The Eunuch

The Eunuch (Eunuchus) is a comedy in Latin verse by the Roman playwright Terence, active in the second century BC. It adapts two comedies by the Greek writer Menander, though Terence combines and reshapes them in his own way. The date of its first performance has been much debated: the manuscript sources give conflicting details, but the most widely accepted view places the premiere in 161 BC, during the Megalesian Games, with a second staging in 146 BC during the Roman Games.

The action takes place on a street in Athens, between the houses of Phaedria, Chaerea and the courtesan Thais. Thais has two suitors: the boastful soldier Thraso, who offers her a young slave girl, Pamphila, and the young Phaedria, who gives her an old and ugly eunuch. Chaerea, Phaedria's brother, falls in love with Pamphila and, disguised as a eunuch, slips into Thais's house, where he assaults her while she sleeps. The situation becomes serious, but the play resolves it through the conventions of the genre with a happy ending: Chaerea marries Pamphila, who turns out to be a free-born girl, and Thais is reconciled with Phaedria.

The play was Terence's greatest success during his lifetime. According to the Life of Terence, it was performed twice in a single day and earned him eight thousand sesterces. It is also the Terentian comedy most frequently quoted by ancient authors such as Cicero, Horace, Quintilian and Augustine. It is often regarded as the most Plautine of his works: the author partly sets aside his reflective and learned tone in favour of a livelier, more popular air. Dante alludes to Terence's Thais in Canto XVIII of the Inferno, and the play inspired later adaptations by Jean de La Fontaine, Brueys and Palaprat, and Michel Carré. Modern critics count it among Terence's most entertaining works, praising the psychological depth of its characters, especially Thais and Phaedria.