The Anatomy of Melancholy

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.