SOURCE: An introduction to Terence: The Self-Tormentor, edited and translated by A. J. Brothers, Aris & Phillips Ltd, 1988, pp. 1-26.

Below, Brothers surveys characterization and plot devices in The Self-Tormentor, and also explores some of Terence's sources for the play.

It has long been part of scholarly practice to attempt to understand the relationship of the Roman comedies to their lost Greek originals, and to try to pinpoint the additions, omissions and alternations of the Roman dramatists and recover the original Greek form - to play, in fact, 'hunt the New Comedy' with the text of a Terence (or Plautus) play. Though this type of activity has its limitations, particularly if carried out to the exclusion of other studies, it is nevertheless not merely legitimate but interesting and valuable.

Such investigations are always difficult, because we have so little to go on. With [Terence's The Self-Tormentor], the problem is...