The Decameron

by Giovanni Boccaccio

  ‘But let us turn to the second reason, which, if I am to prove that he was wiser than you are, I shall have to expound to you at greater length; for you seem to know nothing of the providence of the gods, and to know far less about the consequences of friendship. I say, then, that it was your judgement, your counsel, and your resolve that Sophronia should be given to Gisippus, a young man and a philosopher; and Gisippus gave her to a young man and a philosopher. You wanted her to go to an Athenian, and Gisippus gave her to a Roman. You gave her to a noble youth, Gisippus to a nobler; you to a rich young man, Gisippus to a richer; you to a youth who loved her not, and scarcely even knew her, Gisippus to a youth who loved her above all other blessings, including life itself.

  ‘But in order to see whether what I say is true, and whether Gisippus is worthier of greater commendation than yourselves, let us examine the evidence point by point. That I am a young man and a philosopher, like Gisippus, my countenance and my condition will readily attest, without pursuing the matter any further. We are both of the same age, and we have always kept abreast of one another in our studies. It is true that he is an Athenian, and I am a Roman. But should there be any dispute upon the rival merits of our cities, I would remind you that my own city is free, whilst his pays tribute; I would remind you that my city rules the entire world, whilst his is one of her vassals; and I would remind you that whereas my city is renowned for her soldiers, her statesmen, and her men of letters, it is only for the last of these that Gisippus can boast of his.

  ‘Moreover, though you may look upon me here as a very humble scholar, I was not born of the dregs of the Roman populace. My private house in Rome, and the places of public resort, are filled with ancient statues of my ancestors, and you will find that the annals of the city abound with descriptions of the many triumphs celebrated on the Capitol by the Quintii. Nor has my family fallen into decay on account of its antiquity, for on the contrary the glory of our name shines more resplendently now than at any time in the past.

  ‘Concerning my wealth, modesty forbids that I should speak, bearing in mind that poverty with honour has long been regarded by the noble citizens of Rome as a priceless legacy. But if, after the opinion of the common herd, poverty is to be condemned and riches commended, of these I have abundant store, not out of avarice but out of the kindness of Fortune. And whilst I am fully aware of the value which, quite rightly, you placed upon having Gisippus as your kinsman here in Athens, there is no reason why I should be less of an asset to you in Rome, seeing that you will discover me to be an excellent host to you there, as well as a valuable, solicitous and powerful patron, who will be only too ready to assist you, whether in your public or your personal concerns.

  ‘Who, therefore, having set all prejudice aside and examined the matter dispassionately, would rate your counsels higher than those of my friend Gisippus? No one, to be sure. Thus Sophronia is rightly wedded to Titus Quintus Fulvius, and if anyone deplores or bemoans the fact, he is both misguided and misinformed. Possibly there are those who will say that Sophronia is complaining, not of being wedded to Titus, but of the manner in which she became his wife, secretly, by stealth, and without the knowledge of a single friend or relative. But there is nothing miraculous about this, nor is it the first time that such a thing has happened.

  ‘I gladly leave aside those who have married against the wishes of their fathers; and those who have eloped with their lovers, becoming their mistresses rather than their wives; and those who have divulged their wedded state, not in so many words, but through pregnancy and childbirth, thus leaving their fathers with no alternative but to consent. This was not the case with Sophronia, who on the contrary was bestowed upon Titus by Gisippus in an orderly, discreet, and honourable manner. There are those who will say that Gisippus had no right to bestow her in marriage, but these are merely foolish and womanly scruples, the product of shallow reasoning. This is by no means the first occasion on which Fortune has used strange and wonderful ways to achieve her established aims. What do I care if a cobbler, not to mention a philosopher, manages some affair of mine in his own way, whether openly or furtively, so long as the end result is a good one? If the cobbler has been indiscreet, then admittedly I must take good care not to let him meddle again in my affairs, but at the same time I must thank him for the services he has rendered. So that if Gisippus has married Sophronia well, to complain of the man and his methods is a piece of gratuitous folly; and if you suspect his judgement, thank him for what he has done, and see that he is never given the chance to do it again.

  ‘Nevertheless I must make it clear that I never sought, whether by native cunning or deliberate fraud, to besmirch the honour and the fame of your family in the person of Sophronia. Although I married her in secret, I was no plunderer, intent on despoiling her of her virginity, nor did I wish to possess her on dishonourable terms, like one who was your enemy and who spurned your kinship. I wanted her because I was ardently enamoured of her enchanting beauty and superior worth. Yet I knew that had I sought your formal consent, which you may feel I was obliged to obtain, it would not have been forthcoming, since, loving her deeply as you do, you would have feared that I would take her away to Rome.

  ‘Accordingly I resorted to the secret measures that can now be openly revealed, and I forced Gisippus, for my sake, to fall in with my plans. Moreover, though I was passionately in love with her, it was not as her lover that I conjoined myself to Sophronia, but as her husband. For as she herself can truthfully bear witness, I kept my distance until after I had wedded her by saying the necessary words and placing the ring on her finger, and when I asked her whether she would have me as her husband, she told me that she would. If she feels she was deceived, she should not blame me, but herself, for failing to ask me who I was. So the enormous crime, the terrible sin, the unpardonable wrong committed by Gisippus, my devoted friend, and by myself, her devoted admirer, was simply that Sophronia was married to Titus Quintus in secret; for this reason alone do you tear him to pieces, bombard him with threats, and sharpen your knives against him. What more would you have done, had he given her to a serf, a scoundrel, or a slave? Where would you have found the fetters, the dungeons, or the tortures equal to his offence?

  ‘But of this let us say no more for the present. Something has now occurred which I was not yet expecting, namely, that my father has died and I am obliged to return to Rome; and because I wish to take Sophronia with me, I have revealed to you that which otherwise I might have continued to conceal. If you are wise, you will cheerfully accept it, for had I wished to deceive or offend you, I could have disowned her and left her on your hands. But heaven forbid that the heart of a Roman should ever harbour so cowardly a design.

  ‘Sophronia then is mine, not only by the consent of the gods and the authority of human law, but through the good sense of my friend Gisippus and the skilful manner of my wooing her. But it seems that you disapprove of this, possibly because you think yourselves wiser than the gods and your fellow beings, for you obstinately persist in doing two things that are highly repugnant to me. In the first place you hold on to Sophronia when you have no right to do such a thing without my consent; and secondly you treat Gisippus, to whom you are deeply indebted, as your enemy. It is not my intention to prove to you still further how foolishly you are behaving, being content for the present to offer you some friendly advice: to wit, that you should forget about your grievances, set all your anger aside, and see that Sophronia is restored to me, so that I may depart from Athens in peace, as your kinsman, and live henceforth as one of yourselves. For of this you may be certain, that whether or not you like what has been done, if you fail to heed my advice I shall take Gisippus with me, and once I return to Rome, I shall make quite sure that she who is rightfully mine is restored to me, however much you may object. And you shall learn from experience what havoc can be wrought by the wrath of a Roman, once you have made him your lifelong enemy.’

  Having said what he had to say, Titus, his features contorte
d with anger, rose to his feet; and taking Gisippus by the hand, he led him out of the temple, tossing his head from side to side and looking daggers at all the people present, as if to show how little he was daunted by their numbers.

  The people he had left behind in the temple, in part persuaded by the force of his arguments, in part alarmed by his concluding words, decided of one accord that since Gisippus had turned them down, it was better to have Titus as their kinsman than to have lost a kinsman in Gisippus and gained an enemy in Titus.

  So they went and sought out Titus, and told him they were willing that Sophronia should be his, adding that they would be glad to have him as a dear kinsman and Gisippus as a good friend. And after celebrating their friendship and kinship in a style suited to the occasion, they went their separate ways. Sophronia was then restored to Titus, and being a sensible girl, she made a virtue of necessity and soon accorded Titus the love she had formerly had for Gisippus. And she went with him to Rome, where she was received with great honour.

  Meanwhile Gisippus stayed on in Athens, but could no longer command much esteem among most of his fellow citizens; and not long afterwards, through factional strife in the city, he was driven out of Athens, poor and destitute, and condemned to perpetual exile along with all the members of his family. Now that he was banished, before very long he became not only a pauper but a beggar, and made his way as best he could to Rome, in order to discover whether Titus still remembered him. On learning that Titus was alive and that all the Romans sang his praises, he found out where he was living, then went and stood outside his house. Eventually Titus made his appearance, and though Gisippus would not venture to address him because of his beggarly condition, he endeavoured to let himself be seen so that Titus might recognize and send for him. When, therefore, Titus passed him by without any show of recognition, Gisippus was convinced that he had been deliberately snubbed, and remembering all he had done for Titus in the past, he retreated from the scene in dudgeon and despair.

  It was already dark when Gisippus, hungry and penniless, having nowhere to go and heartily wishing he were dead, strayed into a very lonely part of the city where he came across a large cave, into which he crept with the intention of sheltering there for the night. And on the cave’s bare floor, ill-apparelled and exhausted by prolonged weeping, he fell fast asleep. Just before dawn, however, a pair of burglars came to this very cave with the proceeds of their night’s activities, and having started to quarrel with one another, the more powerful of the two killed his companion and made off.

  All of this was seen and heard by Gisippus, who, being himself intent upon dying, felt that he had now discovered a way of achieving his goal without resorting to suicide. So he stayed where he was until the praetorian guards, having quickly got wind of the affair, arrived at the scene of the crime and bundled him off into custody. He was then interrogated and confessed to the murder, adding that he had been unable to find his way out of the cave; whereupon the praetor, whose name was Marcus Varro, sentenced him to death by crucifixion, which in those days was the regular method of execution.

  By a singular coincidence, at that very moment Titus turned up at the law court, and on staring the wretched prisoner in the face, having learned the reasons for the sentence, he recognized him at once as Gisippus. Titus wondered how the fortunes of Gisippus could have reached so low an ebb, and how on earth he came to be in Rome; but his chief concern was to assist his friend in his hour of need, and since he could see no other way of saving him except by shifting the blame from Gisippus to himself, he quickly stepped forward and exclaimed:

  ‘Marcus Varro, recall the wretched fellow you have just condemned, for he is innocent. I have already offended the gods enough by striking the blow that killed the person whose body was found by your men this morning, without wishing to offend them now with the death of another innocent.’

  Not only was Varro astonished to hear these words, but aggrieved that everyone in court should also have heard them; and since he was morally obliged to follow the course prescribed by the laws of the land, he had Gisippus brought back and said to him, in the presence of Titus:

  ‘How could you be so foolish as to confess, without being forced, to a crime that you never committed, knowing full well that your life was at stake? You told us that you were the person who killed that fellow in the cave last night, and now this other man comes and says it was he and not you who did the killing.’

  Gisippus looked up, saw that it was Titus, and realized at once that he was doing this for his deliverance, out of gratitude for the favour that Gisippus had done him in the past. And so, shedding many a piteous tear, he turned to the praetor and said:

  ‘I assure you, Varro, that it was I who killed him. It is too late now for Titus to concern himself with my deliverance.’

  Whereupon Titus for his part said:

  ‘My lord, as you see, this fellow is a foreigner, and when they found him beside the body of the victim, he was unarmed. You have only to look at him to realize that it’s his poverty that makes him want to die. Let him go, therefore, and give to me the punishment I deserve.’

  Varro, marvelling at the persistence of the two men, was already of the opinion that neither of them was guilty, and just as he was deliberating how best to absolve them, there suddenly stepped forth a youth named Publius Ambustus, who was known to everyone in Rome as a hardened criminal and notorious thief, and who in fact was the real murderer. And knowing that neither of the two was guilty of the crime to which both were confessing, he was so overwhelmed by their innocence that out of pure compassion he went up to Varro and said:

  ‘My lord, fate decrees that I should solve the enigma of these two men, though who the god is that cajoles and compels me from within to expose my iniquitous deed, I know not. Take note, then, that neither of the two is guilty of the crime to which they both confess. It was I, in fact, who killed the man this morning at sunrise, and as I was dividing the spoils of our night’s activities with the fellow I murdered, I saw this poor wretch lying asleep in the cave. As for Titus, he has no need of me for a champion: everyone knows him to be an upright citizen, who would never stoop to such a deed as this. Release them therefore, and punish me in the manner prescribed by the laws.’

  News of the affair had meanwhile reached the ears of Octavianus, who summoned the three men to his presence and demanded to know why each of them was so eager to be convicted of the murder, whereupon they all explained their motives in turn. And in the end he released all three, the first two because they were innocent, and the third for the sake of the others.

  Titus then took hold of his friend Gisippus, and after scolding him severely for treating him so coldly and suspiciously, he made a great fuss of him and led him away to his house, where Sophronia, with tears of compassion, greeted him as a brother. And after Titus had to some extent restored his spirits, and clothed him once again in a manner befitting his nobility and excellence, he not only made him joint owner of all his treasures and possessions, but also presented him with a wife in the person of a young sister of his called Fulvia. Then he said to him:

  ‘It is now up to you to decide, Gisippus, whether you want to stay here with me, or return to Greece with all the things I have given you.’

  Prompted on the one hand by the fact that he was exiled from his native city, and on the other by his just regard for the precious friendship of Titus, Gisippus consented to become a citizen of Rome, where they lived long and happily together under the same roof, Gisippus with his Fulvia and Titus with his Sophronia; and if such a thing were conceivable, their friendship gained steadily in strength with every day that passed.

  Friendship, then, is a most sacred thing, not only worthy of singular reverence, but eternally to be praised as the deeply discerning mother of probity and munificence, the sister of gratitude and charity, and the foe of hatred and avarice, ever ready, without waiting to be asked, to do virtuously unto others that which it would wish to be done unto itself. But very se
ldom in this day and age do we find two persons in whom its hallowed effects may be seen, this being the fault of men’s shameful and miserly greed, which, being solely concerned with seeking its own advantage, has banished friendship to perpetual exile beyond earth’s farthest limits.

  Except for the power of friendship, what quantity of love or riches, what kinsman’s bond, could have wrought so powerful an effect upon the heart of Gisippus as to persuade him, on witnessing the fervour, the tears, and the sighs of Titus, to concede to him the fair and gracious promised bride with whom he was himself in love? Except for the power of friendship, what laws, what threats, what fear of consequence, could have prevented the youthful arms of Gisippus, in darkened or deserted places, or in the privacy of his own bed, from embracing this delectable girl, occasionally perhaps at her own invitation? Except for the power of friendship, what prospect of superior rank, or rich reward, or material gain, could have made Gisippus so indifferent to the loss of his own and Sophronia’s kinsfolk, so indifferent to the slanderous rumours of the populace, so indifferent to the jests and jibes of his fellow men, as to gratify his comrade’s desire?

  And on the other hand, what other force but friendship would have prompted Titus, eagerly and without vacillation, to place his life in jeopardy in order to save Gisippus from the cross of his own desiring, when no one would have blamed him for turning a blind eye to the affair? What other force but friendship would have prompted Titus promptly and generously to share his extensive wealth with Gisippus, whose own possessions had been seized from him by Fortune? What other force but friendship would have prompted Titus readily and zealously to bestow his own sister in marriage upon Gisippus, when he could see that he was penniless and utterly destitute?