Adultery remains the charged topic today that it was back in ancient times. Even though the twentieth century brought it more liberal means for gaining a divorce, and even though cohabitation is catching up with marriage as the relationship structure of choice for many couples, particularly in Europe, the idea that a spouse is cheating on his or her betrothed is still the sort of alluring gossip that draws interest. If this were not true, such spurious stories as Michelle Obama’s plans to divorce the president and Angelina Jolie’s latest decision to leave Brad Pitt would not be among the fictions that the tabloids scream to whichever reader will stop long enough to give the publications more than a cursory look. In Homer’s Odyssey, Plautus’ Amphitryon and the Metamorphoses of Ovid, adultery makes an appearance, showing its importance as a theme throughout classical mythology.
The mythology of Greece and Rome is quite different than the theology that was at work in the Judeo-Christian era. Zeus (or Jupiter, depending on which part of the Mediterranean you lived in) and the other deities up on Mt. Olympus were not moral examples to follow; instead, they featured the characteristics of humanity, albeit in considerably expanded form. So the things that make a person strong are multiplied in the gods on Olympus, but so are the appetites – and the follies – in which people engage. In all things, the gods are expansions of the tendencies of mortals, and adultery is one area in both people and deities engage. As a result, it becomes a common theme in the literature of the period.
Adultery makes a major appearance in the events of Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus is gone from home for just about thirty years – the ten years of the war against Troy and the twenty years of his journey back, as the anger from Poseidon keeps him from being able to navigate the seas back to Ithaca (of course, that foul-up with the bag of Aeolus’ winds doesn’t help, either). While he is gone, his wife Penelope not only has to raise their son, Telemachus, to be the next ruler of Ithaca as well as she can, but she also has to start fending off suitors after a while. These men get to live off Odysseus’ wealth as they wait for Penelope to choose a successor to her husband. After all, she has no idea what has happened to him, and so after a time the assumption is that he has ended up at the bottom of the sea. The suitors clamor for her to select one, but she keeps putting the matter off, wanting to remain faithful to the memory of her husband and hoping that he will return (and quite possibly not wanting to start something with a new man, preferring instead to wait for Odysseus to return).
At the same time, though, Odysseus is more than comfortable with slipping into adulterous liaisons. Not long after the men leave Troy, they end up on the island of Circe, a goddess-witch who at first turns Odysseus’ men into swine, perhaps a metaphor for the selfish nature of the male of the species. Once Odysseus wins her over, though, she turns his men back into humans and he stays there, enjoying a sexual relationship with her and only at the behest of his men thinking about turning his thoughts toward home. Near the end of his voyage, Odysseus is wrecked on the island of Calypso, another beautiful goddess who has her own island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Calypso desires Odysseus, and so he stays with her, but clearly he misses home, because he sobs for it every day. It is this sobbing that moves Calypso to let Odysseus leave, although the raft he has to put together for the trip is far from secure. The suggestion here is that sex and love are two widely different drives for the ancient Greeks. Enjoying oneself while one can was paramount in the Greek culture – particularly for men. While Penelope faithfully waits for her husband to return, he is willing to have sex and enjoy himself and, particularly in the company of Circe, delay his return home in order to enjoy himself longer. Ultimately, the love of Penelope and Odysseus remains as strong as the tree that is a cornerstone of their marriage bed, unshaken by the many affairs that he has had. When they are finally together, “he wept at last, his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms, longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer spent in rough water where his ship went down” (Homer, web). The strong reactions elsewhere in Greek myth, of course, such as the murderous response that Clytemnestra has when Agamemnon returns from Troy, shows that unfaithfulness can be much more dangerous.
Plautus’ Amphitryon takes adultery to a different level than the one it appeared on within Homer’s Odyssey. Amphitryon has been off at war, along with Sosia, his slave, and has just returned to Thebes. Thebes, of course, has its own tortured past when it comes to family relationships. Oedipus, once the ruler of Thebes, took the throne when he unknowingly killed his own father and married his mother to take the throne. When he found out what he had done, he gouged out his own eyes and entered exile, leaving his two sons to rule Thebes, alternating one year at a time. However, when one son refuses to turn the throne over to the other at the end of a year, they fight and kill each other in hand-to-hand combat, and one of their sisters is sentenced to death for burying the one who wanted to take his turn, even though their uncle had branded that brother a rebel. While Amphitryon is off fulfilling his soldierly duty, Jupiter is visiting Amphitryon’s wife, Alcmena, and the two are having an affair. However, Alcmena does not know that she is in an adulterous affair, because Jupiter makes himself look just like Amphitryon. Mercury, the messenger of the gods, has the job of tricking those people who might get in the way of Jupiter’s fun. He alters his own appearance so that he looks like Sosia; when the actual Sosia comes home, preceding his master, Mercury assaults him and sends him from the home. Sosia thinks he is fighting someone who looks exactly like himself, a confusing experience indeed, and so he goes back to the ship to warn Amphitryon that there are definite oddities afoot. The next day, Amphitryon heads home, irritated because of the silly tale Sosia has told him. Jupiter, unaware of the real Amphitryon’s approach, leaves the house after one of his assignations, and Alcmena is confused to see her husband coming back. It is the swiftness with which Jupiter leaves that first confuses Alcmena, but Jupiter is smooth, saying that “no weariness of [her] and home” is taking him away (Plautus, web). Amphitryon finds this to be an odd welcome indeed after such a long absence, but this confusion soon becomes envy once he finds out that she has been sleeping with another man, even though the man looks just like him.
A lengthy argument breaks out, and Alcmena gets to the point where she is prepared to leave, but Jupiter comes back and makes everything all right again. Alcmena soon gives birth to twins: one of them is Hercules, Jupiter’s son, and the other is Amphitryon’s son. Jupiter finally explains to Amphitryon what has gone on, and Amphitryon feels honored that his wife is beautiful enough to have attracted a god, and that he and a god have been with the same woman. This shows the Greek attitude that the gods had ultimate entitlement, but it also shows the pride that Amphitryon has; the fact that a god would want to sleep with his wife is ultimately prestigious for him – in ways that such recent affairs as the ones President Kennedy had with a host of women have failed to become in American culture.
Throughout Ovid’s Metamorphoses, it is clear that sex is little more than a game to the poet, taking some abilities in the areas of deception and strategy. It is clear from the subject matter that Ovid takes a pleasure in sex for sex’s sake that is even a little explicit for the current Kardashian era. However, the sexual mores in ancient Rome may have been even more liberal, but the fact that the World Wide Web was still millennia off into the distance may have been what kept this era from being just as salacious as our own. In Book I, Elegy IV, there is a king named Peirithous who wants to form a treaty with the Centaurs (half horse, half man) by giving them invitations to his nuptials. However, the Centaurs just get drunk and try to carry off some of the women, potentially reigniting the war that had just come to a pause. The marital status of the women is not important, and the things that are going on beneath the robes of the couples could become quite scandalous.
In Book II, Elegy II, one sees an episode that echoes Ovid’s belief that adultery is just a game. The husband of Ovid’s mistress has put a slave, Bagoas, in charge of keeping an eye on her. Ovid threatens the slave while trying to have some fun with his mistress. Using the excuse of the rites of Isis, Ovid works his way into a place where he can have the fun that he wants. In Book II, Elegy IX, the husband of Corinna is working hard to make her adulterous affair with the poet more difficult, but the poet says that these difficulties just make his lust more ardent. The purpose of the poem that the poet sends to the husband is to arouse envious fears, even to taunt him. Overall, the fact that Ovid views sex as a game appears over and over in the Metamorphoses, whether the sex is adulterous in nature or not. However, Ovid has clearly developed a way of detaching himself from unwanted mental hurdles, as he says “Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all” (Ovid, web). Throughout these examples, though, it becomes clear that the Greeks and Romans did not view adultery with the same sort of censure that many view it in modern times. Instead, they appear to have viewed marriage (or at least the men did) as a more flexible institution, more of a structure than a source of undying passion.
Works Cited
Homer. Odyssey. Course reading.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Course reading.
Plautus. Amphitryon. Course reading.
