Eunuchus

Eunuchus was Terence's most successful play and garnered unprecedented revenues when it debuted in 161 BCE. Terence, through the play's unprecedented emphasis on the immediacy of Pampila's rape, is provoking audience members, both male and female, to look at it from a fundamentally humane point of view. The notion of metatheater, generally used to describe a play's theatrical reflexiveness has drawn much attention in recent studies of Roman Comedy, especially in the case of Plautus, whose characters frequently broadcast their deceptive roles in terms of playmaking. The central character of Eunuchus is Thais. As characters in ancient drama do not seem to deliberately deceive audiences in monologues, Thais reveals herself to be a hooker with a heart of gold, in so far as she has genuine feelings of affection for Phaedria, is truthful with him, and wants to help Pamphila for the not entirely selfish reasons she has revealed.