It cannot be denied that many doting fools, as Plutarch admits, “refresh themselves with such worn-out, ill-timed and filthy remedies”—as he calls them—“with the recollection of former pleasures; against nature, they rouse their dead flesh.” But an old lecher is abominable. “A woman marrying for the third time,” Nevizzano maintains, “is presumed to be wanton and inconstant”: a woman who marries a third time may be presumed to be none too chaste.

Of both, Ambrose concludes in his commentary on Luke that “those who couple together, not to have children but to satisfy their lust, are not husbands but fornicators.” St Augustine agrees with him: matrimony without the hope of children “should be called sexual intercourse, not matrimony”; it is no wedding, but a tumbling or coupling together.

In a word—unless they marry for companionship, mutual help and comfort, purposes for which old people may certainly marry, though Tiberius denies it; for, according to Puccius, a man sometimes most needs a wife when he has no need of a wife—otherwise it is most odious when an old fool from the brink of the underworld, with one foot in the grave, a walking corpse, flutters after a vigorous young woman, lively and beautiful:

And lustier Than a sparrow in spring or little white doves.

What could be more detestable?

You love, with your grey head, you most wicked old man, Already full of years and foul of breath? You goat-stinking old man—would you kiss a woman? Will you not make her vomit instead when you approach?

You old goat, grey-haired lecher, wicked man, With stinking breath—are you in love? Must you slobber? She vomits at the sight Of your filthy face: it affects her so.

Yet some maintain that it is much more tolerable for an old man to marry a young woman—they call it Our Lady’s match—for “tomorrow she will be a woman,” as the man in Cicero said. We have Cato the Roman, Critobulus in Xenophon, more recently Tiraqueau, Julius Scaliger and many other famous precedents of this kind. But not the reverse: it is considered unsuitable for an old woman to marry a young man. For, as Varro has it, “When an old woman plays, she provides amusement for death.” It is Charon’s match between Cascus and Casca, and the devil himself is surely well pleased with it. And so the poet attacks you, old Vetustina, you bedridden hussy, now nothing but skin and bones:

You who have three hairs and four teeth, A cicada’s breast and an ant’s little leg, Who wear a forehead more wrinkled than your robe, And breasts like spiders’ webs.

You have three hairs, four teeth, a breast Like a grasshopper’s, an ant’s crest, Skin more wrinkled than your coat, And breasts like spiders’ webs besides.

Must you marry a youth again? And yet “they love to marry after two hundred deaths.” However that may be, as Apuleius says of his Meroe, “a coupling with an old woman, pestilent and abhorrent”: a pestilent match, abominable and intolerable. In such a case, how can they avoid jealousy? How should they agree with one another? This inequality concerns not only years, but birth, wealth, dispositions and all good qualities.

If you wish to marry fittingly, marry your equal.

“It is my advice,” says Antonio de Guevara, “to choose such a person. Let a citizen marry a citizen, a noble a noble”: let a citizen marry a citizen, a gentleman a gentlewoman. Whoever neglects this rule, he says, “will have at home not a son-in-law but an evil spirit, not a daughter-in-law but a Fury, not a companion for life but fuel for quarrels.” Instead of a fair wife he will have a fury, and instead of a suitable son-in-law a downright fiend, and so on. Examples are all too common.

Another important caution is that, though they are equal in age, birth, wealth and other circumstances, they should not neglect virtue and a good upbringing, which Musonius and Antipater so insist upon in Stobaeus.

A great dowry is the parents’ Virtue, and chastity which, bound by a firm covenant, Shrinks from another man.

If, as Plutarch advises, one must eat “a bushel of salt” with a man before choosing him as a friend, how much care should a man take in choosing a wife, his second self! How anxious he should be to know her qualities and behaviour, and, once he is sure of them, to avoid preferring birth, wealth and beauty to upbringing and good character.

Coquage, the god of cuckolds, as someone jokingly said, accompanies the goddess Jealousy. By Jupiter’s appointment both follow the fairest women, and people sacrifice to them together. Beauty and chastity seldom agree: straight bodies often have crooked manners; fair faces, foul vices; good complexions, bad dispositions. “It is a thing full of suspicion and snares”: beauty, says Chrysostom, is full of treachery and suspicion. A man with a beautiful wife can have no worse trouble; yet most men desire one, as if nothing but beauty and wealth mattered in marriage.

Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, was so particular about this that he would not marry the duke of Mantua’s daughter unless he could first see her naked—a practice Lycurgus prescribed in his laws and More approves in his Utopian commonwealth. In Italy, a traveller observes, if a man has three or four daughters, or more, and they turn out beautiful, they are married at once. If unattractive, their pretty names—Lucia, Cynthia, Camena—are changed: they are called Dorothy, Ursula or Bridget and put into convents, as if only outstandingly beautiful women were fit for marriage. But these are mistaken opinions: a modest virgin of good character is much to be preferred to such a pretty-faced creature.