The Woman of Andros

novel by Wilder

Also known as: “The Andrian Girl”

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Article History

The Woman of Andros, play by Terence, produced in 166 bce as Andria. It has also been translated as The Andrian Girl. Terence adapted it from the Greek play Andria by Menander and added material from Menander’s Perinthia (The Perinthian Girl).

The relationship of a father, Simo, and his son, Pamphilus, is central to The Woman of Andros, in which Simo engages Pamphilus in an arranged marriage although Pamphilus wants to marry his sweetheart from Andros, the mother of his child. Simo’s schemes and self-delusion set up the play’s comic situations. Dialogues, rather than the conventional monologues used by other playwrights of the time, enhance the play’s dramatic movement. Also unusual in a Roman comedy is the fact that Terence’s characters are not comic caricatures but fully realized people.

Terence’s The Woman of Andros was the basis of several later works, including the play The Conscious Lovers by Sir Richard Steele (1723) and the novel The Woman of Andros by Thornton Wilder (1930).

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.