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DRAMA
the original Andria the father was alone and narrated all this in a long monologue.
But in the Perinthia, a play of Menander which Terence alleges was
virtually identical in plot but different in ' style', the first scene was a conversation
between mother and father. Terence says that he has taken 'what suited'
from the Perinthia, and he makes it sound as though this was the source of all
the alterations which I.uscius criticized. Terence's commentator Donatus was
hard put to it to find any material or ideas specifically from the Perinthia, and
attributes to it the idea of a dialogue. Even so Terence's substitution of a freedman
for the wife is a substantial independent change. The scene as a whole,
although the first, is among the best of all those where Terence can be seen to
differ from his models; and yet, even here, the integration is not quite perfect.
The father wants Sosia to counteract his slave Davus' influence on his son
(50, i68f.), but nothing comes of this; and the integration of the scene with its
sequel is not quite right. 1
The other major change in the Andria was the introduction of a young man
Charinus and his slave Byrria. In Menander the man called Simo by Terence
(he rings the changes quite pointlessly on Menander's names) tried to force
Pamphilus' hand with respect to his unadmitted liaison with the girl next door
by pretending that Pamphilus shall marry a friend's daughter 'today'. The girl
next door, who was delivered of Pamphilus' baby during the play, was in fact
an Athenian citizen, and so could marry Pamphilus; the friend's daughter was
left unmarried at the end of the original. Neither girl actually appeared on stage.
Charinus' role is to be the friend's daughter's suitor and to marry her at the
end, after misapprehension as to Pamphilus' intentions. Thus a considerable
sub-plot is added to the action. It is Menandrian in character — Charinus'
misapprehensions are like those of Sostratos in the Dis exapaton (see p. 107) —
but the material in question cannot derive from the Perinthia in any simple
sense, unless Terence's allegation about the similarity of the plays is wholly
misleading. Terence's main reason for the addition was ' that there should not
be an element of sadness in the rejection of the girl without a husband and
Pamphilus' marriage to another' (Don. ad An. 301); that is an aesthetic reason,
and as such interesting: Terence thought that he could improve on Menander
in Menander's own terms — ethos and structure — and this is the earliest known
straightforward case in Roman literature of aemulatio, competition with Greeks
on their own terms. A secondary reason may have been a certain lack of confidence
on Terence's part in the simple and unadorned plot of Menander's
Andria. We may question Terence's success in both taste and execution. His
main motive reveals some sentimentality and the confusion of artificiality with
structural neatness. Again, although we never see Glycerium, she matters to
us because of what we are told about her, because she has her baby in our hear-
1 sequor or sequar at 171? cf. 204, 404.
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