1. For the Latin text of all the Terence I cite or quote, I use Barsby (2001a and 2001b) with some modifications to punctuation; translations are my own.

2. Suet. Poet, fr.ll 1.37: Eunuchus quidem bis deinceps acta est meruitque pretium quantum nulla antea cuiusquam comoedia, octo milia nummum.

3. See Section 5 below. It is a curious feature of Terence’s prologues that the criticism of his compositional method precedes production of his first play, Andria (5–16); the customary carping of Terence’s critics is customary even from the start. The pre-production of Eunuch, tantalisingly described in the prologue of that play (20–26), furnishes evidence for how criticism might precede production.

4. Cf. the apologetic note of Barsby (2001b) 14 n.9 ad 28, defending his translating parasitus as ‘trickster’: ‘ …Phormio is a very different character from Gnatho in Eunuch, who is the traditional sponger.’ Donatus seizes upon what opportunities he can to point out Phormio’s parasitical language and behaviour: Phorm. 318 has Phormio metaphorically taking responsibility for his scheming in terms of cooking and eating. Cf. Donatus ad v.988. See Damon (1996), 93f. n.40, on bibliography of critical reception of Phormio as sycophant; Moore (2001), 256f.

5. The extent to which Terence has translated Apollodorus’ Phormio from a sycophant into a parasite dominates the critical literature on the play; Segal and Moulton (1978) advocate for Phormio as juridical stock type; Damon (1996), 92–95, contra (with bibliography at n.37 and n.40).

6. Cf. Demipho’s assessment of the two, Phorm. 264–67.

7. The subtleties and complexities of non-isometric relationships of power in the Terentian family structure have been recently studied by Anderson (2003–2004, and pp. 10–19 above), using Andria as his model text. Such inquiries into character portrayal require the ability and willingness to breathe into the flat script such facets of performative speech as demur irony or muted sarcasm; this allows for the assessment of character against the grain of conventional reception.

8. Damon (1996), 92f., on Phormio’s skills as fiction-making role-player.

9. Damon (1996), 90–98, reads Phormio’s amicable motivations with a robust scepticism, but I part company with her when it comes to reading his motivations i; a larger framework of the social pathology of defective patron/client relationships.

10. Cf. Plautus’ Gelasimus, whose comic bit as an auctioneer of his own wares (Stick 218–33) highlights just how little the stock parasite can offer patron or friend on the market of social exchange.

11. See Damon (1996), 16f. and 49f. (esp. n.30), for relevant discussion on the use of rex in patron/client relationships. Cf. Martin (1969) ad 70.

12. Terentian fathers may threaten to disown their sons in earnest should they stray beyond the limits of acceptable behaviour for sons-in-waiting. Self-Tormentor, Terence’s play most concerned with the disavowal of paternal duties to sons, features two different enactments (HT 102–08 and 928–46 [along with the following scene]) of fathers drawing the line of acceptable filial behaviour. Of course, Terentian drama specifically (and palliate comedy generally) interrogates assumptions of where, why and how that line needs to be drawn.

13. A generation before Terence, the opening scene of Plautus’ Pseudolus is already satirising the unavoidable erotic drive of the comic iuuenis essential to driving the comic plot which (as Calidorus and Pseudolus make plain) is not concerned with concocting a means to ‘love’, but rather a means to money for purchasing ‘love’.

Chaerea’s rape of Pamphila in Eunuch is the unique instance of Terence’s dramatic enactment of a maturational ‘crisis.’ And even in this (at least to our eyes) unseemly dramatisation the issue is not the defective nature of Chaerea’s character but rather the best means by which a re-sourceless youth can provide adequate recompense for the forceful indulgence of his desires.

14. HT 928–46 has Chremes providing the best instance of the fiscal (as opposed to the moral) foundation of paternal condemnation of youthful dissipation. Filial prodigality threatens paternal social security. Cf. also And. 48–102; HT 200–10; Hec. 116–24; Ad. 116–23.

15. And. 96–102 shows in the most compressed terms the ends of proper son-rearing: a son’s demonstration of self-restraint leads to the public identification of the son with his (self-possessed) father, causing a friend of the father to wish to transfer his family holdings—his only daughter and large dowry—through a marriage contract. HT 940–46 offers the paradigm case of unsuccessful child-rearing.

16. Bohm (1976) tracks the instances of the exchange of money between characters throughout Phormio to demonstrate its thematic importance to the whole play.

17. Arguments that Geta only means quasi magistrum to substitute for the metrically difficult paedagogum (Ashmore [1968], 162, adit, Martin [1969], 92), or to describe a tutorship appropriate to young men past the age of schooling (Bond and Walpole [1889] 87, ad 72) miss Davos’ use of paedagogus at 144 (in the same metre) to describe Phaedria’s self-abasement in attending to a citharistria. In his use of the term, Geta means to puff up his position: this is certainly how Davos understands the line and returns the joke.

18. The young man sometimes wishes for the girl to desire him reciprocally (which only causes an increase in the price of the object of his desire). Sometimes the girl expresses a desire to help out the interests of the young man; but such expressions happen in addition to or despite other arrangements of the transaction. Comic love may be sentimental, but certainly not romantic.

19. Hec. 122 has Parmeno compress the essential economic choice facing each of Terence’s iuuenes—market or household—into a single phrase: pudorin anne amori obsequeretur magis, ‘…should he follow pudor [reverence for father] or amor’.

20. So Moore (2001), 262: ‘Phormio, who according to his stock characteristics, his description by others, and his own self-description would seem to be the parasite par excellence, in fact appears almost altruistic, bringing benefits, with only vague or limited rewards for himself, throughout the play.’

21. Donatus ad 532 reads Dorio’s economics in the simplest terms of cash over prestige: semper commodum prius est quam fides. Reduced to its simplest terms, Phormio is about the conversion of a marriage settled for commodum into an arrangement of fides.

22. Naevius fashions himself a poeta in his epitaph (fr. 64.2 = Gellius NA 24.2); there the emphasis is upon the oral craft of Naevius’ use of the Latin language. Plautus never names himself a poeta, but reserves the term for Naevius (Cas. 18; cf. the reputed reference at MG 21 If.), or for the self-fashioning of a Pseudolus who searches for way to make up a sum of money out of thin air (Pseud. 401–05). Pseudolus puns on the fiscal meaning of tabellas (writing tablets/record books) as he imagines himself the poet writing up a fictitious sum of money in the plot of a play.

23. And. 6f. (maleuoli ueteris poetae, ‘malicious old poet’), HT 22 (maleuolus uetus poeta), Phorm. 1 (uetus poeta). Eun. 4–18 obliquely threatens a critical rival poet. Hec. 22 and Ad. 2 refer to carping aduersarii, ‘rivals’.

24. Duckworth (1952), 203, for contaminatio as fusing or grafting. Terence’s response to the charge of contaminatio defended: And. 8–21, HT 16–21, Eun. 19–34.

25. Ambivius plays the prologue for Self-Tormentor as well as for the third production of Mother-in-Law.

26. Donatus ad Phorm. 315. Cf. Segal and Moulton (1978), 276; Moore (2001), 256 n.6.