Nothing’s said now but has been said before.

The prologue sets the humorous tone of story: Terence has to defend himself against the Eunuch of Menander, to whom he gives the play to read. The eunuch calls hims a "thief," saying he stole his characters from other plays. Terence defends borrowing characters from stage traditions, saying everything has been said before and implying that every playwright who uses a character "type" is a thief if what the eunuch says is true. What might strike modern readers as humorous is a playwright asserting, 2,000 years ago, that everything's already been said. But Terence is, in a comic way, reassuring his audience that that they are getting a play solidly set within a known comic tradition:

[In] Spite of myself I love; and knowing, feeling,
With open eyes run on to my destruction;
And what to do I know not.

In this famous quote, Phaedria acknowledges that Thais treats him terribly: she is "false" and "monstrous," he says, after she bars him from her home. But he is caught in love's perennial dilemma: he knows, he has "open eyes" to what his beloved is, and yet, love's madness is such that he can't help but run toward the one he fears will destroy him.

Ah me! I fear lest Phædria take offense
And think I meant it other than I did,
That he was not admitted yesterday.

In the second act, however, Terence offers Thais's point of view. This bewitching courtesan is not as all powerful and "monstrous" as Phaedria believes. Here, Thais shows her vulnerability, and her dependence on wealthy and powerful men like Phaedria—she is trying to survive and now fears Phaedra has taken undue offense at her decision not to allow him in her house the day before. There is pathos beneath the comedy as the players agendas collide.