Play: Andria

Overview
Terence’s Andria, first staged in 166 BCE, sets a sophisticated urban comedy in Athens around the tensions between youthful desire, paternal authority, and social status. Pamphilus, a young man of good family, is deeply in love with Glycerium, a quiet, modest girl raised in the household of Chrysis, a courtesan who had come from the island of Andros. Glycerium is believed to be foreign and thus ineligible for lawful marriage with a citizen. Pamphilus’s father, Simo, intends to break the attachment by arranging his son’s marriage to Philumena, the daughter of their neighbor Chremes. The play tracks the maneuvers, deceptions, and eventual recognition that reconcile love with law.

Plot
Simo opens by describing his plan: he has announced a wedding to Philumena as a test to force Pamphilus’s hand, while secretly gauging his true intentions. He suspects the clever household slave Davus is behind his son’s evasions and primes himself to outwit them. Chremes, hearing rumors of Pamphilus’s liaison and suspecting Glycerium’s presence, withdraws consent for the marriage, then wavers; this vacillation is both a real obstacle and a tool in Simo’s trap.

Pamphilus is torn between duty to his father and devotion to Glycerium, who is pregnant by him. Davus, improvising, assures Simo that Pamphilus accepts the arranged match, hoping to buy time or engineer an escape. The farce tightens when, during the preparations, Glycerium goes into labor. Her maid Mysis and the midwife Lesbia fuss in the background, and the cries of childbirth betray the truth to Simo. Outraged by what he sees as shameless defiance, he resolves to force the marriage through to humiliate Davus’s plots. Meanwhile, Carinus, a friend of Pamphilus, loves Philumena himself and pleads with Pamphilus to renounce her, adding emotional pressure to the already tangled scheme.

A stranger, Crito, arrives from Andros claiming to be Chrysis’s kinsman and executor, with legal claims over her estate and household. He reveals that Glycerium was not Chrysis’s sister after all, but a foundling brought up as such. At first the news worsens Glycerium’s position: if she is a foreigner without citizen status, marriage to Pamphilus is impossible. Yet in the best New Comedy fashion, clues emerge, tokens, a story of a daughter lost years earlier on Andros, that point to a different truth. Chremes recognizes the signs: Glycerium is his own long-lost child, entrusted to others and separated by accident during travels. As his daughter, she is an Athenian citizen and eligible to marry.

Themes and Style
The play explores the negotiation between eros and nomos, the claims of love versus the constraints of law and family strategy. Terence replaces coarse caricature with humane characterization: Pamphilus is dutiful yet ardent; Glycerium’s virtue under pressure makes her sympathetic; Simo’s severity is tinged with concern; Davus’s trickery is resourceful rather than anarchic. The childbirth scene, conducted offstage but audible, brings domestic realism into comedy, while recognition motifs and legal niceties about citizenship drive the plot. Terence’s refined language and ethical shades distinguish his approach from broader farce, emphasizing persuasion, self-control, and mutual accommodation.

Resolution and Significance
With Glycerium identified as Chremes’s daughter, Simo consents to her marriage with Pamphilus, and the earlier obstacle turns into legitimation. Carinus, relieved, can wed Philumena, satisfying both friendship and neighborly alliances. Davus, who has skirted disaster, escapes punishment, and paternal authority is reasserted without cruelty. The ending harmonizes private desire and public order, a hallmark of Hellenistic New Comedy that Terence transposes into Latin with tact and polish. Andria’s deft entanglement of deception, recognition, and social law announces Terence’s characteristic strengths: psychological clarity, moral balance, and elegant construction.