Husband and cuckold seem to have been interchangeable terms in that age. The emperors themselves wore Actaeon’s badge. How many Caesars could I list together, and what a catalogue of horned kings and princes appears in every history! Agamemnon, Menelaus and Philip of Greece; Ptolemy of Egypt; Lucullus, Caesar, Pompey, Cato, Augustus, Antony, Antoninus, and so on—all wore fine plumes of bulls’ feathers in their crests. The bravest soldiers and most heroic spirits could not escape it. They have been both agents and victims in this business: they have either given horns or received them.

King Arthur, whom we call one of the Nine Worthies, for all his great valour was shamefully treated by Mordred, one of his Round Table knights; and Guithera, or Helena Alba, his beautiful wife, as Leland interprets her name, was a thoroughly honest woman. “I would gladly spare the injured majesty of heroines,” says my author, “if historical truth did not tug at my ear”: I could willingly overlook a beautiful lady’s faults, but the laws of history bind me to tell the truth. God knows he wrote it against his will, and I repeat it against mine.

All this time I have not been speaking of our own age. We have good, honest, virtuous men and women, restrained by reputation, zeal, fear of God, religion and superstition. Yet, for all that, we have too many knights of this order, knighted by their wives, and many good women wronged by dissolute husbands. In some places, with some people, you might as well order them to carry water in a sieve as to keep themselves faithful.

What is a man to do in such a case? What remedy is there? How is he to find relief? By seeking a divorce? That is hard to achieve. “If not chastely, at least cautiously”: they manage the affair so cunningly that, though it is as common as simony and as plain as the nose on a man’s face, it cannot be clearly proved, nor are they likely to be caught in the act. They will have some rogue of a Gallus to keep watch, or, like that Roman Sulpitia, have everything secured,

Lest he see her stripped of her Cadurcian linen, Lying naked with Calenus.

Her husband will scarcely catch her, however watchful he is. Far better, then, to put up with it: the more he struggles over it, the more he will publicize his own shame. Make a virtue of necessity and conceal it. Yes, but the world notices it; everyone is talking about it. Let them talk as they please. Of whom do they not speak in this way? From the highest to the lowest, they judge everyone so. There is no remedy, then, but patience.

Perhaps it is his own fault, and he has no reason to complain: it is a return in kind; she is bad, and he is worse. “Think: have you not done as much to some of your neighbours? Why do you require from your wife what you will not do yourself?” You roam like a town bull: “Why are you so furious if she strays?”

Suppose some woman breaks chaste marriage’s laws, Leaves her husband and becomes unfaithful: Usually it is not without a cause. She sees her husband waste her property in sin, Feels that he has withdrawn his love from her And given it to someone perhaps less worthy. Whoever strikes with the sword may be struck by the scabbard; Surely love calls for love, and like demands like.

“She will always try,” says Nevisanus, “to repay like for like”: she will pay you back if she can. Therefore Sirach 9:1 aptly advises, “Do not teach her an evil lesson against yourself.” As Jansenius and Nicholas of Lyra explain this passage, along with Denis the Carthusian, it means simply that she should not do you harm. I do not excuse her by accusing you; but if both are at fault, reform yourself first. For, as the old saying goes, a good husband makes a good wife.

Yes, but you reply, the same reasoning does not apply to men and women: through her fault my children are bastards; I cannot endure it. “Let her be bitter, domineering, wasteful,” and so on—let her scold, quarrel and spend, I do not care, “provided she is chaste”; so long as she is faithful, I could easily bear it. But this I cannot, I must not, I will not bear. My faith, my reputation and my eye must not be touched, as the saying goes,

Reputation, faith and the eye cannot bear a touch.

I say the same of my wife: touch everything, use everything, take everything except this. I acknowledge the truth of Seneca’s saying, “No good thing is pleasant to possess without a companion”: there is no sweet satisfaction in possessing any good thing without someone to share it—except this alone, I say, this.

And why this? Even this thing you abhor so much may benefit your offspring. Better to be any man’s son than yours: begotten by lowly Irus, poor Seius or humble Mevius, the town swineherd’s son, a shepherd’s son. And fortunate is he who, like Hercules, has any two fathers; for you yourself may perhaps have more diseases than a horse, more weaknesses of body and mind, a corrupted soul and a sour disposition.

Take the worst view of it: just as it is “an incurable wound, so it is a wound not felt”; as it is incurable, so it causes no bodily pain. But are you sure it is so?

“Is he attending to your business?” Does he really do so? Perhaps you are excessively suspicious and, like some people, without cause. If it is “an eight-month birth”—born at eight months—or the child resembles this man or that, they foolishly suspect that he fathered it. If she speaks or laughs freely with such and such men, then at once she must be sleeping with them. Such is your weakness; whereas charity, or a well-disposed mind, would put the best construction on everything.