The Anatomy of Melancholy

For Sophocles, as Athenaeus describes him, was a very old man, as cold as January, a bedfellow made of bones, yet he doted on Archippe, a young courtesan. Nothing could be more odious. “An old husband is unwelcome to a young wife”: an old man is a most unwelcome guest to a young woman, incapable and unsuitable.

Girls flee his embraces; Every love recoils, and Venus and Hymen too.

Similarly, a good fellow who had only a peck of grain to grind each week nevertheless insisted on building a new mill for it. He soon discovered his mistake: he must either leave the mill idle, pull it down altogether, or let others grind at it. So it is with these men, and so on.

Seneca therefore disapproves of all such ill-timed matches: “For repeated marriages give grounds for reproach.” And, as Cicero further protests, “it is improper for anyone, but ugly and filthy in old age.” “Love in old age is shameful”—one of the three things God hates. Plutarch, in his Against Colotes, fiercely attacks marriages attempted by old men “who, now physically impotent and deserted by pleasures, sin in their minds.” He raises the question whether, in some cases, it is even tolerable for such a man to marry:

Who seeks the pleasures of Venus without the strength for them,

one who is now past those sexual activities, “as a castrated man lies with a virgin and sighs,” Ecclesiasticus 30:20, and now complains with the man in Petronius, “This part, which was once an Achilles, is now dead and buried.” He is quite finished:

Until lately he lived fit for a girl, And fought his campaigns not without glory.

But the question is whether he may indulge himself like those Priapean popes who, in their decrepit old age, commonly lay between two young women every night: “whether he may still enjoy touching and fondling beautiful women,” as many foolish old fathers still do, to their own shame, their children’s ruin and their families’ destruction. He abhors it: “It must be fled from like a brutal and furious master.” It must be avoided like a mad master, not obeyed.

Alecto herself Carries the torches before the marrying couple, and an evil Hymen Howls mournfully.

The devil himself makes such matches. Levinus Lemnius lists three things that generally disturb marital peace. First, marrying at an unsuitable time, “as many people marry hastily and thoughtlessly when they are worn out and old.” Second, “marrying unequally in wealth and birth.” Third, “when a sick, impotent person marries a healthy one, the new bride’s hopes are disappointed.” Much dissatisfaction immediately follows.