The Woman of Andros and The Ides of March

by Thornton Wilder

  What takes place during those twenty hours must make a powerful impression on the votaries, an effect so great that the majority of the celebrants, elevated to a pitch of ecstasy and supplication, are scarcely aware of the obscenity. The obscenity is for them an intensification of the truth and of the magic efficacy of the rites.

  The Mysteries, I take it, avert sterility and prevent monstrous or catastrophic births. They harmonise and, as it were, sanctify that woman’s life about which even the most skilled doctors tell me they know very little. In doing this I can well understand that it does not stop there; it affirms life itself, all mankind, and the creation. Little wonder that our women return to us like beings from another world and move about us for a time like radiant strangers. They have been told that they keep the stars in their courses and that they maintain in place the very paving stones of Rome. When after a time they give themselves to us it is with a pride not unmixed with contempt, as though we men were but the accidental instruments of their mighty task.

  Now far be it from me to rob these ceremonies of one jot of their power and consolation. I ask only to increase their influence. I have observed, however, that these good effects do not endure beyond a few days. Were our women able to remain for a longer time in their elevated state I would willingly concede that they rule the stars in the sky and support the pavements of Rome. I am beyond any man I have ever met the admirer of the essential feminine; beyond any man I have ever met I am least censorious of their failings and least exasperated by their vagaries. But then! – what advantages I have had! I ask myself in amazement: ‘What opinion must that man hold of womankind who has not had the advantage of living in the proximity of great women?’ What arrogance he must acquire from the mere fact that he is a man! What easy honours he must obtain from brutalising over the women of his association! My eye travels over many men every day; it is not difficult to single out those who are what they are because of their proximity at some time to an exceptional woman. I have done more for the status and independence of women than any ruler that has ever lived. In these matters Pericles was obtuse and Alexander a stripling. I have been widely charged with light behavior toward them. That is nonsense. Among the women whom I have frequented I have left but one enemy behind me, and she, before I met her, had chosen to become the enemy of all men. Her I almost won from her self-hatred and almost saved from her damnation, but that only a God could do.

  I have no hesitation in ascribing the brevity of that festival’s good effects to the fact that it is overstrained; the celebrants are stretched to a pitch of excitement that obliterates the mind, and this degree of excess is a result of the obscene elements. I have grounds for believing that these aspects are more in evidence in the concluding session which begins at midnight. At that hour it is the custom that the Vestal Virgins, unmarried women, and pregnant mothers retire to their homes; and I now understand why my loved Cornelia and Aurelia used to feign illness at midnight and withdraw to their apartments, even when they had responsibilities in the ceremonial, leaving the governance to Servilia who must indeed have conducted herself like a maenad.

  You may well say that I am working in the darkness of ignorance in attempting to alter the balance of good and evil in this matter. But when have I ever done anything else but work in darkness? Particularly these last months, each step I take seems to me like that of a man blindfolded. He hopes that there is no precipice before him. I write my will and make Octavius my heir – is that a step into the darkness? I appoint Marcus Brutus to be Praetor of the City and close to me – is that a sure step?

  – I have just reread these lines, two days after having written them. I am astonished to see that I have not drawn from them the consequence that is uppermost.

  Who is this Good Goddess?

  No man has ever been told her name; no woman is permitted to utter it; perhaps themselves do not know it.

  Where is she? In Rome? Present at the confinements of our wives? Preventing the births of wolf-children? Presumably she was present at my birth, ripped by the doctor from my mother’s side.

  Why, it is very certain she does not exist, apart from the imaginations of these votaries. That is also an existence and, as we have seen, a useful one.

  But if our minds can make such Gods and if from the Gods we have made there flows such power, which is no more than a power resident within us, why cannot we employ that power directly? These women are employing but a small part of their strength, because they are ignorant that that strength is their own. They regard themselves as helpless, as victims of malevolent forces and as beneficiaries of this Goddess whom they must implore and propitiate. Little wonder that their exaltation soon subsides, that they again descend into that incessant occupation with details where every detail is of equal power to enthrall or to distress them, that unremitting activity which so resembles a despair – a despair which does not know it is despairing, or an application to duties so intense that it can drown out despair.

  Let each woman find out in herself her own Goddess – that should be the meaning of these rites.

  At least, the first steps toward that end shall be the elimination of obscenity. Let us at least say of religion that it means that every part of the body is infused with mind, not that the mind is overwhelmed and drowned in body. For the principal attribute of the Gods, without or within us, is mind.

  XLIII

  Cleopatra, in Egypt, to Caesar.

  [August 17.]

  Cleopatra, the Everliving Isis, Child of the Sun, Chosen of Ptah, Queen of Egypt, Cyrenaica, and Arabia, Empress of the Upper and Lower Nile, Queen of Ethiopia, etc., etc. To Caius Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic and Supreme Pontiff.

  Herewith the Queen of Egypt submits her application for inclusion among those in Rome who are permitted to attend the Rites in Celebration of the Good Goddess.

  XLIII-A

  Caesar’s Journal – Letter to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus on the Island of Capri.

  975. It was from you that I obtained an idea which is now so self-evident to me that I am in danger of forgetting that you gave it to me: the importance for administration of encouraging an identification of the Gods of other countries with those of our own. In some regions this has been difficult; in others, astonishingly easy. In most northern Gaul the God of the oak tree and the storms (no Roman has ever been able to pronounce his name – Hodan, Quotan) has long since coalesced with Jupiter; He smiles daily on the marriages of our soldiers and clerks with the golden-haired daughters of those forests. The Temples of my ancestress [Venus; the Julian family traced its descent from Julus, son of Aeneas, son of Aphrodite] in the East are one with those of Astarte and Ashtoreth. If I live long enough, or if my successors also see the importance of this unity among the cults, all the men and women in the world will call themselves brother and sisters, children of Jupiter.

  This world-wide unification has recently produced a slightly ridiculous consequence, some illustrations of which I am enclosing in this packet. Her Pyramidal Majesty, the Queen of Egypt, has applied for admission to the mysteries of our very Roman Good Goddess. You have always had a taste for both genealogy and theology, but even you would not wish to explore the immense documentation with which she supports her claims. Cleopatra does nothing by halves; my anteroom is filled with the bales of this documentation.

  Her application rests on two counts: her descent from the Goddess Qu’eb and her descent from the Goddess Cybele.

  A little of this makes one dizzy, but I shall digest for you some three hundred pages as though they were in her own words, though I have not the texts before me:

  ‘The Greek theologians authorised the identification of Qu’eb and Cybele over two hundred years ago (see attached two hundred pages). On the occasion of the visit of Queen Dicoris of Littoral Armenia to Rome in [89] the Master of Rites ruled an ‘identity of emanation’ between Cybele and the Good Goddess (see attached bundles X and XI).

  ‘The Supreme Pontiff will remember that w
hen the Queen of Egypt laid the charts of her ancestry before him in Alexandria (fiddlesticks) – although at that time she had not made public her Egyptian lineage (indeed, she hadn’t) – she was preparing to announce her claim to Tyre and Sidon by reason of her great-grandfather’s marriage (her great-grandfather was no stronger lying down than standing up) to Queen Aholibah. I am therefore through Queens Jezebel and Athaliah, descendant and hereditary archpriestess of Ashtoreth. Through this relationship, Queen Jezebel having been cousin-german to Dido, Queen of Carthage (notice the threat – my grandfather wronged her great-aunt) and so on and so on.’ It is all quite true. The Eastern potentates are each ones their own cousin many times. I have written her that after suitable instruction she will be admitted to the earlier portion of the rites; that the permission is not accorded to her through any claim on her part to be descended from the Good Goddess or from any other divinity, but merely that the Goddess rejoices receiving – during the earlier part of the evening – all women who wish to bow before her.

  I wish to add that the above rigmarole tends to present an unjust picture of the Queen of Egypt. It happens to reflect the only aspect of her mind on which she is not exceptionally sensible.

  I should add that the Queen failed to include an extremely curious fact among the arguments supporting her request. Perhaps she does not know of it. The votaries of the Good Goddess during the rites wear a headdress which is certainly neither Greek nor Roman and which is known among them as the ‘Egyptian Turban.’ How it came to be there no one has ever explained. But who can explain the symbols, the influences, and the expressions of that universal mixture of joy and terror which is religion?

  XLIV

  The Lady Julia Marcia from Caesar’s House in Rome, to Clodia.

  [September 30.]

  This letter is confidential.

  Julia Marcia sends regard to Clodia Pulcher, daughter and granddaughter of her most dear friends.

  I am looking forward to being present at your dinner tomorrow night, to meeting there for the first time your brother, to renewing an old friendship with Marcus Tullius Cicero, and to seeing you.

  I returned to the City three days ago in order to attend a meeting of the Directresses of a religious festival venerated for its antiquity and held in grateful awe by its votaries. At this meeting eight petitions were laid before me that you be excluded from this year’s festival. I have read these petitions with regret, even with great sorrow, but I do not find the charges sufficiently grave or definite to justify the measure they request. That these petitions exist, however, is a matter which myself and the other women responsible for the devotion and harmony of the rites cannot ignore.

  The procedure I am about to propose is one of compromise. I feel certain that I can insure its acceptance, always granting that no further petitions are submitted which contain incontrovertible evidence that your disbarment be advisable. In proposing this compromise I do not wish to be understood as taking lightly the many protests which rightly or wrongly your actions have aroused. My motive is to avoid unjustifiable scandal in an institution which was so greatly loved by those who greatly loved you.

  I inform you in great confidence that Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, will be in Rome before long and that she has submitted a petition that she be admitted to the ceremonies we are discussing. This application, accompanied by much argumentation and many precedents and analogies, has been laid before the Directresses and before the Supreme Pontiff. The decision will probably be that the Queen will be permitted to attend the rites before midnight when it is customary that the Vestal Virgins, unmarried women, pregnant women, and [here follows a technical term meaning not belonging to the tribes into which citizens of Rome were divided] withdraw. I am going to propose that you be appointed Instructress of the Queen of Egypt and that therefore you will be obliged to accompany her to her palace at midnight. Your enemies will be satisfied, I feel sure, by the knowledge that you will not return to the rites after you have retired from them with your guest.

  You will think my proposal over, Clodia, and I hope that tomorrow night you will find occasion to convey to me your compliance. The only alternative is that you challenge the petitions brought against you and face your accusers in a plenary session of our committees. If we were dealing with secular matters I should certainly advise you to do so; these charges and their defense are, however, matters of decorum, dignity, and reputation. To discuss them openly is to admit that these attributes are damaged.

  The Supreme Pontiff is not aware of these discussions and I need hardly say that I shall make every effort to prevent their reaching his attention save in the final disposition which I have proposed for your decision.

  XLIV-A

  Caesar’s Journal – Letter to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus on the Island of Capri.

  [About October 8.]

  1002. [On Clodia and a mime of Pactinus] I am more frequently discomfited by little things than by big. I have just found myself obliged to forbid the performance of a play on the stage. I enclose a copy of the play in question, a mime by Pactinus called The Prize of Virtue. You are probably aware, though I forgot to tell you, that I instituted the practice of giving twenty prizes of varying amounts of money to girls of the working class who receive the highest commendation from their neighbors for good manners, faithful attendance on their parents and masters, and so on. I think this has had some good effect. It has incidentally provoked as great a plague of witticisms and satire as any action in which I have ever engaged. It has added enormously to the merriment of Rome; every street cleaner discovers himself to be a wit and you may well imagine that I am not spared.

  One result has been the overwhelming success of the attached farce. You will observe that the fourth episode treats of Clodia and her brother. The audience was not slow to perceive the application. It was reported to me that at the close of that scene, on each occasion, the audience rose in a tumult of applause, derision, and savage glee. Strangers embraced one another, shouting; they leaped up and down and on two occasions tore down the handrails of the aisles.

  After eight representations I ordered that the play be withdrawn. After the second Clodius Pulcher appeared in my offices to protest. I sent word that I was busy on African matters and could not see him. I wished the famous couple to drink for a time the bitter brew of their own concocting. Finally, he reappeared in sufficiently humble suppliance and I complied with his request.

  It vexed me to close it. It is without literary merit, but hitherto I have never curbed the freedom of expression of the citizens nor punished opinion however outrageous. Moreover, I wince to think that many will suppose that I suppressed it because it contained many shafts directed at myself.

  The audience at a theater is the most moral of congregations. The fact that all those Romans are seated shoulder to shoulder seems to instill into them an elevation of judgment which they are not found to exercise anywhere else. They have no hesitation in deciding whether the behavior of the characters in a play is good or bad and they demand of them an ethical standard which they are far from requiring of themselves. Pandarus in an audience trembles with virtuous indignation before the pander on the stage. Twelve prostitutes side by side at a play are more prudish than one Vestal Virgin. I have often remarked that the moral and ethical attitudes of a theater audience are some thirty years out of date; in a mass, men reflect the views they received as children from their parents and guardians. And so at this farce the audience was whipped up into an ecstasy of denunciation of our Clodia. Each spectator felt himself or herself to be irreproachably virtuous.

  That lofty emotion may well have lasted an hour. Oh, that we had an Aristophanes among us. He could both pillory Clodia and Caesar, and then turn the laughter on the audience’s laughter. Oh, Aristophanes!

  XLIV-B

  From The Prize of Virtue, a mime by Pactinus.

  [A judge of the contest, obviously intended to be Caesar, sits in his office interviewing applicants for the prize. He is represe
nted as a sly and lecherous old man. He is attended by a clerk.

  The play is in verse.

  This is the fourth episode.]

  Clerk: There is a pretty girl waiting to see Your Honour. [Latin pulcher: pretty.]

  Judge: What? Is there to be no pretty boy? [This is one of those innumerable imputations to Caesar of pederasty with which the literature abounds.]

  Clerk: This is his sister, Your Honour.

  Judge: Well, get on with it. You know I’m not particular.

  Clerk: She’s weeping, Your Honour.

  Judge: Of course, she’s weeping, if she’s virtuous, blockhead. Virtuous women weep the first half of their lives, and women without virtue weep the second half of their lives, and so the Tiber never runs dry. Show her in.

  (Enter a Young Girl, dressed in rags.)

  Come nearer, little girl. I don’t seem to see anything clearly any more – except villas at Tivoli. [Where Caesar had confiscated the estates of two noblemen of Pompey’s party who had been particular favourites of the Roman populace.] So you want a prize for virtue, do you – you little darling?

  The Young Girl: Yes, Your Honour. You won’t find a more virtuous girl in the whole city.

  Judge: (caressing her): Are you sure you haven’t come to the wrong office, my little pigeon? Hm . . . let me see, let me see. This is, ahem, not your first youth, is it?

  The Young Girl: Oh, no, sir. The first youth was under the consulship of Cornelius and Mummius [i.e. 146 B.C.] .

  The Judge: I can well believe it. Tell me, little rose, is your father living?

  The Young Girl: (weeping): Oh, sir, it’s not kind to bring that up against me now.