The Brothers

The Brothers (Latin Adelphoe) is a comedy by the Roman playwright Terence, active in the second century BC. It was first performed in 160 BC at the funeral games held for Lucius Aemilius Paulus Macedonicus. In the usual ordering of Terence's work, it is his last surviving play, and it is often regarded as one of his finest.

The play is adapted chiefly from a Greek comedy of the same name by Menander, although Terence acknowledges in the prologue that he also took a scene from Diphilus's comedy Synapothnescontes. It is less a play of action than of ideas. Its core is a contrast between two models of upbringing: Demea, a strict and authoritarian father who personally supervises his son Ctesipho, and his brother Micio, a cheerful, permissive bachelor who has adopted Aeschinus and raised him with great freedom.

The plot turns on a tangle of deceptions. Aeschinus abducts a slave music-girl from the slave-dealer Sannio, apparently to satisfy his own desires, but really to help his shy brother Ctesipho, who is in love and too afraid of their father to say so. Meanwhile Aeschinus secretly loves Pamphila, a poor but virtuous girl, and eventually marries her. When everything comes to light, Ctesipho keeps his beloved, Aeschinus weds Pamphila, and Demea gives up the principles that had governed his son's education. The old man's conversion, however, stresses the damage of excessive severity more than it endorses total indulgence.

Terence does not seem to favour either extreme. As in other plays, he appears to advocate a middle path between rigour and permissiveness. The metrical variety of the text, which shifts between verse forms to express mood and emotion, shows his mastery of the craft.

The comedy had lasting influence and inspired Molière's The School for Husbands.