“Among the other honours decreed to Caesar,” as Suetonius, chapter 52 of Julius, and Dio, book 44, relate, “he was granted the right to unite himself with any women whatsoever.” Every particular history will supply a variety of such examples: men otherwise good, wise, prudent, virtuous and brave, but all too culpable in this.

Priam had fifty sons, but only seventeen were lawfully begotten. Philip the Good left fourteen illegitimate children. Lorenzo de’ Medici was a good and wise prince, but, says Machiavelli, monstrously lustful. No one was as brave as Castruccio Castracani; yet, according to the same author, no one was as sexually unrestrained.

Nor does this fault prevail only among the great: if you accept a great man’s testimony, it is familiar to every common soldier in France, and elsewhere too, I think. “This vice,” says my author, “is so common among us in France that a man who is not a notorious whoremonger is held of no account, a mere coward, unworthy of the name of soldier.” In Italy, a man is no gentleman unless, besides his wife, he has a courtesan and a mistress.

It is no wonder, then, that poor women are jealous in such circumstances, when they see themselves openly neglected, despised, loathed and mistreated; their unfaithful husbands entertaining others in their place, often courting ladies before their faces; other men’s wives wearing their jewels. How can a poor woman in such a situation moderate her passion?

What do you feel now, Dido, as you witness such things?

On the other hand, how can a poor man keep himself from this deadly malady when he sees such obvious signs of his wife’s inconstancy? When, like Milo’s wife, she dotes on every young man she sees, or, like Martial’s Sota, “abandons her husband and follows Clitus.”

Although her husband is handsome and tall, fair and lovely to behold, able to satisfy any one woman, she will still taste the forbidden fruit. She is Juvenal’s Iberina to the very hair: she is as content with one eye as with one man.

If a young gallant happens to enter her presence—a Fastidious Brisk who can dress fashionably, with a lovelock, jingling spur and feather, who can bow and pay compliments and court a gentlewoman—she raves about him: “Oh, what a lovely, handsome man he was!” Another Hector, an Alexander, a splendid man, a demigod! How charmingly he bore himself, with what graceful dignity: “That was how he moved his eyes, his hands, his face.” How elegantly he wore his clothes!

How noble his bearing, how brave his heart and arms!

How splendidly he talked, rode, sang and danced, and so on! Then she begins to loathe her husband, “kisses him reluctantly,” hates him and his filthy beard and goatish appearance. As Doris said of Polyphemus, “He reeks all over of pus, all over like a he-goat”: a rank, disgusting fellow, a goblin-faced fellow; he smells, he stinks,

And belches onions and garlic together—

“If ever he comes to the bedchamber,” and so forth—how like a simpleton, a fool, an ass he looks; how like a boor he behaves! She will not come near him willingly, but rejects him altogether, as Venus did her soot-blackened Vulcan, until at last,

No god has deemed him worthy of the table, nor a goddess of her bed.

So did Lucretia, a lady of Siena, after she had merely seen Euryalus: “She was wholly swept towards Euryalus; when she returned home,” and so forth. In his presence she could not keep her eyes off him,

So much beauty shines from that noble face.

And in his absence she could think of no one else. “She hates her husband”: she immediately loathed her husband and could not bear him.

And neglecting the marriage bed, She feels bitter, sickening disgust in her husband’s presence.

Against all the laws of matrimony, She abhorred her husband’s face,

and sought every opportunity to see her sweetheart again. Now when a husband notices that his wife is so flighty, “so free and familiar with every gallant,” her immodesty and wantonness, as Camerarius observes, must necessarily give him grounds for suspicion.

When she continually dresses herself up beyond her means and station, makes pointless journeys and unnecessary visits, stays out so long with this or that companion, goes so frequently to plays, masques, feasts and public gatherings, uses such immodest gestures and unrestrained language, and also shows some distaste for her husband—how can he avoid being suspicious and immediately jealous, even if he were another Socrates? “At last she will make him overstep even Socratic bounds.”

All the more when he notices the secret, sly tricks they commonly use to make their husbands cuckolds: “While you play, she makes a plaything of you.” They profess love, honour and chastity, and seem to value their husbands above all living men. Saints in appearance, so skilfully can they dissemble that they will not so much as look at another man in their husband’s presence,

so chaste, so religious and devout that they cannot endure the name or sight of a whore, a harlot—shame on her! In outward behaviour they are most affectionate and attentive, kissing their husband and hanging about his neck—“dear husband, sweet husband”—and greeting him with a composed expression, especially when he comes home. If he leaves, they weep, sigh and lament, pretend to be ill and faint, like Jocundo’s wife in Ariosto when her husband was about to depart; yet they are utter—and so forth. They care nothing for him,

“Alas,” she said, “the thought so frightens me That scarcely any breath remains within my breast.” “Peace, my sweet love and wife,” Jocundo said, And wept as freely, comforting her as best he could, and so on. All this could not relieve the woman’s pain: “I must surely die before you return. I cannot think how I shall stay alive; The sorrowful days and nights I must endure Will keep food from my mouth and sleep from my eyes,” and so on. That very night before the morning On which he had firmly planned to leave, Jocundo’s wife was ill and fainted with grief Within his arms, so heavy was her heart.

Yet for all these sham tears and declarations, when Jocundo hurried back for a jewel he had forgotten,

He found his chaste companion in marriage Coupled with a knave, all chastity abandoned. The adulterer was sleeping soundly, Yet was easily recognized by his face: A beggar’s child whom he had raised from the cradle, Now riding in his master’s saddle.

Thus skilfully can they deceive, as Platina describes their habits: “Kiss their husbands, whom they would rather see hanging on a gallows, and swear they love him more dearly than their own lives; yet they would not ransom his life at the cost of their little dog’s.”