The Arbitration
Five months into the marriage a husband learns from his slave that his wife has borne a child too early for it to be his, moves out to drink with a hired harp-girl, and leaves both families arguing about the dowry. In the country, a shepherd and a charcoal-burner take their quarrel over the trinkets found with an exposed infant to the first respectable man on the road, who is the wife's father and has no idea whose case he is settling. About half the play survives on papyrus, and the arbitration scene was already famous in antiquity.
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Attributes
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Quest object (Greimas)
Symbol / motif
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 69% · 17 shared
- 63% · 15 shared
- 53% · 13 shared
- 51% · 10 shared
- 49% · 11 shared
- 49% · 10 shared