Adelphoe

Ctesipho falls in love with a slave-girl musician, but is afraid of exposing his romantic interest due to the strict education he's received from Demea.

Therefore, Aeschinus, in order to help his brother, decides to steal the girl away from the slave-dealer Sannio, accepting all blame for the affair.

In the last hundred lines of the play, Demea gives away a great deal of money and a large estate, convinces his brother to free two of his slaves, and then finally delivers a closing speech decrying all such liberality: "I will tell you: I did it to show you that what they think is your good nature and pleasantness did not happen from a true life, nor from justice and goodness, but from flattery, indulgence, and largess, Micio" (lines 985–988).

In his book The Music of Roman Comedy, Moore calls this the "ABC succession", where A = iambic senarii, B = other metres, C = trochaic septenarii.

Unusually for Terence, the play contains one short polymetric song (lines 610–617) with an irregular mixture of choriambic, wilamowitzianus, and other metres.

Fielding writes: “They had always differed in their sentiments concerning the education of their children … For young Nightingale was his uncle’s godson, and had lived more with him than with his father.” Again in Book XVIII, ch.