Lydia

Lydia is the high-spirited wife of Nicostratus whose ingenuity lets her pursue Pyrrhus, her husband’s trusted servant, while turning the signs of her betrayal into evidence that Nicostratus cannot trust his own eyes. Told by Pamfilo on the Seventh Day of the Decameron, her story makes desire a contest of perception: Lydia must first convince Pyrrhus that her passion is real, then persuade her husband that the truth before him is an illusion.

Identity and Household

Lydia lives in Argos and belongs to a noble household. Nicostratus, already approaching old age when fortune gives him Lydia as his wife, is wealthy and keeps many servants, hounds, and hawks. His chief delight is the hunt. The distance between their ages matters to Lydia: she regards herself as young and lusty, while her husband’s years leave her dissatisfied in the pleasures she desires. The tale presents that mismatch as the circumstance behind her decision to seek intimacy elsewhere, not as a change in her outward place as his wife.

Among Nicostratus’s servants is Pyrrhus, a young man who is comely, sprightly, well-bred, and able in whatever he undertakes. Nicostratus loves and trusts him above the others. Lydia falls so completely in love with Pyrrhus that she cannot turn her thoughts from him, by day or by night. At first Pyrrhus appears not to notice her attachment, or not to welcome it. Her desire is therefore not immediately shared: she has to find a way to make it known and to persuade him that acting on it will not betray the confidence Nicostratus places in him.

Desire and the Test of Trust

Lydia confides in Lusca, a chamberwoman she trusts, and asks her to carry a secret message to Pyrrhus. She describes her youth and abundance, but identifies her husband’s age as the one deprivation that troubles her. Since fortune has given her an old husband, she says, she will not deny herself the pleasures she wants; she has chosen Pyrrhus and feels no ease except when she sees him or thinks of him. She asks Lusca to appeal to him on her behalf and to arrange a meeting.

Pyrrhus initially refuses. He is astonished by the message and suspects it may be a test, since he has never understood that Lydia loved him. He also insists that Nicostratus has honored and trusted him too much for him to commit such an outrage against his master. Lusca argues that he should not assume Nicostratus would defend his interests if their positions were reversed, and urges him not to reject the opportunity. Her intervention moves Pyrrhus toward consent, but he remains wary: before agreeing, he wants proof that Lydia’s offer is not a trap.

He sets three conditions. Lydia must kill Nicostratus’s prized hawk in her husband’s presence, send Pyrrhus a lock of Nicostratus’s beard, and give him one of the husband’s best teeth. The demands turn private desire into a sequence of visible, increasingly intimate tests. Lydia understands their difficulty, but accepts them. She adds a further assurance: after completing the tests, she will contrive to be with Pyrrhus in Nicostratus’s presence and make her husband believe that what happens is not real. The plan will not merely secure Pyrrhus’s trust; it will enlist Nicostratus’s credulity as protection for the affair.

The Hawk, the Beard, and the Tooth

Lydia begins with the hawk during a dinner Nicostratus has given for several gentlemen. Dressed in green samite and richly adorned, she enters the hall after the tables have been cleared. In view of Pyrrhus and the guests, she approaches the perch as if to set the bird on her hand, takes it by its jesses, and dashes it against the wall, killing it. Nicostratus cries out at the loss. Lydia offers the guests a plausible explanation: the hawk takes from her the time that should be given to women, because Nicostratus rises early to ride out and watch it fly. The assembled gentlemen accept her explanation and laugh with Nicostratus, turning his anger into amusement. Pyrrhus watches Lydia fulfil the first condition and takes the act as a promising beginning.

The second test arises during playful intimacy between Lydia and Nicostratus. When her husband pulls at her hair, Lydia retaliates by tugging out a lock of his beard. She treats the act as an answering jest, while secretly keeping the hair and sending it to Pyrrhus that same day. The object Pyrrhus requested is thus obtained under cover of a familiar domestic exchange, without Nicostratus recognizing its purpose.

The tooth requires a more elaborate deception. Lydia tells two boys who serve Nicostratus at meals that their breath smells, and instructs them to hold their heads back whenever they wait on him. When Nicostratus notices their behavior, she claims that he himself has a foul-smelling mouth and persuades him that a rotten tooth is the cause. She prevents him from summoning a surgeon, saying she can draw it herself and spare him the surgeon’s roughness. With Lusca’s help, she lays him on a table, holds him fast, and pulls out one of his teeth with pincers. She then shows him a separate, decayed tooth she had prepared, passing it off as the one removed. Nicostratus, in pain but believing he has been cured, leaves the chamber; Lydia sends the actual tooth to Pyrrhus. The third test is complete, and Pyrrhus declares himself ready to do her bidding.

The Pear Tree and the Contest of Sight

Lydia’s final assurance puts the deception to its most audacious use. Pretending to be unwell, she asks Nicostratus and Pyrrhus to help her into the garden. They support her between them and set her on the grass beneath a pear tree. Lydia has already arranged what Pyrrhus is to do. She asks him to climb up and throw down pears; from the tree, he claims to see Lydia and Nicostratus making love, though the couple below have not moved in the way he describes.

Nicostratus is astonished, but Pyrrhus maintains that his sight is true. Lydia acts as if she too wonders what marvel the tree has produced, and says that, if she were well, she would climb up to see it. Nicostratus takes up the invitation himself. As soon as he reaches the top, Lydia and Pyrrhus embrace and make love below, in his presence. He cries out at what he sees. The lovers answer that they are sitting where they were before; when Nicostratus descends, they have resumed their former positions. The contradiction leaves him unable to reconcile the scene he witnessed with the scene he sees from the ground.

Pyrrhus exploits that uncertainty by suggesting that the pear tree caused him to see falsely, and that Nicostratus has suffered the same error. He argues that it is unbelievable that Lydia, whom Nicostratus regards as virtuous and prudent, would commit adultery before his eyes, or that a servant so trusted would do so openly. The explanation reverses the force of the evidence: Nicostratus has seen the lovers together, yet Pyrrhus uses the husband’s own judgment of Lydia and his own experience at the top of the tree to make him question his perception. Lydia’s promised proof is therefore also a final act of concealment.

Relationships and Narrative Significance

Lydia’s relationship with Pyrrhus depends on her ability to overcome his loyalty to Nicostratus. She does so not through a single confession or appeal, but by meeting each condition he sets and demonstrating that she can act boldly without allowing those actions to expose her. Pyrrhus’s position makes the affair especially precarious: he is not an outsider but the servant Nicostratus trusts above all others. The three tests convert that trust into a tool the lovers can manipulate, as Pyrrhus receives physical tokens of Lydia’s resolve while Nicostratus remains unaware of their meaning.

With Nicostratus, Lydia combines intimacy and deception. She uses his confidence in her to remove his tooth, his ordinary joking with her to take the lock of his beard, and his pleasure in the hunt as an excuse for destroying his hawk. The pear-tree episode then turns his own attempt to establish what is real into the occasion for witnessing the affair—and for being persuaded that he has not witnessed it. The story’s comic reversal rests on that unstable boundary between seeing and believing. Lydia emerges as its most resourceful strategist: she makes each private act appear ordinary, and when ordinary explanations fail, she makes the truth itself seem impossible.