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The Terentian Marriage Plot: Reproducing Fathers and Sons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Susan Lape
Susan Lape*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
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Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 33 , Issue 1-2: Rethinking Terence , 2004 , pp. 35 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 2004

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References

1. In this study, I am not investigating the relationship between Terence’s comedies and the Menandrian originals on which they are based. For this issue with reference to the father-son plays see, e.g., Goldberg (1986); Fantham (1971); Gratwick (1999).

2. Sedgwick (1985) discusses homosocial desire as a force operating within the context of heterosexuality but aiming at forging social bonds between members of the same sex.

3. For the obstacle to the young man’s desire as key to comedy’s ideological investments, see Konstan (1983).

4. See further Fantham (1971); Hunter (1985), 95–109; Sherberg (1995).

5. On patria potestas, see Crook (1967); Gardner (1993), 52–55, 68f., 71f.; Sailer (1986, 1987 and 1991).

6. On the meaning of paterfamilias, see Sailer (1999).

7. Hopkins (1983), 244.

8. Veyne (1987), 29f. For criticism of this view, see Gardner (1993), 63–66. For criticism of the preoccupation with paternal power in the study of the Roman family, see Dixon (2001), 14.

9. Gardner (1993), 54–66; Sailer (1991).

10. Sailer (1987), 32.

11. Although the tradition of father/son hostility in Roman folktales does not reflect historical situations, the very existence of such a tradition suggests tension in the father/son relationship; see Hopkins (1983), 244 n.59.

12. For the role of law in shaping kinship in Athens, see Lape (2002–03 and 2004).

13. Schneider (1984), 165–77; Carsten (2000), 6–14.

14. For kinship statuses conceived as permanent states of being arising from the facts of procreation, see Schneider (1984), 165f.; Faubion (2001), 12; Stevens (1999). I state that these kinship statuses are relatively content-neutral because sociobiology and evolutionary psychology argue that natural kinship carries or usually carries affectivity between parents and offspring.

15. Adoptive fathers, however, are also depicted as having strong affection for their children, as Micio—uncle of his adopted son—does in Adelphoe.

16. For the father/son relationship in the Andria, see McGarrity (1978).

17. All translations are adapted from Barsby (2001a and 2001b).

18. McGarrity (1978), 104. Sherberg (1995), 95f., discusses the similarity between Andria 260–64 and Menander’s Samia. Moschion’s situation in the Samia differs, however, in that he does not have a conflict between paternal power and love and duty as in the Andria. Rather, he has conflicting motivations because he wants to punish his father for thinking ill of him by disappearing from the polis to become a mercenary but cannot do so because of his prior obligation to Plangon (Sam. 623–36).

19. The promise Chrysis extracted from Pamphilus places him in the additional roles of tutor and pater of Glycerium (295).

20. Arist. EN 1106b36–1107a4.

21. See further Scafuro (1997), 363 with n. 45.

22. For Simo’s inability to discern the clues around him, see Scafuro (1997), 365–68.

23. The play focuses on the means rather than the end of moral education. That is to say, the content of a moral education receives scant attention. For the ends of education in the play, see Greenberg (1979–80).

24. That both Micio and Demea have flawed characters suggests that neither brother’s educational philosophy is unimpeachable—see further Grant (1975). For criticism of attempts to interpret the play as offering a serious study in educational philosophy, see Goldberg (1986), 99; Henderson (1999), 56. Leigh (2004), 160–62, however, links Micio’s and Demea’s conflicting ideas about how to educate children to contemporary debates surrounding Greek education in Rome.

25. For the philosophical background of this distinction, see Rieth (1964), Grant (1975); Lord (1977).

26. See further Lord (1977).

27. According to Sailer (1987), the average age of men at marriage in Rome was 25.

28. Grant (1975), 45, points out that the motivation for Micio’s generosity refutes Rieth’s interpretation of Micio as the ideal Peripatetic father. See further Lord (1977) for systematic criticism of Rieth’s view.

29. Demeas’ behaviour toward Moschion in the Samia may be a relevant parallel insofar as, like Micio, he is extremely generous to his adopted son.

30. This is not say that adoptive parents and their children were seen as lacking in family feeling. Rather, judging from Terence’s Adelphoe, the difference between given and adoptive kinship in the sphere of affectivity hinges on issues of its stability and presumed permanence.

31. Even Aeschinus seems to see his father as over-accommodating. When Micio has forgiven Aeschinus for his misdeeds and arranged his marriage, Aeschinus wonders:

quid hoc est negoti? hoc est patrem esse aut hoc est filium esse?
si frater aut sodalis esset, qui magis morem gereret?
(Ad. 707f.)
What about this? Is this what it means to be a father or a son?
If he were a brother or a friend, how could he be more obliging?

32. Fantham (1971), 972, however, argues that Aeschinus is the ‘stronger, more generous, and high-principled boy’. Whether or not Aeschinus is the more principled son, the fact remains that he, like his brother, has been unable to control his passions and incapable of confessing his behaviour to his father. For the similarities between the sons, see Lord (1977).

33. The status of the music girl is unclear. Aeschinus justifies his behaviour in abducting the girl by adducing a law forbidding the sale of freeborn Athenians. Although the girl is treated as a slave in the rest of the play, this thread in the plot is never resolved, leaving open the possibility that the girl was a citizen. For discussion of this scene (taken from Diphilus and grafted onto the Menandrian plot) see Gratwick (1999), 185.

34. For this point, see Konstan (1995); Lape (2004); Scafuro (1997).

35. Demea, however, attributes Aeschinus’ behaviour to Micio’s general extravagance (760).

36. For the conventions of the New Comic rape plot, see Konstan (1995), Lape (2001), Omitowoju (2002), Pierce (1997), Rosivach (2001).

37. See Lape (2001).

38. See Scafuro (1997), 252–55.

39. Lord (1977), 191f.

40. Micio in the Adelphoe is in many respects the opposite of Simo in the Andria in that he has actually encouraged Aeschinus’ decisional autonomy. The problem, however, is that by indulging Aeschinus, Micio has not helped his son to cultivate restraint or self-control.

41. He continues to worry about Aeschinus because alienus non sum (‘he’s my flesh and blood’, 137).

42. Faubion (2001), 12.

43. See Fantham (1971), 191; Grant (1975); Gratwick (1999), 43f.

44. See Ogden (1996); Lape (2004).

45. For egalitarianism and exclusivity as the core principles of democratic ideology, see Ober and Strauss (1990).

46. See esp. Andria 889–92 and 879f.

47. For Plautus’ comedy and the negotiation of hierarchy in Roman culture, see McCarthy (2000).