Many patient Griseldas, through compliance of this kind, have reclaimed their husbands from their wandering lusts. In New France and Turkey, as Leah, Rachel and Sarah did for Abraham and Jacob, they bring their prettiest young women to their husbands’ beds. Livia assisted Augustus’s lustful appetites; Stratonice, wife of King Diotarus, not only brought a beautiful young woman, Electra, to her husband’s bed, but raised the children he fathered on her as carefully as if they had been her own.

The wife of Tertius Aemilius, Cornelia’s mother, perceived her husband’s lack of restraint but “pretended not to notice,” treated the maid kindly, and took no notice of the affair. A newly married man had a tale-bearing friend who, to win his favour, showed him his wife privately intimate with a young gallant, courting and fondling her, and so on. “Nonsense,” he said, “let him do his worst: I dare trust my wife, though I dare not trust him.”

The best remedy, then, is kind treatment; if that will not work, pretend not to notice, as I say, or dismiss it with a joke. Hear Guevara’s advice in this case: “Either receive it with a joke, or evade it with silence.” For if you take offence at everything your wife does, Solomon’s wisdom, Hercules’s courage, Homer’s learning, Socrates’s patience and Argus’s watchfulness will not suffice. Therefore Nevizzano thinks it “the lesser evil”—a smaller mischief—to pretend not to notice, to be “a buyer of cradles,” as the proverb says, rather than to be too anxious.

“A good fellow, when his wife gave birth before her time, bought half a dozen cradles in advance for as many children, as if she were going to keep having children every two months.” When someone told the emperor Pertinax that a fiddler was too familiar with his empress, he took no notice. And when Philip of Macedon was reproached for his wife’s unchastity—“although he was the conqueror of so many kingdoms and peoples,” and so on, a conqueror of kingdoms could not tame his wife, for she put him out of doors—he made a joke of it. “Wise men bear their horns in their breasts; fools on their foreheads,” says Nevizzano: wise men bear their horns in their hearts, fools on their foreheads.

Eumenes, king of Pergamum, was in a deadly feud with Perseus of Macedonia. When Perseus heard of a journey Eumenes was going to make to Delphi, he stationed a company of soldiers to intercept him on the way. They did so and, as they supposed, left him stoned to death. News of this deed was immediately brought to Pergamum. Attalus, Eumenes’s brother, at once proclaimed himself king, took possession of the crown, and married Queen Stratonice.

But soon, when news came to the contrary—that King Eumenes was alive and approaching the city—he put aside his crown, left his wife, and went as a private citizen to meet him and welcome his return. Though Eumenes knew everything that had happened, he concealed his knowledge, affectionately embraced his brother, and restored his wife to favour, as though no such thing had been heard of or done.

Jocundo in Ariosto found his wife in bed with a scoundrel, both asleep, went away, and would not even wake them, much less reproach them. A good fellow, similarly discovering that his wife had cheated at backgammon and borne one man too many, drew his dagger and swore that, had the man not been his very friend, he would have killed him.

Another man, hearing that someone had done for him what no man wants done by a deputy, pursued him in a rage with his sword drawn. Having caught him, he accused him of adultery. The offender, so hotly pursued, admitted that it was true. Satisfied with this confession, the husband left him, swearing that if he had denied it, he would not have put up with it.

How much better to act like this than to torment oneself, rave and rage impatiently, or bring a lawsuit—as Arnoldus Tilius did in the court of Toulouse against his fellow soldier Martin Guerre, for impersonating him and being too familiar with his wife—and thus make one’s own shame public and remain a cuckold on record for ever! How much better to be Cornelius Tacitus than Publius Cornutus: to condemn it in such cases, or take no notice of it!

“Better to err in this way,” says Erasmus, “than to consume oneself with the anxieties of jealousy”: better to be a knowing cuckold and put up with it than to trouble oneself to no purpose. And though he will not “sleep for everyone”—be an ass as well as an ox—still, to close his eyes to it, as many do, is not amiss at certain times, in certain cases, with certain people, if it serves his advantage or some great man’s wishes: his landlord, patron or benefactor. So Calbas the Roman, says Plutarch, acted towards Maecenas; and Phayllus of Argos towards King Philip, when the king promised him an office on condition that he could sleep with his wife. And so let it pass:

By Pollux, I have no regret, Indeed, at sharing half the good fortune with Jupiter.

“It never troubles me,” said Amphitryon, “to be cuckolded by Jupiter.” Then do not let it distress you: be reconciled with her.

Return to your old good relations With your wife Alcmena.

Let it, I say, cause no break in the love between you. In any case, the best course is to disregard it, as Henry II, king of France, advised a courtier who was jealous of his wife and complained of her unchastity: dismiss it and take comfort. For a man who suspects his wife’s infidelity and fears the pope’s curse will never enjoy a cheerful hour or sleep a peaceful night. There is no remedy but patience. When all is said and done, follow Nevizzano’s counsel: “If the wife’s fault cannot be corrected, it must be endured.” If it cannot be helped, it must be borne.

“Forgive, and bear it in silence”: that is Sophocles’s advice. Keep it to yourself, and accept what Chrysostom calls “a wrestling ground of philosophy and a household gymnasium,” a school of philosophy. There is no other cure but for time to wear it away: “The remedy for injuries is forgetfulness,” as though they had drunk a draught of Lethe in Trophonius’s cave. To conclude, age will deprive her of it; “time lessens sorrow.” Time and patience must bring it to an end.

Patience will calm the emotions of the mind; It kills the passions and heals every disease.