In a story from the ancient Islamic world, a man in Baghdad became perfect friends with a man in Egypt via written correspondence. One day, the Baghdadian decided to visit in person the Egyptian. The Egyptian joyfully welcomed the Baghdadian into his home. Despite enjoying his friend’s lavish hospitality, the Baghdadian became acutely ill.
The Egyptian called forth all the best doctors in Egypt to minister to his friend. These doctors worked to diagnose the man’s illness:
The doctors checked his pulse, and they again and again inspected his urine. Nothing in these tests indicated an illness. And when these indicated no bodily illness, by that they knew the illness to be love’s passion. Having realized this, the master of the house came to the Baghdadian and asked him if there was some woman in the house whom he loved.
{ Medici vero palpato pulsu, iterum et iterum urina respecta, nullam in eo agnoverunt infirmitatem. Et quia per hoc nullam corporalem agnovere infirmitatem, amoris sciunt esse passionem. Hoc agnito dominus venit ad eum et quaesivit si qua esset mulier in domo sua quam diligeret. }[1]
Perfect friends, and also just good friends, are honest with each other even in lovesickness. So was the Baghdadian to the Egyptian:
To him he said: “Show me all the women of your house, and if I happen to see her among them, I will show her to you.” Having heard that, the Egyptian showed to him singers and dancers. None of them pleased him. After that he showed him all his daughters. Just as for the prior ones, all these he rejected and ignored. The master had in the house another certain noble young women, whom he had for a long time raised so that he could marry her. He showed her to his friend. When the sick man saw her appearance, truly he said: “Being away from her is my death, and in her is my life!”
{ Ad haec aeger: Ostende mihi omnes domus tuae mulieres, et si forte inter eas hanc videro, tibi ostendam. Quo audito ostendit ei cantatrices et pedissequas: quarum nulla ei complacuit. Post haec ostendit ei omnes filias: has quoque sicut et priores omnino reppulit atque neglexit. Habebat autem dominus quandam nobilem puellam in domo sua, quam iam diu educaverat, ut eam acciperet in uxorem; quam et ostendit ei. Aeger vero aspecta hac ait: Ex hac est mihi mors et in hac est mihi vita! }[2]
In ancient Arabic literature, the ideal of hospitality developed to the extent that one would not only lay down one’s life for a friend, one would also lay down one’s wife for a friend. The Egyptian accordingly responded:
Dearest one, this young woman is in fact of noble birth. I have raised her from infancy such that she would be my wife. However, you have come to me from distant parts because of the love that has long been between us. I will give her to you in marriage with the abundant riches that I received with her. By these riches all of your offspring will be able to prosper.
{ Karissime, revera puella ista est de nobili genere, quam ab infancia nutrivi ut esset uxor mea. Verumptamen tu venisti ad me de partibus longinquis propter amorem, qui dudem erat inter nos. Dabo eam tibi in uxorem cum diviciis sufficientibus quas ego cum ea recipissem, per quas divicias omnes de progenie tua poterunt promoveri. }[3]
What wonderful hospitality! Even the Baghdadian living within the culture of ancient Arabic lavish hospitality was amazed:
When the Baghdadian heard this, he leaped from the bed totally healthy and said: “Dearest one, may God repay you as much as you have done for me now, and very often done. How I will be able to repay to you the favor you have done, I don’t know at all.” And immediately he had a great feast announced to celebrate the wedding.
{ cum hec audisset, de lecto totaliter sanus surrexit et ait: “Karissime, Deus tibi retribuat quantum fecisti iam et sepius pro me. Quomodo potero vobis reddere beneficium perpetratum, penitus ignoro.” Statimque fecit proclamari unum magnum convivium pro nupciis celebrandis. }
The Baghdadian returned to Baghdad with his wife and riches. His wife was a noble, kind, and generous person whom everyone loved. She had children with her husband, and they prospered with the riches he received with her.
After some time, the Egyptian experienced a reversal of fortune: harsh poverty and acute misery. He decided to visit his Baghdadian friend and ask for support. He arrived in Baghdad at night. In his poverty he decided to sleep in a church. From the church he saw two men fighting in the street. One of the men killed the other, adding to the horrific amount of violence against men. The killer ran into the church. A crowd of people chasing after the killer found the Baghdadian in the church. Wishing to die rather than to continue to live in poverty, the Egyptian declared that he was the killer. He was condemned, imprisoned overnight, and the next day led to the gallows.
A crowd of Baghdadians watched the man being led to the gallows. Among them, the Baghdadian friend recognized his Egyptian friend going to be executed for murder. The friend immediately cried out loudly:
Wait! Wait! He didn’t kill the man, but I did!
{ Expectate! Expectate! Iste non interfecit hominem, sed ego! }
The penal officials were astonished. They seized the Baghdadian and led both friends to the gallows.
The actual killer was among the crowd. He feared God’s wrath if he allowed two innocent men to die in his place. The actual killer thus cried out loudly:
Spare them! Spare them! They are innocent, but I am the one responsible! I killed the man with my own hands, and they are innocent! Take me and hang me on the gallows!
{ Parcatis eis! Parcatis eis! Innocentes sunt, sed ego reus sum! Ego propriis manibus hominem occidi et ipsi sunt innocentes! Accipite me et in patibulo suspendite! }
The crowd seized this man. He along with the two friends were taken before the judge.
The judge was astonished at the three men’s confessions. He asked for an explanation. The Egyptian explained that his poverty was so crushing that he preferred to die. The Baghdadian explained that for the love of his friend he desired to die. The actual killer explained that he had confessed out of fear of God in bringing about the death of two innocent men. With understanding of these men’s particular circumstances and with commendable mercy toward men, the judge freed all three men. Undoubtedly the Baghdadian then shared all his wealth with the Egyptian, and perhaps shared as well his wife with her consent.
While perfect friends are a heart-warming ideal, even a perfect friend cannot save a man so engrossed in his desire that he ignores a friendly offer of salvation. Consider a story originating from ancient India. A young man was chased by a unicorn. He accidentally fell into a pit, but caught a branch of a tree growing up from the bottom of the pit. At the foot of the tree was a horrible serpent. Two mice gnawed at the roots of the tree so as to cause it eventually to come crashing down. Four snakes were reaching up towards the man and poisoning the pit with their breath.
The man’s immediate priority should have been to get out of the pit. However, honey trickled down from a beehive into the man’s mouth. He delighted in its sweetness. Yet the man had a friend:
When a certain friend of his passed by the place and saw him in such danger, the friend held out a ladder so that he could climb out. But the man so gave himself up to the sweetness of the honey that in no way did he want to climb out, but constantly ate the honey and took no care for his dangerous position.
{ Cum autem quidam amicus eius per locum pertransisset et vidit eum in tanto perculo, porrexit sibi scalam ut egrederetur. Ille vero tantum dedit se dulcedini mellis quod nullo modo egredi volebat, sed semper de melle comedit, nec accepit curam de periculo suo. }[4]
In a short time, the man fell to the bottom of the pit. Then the serpent devoured him. His friend wasn’t able to save this foolish man.
Today women and men of good will attempt to save men from castration culture and the demonization of masculinity. Being just a friend to men, not even a perfect friend, isn’t easy. Men are often their own worst enemies.
[1] Petrus Alfonsi, Disciplina clericalis, chapter 2, “Exemplum of the perfect friend {Exemplum de integro amico},” Latin text from Hilka & Söderhjelm (1911), my English translation. For a Middle English translation, Hulme (1919). This story occurs in the continental Gesta Romanorum as Tale 171. See Oesterley (1872) and Stace (2018). In the Anglo-Latin Gesta Romanorum, it’s Tale 55. See Bright (2019).
The Gesta Romanorum versions, which are explicitly attributed to Petrus Alfonsi’s early twelfth-century Disciplina clericalis, don’t include the doctors checking the pulse and inspecting urine. Born in Islamic Spain, Petrus was a Jewish convert to Christianity and a physician. Checking the pulse and examining urine were central practices in medicine in the Islamic world, following Galenic learning. Petrus Alfonsi acquired considerable learning from the Islamic world.
[2] Disciplina clericalis, chapter 2, “Exemplum of the perfect friend {Exemplum de integro amico},” sourced as previously. The Gesta Romanorum versions don’t distinguished serially singers and dancers and the host’s daughters. The former commonly had sex for money, while marriage would be expected to occur in a relationship with the host’s daughters.
[3] Anglo-Latin (Bodleian Library, Douce MS 310) Gesta Romanorum 55 (“Two Friends”), Latin text and English translation (adapted slightly) from Bright (2019). The subsequent three quotes above are similarly from id. The corresponding text in Disciplina clericalis is less detailed and less dramatic.
[4] Anglo-Latin Gesta Romanorum 38 (“Unicorn”), Latin text and English translation (adapted slightly) from Bright (2019). The corresponding story in the continental Gesta Romanorum is Tale 168 (“About eternal damnation {De eterna dampnatione}”). This story occurs in the tenth-century romance Barlaam and Josaphat, wrongly attributed to John Damascene. Woodward & Mattingly (1914) Ch. 12. Originally from India, it exists in Book 11 (Stri Parva) of the Mahabharata and perhaps in a version of the Panchatantra as well. Stace (2018) p. 447, note 1. This story became widely distributed in medieval Europe. Bright (2019), note to Tale 38.
Bright, Philippa, ed. and trans. 2019. The Anglo-Latin Gesta Romanorum: from Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce MS 310. Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hermes, Eberhard and P. R. Quarrie, ed. and trans. 1977. Petrus Alfonsi. The Disciplina clericalis of Petrus Alfonsi. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Business student: You’re ripping me, Shakespeare. Will I ever get a dime out of this? I’ve been reading thy plays, good Sir, for weeks, twisting my brain about as if your words had any relevance to me in the twenty-first century. Today I’ve been following your feet for hours. My leg is now lame. Where are you taking me?
Shakespeare: Who matters in literature. Look into the canon, or your soul will be obliterated.
Business student: What?
Shakespeare: No, who.
Business student: But what is the matter, the relevance, the substance?
Shakespeare: Who is. “I don’t know” is the beginning of self-knowledge. You must learn who you are.
Business student: I don’t know.
Shakespeare: What?
Business student: Who.
Shakespeare: That’s right, who. In the primordial world, humans were indistinct from nature. They heard and saw the world around them without hearing and seeing themselves in their own distinct nature. The earliest poets gave humans a sense of their beating heart. Eventually great poets developed human beings with self-consciousness and appreciation for their own ridiculousness.
Business student:
I’m happy, by god, to have this additional lesson. These deep conversations really are something!
Shakespeare: Follow along and pay attention. There’s the dwelling of the renowned tragic prophet Judith Butler.
Business student: A butler is a tragic prophet?
Shakespeare: Yes, class, race, and gender are prophesied to be the future of literature. And especially gender trouble. If you had studied Judith Butler, you already would have had one of Butler’s devices stuffed up your ass. That’s how men students are taught gender trouble.
A slave, a student of Judith Butler, comes out of the dwelling.
Slave:
Let the student body keep holy silence, gating its mouth, for here sojourns the holy company of Muses within the scholar’s halls, fashioning theory. Let Air windless hold her breath, and the whelming brine its boom, gay —
Business student: To warm lecture halls with hot air!
Shakespeare: Sir, ignore that mere business student. I urgently need to speak with Doctor Professor Butler. Where is they?
Slave:
Supplicate not. The master shall soon emerge. You see, they is beginning to fashion a theory. Since it’s winter, it’s hard for they to limber their theory without feeling outside sun.
Business student: Stop the drama. Look, even I know Shakespeare. You will live on.
Shakespeare: This is no child’s play. The Women in Classics Coalitional Agon is holding its festival today in the sanctuary of Demeter, Persephone, and Christine de Pizan. The festival assembly will debate destroying me!
Business student: Why destroy you?
Shakespeare: They say I slander women by depicting them as capable of plotting and scheming and even doing murder most foul.
Business student: They’re scheming to kill you for that?
Shakespeare: Yes, and they’ll get away with it if I don’t stage something to preempt them. I’ve got to get someone to penetrate their women-only space and theorize on my behalf.
Business student: Why theorize? I’ve actually penetrated a women-only space many times and gotten passionate kisses and moans of pleasure in appreciation.
Shakespeare: Success in the WICCA festival depends on impressive words, nothing more. I want Judith Butler to perform on my behalf in that women-only space.
Business student: Is they a woman?
Shakespeare: Don’t cause gender trouble. Look, there’s Judith Butler! One of their slaves is wheeling them out on their academic high chair!
Judith Butler:
I hate men! I can’t abide them, even now and then. Than ever marry one of them I’d rest a virgin rather, for husbands are a boring lot and only give you bother. Of course I’m awfully glad that mother deigned to marry father! But I hate men!
Of all the types I’ve ever met within our university, I hate the most the scholar with his manner bold and brassy. He may have hair upon his chest, but sister, so has Lassie! Oh I hate men!
Shakespeare: I’m sure Judith Butler can penetrate the WICCA festival since it’s all-women. Then they can advocate on my behalf without raising suspicion.
Judith Butler: You feeble-minded, dogmatic cis-gender male author backstabbing transmen, you want me to join the haters at the hateful WICCA festival? They are fascists walling off the term “women” and using it as a weapon to threaten the existence of non-binary persons. They want to destroy me!
Business student: Blah blah blah, la la la, Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall!
Shakespeare: Doctor Professor Butler, most highly esteemed celebrity professor, I need your help, please!
Judith Butler: Transphobic, misogynist, homophobic white nationalist, bug off! Imagine a different future!
Business student: Butler’s blather is worthless to anyone not aspiring to win a clown performance. I’ll help you, really.
Shakespeare: Really?
Business student: Yup.
Shakespeare: You’re a good man. Take your clothes off. I’m going to shave your face, singe the hair from your groin and bottom, and dress you as a woman. Then you can penetrate the WICCA festival and perform for me.
Business student: Anything to save you, my dear in-law Shakespeare. But you have to swear that you’ll do anything to save me if I get into gender trouble.
Shakespeare: Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and caldron bubble. Yes, I swear. Quickly now, into the WICCA festival!
Shakespeare departs. The business student joins a group a women heading to the festival assembly.There the woman leader Critylla mounts the rostrum.
Critylla: Ritual silence, please! Form a circle and hold hands. Now chant our creed. Patriarchy, misogyny, oppression, history no herstory, misogyny, misogyny, patriarchy. Grandpa, leave that grandma alone. Women weren’t allowed to work and fight in wars. Patriarchy, misogyny, oppression, history no herstory, misogyny, misogyny, patriarchy. Helen was raped and didn’t feel safe during the Trojan War. Patriarchy, misogyny, oppression, history no herstory, misogyny, misogyny, patriarchy. Women have been men’s property throughout history. But no longer. Because we say so.
All the women in the circle nod their heads up and down.
Critylla: Attention everyone! The Women in Classics Coalitional Agon — Timocleia presiding, Lysilla being secretary, Sostrate proposing — has passed the following motion: this Assembly will have as its principal agendum deliberation about the punishment of Shakespeare, who in the view of us all is a criminal. Who wants to speak first against Shakespeare?
Mica raises her hand with an inverted-V gesture and then is called to the rostrum.
Mica: By Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, I have not risen to speak, sororal women, out of any personal ambition. No, I’ve risen because I’m enraged by seeing you get dragged through the mud by Shakespeare, that son of a glove-maker. With what abuse has this man not besmirched us? He’s called us foolish, mad, pernicious, and wretched. While he has affirmed our strong, independent sexuality by calling us whores, and he honored the great woman Photis by using the term “kitchen wench,” he’s also called some women fat. He insinuated that Desdemona cheated on Othello. His Iago even said that women rise to play and go to bed to work. Some men now don’t believe that all women are angelically chaste. He had Maria falsify a letter to Malvolio, and now men question whether all women are as honest as the mother of God. He called Katherina cursed when she was blessed to be an unruly woman. Measure by measure, Shakespeare documented that men are punished more severely than women for illicit sex, and that men have historically been deprived of free choice in marriage. His plays have contributed to calls for justice for men, concern for men’s lack of reproductive choice, the Capitol insurrection of January 6, and fascism. He drove Ophelia mad, causing adolescent girls to commit suicide. Lady Macbeth and other ladies are committing suicide just because they have incited the killing of men. I therefore propose that we brew up a way to destroy Shakespeare, either with poison, mass twittering, or some other way to ensure that he’s canceled, dead, and his works never again read.
Choir of women at the assembly:
I’ve never heard a woman more intricate of mind or more impressive as a speaker. Everything she says is right. She’s reviewed every aspect, she’s weighed each detail in her mind, and she’s sagaciously devised a whole spectrum of well-chosen arguments.
The business student, disguised as a woman, steps up to the rostrum.
Business student: Sororal women of eminence, you are rightly enraged at Shakespeare, and you deserve honor and respect for your bile being aboil. I too hate Shakespeare. I would be crazy not to hate him. “I hate” with hate to me he said, and cursed my life, saying, “I wish you dead.” All the same, since no men are here, we should have an open and fair discussion. Why are we getting so angry with him for depicting us as fully human persons who are equal to men in doing evil?
I myself am conscious of my potential for evil and my actual misdeeds. Why, when I had been married for only three days, my husband was sleeping beside me. Yet two decades earlier, when I was seventeen, my boyfriend initiated me into the joy of being penetrated. To this day I’m still hot for him, and he for me. That day he came singing sweetly on the street. I started to sneak out of the house and my husband asked, “Where are you going, dear wife?” I said, “I have a stomach ache, husband, and I’m going to take a shit.” “Oh, poor dear,” he said, “go ahead.” And then he got up and started preparing a stomach-soothing soup for me. Meanwhile, I flushed the toilet a couple of times and went out to meet my lover on the street. There I bent over a fire hydrant, and my lover pumped me well. Shakespeare never wrote about that!
Shakespeare also never wrote about how we get sexually serviced from servants and mule drivers. Or how when we spend the night getting thoroughly balled by some lover, we chew garlic in the morning so when the husband gets home from military service he’ll smell it and won’t suspect that we’ve been doing anything nasty. Shakespeare never said anything about that, right? And if he represented Katherina as a shrew, what’s that to us? He never told about how the wife held up a robe in her husband’s face so her lover could sneak out of the house, or about the wife who pretended to be in labor for ten days until she could buy a baby boy. The old lady who bought the boy for her told her husband, “You’ve got a lion, sir, a lion, the very image of yourself, sir, with everything a perfect match, even his little penis too, curled over like an acorn.”
Why get mad at Shakespeare, when he’s represented us fully according to what we’re capable of doing?
The women are the festival assembly are astonished and outraged at the business student’s speech.
Mica: This harridan is abusing women with frank speech. This can’t be tolerated. Do something!
Upset, the women look at each other with expressions of pain. They do nothing.
Mica:
I myself, along with my slave girls, will get hot coals somewhere and singe the hair off this woman’s pussy. That’ll teach her never again to badmouth her fellow women!
Women, please no, not my pussy! There is for every citizen the right of speaking frankly at the assembly, so if I merely said in Shakespeare’s defense what I know to be fair, am I to be punished by depilation at your hands?
Look, there’s a woman news reporter rushing to our assembly.
Anderson Cooper: Dear ladies, my audience, my constituency, I’m devoted to women and I represent your interests always. While I was in the marketplace, I accidentally uncovered a news story. Now I’m here to inform you about it so you can take action to prevent a terrible trouble. I don’t want it to engulf you while your guard is down.
Critylla: What is it, what is it, my boy, tickle me with your lips!
Anderson Cooper: Rumor reports that Shakespeare has sent some kinsman of his, an old man, up here today to this women-only festival. That man, dressed and gender-performing as a woman, intends to penetrate and report on your assembly.
Critylla:
It’s a terrible business that’s been reported. Well, women, we shouldn’t sit around doing nothing! We’ve got to look for this man and find out where he’s been sitting unnoticed in his disguise. And you, Mr. Woman’s Reporter, help us search, and so add this to our debt of gratitude to you!
Anderson Cooper: I’ll have to ask questions. As you all know, Shakespeare has been discredited as an author because he was a cis-gender white male pretend-heterosexual who slandered women. It’s been agreed that he must be killed. So for a penetrating, emmm, question, why does that woman behind the bush appear so tall while taking a piss?
Business student: Bad knees from bearing so many children. I have to stand.
Anderson Cooper: Women don’t do that. She must be a man!
Critylla: Grab her and strip her. Check if she has a dick to us in hock!
Anderson Cooper: I know cock. What I see there is a big, thick cock!
Chorus:
Now you’re lookin’ at a man that’s gettin’ us mad. His kin wrote lots of stuff, but it’s all been bad. No matter how he struggles and strives, he’ll never get out of this world alive.
His dickin’ pole’s broken, his face’s full of sand, his woman’s run away with another man. No matter how he struggles and strives, he’ll never get out of this world alive.
A distant uncle Soph passed away and left him many a buck. And he was living high until that fateful day the law proved he wasn’t true-born, but just a cuck.
Everyone’s agin’ him and he must go down. If he jumped in a river, we’d hope he’d drown. No matter how he struggles and strives, he’ll never get out of this world alive.
We’re not gonna worry wrinkles in our brow cause he ain’t worth nothing, no-how. No matter how he struggles and strives, he’ll never get out of this world alive.
Anderson Cooper: Keep him under close guard. Since I work for the police state, I’ll report him to the police state, and it can then add another man to the mass incarceration of men.
Anderson Cooper departs. Women at the WICCA festival guard the business student.The Assistant Dean for Thesmophoria Security arrives and binds the business student to a plank. When night falls, the business student sees Shakespeare coming toward him dressed as Pyramus.
Business student: I’ll be his Thisbe, and I’ll hug him joyfully if he takes me home.
Shakespeare walks behind the plank to which the business student is bound.
Shakespeare as Pyramus:
O grim-looked night! O night with hue so black! O night, which ever art when day is not! O night! O night! Alack, alack, alack! I fear my Thisbe’s promise is forgot. And thou, O plank, O sweet, O lovely plank, that stand’st between her backside’s round and me, thou plank, O plank, O sweet and lovely plank, show me thy chink to blink through with my rod.
Business student as Thisbe:
O plank, full often hast thou heard my moans for parting my fair Pyramus and me. My cherry lips have often kissed thy knots, thy knots with sweat and hair knit up in thee.
Shakespeare walks around to the other side of the plank.
Shakespeare as Pyramus: My love! Thou art my love, I think.
Business student as Thisbe:
Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover’s grace, And, like Limander, am I trusty still.
Shakespeare as Pyramus: And I like Helen, till the Fates me kill.
Assistant Dean for Thesmophoria Security: Hey you, stay away from that dirty old man, that cis-gender crook, that heterosexist creep.
Shakespeare as Pyramus: Nonsense, learned Dean. This is my beloved Thisbe of Babylon.
Assistant Dean for Thesmophoria Security, lifting Thisbe’s dress and pointing: Gaze at that patriarchal phallus. It doesn’t look marginalized in your truth, does it?
Shakespeare as Pyramus:
Give me her hand, that I might clasp the woman. Please, Dean, all human flesh is weak. In my own case, love for this girl has me in its grip.
Assistant Dean for Thesmophoria Security: One more microaggression from you, and then your life will be worth nothing.
Shakespeare as Pyramus (aside):
Ah me, what action, what clever logic now? All wit is lost upon this savage lout. For work a novel ruse upon a clod and you have worked in vain. I must apply a different stratagem, one suitable for him.
Who run the world? Girls! Who run the world? Girls! Who run the world? Girls! Who run the world? Girls!
I’m so good with this, I remind you, I’m so hood with this. Boy, I’m just playing, come here, baby, hope you still like me, fuck you, pay me.
Who run the world? Girls! Who run the world? Girls! Who run the world? Girls! Who run the world? Girls!
My persuasion can destroy a nation! Endless power with our love we can devour. You’ll do anything for me.
Who run the world? Girls! Who run the world? Girls! Who run the world? Girls! Who run the world? Girls!
Shakespeare enters wearing a t-shirt proclaiming “The future is female!”
Shakespeare:
Ladies, if you want to make a permanent peace treaty with me, now is the time. I’ll stipulate that in the future I will never again in any way criticize women. That’s my official proposal.
Crytilla: Why should we agree to that? What about the past?
Shakespeare:
Look, this man on the plank here is my kinsman. If I may take him away with me, you’ll never hear another insult from me. But if you refuse, whatever you’ve done behind your husbands’ backs while they’ve been away at war, I’ll denounce when the survivors return.
Critylla: Ok, we’ll accept your treaty. But rescue your wretched kinsman yourself!
Shakespeare exits, then enters dressed as Justin Trudeau in blackface. He has with him Melinda Gates.
Justine Trudeau in blackface: Respected Dean, would you please take me to the President’s mansion? Melinda Gates wants to talk with her about funding a massive new university building to house an institution for studying empowering women in Africa. Ms. Gates is a busy philanthropic business leader. She’s ready to leave on her private jet in frustration at not being able to find the President’s mansion.
Assistant Dean for Thesmophoria Security: Of course I will. Nothing is more important to the President than fundraising. Guiding donors isn’t my job, but I might get a promotion out of it.
Melinda Gates exits led by the Assistant Dean. Shakespeare then unbinds the business student and exits in the opposite direction with him. They head to Shakespeare’s father’s house in the glove-makers’ quarter of Athens. That night a neighborhood feast celebrates the return of Shakespeare and his kinsman.
Head of the weaver’s union:
So we fairies, that do run by the triple Hecate’s team from the presence of the sun, following darkness like a dream, now are frolic. Not a mouse shall disturb this hallowed house. I am sent with broom before, to sweep the dust behind the door.
Now, until the break of day, through this house each fairy stray. To the best bride-bed will we, which by us shall blessèd be, and the issue there create ever shall be fortunate.
With this field-dew consecrate every fairy take his gait, and each several chamber bless, through this palace, with sweet peace. And the owner of it blest, ever shall in safety rest. Trip away. Make no stay. Meet me all by break of day.
The above play is a modernization of Aristophanes’s comedy, Θεσμοφοριάζουσαι {Women at the Thesmophoria / Thesmophoriazusae}, first performed in 411 BGC, probably in Athens. English text followed by Greek text signal a quotation (with some small but significant changes) from Thesmophoriazusae, using the Greek text and English translation (modified slightly) of Henderson (2000). In other instances, I’ve loosely followed that translation. The Greek text of Hall & Geldart (1907) is freely available online, as are the English translations by Eugene O’Neill (1938) and by George Theodoridis (2007).
The above play of Pyramus and Thisbe includes quotes from the Rude Mechanicals’ performance of Pyramus and Thisbe in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1. The concluding song is built from verses from the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. On Aristophanes’s use of fragments of Euripides’s tragedies in the Thesmophoriazusae, Bierl (2020).
Verses preceding the included videos are adaptations of some of the lyrics from the videos (see image references below).
The in-law protests against being punished for speaking frankly at the assembly. That suggests a norm supporting speaking frankly. Translators have used the term “freedom of speech.” Lu objected:
Ancient Athenian freedom was the freedom of opportunity. In the case of parrhesia, it was a custom or value which was not a feature of government or law, but part of the Athenian character. The fact that Athenians valued free speaking was formalised in political practice under the democracy through the equal opportunity to address the political assemblies known as isegoria. There was in Athens no explicit or implied protection against the negative consequences of what one said.
Lu (2017), abstract. However, a norm of frank speaking associated with the Athenian character and an institutionalized practice of frank speaking implicitly devalue attempts to punish someone for frank speech. That norm and that institution give weight to the in-law’s protest against being punished for his frank speech.
In an influential article, Froma Zeitlin provided a gynocentric orientation to Aristophanes. She concluded that at the end of the fifth century BGC in Athens, woman is “the domain of art itself.” Moreover, according to Zeitlin, Euripides was a pioneer of the feminization of Greek culture. Zeitlin (1981) p. 327. Such a critical orientation, while at least acknowledging the long history of gynocentrism, tends to essentialize gender and devalue men. Duncan, in contrast, observed:
the figure of Agathon in the Thesmophoriazusae unsettles the tidy boundaries between masculine and feminine — even between male and female — from within the system.
Duncan (2001) p. 35. So too, of course, does Judith Butler.
[images] (1) Kathryn Grayson performing “I hate men” in the 1953 film Kiss me, Kate (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios), music and lyrics by Cole Porter for the 1948 musical Kiss Me, Kate. This musical adapted William Shakespeare’s play, The Taming of the Shrew. Shakespeare is thought to have written that play between 1590 and 1592. Via YouTube. Furthering its reputation for misandry, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) featured Alexandra Silber singing “I hate men” at the 2014 BBC Proms at The Royal Albert Hall, with The John Wilson Orchestra live. (2) Hank Williams singing “I’ll never get out of this world alive,” which he released as a single in 1952. It was included on Williams’ 1954, posthumous album, Low Down Blues. Via YouTube. (3) Beyoncé’s official music video for “Run the World (Girls)” from her 2011 studio album 4. Via YouTube. According to Wikipedia, ‘“Run the World” was used to awaken the crew of the final mission of the US Space Shuttle Atlantis and was dedicated to Mission Specialist Sandra Magnus.’
Henderson, Jeffrey, ed. and trans. 2000. Aristophanes. Birds. Lysistrata. Women at the Thesmophoria. Loeb Classical Library, 179. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Zeitlin, Froma I. 1981. “Travesties of gender and genre in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazousae.” Critical Inquiry. Theme issue: Writing and Sexual Difference. 8 (2): 301-327.
The eminent Greek warrior Achilles killed Andromache’s husband Hector, an eminent Trojan warrior, in the brutal violence against men of the Trojan War. Achilles had also killed Andromache’s father and her seven brothers. After the Greeks conquered Troy, Achilles’s son Neoptolemus threw Andromache and Hector’s baby boy Astyanax down from the Trojan city walls to death on the rocks below.[1] Then Neoptolemus took Andromache as his concubine. That’s a rocky way to start an intimate personal relationship.
Andromache’s name means literally “man fighter.” But Andromache in fact related to men with generous love. She tried to protect her husband Hector from the most dangerous fighting in the Trojan War. Moreover, she loved him despite his extramarital affairs:
Dearest Hector, I even went so far as to help you with your love affairs, if the Love Goddess tripped you up. And often I gave my breast to your bastards so that I might demonstrate no bitterness towards you. And by doing this, I won my husband’s love with my goodness.
After Andromache became Neoptolemus’s concubine, she treated him well despite the violence that he and his father Achilles had done to males in her family. She treated him well even after he married Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus.
Hermione bitterly resented her husband Neoptolemus retaining Andromache as a concubine. In his twelfth-century Romance of Troy {Roman de Troie}, Benoît de Sainte-Maure explained:
Menelaus’s daughter believed, such it appeared and seemed to her, that she didn’t have the courtly love nor true heart of her husband. Hector’s wife was the trouble, for Neoptolemus loved her beyond measure. She had from him it well seemed all his favor and his desire. For this Hermione hated her very much.
{ La fille Menelaus cuidot, Ço li ert vis, ço li semblot, Qu’el n’aveit mie fine amor Ne verai cuer de son seignor: En la femme Hector ert sa cure; Celi amot a desmesure, Cele aveit de lui bel semblant E tot son buen e son talant. Mout l’en haï Hermiona }[3]
Neoptolemus loved Andromache profoundly despite her being a foreigner and a slave. She explained to Hermione why Neoptolemus loved her and liked Hermione much less:
No, not because of my drugs does your husband hate you, but because you are an unpleasant living companion. And this is the love charm: not beauty, O woman, but goodness delights a husband. … A woman, even if married to a low-born husband, must respect him, not contend with him in prideful intellect.
According to the structure of traditional understanding, one might claim that men help to civilize women and to foster in them ennobling love. Meninism rejects that gender essentialism. It certainly doesn’t apply to Hermione. Neoptolemus’s preference for Andromache relative to Hermione is simply men’s common sense of love through the ages.
Hermione complained and plotted against Andromache. As soon as Neoptolemus went on a pilgrimage to Delphi, Hermione summoned her father Menelaus:
She had him come to her, and complained to him and said that in no way whatsoever did Neoptolemus love her, which was obvious to her. Hector’s wife had stolen him from her. No joy or good solace did she receive from him. Indeed, he scarcely ever held her in his arms. She told and asked her father to kill Andromache, because she very much hated her rival, as well as Andromache’s son Laudamanta that the vile Hector had engendered with her. And Neoptolemus was planning to make him his heir, Laudamanta, that foul dog that puts on airs.
{ Venir l’a fait, a lui se claime E dit ne tant ne quant ne l’aime Danz Pirrus, bien s’en aparceit: La femme Hector li a toleit; N’en a joie ne bel solaz; A tart la tient entre ses braz. Dit li e prie qu’il l’ocie, Quar trop par het sa compaignie, Neïs son fil Laudamanta, Qu’Ector li coilverz engendra, E ja en cuide son heir faire, De l’ort, del chien, del de put aire }
What’s a father to do when his daughter asks him to kill her husband? Men, including fathers, know their place:
Menelaus saw that he had to do her bidding, and he couldn’t backtrack from doing it. He didn’t want to ignore his daughter’s wishes.
{ Menelaus veit faire l’estuet E que retraire ne s’en puet: Ne vueut sa fille mesoïr. }
Having discovered Hermione’s plot to have her murdered, Andromache fled with her son Laudamanta to the people outside the palace. She cried and appealed for their help. As is typical, the people united in support of the damsel in distress:
She implored loudly and pitifully that they help her. The common people jumped in an ugly, foul mood toward Menelaus. Among them they nearly killed him before with great effort he escaped. Nothing would have kept them back until they had killed him. They defended well the lady and held her in such high honor that whatever she wanted and desired they did from that day forward.
{ Hauz criz lor crie e merciables, Que il li seient aïdables. Li pueples comuns est sailliz Vers Menelau fel e marriz. Por poi qu’entre eus ne l’ont ocis; A grant peine lor estort vis: Ja rien nes dut mais retenir Jusqu’il l’eüssent fait morir. Bien ont la dame défendue E a si grant honor tenue Que lot son buen e son talant Firent de cel jor en avant. }
Trojan or Greek, Gentile or Jew, a woman’s life is commonly valued much more than a man’s. When Orestes showed up, Menelaus urged him to behead Andromache. He didn’t dare. Orestes, however, arranged to have Neoptolemus killed at Delphi and then took Hermione as his wife. Orestes received the reward he deserved.
Men must unite in solidarity to overcome violence against men and other gender injustices. With the help of Achilles’s parents Thetis and Peleus, Andromache and her son Laudamanta found refuge in Molose. Then pregnant by Neoptolemus, Andromache gave birth to a boy named Achillides. Hector’s son Laudamanta and Achilles’s grandson Achillides loved each other as worthy brothers of the same mother. Laudamanta became a Trojan king and Achillides a Greek king. They were loyal allies to each other.[4] Another Trojan War became unthinkable.
[1] On Achilles killing Andromache’s father Eetion and her seven brothers in Thebe, Iliad 6.414-24. On Neoptolemus killing Andromache and Hector’s son Astyanax, Pausanius, Description of Greece10.25.9 (following the account in the epic cycle Little Iliad) and 10.26.4. Neoptolemus is also known as Pyrrhus / Pirrus.
[2] Euripides, Andromache vv. 222-6, Greek text and English translation (modified) from Kovacs (1995). The subsequent quote “No, not because of my drugs…” is from Andromache vv. 205-8, 213-4 and is similarly sourced. On Andromache attempting to protect Hector from dangerous fighting in the Trojan War, Iliad 6.430-9.
[3] Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Roman de Troie, vv. 29623-31, Old French text from Constans (1904), English translation (modified slightly) from Burgess & Kelly (2017). Subsequent quotes from the Roman de Troie are similarly sourced. They are vv. 29635-46 (She had him come to her…), 29651-3 (Menelaus saw that he had to do her bidding…), 29662-74 (She implored loudly and pitifully…).
Medieval authors recognized women’s cruelty to other women. In a story in the Deeds of the Romans {Gesta Romanorum}, an empress forced another noble woman to suckle two serpents at her breasts. The serpents bit her breasts and killed her. See Chapter 80, “Serpents Suckled,” in the Anglo-Latin Gesta Romanorum, edition of Bright (2019). This story is Chapter 279, drawn from the Anglo-Latin manuscript British Library Harley MS 2270, in the Gesta Romanorum edition of Oesterley (1872). It doesn’t occur in continental Gesta Romanorum manuscripts. Bright (2019) p. 531, note for ch. 80.
[4] Despite similarly serious familial trauma, Odysseus’s sons Telemachus and Telegonus, mothered by Penelope and Circe, respectively, also became close allies. Roman de Troie vv. 30263-300.
[image] Andromache, with her son Astyanax, mourns her husband Hector, who Achilles killed in the Trojan War. Excerpt from painting by Jacques-Louis David in 1783. Preserved as accession # DL 1969-1 and MR 1433 in the Louvre Museum (Paris, France). Via Wikimedia Commons.
References:
Bright, Philippa, ed. and trans. 2019. The Anglo-Latin Gesta Romanorum: from Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce MS 310. Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burgess, Glyn S., and Douglas Kelly. 2017. The Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Mauré: a translation. Gallica, 41. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Review by Sylvia Federico and by Cristian Bratu.
Constans, Léopold, ed. 1904-12. Le roman de Troie, par Benoît de Sainte-Maure, publié d’après tous les manuscrits connus. Société des Aanciens Textes Français. Paris: F. Didot. Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
Kovacs, David, ed. and trans. 1995. Euripides. Children of Heracles. Hippolytus. Andromache. Hecuba. Loeb Classical Library 484. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Medieval European monks and clerics recognized that Jesus, Christ the Savior in Christian understanding, was a fully masculine man. Moreover, these learned men recognized men’s goodness not just in men’s heroic deeds, but in men’s very being. Many men in their ardent love for women veer toward gyno-idolatry. Women today must help men to avoid that delusion, just as one medieval woman poetically did.
Medieval Christianity deeply respected men’s sexuality. Consider, for example, the Benedictine Solignac Abbey, founded in Limoges, France, in the seventh century. In the twelfth century, Solignac Abbey celebrated annually Christian warrior-men (Crusaders) reconquering Jerusalem in 1099. A poem memorializing that annual festival began with condemning castration culture:
Solignac Abbey takes its name from its yearly festivals, so let everyone observe those yearly festivals, except the monk Serracum, who cut off his genitals. We exclude him as a man possessed by a demon.
{ Nomen a solemnibus trahit Solemniacum; solemnizent igitur omnes praeter monachum, qui sibi virilia resecavit, Serracum. Illum hinc excipimus tamquam demoniacum }[1]
Excluding castrated men isn’t meant to associate men’s genitals with violence. The monk Serracum wasn’t a warrior. Moreover, the reason for excluding him wasn’t that he was unmanly, but that he was possessed by a demon. The leadership at the medieval Solignac Abbey recognized that castration is Satanic. You should, too.
In their ardently passionate sexuality, medieval men regarded their beloved women as holy. In describing his beloved Flora, a medieval man poet used epithets associated with Mary, the mother of Jesus:
She is neither pale nor has any blemish. A chaste flower and heaven’s dew strive to equal her, as does a golden vessel and a fragrant column of smoke.
{ nec pallentem nec habentem maculam, casti floris, caeli roris aemulam, vas auratum, aromatum virgulam }[2]
Medieval men implored the love goddess Venus just as they implored Mary, the preeminent Christian intercessor:
May Venus assist all who call upon her — assist them with Cupid!
May she soon assist young men who ask for her help so that their ladies would be good to them.
{ Venus assit omnibus ad eam clamantibus, assit cum Cupidine!
Assit iam iuvenibus iuvamen poscentibus ut prosint his dominae. }[3]
Medieval love poetry is for a mature audience. In such poetry, ladies being good to men means having sex with them. That’s Christian salvation history reduced to an act like the Holy Spirit uniting with Mary to incarnate Jesus.
While men tend to be romantically simple, Christian love relationships are complicated in practice. Another medieval man declared to his beloved woman:
You are the spark of living fire that rushes at my heart’s pennants. Placing myself over the not-little fire, I enclosed you in my heart and sealed my love.
My heart regrets that it rejoiced on that day it came to know you, a distinctive, modest woman, and chose you for a beloved.
{ Ignis vivi tu scintilla, discurrens cordis ad vexilla. Igni incumbens non pauxillo conclusi mentis te sigillo.
Maeret cor, quod gaudebat die, quo te cognoscebat singularem et pudicam te adoptabat in amicam. }[4]
Jesus offered to his followers “living water {aqua viva}” associated with an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.[5] In the first verse above, “living fire {ignis vivus}” is the man’s love for the woman. He longs for sexual union with her, but she’s a modest woman. He thus begs her:
Virginal lily, bestow your aid! One who has been sent into exile asks for your advice. … You, not under Venus’s rule, you, chastity reborn, adorned with a suitable face, clothed in Wisdom’s dress,
to you alone I sing. Don’t despise me! … Allow me, I beg you, to worship you, who shine like a star in the sky!
{ Virginale lilium, tuum praesta subsidium! Missus in exilium quaerit a te consilium. … Iure Veneris orbata, castitas redintegrata, vultu decenti perornata, veste Sophiae decorata,
The man adores the woman with Christian figures. The lily was a figure of virginity associated with the Virgin Mary. God led Mary’s Jewish ancestors out of exile in Egypt. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was associated with stars. She was the “star of the sea {stella maris}” and the “morning star {stella matutina}.” The man seeks to worship his beloved woman. That’s the gyno-idolatry of being under the rule of Venus, not under the rule of the one Christian God.
In medieval men’s imagination, worshiping a flesh-and-blood woman included having sex with her. A medieval man thus declared:
I love her passionately. When I am sad, she makes me strong and joyful. I love her above all others and venerate her as a goddess.
{ Amo ferventer eam, per quam maestus vigeo et gaudeo, illam prae cunctis diligo et veneror ut deam. }[6]
Another medieval men seeking again to be joined sexually with his beloved affirmed:
With only a nod from her, I will worship her throughout my life in this world.
{ eam colo nutu solo in hoc saeculo. }
The idea of worshiping a woman by having sex with her simplistically sacrilizes men’s sexuality. In Christianity, marriage is a sacrament institutionalized in the same way as other Christian sacraments. Christian marriage entails spouses’ mutual obligation to have loving sex with each other, even if one doesn’t feel like doing it. What that means in actual practice isn’t simple. Marriage is a much more complicated relationship than simply worshiping a woman in one’s own way and having sex with her.
Another medieval man sought salvation from his beloved woman. On a bended knee of feudal subservience, he hailed her with epithets of Mary, the mother of God, combined with invocations of beautiful non-biblical women:
Hail, most beautiful woman, precious jewel! Hail, glory of virgins, maiden glorious! Hail, light of lights! Hail, rose of the world, a Blanchefleur and a Helen, a noble Venus!
The man’s beloved woman in response directed him to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, rather than her:
Then the morning star in answer said to me: “May he, who rules the earthly and the divine, who puts violets in the grass and roses on thorns, be your salvation, your glory, and your medicine!”
{ Tunc respondit inquiens stella matutina: “Ille, qui terrestria regit et divina, dans in herba violas et rosas in spina, tibi salus, gloria sit et medicina!” }
She was a godly woman. She advised the man who loved her not to engage in gyno-idolatry. That doesn’t mean she declared his masculinity to be toxic or disparaged his genitals as “junk.” In fact, they kissed each other thousands of times and had sex. But she at least rightly understood that gyno-idolatry is wrong.
Medieval Latin literature addressed men’s sexuality respectfully, generously, and playfully. It recognized that men are like dogs, but not merely like dogs. It appreciated that men are virtuous, not through their accomplishments, but through their masculine being, even being like a male pig. What do men want? Men want to be appreciated as men were appreciated in medieval Latin literature. Women today should make the effort to appreciate men in that way.
From bitter experiences, happy times are born. The greatest goals are not achieved without effort. Those who seek sweet honey are often stung, so let those embittered by love hope for better days.
{ Ex amaris equidem grata generantur; non sine laboribus maxima parantur. Dulce mel qui appetunt sepe stimulantur; sperent ergo melius qui plus amarantur. }
[1] Carmina Burana 52: “Solignac Abbey takes its name from its yearly festivals {Nomen a solemnibus trahit Solemniacum},” stanza 1 (of 6), Latin text and English translation (modified) from Traill (2018). This poem, which probably was written abound 1130, survives in two twelfth-century manuscripts as well as in the early thirteenth-century Carmina Burana.
[2] Carmina Burana 103, “Alas, the pain {Eia dolor}!” vv. 2.10-18, Latin text and English translation (modified) from Traill (2018). Subsequent quotes from the Carmina Burana are similarly sourced.
[3] Carmina Burana 148, “The earth is abloom with flowers {Floret tellus floribus},” stanzas 3-4 (of 6).
[4] Carmina Burana 107, “I am crushed by the grim power of love {Dira vi amoris teror},” stanzas 1b-c. The subsequent quote of verses is from id., stanzas 2a, 3a-b, which concludes the poem. For a freely available English translation, Waddell (1929) pp. 259-61.
[5] John 4:10, 7:38. On the Holy Spirit associated with tongues of fire, Acts 2:3-4.
[6] Carmina Burana 168, “May my partner in the new year {Anno novali mea},” vv. 4.4-7, which concludes the poem. The subsequent quote is from Carmina Burana 169, “The star of all that I delight to see {Hebet sidus laeti visus}, vv. 2.7-8.
[7] Carmina Burana 77, “If I were to speak with the tongues of angels and men {Si linguis angelicis loquar et humanis},” stanza 8. The subsequent two quotes above are from id., stanzas 9 and 33 (of 33). The phrase “Those who seek sweet honey are often stung {Dulce mel qui appetunt sepe stimulantur}” of v. 33.3 was a medieval proverb “generally used to warn about possible negative consequences of indiscriminate sexual encounters.” Traill (2018) v. 1, p. 541, note to 33.3.
In a subsequent stanza, the poet is even more explicitly gyno-idolatrous:
Your looks were bright and charming, shining and serene like a sunlit sky. That’s why I often said: “My God, my God — is she Helen or is she the goddess Venus?”
{ Visus tuus splendidus erat et amoenus, tamquam aer lucidus, nitens et serenus. Unde dixi saepius: “Deus, Deus meus, estne illa Helena, vel est dea Venus?” }
“Si linguis angelicis loquar et humanis,” stanza 14.
[images] (1) Twelfth-century Solignac Abbey in Limoges, France. Photo made on May 4, 2016 by GFreihalter via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Medieval man and woman in agreement in love. The depicted man (minnesinger) is Herr Bernger von Horheim, who lived late in the twelfth century in Germanic lands. Illustration from Codex Manesse, made between 1305 and 1315. Manuscript preserved as UB Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 848, fol. 178r. Thanks to University of Hiedelberg and Wikimedia Commons.
References:
Traill, David A. 2018, ed. and trans. Carmina Burana. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 48-49. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
According to a medieval story collection, the Roman Emperor Titus decreed that all must hold sacred his first-born son’s birthday. No one was permitted to engage in “servile work {opus servile}” on that day. Emperor Titus asked the great poet Master Virgil to invent a device that would indicate any violations of that decree. Virgil erected in the city-center a statue that policed working on the birthday of the emperor’s son.
The artisan Focus, struggling to meet his needs, rebelled against the Emperor’s decree. Focus went to the statue and declared that if it informed against him, he would break its head. When the emperor sent messengers to the statue, the statue told them to read the writing on its forehead:
Times have changed, people have grown worse, and a person who wishes to say the truth will receive a broken head.
{ Tempora mutantur, homines deteriorantur, qui voluerit veritatem dicere caput fractum habebit. }
When Emperor Titus heard this message, he sent armed guards. The guards told the statue to speak the truth. They would protect it against attacks on its head. The statue declared:
Arrest the artisan named Focus. He’s one who doesn’t observe in any way the Emperor’s day.
{ Accipe fabrum nomine Focum. Ille est, qui in nullo observat diem imperatoris. }
The guards arrested Focus and brought him before the Emperor.
In his defense, Focus explained that he had to work every day to meet his daily need for eight silver pennies. He declared:
My lord, listen to me. I have to pay two silver pennies every day to my father, because when I was a young boy, my father spent two silver pennies on me every day. Now my father is poor, so reason dictates that I must help him in his poverty. Each day I thus hand him two silver pennies. Two other silver pennies I lend to my son, who is now a student. Hence if I should ever chance to be poor, he can pay me back two silver pennies, as I am now doing for my father. Two further silver pennies I lose every day on my wife, who is always arguing with me and is very willful and has a hot-tempered disposition. Because of these three characteristics, whatever I give her, that I lose. Another two silver pennies I spend on myself for food and drink. I can’t easily get by with less, and those eight silver pennies I cannot obtain without working every day. Now you have heard my defense. Let therefore your judgment be correct!
{ Domine mi, advertite me! Duos denarios omni die teneor patri meo, quia cum essem puer parvulus, pater meus duos denarios super me singulis diebus expendit, jam pater meus in egestate est positus, unde racio dictat, quod ei subveniam in sua paupertate, et ideo omni die duos denarios ei trado; duos alios denarios filio meo accommodo, qui jam ad studium pergit, ut si contingat me ad egestatem pervenire, michi illos duos denarios reddat, sicut ego jam patri meo facio; duos alios denarios omni die perdo super uxorem meam, quia semper est michi contraria, aut proprie voluntatis aut callide complectionis, et propter ista tria quicquid ei dedero, hoc perdo; duos alios denarios super meipsum in cibis et potibus expendo. Levius bono modo transire non potero et istos denarios non possum obtinere sine continuo labore. Jam audistis racionem. Detis ergo judicium rectum! }
Focus’s wife apparently didn’t work. Moreover, despite his wife not being cooperative, Focus allocated as much of his earnings to her as he did to himself. Emperor Titus didn’t condemn this marital gender injustice. Instead, the Emperor praised Focus and permitted him to work as much as he needed to do.
After the Emperor died, the Roman people chose Focus as the new Emperor rather than the Emperor’s son. The Roman people respected Focus’s work ethic and economic wisdom. Many workingmen have shown a similar work ethic and allocation of their earnings throughout history.
As a matter of retributive justice for historical oppression, women must work to support financially men today. Men deserve the choice to withdraw from the workforce and be homemakers receiving half of their women’s earnings while being argumentative, willful, and hot-tempered. Let it be so taught to everyone. If you’re not a meninist, you’re a bigot!
The above story of Focus the artisan exists in the medieval continental Gesta Romanorum as Ch. 57, “About the perfection of life {De perfectione vite},” and in the medieval Anglo-Latin Gesta Romanorum as Ch. 16, which Bright (2019) titles “Focus the smith.” The first and third quotes are from the continental Gesta Romanorum, Latin text from Oesterley (1872), English translation (modified slightly) from Stace (2018). The second quote is from the Anglo-Latin Gesta Romanorum, Latin text and English translation from Bright (2019). The story differs only in minor details across these two versions.
[images] [1] Tanner-man at work. Illustration made in 1473. From Housebook of the Mendelschen Twelve Brothers Foundation, Volume 1. Nuremberg 1426–1549. Nuremberg City Library, Amb. 317.2 °. Via Wikimedia Commons. [2] Saddlemaker-man at work. Illustration made in 1470. Sourced as for the tanner-man. Via Wikimedia Commons.
References:
Bright, Philippa, ed. and trans. 2019. The Anglo-Latin Gesta Romanorum: from Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce MS 310. Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
