the latter play, and he also followed
Plautus' Aulularia (in L'Avare) and Terence's Adelphoe (in L'Ecole des maris) and Phormio (in Les Fourberies de
Scapin). Boastful soldiers, rediscovered foundlings, and scheming servants have long been standard ingredients of
comic writing, not only for the stage: although P. G. Wodehouse told me (when I wrote to ask him) that he had not
read Plautus or Terence, his Jeeves is clearly heir to the tradition of the scheming servant.
Ennius
One author who has not survived except in fragments must be mentioned because of his importance in the
development of Latin literature. This is Ennius (239-169 B.C.). We have more certain information about his life than
about those of Plautus and Terence: born in Calabria, he was brought to Rome in 204 or 203 by M. Porcius Cato and
gave lectures on poetry. He accompanied M. Fulvius Nobilior on his Aetolian campaign in 189 and wrote in praise of
his patron's achievements. His name is also linked with those of other prominent Romans. One benefit which he
derived from such patronage was the Roman citizenship, conferred on him in 184 (by Nobilior's son, according to the
traditional but unreliable account).