CLASSICAL CORNER

264: GREAT SEXPECTATIONS

(Abundance of translated sources in Fant & Lefkowitz’s Women’s Life in Greece & Rome,

1982, and Lattimore’s Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs, 1962)

Gay Marriage, LGBTQI, E-Harmony/ Tinder, Trolling/Tweeting, Seeking the Perfect Mate – what have these to do with the ancients or our master Fort? Marriage and its constituents aren’t topics of Fort’s books – no pertinent references in Henry Schlanger’s Index. But, a frequent theme of his short stories, e.g. “Ruckus”, listed and readable on Mr X’s website. Fort (1896) married English servant Anna Filan (aka Filing), who survived him until 1937. No children. According to first-hand testimonies, a union of opposites that worked. A “bustling little hostess” (Aaron Sussman), she was outgoing, privy to their neighbours’ doings, and dragged Charles away from his clippings for nightly visits to the pictures. He, in turn, clearly somewhat overawed, was

“very tender towards Anna”, unaffected by her refusal to read any of his books. Fort did ( Books,

p947) spotlight one extraordinary marital dossier. The first wife of oilman WA Baker hanged herself (1924). His second (1931) was killed by a mysterious explosion that blew her bed to the ceiling – investigating experts were baffled.

Helen of Troy (pictured above): fact or fancy? What counts is what people believed and why; cf. PaulVeyne, Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? (Paula Wissing, English tr. 1988). Before her ‘rape’ by Paris, Helen had earlier been abducted by Theseus, who insisted his ideal mate must be of divine birth. She exotically filled this bill, being the product of Zeus descending as a swan, calling “Take Me to Your Leda”, the result being Helen born from an egg, a challenge not yet faced in Call The Midwife. After the Trojan War, Homer describes Helen as back in Sparta as a Hausfrau devoted to her knitting – must hope ex-war-hero hubby Menelaus had become a pipe and slippers man…

Other early Greek poets were much rougher on women: misogyny or homosexuality? Peasant farmer Hesiod bluntly advises, “Get a woman and an ox,” elsewhere advising a man should wait until 30, then marry a neighbouring virgin four years past puberty. Semonides penned a diatribe against all women – paralleled in Rome by Juvenal – likening them to various animals and insects, concluding they are “Zeus’s worst plague”; cf. Hugh Lloyd-Jones, The Female of the Species (1986).

Yet another poet, Hipponax, emitted what might be dubbed the earliest tweet:

Two days a woman’s best; the days she’s wed, The day she’s carried from your doorstep – dead.

Had Athens had Hello! magazine, it would have splashed the wedding of Hipparete, whose mega-rich husband expensively palmed her off to the city’s Number One playboy, Alcibiades. Finally tiring of his infidelities, she went to file a divorce, only to have him pick her up and deposit her back at the far from home sweet home.

Two parallel Græco-Roman texts detail the perfect wife. Xenophon reports Socrates’s recipe: she should be young, educated, good at knitting and baking, keep the slaves in order, go easy on make-up, be always ready to gratify hubby’s desires. Pliny the Younger commends his wife for her unceasing praise and support for his barrister career and poetry-writing: she applauds his every speech, transcribes his verses, sits close leading the applause at his every recital, sets them to music and performs them. Pliny’s editor, Sherwin White, remarks, “This letter is often condemned as intolerable by modern standards”. Doesn’t compare, though, with the now discredited chestnut about the Englishman’s perfect wife: A deaf and dumb nymphomaniac who keeps a pub.

Greek and Roman epitaphs run to a pattern. The wife was always dutiful, good at childbearing and with wool, pleasant to look at. Their physical attributes are rarely described, except in the case of Allia Potestas, whose breasts and legs are poetically drooled over. But she was the man’s maitresse en titre, not his wife; likewise, Roman love poets (Ovid and co) always celebrated their girlfriends, never their wives.

Particular wives became perpetual paradigms, for easy instance Cornelia, honoured by a statue as ‘Mother of the Gracchi’ for how she educated them. When asked why she wore no jewels, the reply was, “My sons are my jewels,” a riposte that may allude to senatorial sumptuary laws that vainly attempted to curb female ‘bling’.

Then there was Arria, an imperial throwback to semi-mystic Republican courage. When her husband (under death warrant) hesitated to kill himself, she stabbed herself, handed the dagger to him saying, “Look, my dear, it doesn’t hurt.”

Wifey had to be chaste, ideally never re-marrying if husband predeceased. He could legally and socially do anything.

As Augustus ‘tweeted’ in verse: “Because Antony fucks Glaphyra, Fulvia demands I fuck her. Should I also bugger Manius if he asks? Does it matter which and whose holes we penetrate?”

As now, many marriages, ‘glam’ and ordinary, went badly wrong. Seneca remarks that every issue of Rome’s daily newspaper ( Acta Diurna) reported a society divorce (Latin word origin divortium). Plus, violent domestics. Wives on the Greek island of Lemnos bumped off their menfolk for accusing them of rank body odour – no ancient deodorants (nor toilet paper). Nero kicked his pregnant wife to death. So did multi-millionaire Herodes Atticus; cf. Sarah Pomeroy’s The Murder of Regilla (2007).

Juvenal mentions a wife who’d poisoned seven husbands; Jerome knew one who’d disposed of 22. Some people never learn. Jerome records a man who’d had 20 wives, a woman with 22 husbands. Juxtapose Baptist minister Glynn Wolfe, world marriages (29) holder, last wife being Linda Essex, jointchampion with 23 nuptials.

Same-sex marriages originated in Rome – no sign of Greek ones. Cicero (a possible joke, but suggestive) accuses Antony of being Curio’s legal ‘husband’. Nero married two youths, likewise Elagabalus, the latter also transgendering himself with an anatomical insertion. These unions were outlawed by imperial edict (16 Dec AD 342, Theodosian Code 9. 7. 3), promising the culprits “exquisite penalties”. Byzantine emperor Justinian in Novels (a legal term) 77 (AD 538) and 141 (AD 559) banned sodomy on the grounds it caused earthquakes (Greek word for which was Theomania = Wrath of God).

For modern complement, I adduce Penrose Halson’s The Marriage Bureau (2017), a delightful account of Heather Jenner’s famous eponymous pre-Internet enterprise. It ends with long lists of male and female requirements for the right mate. Representative masculine samples include: Able to play a portable instrument

Not made up to hell

Prefer Jewish girl but any other will do South Welsh, NOT North Welsh, no frequenters of art schools

No Socialists, no bridge players

She must live on gravel

Nobody called Florence

Widow of pharmacist particularly suitable Bright enough to make fair success of a Times crossword puzzle

(Cliché number one: Takes all sorts… Cliché number two: Be careful what you wish for…)