Alan H. ZEITLIN Non ...ut in comoediis : Male Identity, Marriage, and Closure in Terence's Hecyra

The traditional model of citizen male identity in both Greece and Rome conditioned the domestic authority of citizen males on their possessing moral knowledge -- a key aspect of which is knowing that in the domestic sphere they must fulfill society's sometimes inconvenient demands (such as fatherhood). The comic tradition had generally validated this model by showing citizen males ultimately accepting society's domestic requirements. Marriage was often used to mark closure, signalling a happy ending, but only when the husband (whose domestic authority it confirmed) possessed such moral knowledge.

Terence's Hecyra offers a novel view of the dangers inherent in this traditional model. The play accomplishes this by first locating an awareness of the need to bear domestic inconveniences almost exclusively in female characters, and then contrasting two troubled married couples. One couple, old Laches and his wife, Sostrata, reunite when Laches recognizes his wife's willingness to bear discomfort for the good of the family, and himself embraces this "feminine" value. This "feminization" amounts to an ethical anagnorisis for Laches, and (somewhat paradoxically) only through it is he able to enter into a traditional and satisfying (re-)marriage, in which the husband has the moral knowledge that justifies his domestic authority.

But the husband of the play's younger focal couple, Pamphilus, son of Laches and Sostrata, never gains such moral knowledge. True, he learns the bare facts of his situation. Having attempted to end his marriage because he believed his wife had given birth to an illegitimate child, Pamphilus ultimately realizes that the child is his own: he himself perpetrated (on a stranger, he thought) the pre-marital rape that produced it. On this basis he is prepared to reunite with her. But recognition of the facts fails to produce the conventional ethical anagnorisis of comedy. Pamphilus expresses no regret for either the rape or his attempt to end the marriage. And, far from accepting the temporary inconvenience of reconciling those whom he has hurt, his wife and parents, he launches an ill-conceived cover-up of his rape, preposterously claiming that neither his father nor his mother (both not merely sympathetic, but exemplary characters) deserves to know of it.

By failing to accept the feminine value of bearing incommoda in the domestic sphere, Pamphilus both fails to live up to traditional social expectations and drains the comic convention of (re-)marriage of its traditional positive meaning. Possessing domestic authority, but without moral knowledge, Pamphilus engineers a bleak future for all concerned and an ending to the play that, far more disturbingly than he himself realizes, is indeed non ... ut in comoediis (866).