Following the relationships between prostitutes and their customers, it contains perhaps Plautus's most cynical depiction of human nature in comparison with his other surviving plays.
The title means "Truculent (or Surly)", referring to the bad-tempered slave who tries to prevent his young master Strabax from wasting money on his love affair with the courtesan Phronesium, but who later himself falls for the charms of her maid Astaphium.
Phronesium, the main prostitute, relentlessly persuades every male she encounters to give her all their money, by means of trickery or more often by simple flirtation.
She attempts to gain more by making him jealous, feigning excitement over the gifts of Diniarchus, and later pretending to be in love with a third man, Strabax, her rather dimwitted farming neighbor.
The slave from whom the play gets its name, Truculentus, attempts to protect his dimwitted master Strabax from wasting the family's fortune at the whorehouse.
The play is brought to a close when a gentleman called Callicles arrives, looking for the baby his daughter had as a result of being raped.
The overall scheme, taking A = iambic senarii, B = other metres, C = trochaic septenarii, is as follows: As frequently occurs in Plautus's comedies, the third of the five sections is taken up with a trick carried out to obtain money.
In this play the trickster is Phronesium, who dresses up in maternity clothes and uses a baby as a prop in order to deceive the soldier Stratophanes.