The Brothers Menaechmus

Menaechmus is one of the play’s protagonists. He is a young man who inherited great wealth from his adopted father, is married to a wealthy woman, and acts as a patron for a number of clients. He therefore has authority and status in the city. According to Peniculus, he is “the greatest eater,” and the play dramatizes his appetite for food, wine and wealth. He is in love with a prostitute named Erotium. 

Menaechmus has abundant faith in his own worth, partly bolstered by the systematic flattery of his lover and parasite. When he first enters the stage, for example, he hyperbolically presents his theft of a dress from his wife as a great military exploit: “pin your medals right on me […]”, he exclaims, “look how I’ve battled with such guts” (128-29). Furthermore, when he thinks Peniculus has betrayed him, he portrays himself as a king or “royal patron,” betrayed by “my Ulysses,” i.e., by his loyal adviser (902).

For all his status, however, he feels trapped by his marriage. His first song reveals he is a henpecked husband and continually rebuked by his wife, who will not let him out of her sight. Instead of a wife, he feels he has a “customs office bureaucrat,” since “I must declare the things I’ve done, I’m doing, and all that!” (117-18).