The Essays of Montaigne [436]
"Materiam culpae prosequiturque suae."
["And seeks out a matter (motive) for his crimes."
—Ovid, Trist., iv. I. 34.]
As to the second point; should we not be less cuckolds, if we less feared to be so? according to the humour of women whom interdiction incites, and who are more eager, being forbidden:
"Ubi velis, nolunt; ubi nolis, volunt ultro;
Concessa pudet ire via."
["Where thou wilt, they won't; where thou wilt not, they
spontaneously agree; they are ashamed to go in the permitted path."
—Terence, Eunuchus, act iv., sc. 8, v 43]
What better interpretation can we make of Messalina's behaviour? She, at first, made her husband a cuckold in private, as is the common use; but, bringing her business about with too much ease, by reason of her husband's stupidity, she soon scorned that way, and presently fell to making open love, to own her lovers, and to favour and entertain them in the sight of all: she would make him know and see how she used him. This animal, not to be roused with all this, and rendering her pleasures dull and flat by his too stupid facility, by which he seemed to authorise and make them lawful; what does she? Being the wife of a living and healthful emperor, and at Rome, the theatre of the world, in the face of the sun, and with solemn ceremony, and to Silius, who had long before enjoyed her, she publicly marries herself one day that her husband was gone out of the city. Does it not seem as if she was going to become chaste by her husband's negligence? or that she sought another husband who might sharpen her appetite by his jealousy, and who by watching should incite her? But the first difficulty she met with was also the last: this beast suddenly roused these sleepy, sluggish sort of men are often the most dangerous: I have found by experience that this extreme toleration, when it comes to dissolve, produces the most severe revenge; for taking fire on a sudden, anger and fury being combined in one, discharge their utmost force at the first onset,
"Irarumque omnes effundit habenas:"
["He let loose his whole fury."—AEneid, xii. 499.]
he put her to death, and with her a great number of those with whom she had intelligence, and even one of them who could not help it, and whom she had caused to be forced to her bed with scourges.
What Virgil says of Venus and Vulcan, Lucretius had better expressed of a stolen enjoyment betwixt her and Mars:
"Belli fera moenera Mavors
Armipotens regit, ingremium qui saepe tuum se
Rejictt, aeterno devinctus vulnere amoris
............................
Pascit amore avidos inhians in te, Dea, visus,
Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore
Hunc tu, Diva, tuo recubantem corpore sancto
Circumfusa super, suaveis ex ore loquelas
Funde."
["Mars, the god of wars, who controls the cruel tasks of war, often
reclines on thy bosom, and greedily drinks love at both his eyes,
vanquished by the eternal wound of love: and his breath, as he
reclines, hangs on thy lips; bending thy head over him as he lies
upon thy sacred person, pour forth sweet and persuasive words."
—Lucretius, i. 23.]
When I consider this rejicit, fiascit, inhians, ynolli, fovet, medullas, labefacta, pendet, percurrit, and that noble circumfusa, mother of the pretty infuses; I disdain those little quibbles and verbal allusions that have since sprung up. Those worthy people stood in need of no subtlety to disguise their meaning; their language is downright, and full of natural and continued vigour; they are all epigram; not only the tail, but the head, body, and feet. There is nothing forced, nothing languishing, but everything keeps the same pace:
"Contextus totes virilis est; non sunt circa flosculos occupati."
["The whole contexture is manly; they don't occupy themselves with
little flowers of rhetoric."—Seneca, Ep., 33.]
'Tis not a soft eloquence, and without offence only; 'tis nervous and solid, that does not so much please, as it fills and ravishes the greatest minds. When