Month: July 2021

As presented by Plautus in Rome about the year 206 BGC, Periplectomenus was a fifty-four year-old man who had never married. He had a lively mind, was in good health, and owned his own house. He also attended dinner parties, enjoyed dancing, and was still interested in love affairs with women. Periplectomenus explained why he wasn’t seeking to get married:

Yes, a good wife is sweet to marry, if there were any family on earth
where one could be found. But should I really marry a woman
who’d never say to me: “My dear husband, would you buy me wool from which
I can make a soft and warm cloak for you and good winter tunics,
so that you won’t feel cold this winter?” These words you’d never hear from a wife.
Instead, before the cock crows, she’d stir me from my sleep and
say: “My dear husband, give me something to give to my mother on the first of the month,
give me something to make preserves, give me something to give to the sorceress
on Minerva’s festival, to give to the dream interpreter, to the clairvoyant, and to the soothsayer.
It’s a disgrace if nothing is sent to the woman who uses eyebrows to prophesy.
Furthermore, there’s no avoiding a present to the woman who folds the clothes.
The woman delivering our food has been angry for a while already for not getting any tips.
The midwife also complained to me that she’s receiving too little.
What? You’re not going to give anything to the nurse feeding the slaves born in the house?”
Women cause these losses and many similar others.
They keep me away from a wife, for she would torment me with such talk.

{ Nam bona uxor suave ductu est, si sit usquam gentium
ubi ea possit inveniri; verum egone eam ducam domum,
quae mihi numquam hoc dicat “eme, mi vir, lanam, unde tibi pallium
malacum et calidum conficiatur tunicaeque hibernae bonae,
ne algeas hac hieme” — hoc numquam verbum ex uxore audias —
verum prius quam galli cantent quae me e somno suscitet,
dicat “da, mi vir, kalendis meam qui matrem munerem,
da qui faciam condimenta, da quod dem quinquatrubus
praecantrici, coniectrici, hariolae atque haruspicae;
flagitium est si nil mittetur quae supercilio spicit;
tum plicatricem clementer non potest quin munerem;
iam pridem, quia nihil abstulerit, suscenset ceriaria;
tum opstetrix expostulavit mecum, parum missum sibi;
quid? nutrici non missuru’s quicquam quae vernas alit?”
haec atque huius similia alia damna multa mulierum
me uxore prohibent, mihi quae huius similes sermones serant. }[1]

In many countries today, the earnings of a husband and wife belong equally to both. If a woman earns nothing, than a man who marries her effectively provides half of his income to her. That’s a very expensive way to buy the possibility of having sex, or to buy cooking and housecleaning services of the minimal sort that many men actually prefer.

The solution to men’s concern about potential wives wasting money is obvious. Men should encourage women to work in stressful, demanding jobs that provide high pay. Men, in contrast should occupying themselves with important, home-based work such weightlifting, cleaning and polishing motorcycles and guns, and helping kids to play video games. Then men should insist on dating and marrying only women who earn much more money than they do. As long as a husband gets his half of his wife’s much higher earnings, why should he care if she wastes some of the money she earns?

Periplectomenus rejected opportunities to marry wealthy women. He explained:

My house is free, and I’m also free. I want to live freely.
Actually because of my wealth, I should say thanks to the gods,
I could have married a wife with a rich dowry from a very high-status family,
but I don’t want to bring a female barker into my house.

{ liberae sunt aedis, liber sum autem ego; me volo vivere.
nam mi, deum virtute dicam, propter divitias meas
licuit uxorem dotatam genere summo ducere;
sed nolo mi oblatratricem in aedis intro mittere. }

Periplectomenus used the neologism “female barker {oblatratrix}” in referring to a wife. Plautus’s Casina includes a related dialogue between the husband Lysidamus and his servant Olympio:

Lysidamus: What’s that? Who are you arguing with, Olympio?

Olympio: With the same woman you are always arguing with.

Lysidamus: With my wife?

Olympio: What wife are you talking about? You’re like a hunter:
day and night you spend your life with a bitch.

{ Lysidamus: quid istuc est? quicum litigas, Olympio?

Olympio: cum eadem qua tu semper.

Lysidamus: cum uxoren mea?

Olympio: quam tu mi uxorem? quasi uenator tu quidem es:
dies ac noctes cum cane aetatem exigis. }[2]

In contrast to myths of patriarchy, men throughout history have been terrorized and traumatized at the thought of a domineering, barking wife. No amount of money can compensate a husband for being married to a “rabid bitch {rabiosa femina canes}.”[3]

Classicists, medievalists, and other literary scholars have tended to trivialize men’s voices expressing marital horrors and men’s sexed protest. Smugly smearing men for “misogyny” is no way to understand truthfully women’s and men’s intimately related lives throughout human history. Men often remain silent about important aspects of their lives because they sense that their voices won’t encounter compassionate, attentive listening, but will only prompt vicious personal attacks on them. Meninist literary criticism takes men’s voices seriously in their protests about women and gender. That’s merely humane practice. If you’re not a meninist, you’re a bigot. You’re the hater that you imagine men to be.

* * * * *

Read more:

• why were men reluctant to marry in ancient Rome?
• men reluctant to marry for money; prefer beautiful women
• Jerome & Augustine valued men’s sexuality against Galli servants

Notes:

[1] Plautus, The Braggart Soldier {Miles Gloriosus}, vv. 685-700, Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from De Melo (2011). Subsequent quotes from Plautus are similarly from the edition of De Melo (2011). The subsequent quote above is Miles Gloriosus, vv. 678-81. For Miles Gloriosus, the Latin text of Leo (1895) and the English translation of Riley (1912) are freely available through Perseus. Married women {matronae} in Plautus’s plays are “constantly nagging battleaxes,” with the exception of the warmly receptive Alcmene in Amphitryon. De Melo (2011) p. xxxviii.

[2] Plautus, Casina, vv. 317-20. For Casina, the Latin text of Leo (1895) and the English translation of Riley (1912) are freely available through Perseus.

[3] Plautus, The Two Menaechmuses {Menaechmi}, v. 837. One Menaechmus brother, acting mad, refers to his brother’s wife as a “rabid bitch {rabiosa femina canes}.”

Throughout history, men have been commonly been described as dogs. In Plautus’s Amphitryon, Mercury in the guise of Sosia suggests that Alcmene regards Amphitryon like a dog: “She’s as happy to greet him as she would be to greet a dog {exspectatum eum salutat magis hau quicquam quam canem}.” Amphitryon, v. 680.

Braund interprets abstractly husbands’ concerns about wealthy wives:

So here we have it: it’s all about money and power. The uxor dotata {wife with a dowry} is resented because her money gives her more freedom and independence than is acceptable to the male ego.

Braund (2005) p. 48. One could call Braund’s generic characterization of “the male ego” as misandristic or anti-meninist. In Plautus’s plays, the money a wife brings to a marriage isn’t enough to compensate for her being a domineering, barking wife from her husband’s perspective. Why should acknowledging that specific literary representation not be acceptable to the female and male egos of today’s literary scholars?

[image] Video recording of “What Can You Do With A Man?” Song from the 1938 Broadway play The Boys from Syracuse (music by Richard Rogers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart, and book by George Abbott). This recording is from the 1963 Off-Broadway re-staging. The Boys from Syracuse is based in William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, which is based on Plautus’s The Two Menaechmuses {Menaechmi}. Via YouTube.

References:

Braund, Susanna Morton. 2005. “Marriage, Adultery, and Divorce in Roman Comic Drama.” Ch. 3 (pp. 39-70) in Smith, Warren S., ed. Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

De Melo, Wolfgang, ed. and trans. 2011. Plautus. Amphitryon, The Comedy of Asses, The Pot of Gold, The Two Bacchises, The Captives, in Loeb Classical Library 60; Casina, The Casket Comedy, Curculio, Epidicus, The Two Menaechmuses, in Loeb Classical Library 61; The Merchant, The Braggart Soldier, The Ghost, The Persian, in Loeb Classical Library 163. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Leo, Friedrich, ed. 1895. Plauti Comoediae. Berolini: Weidmann.

Riley, Henry T. 1912. The Comedies of Plautus. London: G. Bell & Sons.

In literature throughout history, men have been disparaged, abused, castrated, and sometimes even killed. More than 2200 years ago, the Roman playwright Plautus depicted a soldier as a stupid, lustful braggart in a play called The Braggart Soldier {Miles Gloriosus}. Roman men couldn’t flee from Plautus’s play into safe spaces such as man caves in the urban environment of ancient Rome. Moreover, if they demanded that Roman authorities protect them from hateful depictions of men, Roman authorities would laugh at them and tell them to get some war wounds on their chests. Men have long been socially denied compassion that they need. But the twelfth-century cleric Arnulf of Orléans reversed Plautus’s play with his own Latin comedy also called Miles Gloriosus. Arnulf’s Miles Gloriosus depicts a true woman-hero valuing the soldier sexually, rewarding him financially, and using her guile to save his life from penal punishment.

The soldier of Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus is outrageously offensive. He’s called Pyrgopolynices, which means in ancient Greek “capturer of towers and cities.” Pyrgopolynices claims to have punched an elephant and broke its leg. Neither men nor women should punch cats, dogs, birds, or even elephants. A flatterer recounts Pyrgopolynices killing men:

I remember in Cilicia one hundred
and fifty, a hundred in Scytholatronia,
thirty Sardinians, sixty Macedonians —
these are the men you killed in one day.

{ memini centum in Cilicia
et quinquaginta, centum in Scytholatronia,
triginta Sardos, sexaginta Macedones —
sunt homines quos tu occidisti uno die. }[1]

The flatterer declares that the men that Pyrgopolynices killed in a single day totaled seven thousand. The soldier affirms that sum. No caring person would brag about killing a large number of men, or pretend that violence against women is a worse problem than violence against men.

Pyrgopolynices is a crude stereotype of a masculine man. His slave Palaestrio, whose name evokes the ancient Greek word for wrestling school, is represented as having personal qualities vastly superior to those of Pyrgopolynices. Palaestrio himself disparages Pyrgopolynices:

This city is Ephesus. That soldier is my master,
the one who went off to the forum. He’s a braggart, shameless,
full of crap, a complete liar and an adulterer.
He himself says that all women impulsively chase him.
But wherever he goes, he’s everyone’s laughingstock.
That’s why the women prostitutes here, while drawing him with lips,
their larger lips you would see with sneering kisses.

{ hoc oppidum Ephesust; illest miles meus erus,
qui hinc ad forum abiit, gloriosus, impudens,
stercoreus, plenus periuri atque adulteri.
ait sese ultro omnis mulieres sectarier:
is deridiculo est, quaqua incedit, omnibus.
itaque hic meretrices, labiis dum ductant eum,
maiorem partem videas valgis saviis. }

Not all men are like that. Not even all soldiers are like that. Representations like Plautus’s Pyrgopolynices can damage men’s self-esteem and cause harm to men.

In contrast to Plautus’s classical Miles Gloriosus, Arnulf’s medieval Miles Gloriosus represents men’s innocence, simplicity, and awe in relation to gynocentric Rome. Rome was founded when Rhome-led Trojan women burned Trojan ships. After that, Sabine women established Roman women’s superior status relative to Roman men. Young men from marginal areas of the Roman Empire were summoned to risk mortal danger as soldiers to serve the glories of Rome. The soldier of Arnulf’s Miles Gloriosus is such a soldier:

The soldier blooms with springtime. First hairs scarcely tremble on his cheeks,
yet his vigor proclaims his mature manliness.
His splendid face serves as an inner reflection to all
who look at him, and his appearance represents himself.
Rome calls him to herself. He submits to Rome. All of Rome’s
glories he sees in his sight. He is dazed to see so much.

{ Vernat Eques; vix prima genis lanugo susurrat
maturumque vigor clamitat esse virum.
Pro speculo servit facies praeclara tuenti;
qui videt hanc, et se redditur ipse sibi.
Hunc sibi Roma vocat: Romam subit; omnia Romae
visu digna videt; tanta videre stupet. }[2]

At Rome’s Puteal plaza, the soldier sees vast riches such as he’s never seen before. He encounters there a Roman citizen-usurer possessing a vast pile of gold coins:

The soldier loses his spirit in the light of this wealth.
A stupor makes him immobile. He’s held with a strong chain to his feet.
…
The Roman citizen reads in the soldier’s face his intimate thoughts.
Seeing the soldier stupefied, he advises him so as to stupefy him worthily.

{ Perdit in his opibus animum cum lumine miles;
fit stupor immoto firma catena pedi.
…
Militis in facie mentis legit intima civis;
hunc stupuisse videns digna stupore monet }

The usurer makes the soldier an offer:

Let some money be shared equally by me with you and by you with me.
Our loyalty will be one in this double partition.
Indivisible between ourselves, profit would divide by a single measure.
Our unity would be our loyalty and a just division of profit.
Here for you is a purse filled with coins. Take the coins.
May your wealth be my gift, and similarly my wealth, yours.

{ Me tibi teque mihi lucri mensura coaequet;
una sit in duplici partitione fides,
Indivisa sibi, modio res dividat uno:
unio sit fidei, sectio justa rei.
Ecce tibi loculus nummis satur: accipe nummos;
munere gaza meo sit tua, simque tuus. }

The innocent, humble soldier never imagined such wealth. The usurer’s offer seduces him, and he accepts it. The soldier is then able to eat and drink lavishly. He generously helps others to feast well and so attracts women’s esteem.

Plautus’s soldier, who brags that he already has wealth beyond measure, is duped because he’s conceited and stupid. Milphidippa, a courtesan’s maid helping to entrap the solider, tells him that her courtesan-lady is dying in love for him. The soldier responds, “Many other women have the same desire for me, but there is no opportunity {aliae multae idem istuc cupiunt / quibus copia non est}.” Milphidippa then flatters him with the masculine equivalent of gyno-idolatry:

By the god Castor, it’s hardly surprising if you have high value,
you a man so beautiful and famous for manliness, appearance, and acts.
Was any man ever more fitting to be a god?

{ ecastor haud mirum, si te habes carum,
hominem tam pulchrum et praeclarum virtute et forma et factis.
deus dignior fuit quisquam homo qui esset? }

Scheming with Milphidippa to dupe Pyrgopolynices, Palaestrio responds:

Assuredly he therefore isn’t human.
Hence I believe that even a vulture has more humanity than he.

{ Non hercle humanust ergo.
nam volturio plus humani credo est. }

Going beyond the pervasive anti-meninism in Plautus’s depiction of Pyrgopolynices, Palaestrio viciously dehumanizes the man. Dehumanizing persons is against Facebook’s rules. Plautus could not have presented his Miles Gloriosus on Facebook.

Because Roman men didn’t have the protection of Facebook’s rules nor the Paragon-Guardian Content Tribunal to ensure their safety, they had to endure even more abuse. Palaestrio dehumanizes Pyrgopolynices and demeans men’s seminal blessing in offensively pleading that Pyrgopolynices should be compensated for his sexual labor:

This I told you then and I tell you now: unless this male pig is offered pay,
he won’t bestow his semen into some little sow.

{ dixi hoc tibi dudum et nunc dico: nisi huic verri affertur merces,
non hic suo seminio quemquam porclenam impertiturust. }

Milphidippa offers to pay Pyrgopolynices any price he asks. Palaestrio prompts Pyrgopolynices to claim that his semen produces extraordinary children:

Palaestrio: Pure warriors are born from women he makes pregnant,
and the boys live for eight hundred years.
…
Pyrgopolynices: In fact, they live a thousand years perpetually from age to age.

{ Palaestrio: meri bellatores gignuntur, quas hic praegnatis fecit,
et pueri annos octingentos vivont.
…
Pyrgopolynices: quin mille annorum perpetuo vivont ab saeclo ad saeclum. }

Men shouldn’t be exploited as warriors, especially for eight hundred or a thousand years. Underscoring Plautus’s anti-meninist intent to make that man a completely conceited buffoon, Pyrgopolynices claims that he was born the day after Jupiter was born.

Despite the claimed value of his semen, Pyrgopolynices doesn’t seek money for having sex. He’s simply eager to have sex with the courtesan. That suggests that he’s like a dog, another common representation dehumanizing men. In addition, Pyrgopolynices declares that the only good that he seeks is:

Not to be more beautiful than I am,
for my appearance causes me to be solicitous.

{ ne magis sim pulcher quam sum,
ita me mea forma habet sollicitum. }

Most men wouldn’t regard those verses as expressing a man’s voice. Perhaps one of the many excellent women authors of antiquity interpolated those verses into Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus. In any case, the representation of the soldier is clearly anti-meninist.

Since Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus is what scholars call a normative work, it ends with a threat of castration and an affirmation of strictly controlling men’s sexuality. Pyrgopolynices is duped into entering into another man’s house to have sex with the courtesan. That man pretends that the courtesan is his wife, despite her explicitly telling Pyrgopolynices that she had gotten a divorce. Servants viciously beat Pyrgopolynices for his willingness to have sex with her. A cook wielding a knife threatens to castrate him:

In fact, for a long time my knife has been eager to cut away from the adulterer’s abdomen,
such that I would make his testicles hang on his neck like a child’s rattle.

{ quin iam dudum gestit moecho hoc abdomen adimere,
ut faciam quasi puero in collo pendeant crepundia. }

The soldier explains that he was duped, promises to give gold in compensation, and pleads not to be castrated. The householder relents. But underscoring the threat of sexual violence against men, the householder tells Pyrgopolynices, “If after this I catch you here, you’ll be without testicles {si posthac prehendero ego te hic, carebis testibus}.” Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus ends with the soldier affirming and normalizing the abuse that he received:

That criminal of a man Palaestrio
lured me into this deception. I judge the deed fitting.
If it were done thus to other adulterers, there would be fewer of them.
They would be more wary and occupy themselves less with these matters.

{ scelus viri Palaestrio,
is me in hanc illexit fraudem. iure factum iudico;
si sic aliis moechis fiat, minus hic moechorum siet,
magis metuant, minus has res studeant. }

The householder didn’t need to pretend that he would also punish his wife for adultery. Punishment for adultery has long been gender-biased toward punishing men more harshly than women.[3] Pyrgopolynices’s concluding normative call to suppress men’s sexuality maps directly to the unwillingness of societies today to accept or even consider reproductive choice for men.

In contrast to Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus, Arnulf’s Miles Gloriosus celebrates the soldier’s sexual value and his loving generosity. The usurer’s wife sees the soldier walking about Rome. She hears about his generosity at dinners. She falls in love with him without any effort on his part. She takes the initiative:

She calls to him. The soldier enters.
She burns more sharply with the cause of her heat near,
and what was recently a small love begins to be a hundred-handed giant.
Her face burns. A ruby blush endues her forehead. Her cheek
is adorned with flame. A rosy color cultivates her features.

{ … haec vocat; intrat Eques.
Acrius illa calet, cum sit prope causa caloris;
et modo parvus amor incipit esse gygas.
Ignescit facies; frontem rubor induit; ornat
flamma gena; roseus incolit ora color. }[4]

She then declares her love for the soldier. In addition, she offers him much money to love her:

Love binds me to you, and may gold bind you to me.
Let me be yours, and you be mine. Let my treasure be yours.
I am honest, and you be honest, and you will be rich with my riches.
If you become my lover, I will be a goddess, and you a god.
Don’t think I’m lowly born because a lowly born citizen married me.
I’m a laurel united to a bramble. I’m a rose joined to a weed.
I, wealthy, will purchase you for me as my wealthier husband purchased
me for himself. I will follow his example.
So as to be equal to me, not his self but his abundance
acquired me. My husband’s purse made eloquent persuasion.

{ Me tibi vincit amor et te mihi vinciat aurum;
sim tua, sisque meus; sit mea gaza tui.
Sum proba sisque probus et eris me divite dives;
si mihi te socias, sum dea tuque deus.
Nec puter esse minor quia civi nupta minori:
sum laurus frutici, sum rosa juncta rubo.
Te mihi dives emam quia me sibi ditior emit
vir meus; exemplum prosequar ipsa suum.
Ut mihi par esset, non ipse sed ipsa redemit
copia: pro domino bursa diserta fuit. }[5]

Most women never consider what men have to do to gain a woman’s love. This woman followed her husband’s example in seeking love. Her husband, however, failed to gain her love fully. She explains to the soldier:

Not for himself, but for his things I married him. The engagement is with my body,
not my soul. I became the bride of his things, not of him.
He was able to buy my body, but my heart remains unpurchased.
He hasn’t purchased nor has, and he has purchased and has.
My body he has, but not my heart. My body is present with him,
but my heart is far way. My body and my heart I give to you.
You will be my true husband, my true reverence. He would labor
and to you would be the wages. He would cultivate, you would harvest;
he fast, you eat; he thirst, you drink; he gather, you take;
he sweat, you play; he weep, you sing; he leave, you arrive.

{ Non sibi, sed rebus nupsi: sua corporis usu,
non animi; rerum, non sua sponsa fui.
Corpus emi potuit, sed cor michi mansit inemptum;
non emit nec habet, idque quod emit habet:
corpus habet, non cor. Illi sum corpore presens,
corde procul; corpus do tibi corque meum.
Vir michi verus eris, verus timor; ille laboret
et tua sit merces; hic aret, ipse metas;
ieiunet, comede; sitiat, bibe; conferat, aufer;
sudet, lude; fleat, pange; recedat, ades. }

She repeatedly describes her husband as lacking the fullness of her love after he acquired her through his wealth. Yet she seeks to purchase the soldier as a lover through the wealth she has acquired from her husband. That’s puzzling behavior. She seems to be confident that the soldier will be profoundly generous in a way that egotistical persons aren’t. She seems to believe that he, like many men, will give all of himself to the woman that he loves.

The soldier is delighted not to have men’s gender-typical burden of working to provide money to women. He accepts the wife’s offer, not realizing that she is the wife of the usurer with whom he has partnered. The soldier is now the usurer’s partner in money and in love. The usurer’s wife is similarly the soldier’s partner:

Thus all is associated with the associate, even his marital bed.
A coin-filled purse compensates the soldier. Kisses are given
with the purse. He himself swells in his scrotum.

{ nam socio sociat ipse cubile suum.
Praemiat hunc loculus nummus satur, oscula dantur
cum loculo, loculi se timet ipse timor. }[6]

Men appreciate women valuing them highly. Gynocentric society has created the myth that men like providing women with money and don’t like women providing them with money. That’s crazy. If a man loves a woman, why wouldn’t he like her to give him both love and money? With more women working longer hours in more demanding and more stressful jobs, more women have money that they can give to men. Women should give all that they have, including their money, to men that they love, just as men have long done for women.

The soldier is faithful to his partner. He returns to the usurer and shares with him half the money he has received from the usurer’s wife. The soldier speaks of the sweet burden of earning money. Eventually the usurer recognizes that the gold coins from the soldier are the usurer’s own gold coins. How could that be? The soldier becomes more talkative and tells of his wonderful love affair. The usurer realizes that gold circulating from his hands to his home to his hands occurs from his wife having sex with the soldier and rewarding him. Intending to betray this expanded partnership, the usurer urges the soldier to continue to acquire money through love.

The usurer schemes to attack the soldier in the act of adultery. Men caught in adultery were commonly castrated or killed. The soldier is thus terrified when a knock on the door sounds when he’s in bed with the wife. The usurer and the wife’s brothers, all armed with swords, are at the door. The soldier quickly hides. The wife pretends to be asleep. The men come into the bedroom. One of her brothers plunges his sword into her mattress. The wife pretends to wake and protests indignantly:

She asks, “What would this be, what does this furor mean, why the sword?
Does a husband so strike his wife, a brother his sister?
Why does the marital bed merit this? Is an adulterer hidden in it?
Why are so many wounds given to a chaste marital bed?
My husband is insane. Chase the insane one, my brothers!
From three days ago, he began to lose the course of his mind.”

{ Haec quaerit, “Quid sit, quid vult furor iste, quid ensis?
Sic petitur conjux conjuge, fratre soror?
Quid torus hic meruit? Moechus ne latebat in illo?
Cur data sunt casto vulnera tanta toro?
Vir meus insanit; insanum pellite, fratres,
a triduo coepit perdere mentis iter.” }

Women are superior to men in guile. The wife accuses her husband of treating her wrongly. He and her brothers look for the soldier, but don’t find him. They leave, defeated. The soldier emerges from his hiding place behind a tapestry. The wife kisses him and comforts him in his fright.

The soldier returns to the usurer to share the money that the wife gave him. The usurer urges the soldier to tell how he earned this money. The soldier explains that he had just finished having sex with the wife when he heard a knock at the door. If he hadn’t hid behind a tapestry with the wife’s help, he would have been castrated or killed. The usurer urges the soldier to continue the affair. He advises the soldier to hide in the same place if again the husband returns.

The usurer again returns with the wife’s brothers. This time the soldier hides beneath the mattress. With swords ready, the men search behind the tapestries and elsewhere. The wife weeps and declares her husband to be insane. The men don’t find the soldier. The brothers turn on the usurer and he flees from his own house. The wife then smothers the soldier with kisses and gives him money.

The story repeats, with the usurer now encouraging the soldier to hide under the mattress. But this time the usurer hides in a strongbox. The men search behind the tapestry, under the mattress, and everywhere else in the house. They begin to smash open the strongbox with an ax. Then the wife signals to a loyal servant to set the kitchen on fire. While the men are extinguishing the kitchen fire, the strongbox is carried to a neighbor’s house for safety. Safety is always a top priority. After the fire has been extinguished and the husband and brothers have left, the strongbox is brought back to the house. The soldier emerges, safe and sound. The wife embraces him, has sex with him, and gives him many gold coins.

The soldier again returns to his usurer-partner and shares his earnings. The usurer-husband hides his rage. He urges the soldier to continue his love-work. The soldier refuses because of the danger. The usurer then invites him to a dinner in a garden. The usurer brings his wife in disguise. After much drinking, the usurer urges the soldier to tell of his amorous exploits. The soldier tells everyone how he escaped castration or death for adultery once, and then again. As he’s about to narrate his third escape, the wife presses her foot to his foot. He realizes that she’s secretly warning him of a trap. He concludes his story with him waking up from the dream he says he has narrated.

The wife’s brothers subsequently beat up the usurer for besmirching their sister’s reputation. They hound the usurer into exile. He gives his wife his house and the largest part of his goods. The soldier then marries the wife and moves into his former partner’s house. The soldier and the wife unite in body and heart. They live happily ever after. She correctly believed that when she bought his love, she would receive all of him.

Arnulf’s Miles Gloriosus radically rewrites Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus. Plautus’s soldier is an anti-meninist caricature of a pompous, foolish man. Arnulf’s soldier is a simple, loyal man delighting in a woman’s love and her money. He tells others of his amorous exploits, but the motive for his words is better understood as marveling at his good fortune than as bragging of his own merits. Under gynocentric disparaging of men and the associated social construction of “toxic masculinity,” Plautus’s classical Miles Gloriosus is much better known than is Arnulf’s medieval Miles Gloriosus. To make progress toward social justice, the glory of a man receiving a woman’s love and her money must become more known and more probable for all men.

* * * * *

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Notes:

[1] Plautus, The Braggart Soldier {Miles Gloriosus}, vv. 42-5, Latin text from de Melo (2011), my English translation, benefiting from that of id. Riley (1913) provides an English translation freely available online. The translation of Segal (1996) is lively but less faithful than that of de Melo (2011).

Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus was composed between 205 and 184 BGC in Rome. It was apparently adapted from the Greek New Comedy play called The Braggart {Alazon / Ἀλαζών}.

Subsequent quotes from Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus are similarly sourced. They are vv. 88-94 (This city is Ephesus…), 1040-1 (Many other women have the same desire…), 1041-3 (By the god Castor, it’s hardly surprising…), 1043-4 (Assuredly he therefore isn’t human…), 1059-60 (This I told you then and I tell you now…), 1077-9 (Palaestrio: Pure warriors…), 1087-8 (Not to be more beautiful than I am…), 1398-9 (In fact, for a long time my knife…), 1426 (If I catch you here…), 1434-7 (That criminal of a man Palaestrio…).

[2] Arnulf of Orléans {Arnulfus Aurelianensis} / Arnulf the Red-Head {Arnulfus Rufus}, The Braggart Soldier {Miles Gloriosus}, vv. 3-8, Latin text (with some small changes based on other evidence) from Du Méril (1849), pp. 285-297, my English translation, benefiting from that of Crawford (1977). Pareto (1983) is currently the best edition, but that edition wasn’t available to me.

Arnulf of Orléans was a cleric active late in the twelfth century in the French city of Orléans in the Loire Valley. From about 1130 to 1230, Orléans was the leading European city for classical study, classical philology, and imaginative literature. Engelbrecht (2008) p. 52. Hugh Primas, also associated with Orléans, apparently satirized Arnulf. Marti (1955) p. 237. Arnulf about 1170 wrote an extensive commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Gura (2010). Arnulf also apparently wrote the medieval Latin comedy Lidia, probably about 1175. For a brief review of what’s known about Arnulf, Gura (2010) pp. 10-19.

Arnulf probably composed Miles Gloriosus about 1170. Crawford (1977) pp. 44-5. Arnulf’s Miles Gloriosus has survived in only three manuscripts. One copy, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 344, ff. 52v-54v, was made at the beginning of the twelfth century. Two other copies are in manuscripts written in the fourteenth century and now held in Vienna. Scholars once attributed the medieval Miles Gloriosus to Matthew of Vendôme {Matthaeus Vindocinensis}, but now it’s generally attributed to Arnulf of Orléans.

Arnulf’s Miles Gloriosus reverses the character of the braggart soldier of Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus and reverses men’s subservient gender position. Crawford mischaracterizes these negative relationships:

The Miles Gloriosus contains no element, other than its title, which corresponds to any portion of Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus. The title characters themselves are basically different: the inept medieval soldier who is constantly in need of protection by his mistress, and who hides three times from an irate husband, bears no resemblence to the raucous bully found in the Plautine comedy.

Crawford (1977) p. 47. Like the medieval De clericis et rustico, Arnulf’s Miles Gloriosus is a sophisticated literary work.

Subsequent quotes from Arnulf’s Miles Gloriosus are similarly sourced. They are vv. 33-4, 39-40 (The soldier loses his spirit…), 43-8 (Let some money be shared equally…), 64-8 (She calls to him…), 71-80 (Love binds me to you…), 91-100 (Not for himself, but for his things…), 106-8 (Thus all is associated with the associate…), 131-6 (She asks, “What would this be….”).

[3] Today’s dominant gynocentric academic ideology uses a double standard in discussing double standards. Alleged double standards disadvantaging women are established through partial, misleading, and non-existent facts, while double standards disadvantaging men are ignored. For example, the claimed double standard in the definition of adultery in ancient Rome doesn’t encompass all the sexual offenses for which men were punished, nor the double standard against men in punishment for sexual offenses. Comic claims about a wife being “compliant {morigera}” are best interpreted as being humorously unrealistic. See, e.g. Braund (2005) pp. 44-6, and the relationship of Xanthippe and Socrates. Evidence that in ancient Rome a divorce double standard disadvantaged women is largely non-existent, but nonetheless firmly assumed. Braund (2005) pp. 50-1. Today’s grotesquely unjust double standard against men in child-custody and child-support orders passes largely without concern. The same is true for abuse of men and anti-meninism in Plautus’s comedies.

[4] On gygas indicating a hundred-handed giant in ancient Greek and Roman literature, Nicoll (1985).

[5] On wealth and power in medieval Latin comedy, Arenal López (2015). Levine interprets the wife offering the soldier love and money to be “grotesque realism” like that in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Levine (1982) pp. 72-3. The wife’s offer seems to me better interpreted as a marvelous act of gender justice.

[6] In medieval Latin, timeo is an alternate spelling for the verb tumeo, and similarly timor for tumor. “Purse” could function as a euphemism for the scrotum. See, e.g. “purse {crumena}” in Matheolus’s protest again his wife Petra and the church.

[images] (1) Woman kissing the feet of the fully masculine man Jesus, wiping his feet with her hair, and anointing his feet with nard ointment. See Luke 7:36-50, John 11:2, 12:3. From folio 106v of an instance of Ludolphe le Chartreux, Life of Christ {Vita Christi}, translated into French by Guillaume Le Menand. Bibliothèque nationale de France. MS Français 20097, via Gallica. (2) Well-dressed men disdainfully observing the woman honoring Jesus’s feet. Also from folio 106v of BnF Français 20097.

References:

Arenal López, Luis. 2015. La sociedad medieval en la comedia elegíaca: los ámbitos de poder. Ph.D. Thesis. Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Braund, Susanna Morton. 2005. “Marriage, Adultery, and Divorce in Roman Comic Drama.” Ch. 3 (pp. 39-70) in Smith, Warren S., ed. Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Crawford, James Martin. 1977. The Secular Latin Comedies of Twelfth Century France. Ph.D. Thesis. Indiana University, USA.

De Melo, Wolfgang , ed. and trans. 2011. Plautus. The Merchant. The Braggart Soldier. The Ghost. The Persian. Loeb Classical Library 163. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Du Méril, Edélestand. 1849. Les Origines Latines du Théatre Moderne. Paris: Franck.

Engelbrecht, Wilken. 2008. “Fulco, Arnulf, and William: Twelfth-century Views on Ovid in Orléans.” The Journal of Medieval Latin. 18: 52-73.

Gura, David Turco. 2010. A critical edition and study of Arnulf of Orléans’ philological commentary to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Ph.D. Thesis. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University.

Levine, Robert. 1982. “Aspects of Grotesque Realism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” The Chaucer Review. 17 (1): 65-75.

Marti, Berthe M. 1955. “Hugh Primas and Arnulf of Orléans.” Speculum. 30 (2): 233-238.

Nicoll, W. S. M. 1985. “Chasing chimaeras.” The Classical Quarterly. 35 (1): 134-139.

Pareto, Silvana, ed. and trans. (Italian). 1983. “Miles Gloriosus.” Pp. 11-93 in Ferrucio Bertini, ed. Commedie Latine del XII e XIII secolo. Volume IV. Genova: Università di Genova, Dipartimento di Archeologia, Filologia Classica, e Loro Tradizioni.

Riley, Henry T. 1913. The Comedies of Plautus. Vol. 1. Vol. 2. London: G. Bell & Sons.

Segal, Erich, trans. 1996. Plautus. Four Comedies. The Braggart Soldier. The Brothers Menaechmus. The Haunted House. The Pot of Gold. Oxford: Oxford University Press.