Terence’s Adelphoe according to Seneca’s De Ira: a “tragicomedy” of anger?

Abstract

This article intends to point out convergent points between the philosophical thought about the passion of anger by Seneca in his treatise and the comic characterization of this vice in the Terence’s comedy Adelphoe. Reading the play following Seneca’s perspective, Demea, a typical pater iratus, is easily associated with the vice of anger, but the same philosophical work would allow us to understand Micio as someone involved by this pathos as well: after all, when secondary to other vices, says Seneca, anger can be momentarily hidden or can manifest in less strident ways. Understanding Micio as na angry and proud character elucidates the end of the play, when him, who has had a relatively positive attitude to raise his son, is abandoned by the boy at the end of the comedy. Finally, adopting the interpretatation that both the senes are trapped in anger, a feeling that brings nothing but destruction, we understand his creation of a lenient and arrogant persona to deal with his brother, which arouses the desire for revenge in him. Endowed with a punctual failure that makes him lose everything, Micio, in a way, resembles a tragic character appropriate to the tragedies of Seneca, in a smaller comic record.