The Anatomy of Melancholy

An honest countryman in the kingdom of Naples, as Fulgosius relates, was ploughing by the sea when he saw his wife carried away by Mauritanian pirates. He ran after them in all haste, first up to his chin in the water; when he could wade no farther, he swam, calling to the ship’s commander to release his wife. If she could not be restored to him, he asked to accompany her as a prisoner. He was resolved to become a galley slave, the commander’s drudge, willing to endure any misery if only he could be with his dear wife.

The Moors, seeing the man’s steadfastness and reporting the whole affair to their governor at Tunis, set them both free and gave them a substantial allowance to support them for the rest of their lives.

I could tell many stories to this effect. But suppose things often turn out otherwise: to avoid marriage altogether because it is troublesome is no sound argument. “Whoever would avoid trouble must avoid the world”—Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, book 5, chapter 50.

I do not deny that there is some trouble in marriage. “Even if marriage is burdensome,” says Erasmus, “it is nevertheless sweetened by many things,” and so on. There are many things to sweeten it: a pleasant wife—“a pleasing wife”; pretty children—“dear children, the delights of the sons of men,” their chief delight; Ecclesiastes 2:8, and so forth.

And in any case, even if it were nothing but trouble, “it must be swallowed for the sake of the public good, a burden willingly undertaken”: it must willingly be endured for the public good.

Hear this, people, says Susarion: Women are an evil; nevertheless, my countrymen, Without this evil one cannot keep a household.

Hear me, my countrymen, says Susarion: Women are bad, yet there is no living without one.

“Woman is an evil, but a necessary evil.” They are necessary evils, and for our own ends we must make use of them to have children—“Venus replenishes and restores the human race”—and to propagate the Church.

For what purpose is a man born? Why does he live, except to increase the world’s population? And how can he do that properly if he does not marry? “Marriage bestows immortality on the human race,” says Nevisanus: matrimony makes us immortal. And according to Tacitus, it is “the strongest bulwark of an empire,” its sole and chief support.

He lives unworthily through whom no other lives.

This was the objection Pelopidas made to Epaminondas: a man was an unworthy member of a commonwealth if he left no child behind to defend it. And as Trismegistus said to his son Tatius, “Have no dealings with an unmarried man.”