Author: Douglas Galbi

Contrary to widely propagated lies, men suffer terribly from intimate-partner violence. Both old, fat men and young, handsome men are victimized. What domestic-violence experts teach to women also applies to men. No man is safe from those who claim to love him.

Consider the case of Enguerrand I de Boves. He was born in France in the middle of the eleventh century. Enguerrand married Ade de Marle. She had previously been married to Aubry, Viscount of Coucy.[1] Enguerrand’s marriage to Ade de Marle made him Lord of Marle. Ade had two children, Thomas and Robert, within her marriage to Enguerrand. He apparently suspected that at least Thomas (his “reputed {ut dicitur}” son) wasn’t his biological child. Enguerrand divorced Ade, most plausibly for betraying his reproductive interests despite professing to love him.[2]

Although Enguerrand showed more backbone toward Ade than many men show toward their wives, Enguerrand typically allowed women to dominate him. Guibert of Nogent noted of Enguerrand:

He was so much devoted to women’s love that, whatever women surrounded him, whether they were indebted to him in love or money-seeking women, he would do almost nothing but what their impudence dictated.

{ amori foemineo adeo deditus, ut quascunque circa se aut debitas aut usurarias mulieres haberet, nihil pene faceret, nisi quod ei earundem petulantia dictitaret. } [3]

After Enguerrand divorced Ade, he became enamored of Sibylle de Porcien. She was Count Godfrey’s wife. Godfrey was a very handsome man and much younger than Enguerrand. However, Godfrey and Sibylle were having marital problems, and Sibylle was a woman with strong, independent sexuality:

Her husband was fulfilling his martial duty less than she would have desired. Whether she kept herself from other men can be know from this one thing: she would have never come to such a public and monstrous scandal if she had not descended one step at a time through clandestine evil acts. In particular, she was already pregnant with another man’s child when she married the man who is now her husband. Her past debaucheries everyone knows.

{ Cui, cum minus quam volebat mariti debitum redderetur, utrum alia sese cohibuisset, hoc uno sciri potest, quod ad tam evidentis et immanis flagitii saltum nunquam venisset, nisi clandestinorum malorum gradibus descendisset, praesertim cum externis concubitibus gravida veniret ad istum, quem nunc obsidet. Nam praeteritarum ejus libidinum ea apud omnes }

Enguerrand and Sibylle had a secret affair. She then left her husband and married Enguerrand. Both her former husband Count Godfrey and her father, Roger, Count of Porcien, were furious with Enguerrand for what he had done. Both sides killed many men in the resulting violence against men.

Enguerrand subsequently had to make a humiliating sacrifice for his wife Sibylle. As Enguerrand became old and put on weight, his social status declined:

He was ridiculed by tavern-keepers and butchers for getting old and fat — many pounds with many years.

{ sui aevi gravitatem caupones et macellarii irriderent } [4]

In light of these personal developments, his wife Sibylle took decisive action:

His wife, with the pretense of chastity but really because of his age and fatness, began to refuse to have sex with Enguerrand. She, however, would not be deprived of her customary enjoyment of lovers. So she began to lust for a suitable young man.

{ uxor, cum jam sub specie continentiae pro senio et corporis mole aspernaretur Ingelrannum, veteri tamen amasiorum usu carere non poterat. Unde et juvenem idoneum cum amaret } [5]

What could an old, fat, sexually desperate husband do in this situation? Some might say he should divorce his wife and find a new one, or at least find an eager girlfriend. But Enguerrand had already been divorced once. Real-world divorce is expensive in a variety of ways. After Enguerrand’s divorce from Ade, Thomas de Marle, Enguerrand’s reputed son with Ade, hated him and violently attacked him and his allies. Divorce often promotes family violence.

Rather than divorcing Sibylle, Enguerrand resolved that sharing is better than lacking. He apparently accommodated Sibylle’s desire in order to be allowed to have sex with her:

Enguerrand kept her away from all communication with the young man, until she drove Enguerrand so mad with sexual enticements that he summoned the young man, set him up in their house, and betrothed her very young daughter to him to conceal the young man’s wicked affair with Enguerrand’s own wife.

{ eam Ingelrannus ab ejus omnino confabulatione arceret, tantis repente hominem lenociniis dementavit, ut eum ad se accersiret, in domo sua statueret, filiam suam parvulam ad palliandos amores nefarios pactis sponsalibus daret }

Husbands historically have shared their wife with other men when the wife was reluctant to work outside the home. But for good evolutionary-biological reasons (powerfully re-enforced by gynocentric paternity laws) men typically prefer that, for a woman with whom they hope to have children, she exclusively have sex with him. Enguerrand sacrificed an exclusive arrangement with his wife in order to avoid the harm and violence of divorce.

Even young men are forced to offer sacrifices because of intimate-partner violence. Consider a situation of complicated intimate partnerships and violence in ancient Rome. The gladiator Encolpius apparently became a sexual consort for the wealthy married merchant Lichas, and perhaps also had sex with Lichas’s wife. The wealthy, highly privileged woman Tryphaena owned both Encolpius and a sixteen-year-old servant youth named Giton. Encolpius and Giton had a consensual sexual relationship. Exploiting her position of power and authority over Giton, Tryphaena frequently sexually assaulted him. Encolpius and Giton fled from Tryphaena’s household and thus became runaway slaves. Tryphaena was enraged by the loss of her beloved chattel and her sexual privilege. Lichas was enraged that Encolpius had deserted him to be with Giton. The grave risks of further intimate-partner violence are obvious.

Tryphaena, Lichas, Encolpius, and Giton found themselves unexpectedly together on a ship at sea. With Tryphaena keen to sexually assault Giton, Encolpius courageously defended the youth:

Thrusting my fists into Tryphaena’s face, I cried out in a clear and free voice that I would use violence if that wicked woman didn’t abstain from hurting Giton, for she was the only person on the ship who deserved a beating.

{ intentans in oculos Tryphaenae manus usurum me viribus meis clara liberaque voce clamavi, ni abstineret a Gitone iniuriam mulier damnata et in toto navigio sola verberanda. } [6]

A brawl subsequently broke out. Tryphaena, her maids, Lichas, and other subservient men were on her side; Encolpius, Giton, Eumolpus, and Eumolpius’s servant-man fought against them. Blood streamed from wounds on both sides, yet the intimate-partner violence raged undiminished. Then Giton dramatically offered a horrific sacrifice:

Then the supremely brave Giton put a razor to his own manly genitals and threatened to excise the cause of all the misery.

{ Tunc fortissimus Giton ad virilia sua admovit novaculam infestam, minatus se abscisurum tot miseriarum causam }

Tryphaena quickly responded with an offer of forgiveness for all past offenses. The warring parties then established a formal peace treaty. Lichas was compelled not to disparage Encolpius about his relationship with Giton:

Lichas, you express your understanding that you will not pursue Encolpius with insulting words or grimaces, nor inquire where he sleeps at night. If you do so inquire, you will pay him two hundred denarii for each injurious act.

{ Licha, ex tui animi sententia, ut tu Encolpion nec verbo contumelioso insequeris nec vultu, neque quaeres ubi nocte dormiat, aut si quaesieris, pro singulis iniuriis numerabis praesentes denarios ducenos. } [7]

Tryphaena was compelled not to sexually harass Giton without pay:

You will give the youth no repugnant demand for a hug, a kiss, or to be held tight in sexual intercourse, without for each act paying a hundred denarii.

{ tu nihil imperabis puero repugnanti, non amplexum, non osculum, non coitum venere constrictum, nisi pro qua re praesentes numeraveris denarios centum. }

A woman paying a subordinate for sexual services that she demands is more just than her receiving those services for free. In our more ignorant and barbaric age, women who raped men can receive state-mandated monthly payments from their victims. While the treaty that ended this intimate-partner violence was far from perfect, at least it established peace.

Cuckolding and castration culture cast a long, dark shadow over human history. Men too often have been called upon to make enormous sacrifices to stop intimate-partner violence. Women must take equal responsibility for stopping intimate-partner violence. But that’s not enough. Establishing a propitious environment for human love is the most important task for everyone.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• Guibert of Nogent in Heloise’s light: dark nights of internalized misandry
• now-unspeakable wrong: resisting cuckolding in medieval Europe
• wife calling husband home in the shadow of Corpus Juris Civilis

Notes:

[1] Ade de Marle is also known as Adèle of Marle and Adèle of Roucy. Aubry of Coucy is also known as Alberic de Beaumont, seigneur de Coucy. Enguerrand I de Boves became Count of Amiens in 1085 and Lord of Coucy in 1086. Bourgin (1907) p. 133, n. 1. Ade and Enguerrand had their first son, Thomas de Marle, in 1073.

Enguerrand had “a very close relative {plurima sibi consanguinitate affinis}” with another Enguerrand who became Bishop of Laon in 1098 or 1099. Bishop Enguerrand of Laon apparently died in 1104. Guibert, Monodiae 3.3; Bourgin (1907) p. 132, n. 1. Both Bishop Enguerrand of Laon and Enguerrand de Marle were probably grandsons of Aubry of Coucy and hence first cousins. Bourgin (1907) p. 133, n. 1;  Archambault (1996) p. 124, n. 10.

An Enguerrand associated with Laon participated in the First Crusade, 1095-1099. Writing about the First Crusade, Guibert reported:

But count Stephen, with certain bishops of our kingdom, among whom were Hugh of Soissons, William of Paris, fine, noble men, who were splendid, accomplished young rulers, and Enguerrand of Laon — would that he had been as preeminent in his religious belief as he was in appearance and eloquence — together with many dignitaries of all ranks, entered the city of Constantinople.

{ At Stephanus comes cum quibusdam pontificibus regni nostri, inter quos Hugo Suessionicus, et Parisiorum Guillelmus illustris indolis generisque viri, qui praesulatui suo in primaevo flore clarissimis moribus ministrabant, et Engelrannus Laudunensis, vir sicut forma et eloquentia, utinam sic religione! conspicuus, cum multa ordinum omnium dignitate moenia Constantinopolitana subintrant. }

Guibert of Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos {God’s Deeds through the Franks} 8.6, Latin text from Guizot (1825), English trans. from Levine (1997). Archambault identifies this Enguerrand as Enguerrand de Marle. Archambault (1996) p. 125, n. 12. It seems to me more probably Bishop Enguerrand of Laon.

[2] Guibert repeatedly refers to Thomas de Marle as “Enguerrand’s reputed son {ut dicitur Ingrelranni filium}.” E.g. Monodiae 3.11. Benton states:

He {Enguerrand} divorced Adèle of Roucy, the mother of Thomas of Marle, on charges of adultery, leading Guibert to say throughout this work {Monodiae} that Thomas was Enguerrand’s “reputed” son.

Benson (1970) p. 148, n. 2. Archambault, however, argues:

Guibert is not casting doubt on Thomas’s legitimacy, or casting aspersions on Enguerrand’s first marriage to Ade de Marle, Thomas’s mother, when he states: “contra Thomam, quem irremediabiliter ipse, qui dicebatur pater, oderat {against Thomas, who irremediably hated that one who is called his father}.” He is showing, rather, how unnatural Enguerrand’s sentiments have become toward Thomas de Marle, whom both he and he second wife, Sibylle, intend to disinherit.

Archambault (1996) p. 169, n. 113. I think Guibert is both depicting “unnatural” familial sentiments and recording doubt about Thomas’s legitimacy. Guibert states of Enguerrand: “in entering into marriages he had been unfortunate {cum in sortiendis matrimoniis infortuniosus esset}.” Monodiae 3.3. Guibert also describes Thomas’s intense hatred toward both Enguerrand and Sibylle. That hatred is plausibly the hatred of a son toward those who had exposed his mother’s adultery and his illegitimacy in contemporary eyes.

[3] Guibert of Nogent, Monodiae {Songs of Self} 3.3, Latin text from Bourgin (1907), my English translation benefiting from those of Archambault (1996) and McAlhany & Rubenstein (2011). All subsequent quotes from Monodiae are similarly sourced. The subsequent quote above is also from Monodiae 3.3.

[4] Guibert, Monodiae 3.14. Enguerrand was a lord and a count. Being ridiculed by inn-keepers and butchers is a stunning status reversal. The Latin text refers wittily to the “weight of his age {gravitas aevi}”; gravitas, used here ironically, is a venerable Roman virtue.

[5] Guibert, Monodiae 3.11. The subsequent quote above is from id. While less so in medieval Europe than in today’s high-income countries, marriage turning sexless has always been a risk.

[6] Petronius, Satyricon 108, Latin text from Heseltine & Rouse (1913), my English translation benefiting from that of id. and Walsh (1996). All subsequent quotes from the Satyricon are similarly source. The next quote above is also from Satyricon 108.

[7] Petronius, Satyricon 109. The subsequent quote above is from id. The denarius was an ancient Roman silver coin.

Payments of 200 and 100 denarii were enormous sums relative to the income of ordinary Roman men. The Satyricon is thought to have been written about 64 GC. Toward the end of the first century GC, men engaged in unskilled agricultural labor on estates in Roman Egypt earned roughly 5 obols per day. A denarius was worth 28 obols. Hence the daily wage for men engaged in unskilled labor was about 0.2 denarii a day. For the equivalence and data, Harper (2016) Table 2, p. 814, and Figure 9, p. 828. Here’s Harper’s extensive dataset on Roman prices and wages.

[image] One man being sawed into two parts. Illumination on folio 107r in Epistolarium (Amiens) {Épistolier à l’usage d’Amiens}. Illumination by Maître d’Antoine Clabault, made about 1490. Preserved in Bibliothèque nationale de France as Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal. MS-662.

References:

Archambault, Paul J., trans. 1996. A Monk’s Confession: the memoirs of Guibert of Nogent. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Benton, John F., trans. 1970. Self and society in Medieval France: the memoirs of Abbot Guibert of Nogent. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Bourgin, George, ed. 1907. Guibert of Nogent. Histoire de sa vie: 1053-1124. Paris: Picard.

Guizot, François, trans. 1825. Histoire des Croisades. Collection des mémoires relatifs à l’histoire de France, 10. Paris: Brière.

Harper, Kyle. 2016. “People, Plagues, and Prices in the Roman World: The Evidence from Egypt.” Journal of Economic History. 76 (3): 803-839.

Heseltine, Michael and W. H. D. Rouse, trans., revised by E. H. Warmington. 1913. Petronius Arbiter, Seneca. Satyricon. Apocolocyntosis. Loeb Classical Library 15. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Levine, Robert. 1997. The Deeds of God through the Franks: a translation of Guibert de Nogent’s Gesta Dei per Francos. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.

McAlhany, Joseph, and Jay Rubenstein, trans. 2011. Guibert of Nogent. Monodies and the Relics of Saints: the autobiography and a manifesto of a French monk from the time of the crusades. New York, NY: Penguin Books. (review by Scott G. Bruce, review by Bruce L. Venarde)

Walsh, Patrick G, trans. 1996. Petronius Arbiter. The Satyricon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Important recent classical scholarship has established that “the classical Greek notion of beauty is closely related to erôs, that is, passionate desire.”[1] The learned, twelfth-century monk Guibert of Nogent understood beauty classically. Guibert, however, went beyond the ancient Greek notion of beauty to highlight men’s under-appreciated work of desire.

Guibert presented beauty with a superficial contrast. Consider how Guibert described his greatest blessing:

I have already said, Pious and Holy One, that I am thankful to you for your gifts. I thank you, first and foremost, for having given me a mother who is beautiful yet chaste and modest and exceedingly God-fearing. Mentioning her beauty alone would be profane and foolish if I didn’t add (to show the vanity of the word “beauty”) that the severity of her appearance was sure proof of her chastity.

{ Dixeram, pie et sancte, quod de tuis tibi beneficiis gratularer. Primum potissimumque itaque gratias ago, quod pulchram, sed castam, modestam mihi matrem timoratissimamque contuleris. Pulchram profecto satis seculariter ac inepte protuleram, nisi certae castitatis severissima fronte hoc nomen inane firmassem. } [2]

Guibert’s mother is beautiful {pulcher}, yet she has a severe appearance. So does she look like Saint Pelagia, or like a viciously anti-meninist woman? Guibert immediately explained:

Fasting for the poor, who have no choice for when food is available, is really a form of torture and is therefore less praiseworthy. In the same way, if rich people abstain from food, their merit is derived from abundance. So it is with beauty, which is all the more praiseworthy if it resists flattery while knowing itself to be desirable.

{ Sicut sane in omnino pauperibus jejunia videntur extortitia, quibus non suppetunt ciborum suffragia, et ideo minus laudabilia, frugalitas autem divitum pro sua habet copia pretium; sic forma quanto appetibilior, si contra lenocinia duruerit, tanto omnimodae titulo laudis evectior. }

Guibert’s mother evidently is a woman that men desire, like men do Saint Pelagia. His mother’s severity isn’t repellent bitterness and hostility toward men. Her severity is merely her reason and judgment strong enough to resist the servile flattery of weak, self-abasing men.

Guibert went on to consider a classical understanding of beauty. He stated:

Sallust was able to consider beauty praiseworthy independent of moral considerations. Otherwise he never would have said about Aurelia Orestilla, “Good men never praised anything in her except her beauty.” Sallust seems to have meant that Aurelia’s beauty, considered in isolation, could still be praised by good people, while admitting how corrupt she was in everything else.

{ Sallustiuse Crispus nisi solam sine moribus pulchritudinem laudi duxisset, nunquam de Aurelia Orestilla dixisset: “Inqua, ait, praeter formam nihil unquam bonus laudavit.” Si formam ejus, quam excipit, a bono laudari asserit, quia tamen in caeteris omnibus turpem } [3]

Aurelia Orestilla came from a leading political family in the Roman Republic of the early first century BGC. She was the wife of the eminent Roman commander Catiline when he engaged in a conspiracy to burn Rome and overthrow the Republican government. Cicero associated Aurelia Orestilla with obscenity.[4] She was probably similar to her contemporary Sempronia, a type of woman profusely celebrated in mass media today:

Sempronia was a woman who had often committed many crimes of masculine daring. In family heritage and beauty, and in her husband and her children, she was abundantly favored by fortune. She was well-read in the literature of Greece and Rome, and able to play the lyre and to dance more skillfully than an honest woman would find necessary. She had many other accomplishments that aid voluptuousness. Nothing she valued so little as modesty and chastity. You could not easily say whether she was less sparing of her money or her honor. Her sexual desires were so ardent that she sought men more often than they sought her. Even before the time of the conspiracy she had often broken her word, repudiated her debts, and been privy to murder. Experiences of poverty and extravagance had combined to drive her forward. Nevertheless, she was a woman of no paltry endowments. She could write verses, bandy jests, and use language modest, tender, or wanton. In short, she possessed a high degree of wit and charm.

{ erat Sempronia quae multa saepe virilis audaciae facinora commiserat. Haec mulier genere atque forma, praeterea viro atque liberis satis fortunata fuit; litteris Graecis et Latinis docta, psallere et saltare elegantius, quam necesse est probae, multa alia, quae instrumenta luxuriae sunt. Sed ei cariora semper omnia quam decus atque pudicitia fuit; pecuniae an famae minus parceret, haud facile discerneres; lubido sic accensa, ut saepius peteret viros quam peteretur. Sed ea saepe antehac fidem prodiderat, creditum abiuraverat, caedis conscia fuerat, luxuria atque inopia praeceps abierat. Verum ingenium eius haud absurdum; posse versus facere, iocum movere, sermone uti vel modesto vel molli vel procaci; prorsus multae facetiae multusque lepos inerat. } [5]

The Latin word for beauty used to characterize both Aurelia Orestilla and Sempronia is forma. The Latin word that Guibert used to characterize his mother is pulcher. The word forma is beauty much more narrowly limited to physical appearance.[6]

Like Bishop Nonnus with respect to Pelagia, Guibert had a realistic understanding of womanly beauty. Writing in a more liberal and less doctrinaire age than ours, Guibert frankly explained:

Speaking for Sallust, I think he might just as well have said that Aurelia deserved to be praised for a natural, God-given gift, impaired though she was by all the other impurities that made up her being. Likewise a statue can be praised for the harmony of its parts, no matter what material composes it. It may be regarded as an idol by the Apostle Paul from the viewpoint of faith, and indeed nothing may be called or is more impious, but one can still admire the harmony of its limbs.

{ dicit, secure pro Sallustio loquor sic sensisse, ceu diceret, digne dote naturae a Deo approbari, licet eam constet adjectivis quibuslibet impuritatibus impiari. Laudatur itaque in idolo cujuslibet materiei partibus propriis forma conveniens, et licet idolum ab Apostolo, quantum spectat ad fidem, nihil appelletur nec quippiam profanius habeatur, tamen illa membrorum apta diductio non ab re laudatur. }

Men sexually desire beautiful women even if those women are morally bad. Women, on the other hand, sexually desire bad boys even if those boys aren’t beautiful. Reality resists social constructions of gender. Beauty is an aspect of natural, God-given reality.

The classical understanding of beauty closely linked beauty with desire, but commonly trivialized men’s work of desire. Consider, for example, the classical poet Eumolpus. One day while bathing in a Roman bathhouse with other naked men, he attempted to recite learned poetry. His fellow bathers ridiculed him, attacked him, and drove him out of the bath. Outside, a huge crowd surrounded another naked man. Eumolpus sarcastically reported:

In contrast to their treatment of me, a huge crowd surrounded that other man’s groin and clapped their hands in humblest admiration. He had genitals that hung down with such weight that you would have thought that the man himself was a mere appendage to his penis. What a hard-working young man he must be! I suspect that he has to begin today to finish tomorrow. So it wasn’t long before he got himself an assistant — some Roman noble or other, with a dubious reputation, they say — who gave his clothes to cover him up and brought him home with him, I believe, to enjoy his good fortune in private. … It just shows that it’s more profitable to work your genitals than your brains.

{ ilium autem frequentia ingens circumvenit cum plausu et admiratione timidissima. Habebat enim inguinum pondus tam grande, ut ipsum hominem laciniam fascini crederes. O iuvenem laboriosum: puto ilium pridie incipere, postero die finire. Itaque statim invenit auxilium; nescio quis enim, eques Romanus ut aiebant infamis, sua veste errantem circumdedit ac domum abduxit, credo, ut tam magna fortuna solus uteretur. … Tanto magis expedit inguina quam ingenia fricare. } [7]

Eumolpus thus trivialized the erection labor of even a man with very heavy equipment.[8] More generally, in the defective classical understanding of beauty, men’s desire requires of men negligible labor.

Showing important development of reasoned, empirical thinking, Guibert highlighted that desire requires labor from men. Guibert sympathetically reported why an older man became a monk:

Another man was from a noble Beauvaisien family with rich estates in Noyon. He was elderly, and his body had been worn out long ago. Yet he had a wife vigorous in the business of the marriage bed. That’s greatly pernicious. So, deserting married life and the world, he professed vows as a monk.

{ Alter quidam, genere nobilis Bellovagensium, Noviomagensium quoque locuples, aetate evectus, et effoeto jam corpore, quod talibus pestiferum est, uxorem habens vegetiorem officio thalamorum, desertis conjugio ac saeculo, monachum inibi profitetur. } [9]

With great love for women, men engage in tiring work in bed. Other medieval literature similarly tells of men exhausted by their erection labor. Desire requires strength-sapping labor from men.

In the more liberal and less doctrinaire medieval period, women both under-appreciated and over-appreciated men’s erection labor. Men generally endure less risk to their health when women under-appreciate men’s sexuality. Today, however, many women insist on being on top. Yet women also eagerly buy seedless watermelons and urgently pursue an ideal of zero emissions. Men’s health is thus endangered and men’s erection labor is devalued. Women’s beauty is good for society only when men are adequately compensated for their erection labor.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• Guibert of Nogent in Heloise’s light: dark nights of internalized misandry
• Abelard’s advice to his son Astralabe & Trimalchio’s Fortunata
• Ausonius’s Bissula & Jerome’s captive maiden: Rabbi Akiba understood

Notes:

[1] Konstan (2015) p. 62.

[2] Guibert of Nogent, Monodiae {Songs of Self} 1.2, Latin text from Bourgin (1907), English trans. from Archambault (1996) (adapted). All subsequent quotes from Guibert, unless otherwise noted, are similarly sourced from Monodiae 1.2.

Guibert ended his discussion of his mother’s beauty in a way that underscores the close relationship between beauty and desire:

Thank you, God, for instilling virtue into my mother’s beauty. The seriousness of her whole bearing was enough to show her contempt for all vanity. Her lowered eyes, paucity of speech, and unexcitable facial expression by no means indicated acquiescence to flirtatious looks.

{ Gratia igitur tibi, Deus, qui praestillaveras decori ejus virtutem: illius enim habitudinis gravitas tolius vanitatis poterat insinuare contemptum; oculorum namque pondus, raritas eloquendi ac faciei motuum difficultas, minime levitatibus intuentium obsecundat. }

Id. Guibert here shifts to referring to his mother’s beauty with the Latin word decor. That word most commonly represents physical beauty. Konstan (2015) p. 142. Guibert’s mother is physically beautiful, but she in other ways distances herself from sexual desire.

As many mothers throughout history have with respect to their sons, Guibert’s mother dominated him. He regarded her as almost God-like and was greatly concerning to follow her instructions. She regarded Guibert’s sexual desire as dangerous to him. That’s certainly true for men under gynocentrism today.

[3] Guibert quotes from Sallust, The War With Catiline {Bellum Catilinae} 15.2. Here’s the Loeb edition of The War With Catiline, with Latin text and English translation by John C. Rolfe (1921/1931). Catiline’s full name in Latin is Lucius Sergius Catilina.

[4] On Aurelia Orestilla family background, Evans (1987). Catiline’s wife Aurelia plausibly was Catiline’s daughter via his adulterous relationship with her mother. Consider words of Cicero, with ancient commentary:

“Whenever you were caught in adultery, whenever you caught adulterers yourself, when arising from the same act of gross indecency you found yourself a woman to be both wife and daughter.” It is said that Catilina committed adultery with the woman who was later his mother-in-law, and took to wife the female offspring of that fornication, although she was his daughter. This charge Lucceius also levels against Catilina in the orations which he wrote attacking him. I have not yet discovered the names of these women.

{ “Cum deprehendebare in adulteriis, cum deprehendebas adulteros ipse, cum ex eodem stupro tibi et uxorem et filiam invenisti.” Dicitur Catilina adulterium commisisse cum ea quae ei postea socrus fuit, et ex eo natam stupro duxisse uxorem, cum filia eius esset. Hoc Lucceius quoque Catilinae obicit in orationibus quas in eum scripsit. Nomina harum mulierum nondum inveni. }

Cicero’s speech In his white gown {In toga candida}, according to the commentary of Asconius 91C. Latin text and English translation from Lewis (2006) pp. 183-4. A correction written in Poggio’s manuscript of Asconius added, “the name of his wife was Aurelia Orestilla, of his mother-in-law, I don’t know {nomen uxori fuit Aurelia Orestilla, de socru ignoro}.” Id. (in editor’s note).

Cicero, in his Letters to Friends {Epistulae ad Familiares} 9.15 associated Aurelia and Lollia with obscenity. Cicero stated, “if we use the word Aurelia or Lollia we must prefix an apology {sin de Aurelia aliquid aut Lollia, honos praefandus est}.” Latin text and English translation from Loeb edition of William Glyn (1927).

[5] Sallust, The War With Catiline {Bellum Catilinae} 25, Latin text and English translation (adapted) from the Loeb edition of Rolfe (1921/1931). This Sempronia was the wife of Decimus Junius Brutus. On her involvement in the conspiracy, Bellum Catilinae 40.5. For a modern apology for the perhaps adulterous Sempronia, wife of Scipio Aemilianus, Beness & Hillard (2016). Here’s some analysis of modern reporting of men being cuckolded.

Despite Aurelia Orestilla almost surely being deeply involved in what has been called the Catiline conspiracy, she apparently suffered relatively little from that failed uprising. Catiline in 62 BGC was killed fighting for the conspiracy attempt. But in 50 BGC Aurelia Orestilla was making an elite marriage for her daughter. Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares 8.7.7, discussed in Evans (1986) p. 70.

Ben Jonson’s tragedy Catiline His Conspiracy (1611) plausibly elaborates on Aurelia Orestilla’s character. Brian Jay Corrigan’s Compendium of Renaissance Drama recognizes Jonson’s gender-critical insight in Catiline His Conspiracy:

After their respective meetings, both men and women conspirators convene in the early hours of the morning to take their leave and make a final statement of confidence. Eventually, when the conspirators are sentenced to death, it is understood that the women, including Aurelia, are not punished.

See Aurelia in Corrigan’s character list. A gender protrusion in men’s mortality and sex discrimination in punishment are common aspects of gynocentrism.

[6] The word forma most specifically refers to physical shape or figure, but it can take on the meaning “beauty” in context. The Latin words for beauty formosus and formositas, which are derived from forma, highlight that physical meaning of beauty. Konstan (2015) pp. 144, 148.

[7] Petronius, Satyricon 92, Latin text from Heseltine & Rouse (1913), English translation from Walsh (1996) (adapted). The well-endowed man is Ascyltus, a rival to Encolpius for amorous relations with Giton. On classical literature admiring large penises, see commentary to Satyricon 92 in Schmeling (2011).

[8] Despite Eumolpus’s disdain’s for Ascyltus’s erection labor, Eumolpus himself experienced sexual exhaustion in his relationship with the Pergamene youth. Eumolpus threatened to alert the father of the Pargamene youth if that youth didn’t stop pressing him for more sex. Satyricon 82-7. On the literary context of this story, Harrison (1998). The gender-political implications of the story have been regrettably overlooked.

[9] Guibert, Monodiae 2.5, Latin text from Bourgin (1907), English trans. from Archambault (1996) (adapted).

[image] Bathsheba sexually harassing David. As a result of that sexual harassment, one man suffered a reproductive injury and a man and a boy were killed. Specifically, Bathsheba’s husband Uriah was cuckolded and killed, and Bathsheba and David’s newly born son died. 2 Samuel 11-12. In recent decades scholars have tended to blame the victim and condemn men in such situations for “the male gaze.” That reflects the growing influence of carceral anti-meninism. Illumination on f. 71 of French Book of Hours, made c. 1485. Preserved as British Library MS Harley 2863.

References:

Archambault, Paul J., trans. 1996. A Monk’s Confession: the memoirs of Guibert of Nogent. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Beness, J. Lea, and Tom Hillard. 2016. “Wronging Sempronia.” Antichthon. 50: 80-106.

Bourgin, George, ed. 1907. Guibert of Nogent. Histoire de sa vie: 1053-1124. Paris: Picard.

Evans, Richard J. 1987. “Catiline’s wife.” Acta Classica. 30: 69-71.

Harrison, Stephen J. 1998. “The Milesian Tales and the Roman Novel.” Groningen Colloquia on the Novel. 9: 61–73.

Heseltine, Michael and W. H. D. Rouse, trans., revised by E. H. Warmington. 1913. Petronius Arbiter, Seneca. Satyricon. Apocolocyntosis. Loeb Classical Library 15. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Konstan, David. 2015. Beauty: The Fortunes of an Ancient Greek Idea. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lewis, R.G, ed. and trans. 2006. Asconius: Commentaries on Speeches of Cicero. New York: Oxford University Press.

Schmeling, Gareth L. 2011. A Commentary on the Satyrica of Petronius. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Walsh, Patrick G, trans. 1996. Petronius Arbiter. The Satyricon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.