SOURCE: "Love in Terence's Eunuch: The Origins of Erotic Subjectivity," in American Journal of Philology, Vol. 107, No. 1, Spring, 1986, pp. 369-93.

In the essay below, Konstan analyzes the complex and contradictory views of love presented in The Eunuch, focusing particularly on the unresolved tension between love and commerce inherent in the situation of the courtesan Thais.

Date operam, cum silentio animum attendite,
    ut pernoscati' quid sibi Eunuchus velit.
                —Eunuch, Prologue 44-45

Like all but one of Terence's comedies, the Eunuch has a double plot. One strand, which serves as the frame story, is based on a rivalry between two lovers: a more or less sympathetic young man, though not, in this case, destitute or subject to the control of a parsimonious father, versus the vainglorious mercenary soldier familiar in the genre (whose role here may derive from Terence himself rather than from Terence's Greek model, a play by Menander...