love he bears his wife, arranges for another man, Gyges – a well-regarded subordinate, but a subordinate all the same – to spy upon her nakedness. Outraged to discover this liberty taken with her person, the queen (to whom Herodotus never gives a name) offers Gyges a terriblechoice – either he pays with his life for what he has unlawfully seen, or he assassinates her husband and succeeds as King of Lydia in his place.
Not knowing the state of my Greek, Victor included a translation of this famous story, for all that he was sure, given my precocious cleverness, I had ‘no need of it’. I say ‘famous’ but in truth the tale of Gyges and Candaules is well known only to classicists and to men of my strain for whom, despite the unfortunate ending, it enjoys the status of a sort of founding myth.
This much I can say about it today, but at the time I was out of my depth. I might have been a precocious turner of sentences but I had only briefly kissed one girl; to ask me to draw fine distinctions between degrees of wife-mongering was to ask too much. Now, of course, water having passed beneath the bridge, I get what Victor wanted me to understand: that there is a world of difference between the everyday torments a jealous husband suffers and that desire which is so overwhelming you have to share it. Love was at the bottom of it for both of them; but whereas Anselmo shrank into his own terrors under the alchemy of love, Candaules so could not contain the ardour of his desire that it spilled over into a thing it would not be fantastical to call philanthropy.
From the opening lines of Herodotus’ narrative – and I quote from the popular translation by G. C. Macaulay which Victor sent me – Candaules appears uxorious beyond the common run of men.
This Candaules then of whom I speak had become passionately in love with his own wife; and having become so, he deemed that his wife was fairer by far than all other women; and thus deeming . . .
. . . thus deeming, he contrives to have Gyges hide himself where he can see the queen disrobing for bed.
Is not the idea of a man becoming passionately in love with his wife intriguing? We must assume, else why would the opposite be remarked on, that husbands in the kingdom of Lydia neither married for love, nor found it after marriage. So this is a love story before it is anything else. First the rare and unexpected love which King Candaules bears his wife,then the conviction of her superlative beauty, then the wish to have it seen. To my mind an ineluctable progression.
Ask why King Candaules couldn’t have been content with Gyges beholding the queen clothed and you enter into the unconditional nature of his passion.
‘It was the completeness of my wife ’s beauty I fell for,’ he will tell you from whichever circle of lovers’ hell he inhabits. ‘Not the colour of her eyes or the turn of her neck, but the sum total of her parts, the harmony of her, and that harmoniousness, you must surely see, can only be appreciated naked .’
Ask why he couldn’t have been content to enjoy the totality of this beauty for himself alone and you touch upon the nature not only of romantic love, in one of its extreme forms, but of art as well.
‘The instinct to share that which we find beautiful,’ he will go on, ‘lies deep within our natures. It is not only for ourselves, but for others to look at too, that we hang paintings we care for upon our walls. The man who hides his artworks in a vault is considered to have deprived the world of a pleasure, some would go so far as to say an entitlement. Though I would lose my kingdom and my life for it, I could not deny the world its entitlement.’
Before succumbing to Candaules’ feverish persuasion, Gyges voiced the conventional man’s objections. ‘Master, when a woman puts off her tunic she puts off her modesty also.’
An observation seconded by Herodotus himself. ‘For among the Lydians as also among most other Barbarians it is a
Not knowing the state of my Greek, Victor included a translation of this famous story, for all that he was sure, given my precocious cleverness, I had ‘no need of it’. I say ‘famous’ but in truth the tale of Gyges and Candaules is well known only to classicists and to men of my strain for whom, despite the unfortunate ending, it enjoys the status of a sort of founding myth.
This much I can say about it today, but at the time I was out of my depth. I might have been a precocious turner of sentences but I had only briefly kissed one girl; to ask me to draw fine distinctions between degrees of wife-mongering was to ask too much. Now, of course, water having passed beneath the bridge, I get what Victor wanted me to understand: that there is a world of difference between the everyday torments a jealous husband suffers and that desire which is so overwhelming you have to share it. Love was at the bottom of it for both of them; but whereas Anselmo shrank into his own terrors under the alchemy of love, Candaules so could not contain the ardour of his desire that it spilled over into a thing it would not be fantastical to call philanthropy.
From the opening lines of Herodotus’ narrative – and I quote from the popular translation by G. C. Macaulay which Victor sent me – Candaules appears uxorious beyond the common run of men.
This Candaules then of whom I speak had become passionately in love with his own wife; and having become so, he deemed that his wife was fairer by far than all other women; and thus deeming . . .
. . . thus deeming, he contrives to have Gyges hide himself where he can see the queen disrobing for bed.
Is not the idea of a man becoming passionately in love with his wife intriguing? We must assume, else why would the opposite be remarked on, that husbands in the kingdom of Lydia neither married for love, nor found it after marriage. So this is a love story before it is anything else. First the rare and unexpected love which King Candaules bears his wife,then the conviction of her superlative beauty, then the wish to have it seen. To my mind an ineluctable progression.
Ask why King Candaules couldn’t have been content with Gyges beholding the queen clothed and you enter into the unconditional nature of his passion.
‘It was the completeness of my wife ’s beauty I fell for,’ he will tell you from whichever circle of lovers’ hell he inhabits. ‘Not the colour of her eyes or the turn of her neck, but the sum total of her parts, the harmony of her, and that harmoniousness, you must surely see, can only be appreciated naked .’
Ask why he couldn’t have been content to enjoy the totality of this beauty for himself alone and you touch upon the nature not only of romantic love, in one of its extreme forms, but of art as well.
‘The instinct to share that which we find beautiful,’ he will go on, ‘lies deep within our natures. It is not only for ourselves, but for others to look at too, that we hang paintings we care for upon our walls. The man who hides his artworks in a vault is considered to have deprived the world of a pleasure, some would go so far as to say an entitlement. Though I would lose my kingdom and my life for it, I could not deny the world its entitlement.’
Before succumbing to Candaules’ feverish persuasion, Gyges voiced the conventional man’s objections. ‘Master, when a woman puts off her tunic she puts off her modesty also.’
An observation seconded by Herodotus himself. ‘For among the Lydians as also among most other Barbarians it is a
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