Epitrepontes

Epitrepontes (‘arbitrants’), Greek comedy by Menander, of which half is preserved intact on several papyri and a further sixth in fragments.

During the absence of her husband Charisios, Pamphilē has borne a child five months after her marriage, and has exposed it with the help of her old nurse Sophronē. Charisios, told of this by his slave Onesimos, leaves home to stay with a friend Chairestratos and invites the harp-girl Habrotonon to join him, to the great indignation of Pamphile's unpleasant father Smikrines. A shepherd Daos finds the child and gives it to a charcoal burner Syriskos whose wife has lost her own baby, but Daos and Syriskos dispute possession of some trinkets found with the child and agree to submit to the arbitration of a passer-by. This chances to be Smikrines, who judges that the trinkets, being evidence of parentage, should accompany the child. Onesimos recognizes one as being his master's ring, and thus Charisios, already repenting of his priggish self-righteousness, is eventually revealed as having himself seduced Pamphile at a festival before their marriage and being the father of her exposed child. With the kindly help of Habrotonon all are reconciled and the play ends with the discomfiture of the objectionable Smikrines who, unaware of the turn of events, arrives determined to remove his daughter.

Terence's Hecyra resembles the Epitrepontes in plot.