323Athenian Law as Source of Inspiration: Apollodorus and Terence’s Phormio

Apollodorus of Carystus was widely held in antiquity as one of the great masters of New Comedy, while the fact that he was the only other conspicuous model for Terence prompted several modern critics to label him a follower of Menander. The scant fragments surviving from his corpus inhibit firm conclusions regarding the distinct character of Apollodoran dramaturgy, but the reception of two of his plays, Epidikazomenos and Hekyra , by Terence, in Phormio and Hecyra respectively, may enable some temptingly plausible arguments as to the originality of Apollodorus. Specifically, both plays revel in a series of inversions of traditional New Comedy conventions in plot and themes, favoring plots that revolve around Athenian family law, which they nonetheless manipulate. The comic effect produced by these legally impossible situations invites intriguing speculation concerning the extent to which the source of the experimentation with Athenian law may have been Apollodorus himself.