SOURCE: "Phormio: Citizen Disorder," in Roman Comedy, Cornell, 1983, pp. 115-29.

In the excerpt below, Konstan explores the theme of private emotion versus social codes in Phormio.

Terence particularly favored such plots as the frame story in [Plautus's] Cistellaria, based on the elementary triangle of stubborn father, enamored son, and maiden apparently ineligible for marriage. Thus R. H. Martin remarks, in the introduction to his excellent school edition of the Phormio [Terence: Phormio, 1959]:

The following elements of plot are found in all Terence's plays except the Hecyra. Two young men, often brothers, are engaged in love affairs. One of them loves a courtesan, the other wishes to marry a young woman, who is either poor but freeborn, or ostensibly a courtesan. The father opposes his son's marriage or even wants him instead to marry the daughter of a friend or relation. The young woman turns out to be freeborn...