The Terentian Marriage Plot: Reproducing Fathers and Sons

Abstract

In this study, I examine what it means to be a father, a son, and the father-son relationship in three Terentian comedies, the Andria, Self-Tormentor, and Adelphoe. Like the Menandrian originals on which they are based, these plays all employ a marriage plot centring on a young man's efforts to win and or retain his beloved in marriage or a temporary union. In each case, the story (or stories) about the romantic union of a young man and woman takes a back seat to a story about the negotiations between men needed to forge that union. As in Menander's plays, this homosocial orientation invests Terence's marriage plot with a dense network of cultural and ideological concerns. These concerns surface most clearly in the characterisation of the obstacle to the young man's relationship. In the plays under consideration here, the primary obstacle to the marriage or love relationship is the young man's father. In most cases, the fathers only object to their sons having relationships with non-marriageable women when they (the fathers) decide that it is time for their sons to marry. Significantly, the perceived status discrepancy does not operate as an absolute barrier to the young man's romantic relationship in the father's eyes (as in Menander's extant plays and fragments). Rather, the problem arises when the son's desire to remain in the relationship conflicts with his father's desire that he marry a respectable woman. Because the obstacle is framed in this way—as a direct confrontation between the discordant desires of fathers and sons—Terence's marriage plots provide an important window on the ideology of the Roman family and its kinship structure.