In the early second century bc Plautus and Terence both use domestic situations as the basis for their plays, which are acknowledged to be heavily influenced by Greek models but to some extent modified to suit Roman audiences. There is still dispute over the detail. Cases of adoption mentioned by Plautus have generally been thought to reflect Greek rather than Roman customs. There are three relevant passages reviewed by Paoli (Paoli [1963] 548–51). The first is in Menaechmi:

Here an Epidamnian trader has kidnapped one of the brothers Menaechmi at Tarentum, where he had been taken on a business trip by his real father. The trader carried him off home to Epidamnus and treated him like a son. The process is described as an adoption, although under the circumstances there can have been no official procedure, no granting of patria potestas, such as would occur under a Roman adoption. The author reflects ideas about adoption in the Greek rather than the Roman world. Even so, the whole case is highly irregular, since the status of the child is the result of fraud. The trader might nevertheless have passed off the child as his own in his phratry. None of this is revealed in the play.