Lydia—Pyrrhus

Lydia and Pyrrhus’s relationship is a clandestine affair built on unequal household loyalties and Lydia’s calculated ingenuity. Pyrrhus is initially reluctant to become her lover because Nicostratus, Lydia’s older husband, trusts him above all his other servants; Lydia answers that reluctance not with a single entreaty, but with three increasingly dangerous demonstrations of her resolve. Their eventual intimacy is secured through the very evidence that should expose it: the hawk, beard, and tooth that Pyrrhus requires as proof, and the pear tree that makes Nicostratus doubt what he sees.

Household Roles and Desire

In Argos, Lydia is the high-born, beautiful wife of Nicostratus, a wealthy nobleman already nearing old age. He keeps many servants, hounds, and hawks and delights in hunting. Pyrrhus, a handsome and capable young servant, is his particular favorite and confidant: Nicostratus trusts him with his affairs more than anyone else. That closeness gives Pyrrhus both access to the household and a reason to refuse Lydia. The pair are not simply lovers who meet in secret; their desire develops inside a household structured by the husband’s authority and the servant’s loyalty to him.

Lydia is intensely enamored of Pyrrhus, whose apparent indifference leaves her distressed. She entrusts her chamberwoman, Lusca, with the task of conveying her passion and requesting a meeting. Through Lusca she also frames the proposed affair as an answer to the mismatch between her youth and her husband’s age: she wants the pleasures she believes her marriage does not provide, and has fixed on Pyrrhus as the man she desires. Her appeal makes her objective explicit, but it does not make Pyrrhus consent. He initially rejects the proposal, protesting that Nicostratus has honored him and that he will not repay that confidence by wronging his master.

Refusal and the Three Tests

Lusca returns to Pyrrhus with renewed persuasion. She argues that Lydia’s passion is serious, that he would be foolish to refuse an extraordinary opportunity, and that the loyalty owed by a servant to a master is not the same as the fidelity owed between friends or kin. Her words appeal both to Pyrrhus’s desire and to his prospects within the household. He remains wary, however, suspecting that Lydia and Nicostratus may be testing him. He says he will comply only if Lydia performs three acts that will convince him the offer is genuine: kill Nicostratus’s prized hawk in his presence, send him a lock of her husband’s beard, and provide one of his teeth.

Lydia accepts these conditions even though they expose her to discovery and require her to harm or deceive her husband. She also tells Lusca that, once Pyrrhus is convinced, she will demonstrate her love while Nicostratus is present and make him believe that nothing has happened. The arrangement changes the character of the relationship: Pyrrhus has made his consent conditional on proof, and Lydia turns those conditions into a sequence of performances that both demonstrate her commitment and conceal its purpose.

At a dinner attended by gentlemen, Lydia appears richly dressed in green samite. She goes to Nicostratus’s hawk, takes it by the jesses, and dashes it against the wall, killing it. To the guests, she presents the act as revenge against a bird that has occupied the time her husband might otherwise have spent with her. Nicostratus is angered at first, but the guests accept her explanation and make light of his annoyance. Pyrrhus, watching the scene, takes the successful deception as the promised beginning of their affair.

The second proof comes during a playful moment between Lydia and Nicostratus. When her husband pulls her hair, she tugs out a lock of his beard, laughing as though she is merely returning his rough treatment. She conceals the hair and sends it to Pyrrhus. To obtain the final proof, she manipulates two boys who serve Nicostratus at table, persuading them to hold their heads back because she claims they have bad breath. She then tells her husband that he too has a decayed tooth. Rather than call a surgeon, she insists that she can remove it herself. With Lusca holding Nicostratus down, Lydia extracts a tooth by force, keeps it, and shows him a rotten tooth she had prepared in advance. Believing that the diseased tooth has been removed, Nicostratus leaves the room; Lydia sends the real tooth to Pyrrhus, who is now assured of her determination.

The Pear Tree Deception

Lydia next creates the promised opportunity in the garden. Pretending to be unwell, she asks Nicostratus and Pyrrhus to help her outside and settle her on the grass beneath a pear tree. She has already arranged matters with her lover. When she asks Pyrrhus to climb the tree and throw down pears, he begins pretending that he can see Lydia and Nicostratus behaving amorously below. Lydia treats his claims as nonsense, and Nicostratus initially shares her disbelief. The pretence gives the lovers a way to make the husband’s eventual discovery seem impossible or illusory rather than credible.

Nicostratus climbs the tree to test what Pyrrhus says he has seen. While he is above them, Lydia and Pyrrhus embrace and take their opportunity together. When Nicostratus comes down, they are again seated where he left them. He accuses them, but Pyrrhus argues that the tree has distorted his sight: if Nicostratus could believe he saw an act that never occurred, he should accept that Pyrrhus’s earlier report was equally false. He further insists that Lydia, supposedly so discreet and virtuous, could not have betrayed her husband before his eyes. Nicostratus is left to consider the tree, rather than the couple, as the cause of what he thinks he witnessed.

An Affair Hidden in Plain Sight

Nicostratus decides that the pear tree must be enchanted and calls for it to be cut down. Pyrrhus fetches the hatchet and fells it. Lydia declares that the enemy of her honor has been overthrown and graciously forgives her husband, while requiring him never again to suspect her of such conduct. The language of injured honor completes the reversal: the woman who has just deceived him presents herself as the wronged party, and the husband accepts her account. The supposed proof of adultery becomes, in his mind, proof that his own perceptions were unreliable.

The ending confirms that the pear-tree episode does not end the relationship. Nicostratus returns to the palace with Lydia and Pyrrhus, and the lovers continue to take their pleasure together with greater ease. Pyrrhus’s original scruple about betraying a trusted master has been overcome not by a reconciliation with Nicostratus, but by a confidence-building scheme that makes the husband’s trust part of the cover. Their bond rests on mutual desire and Lydia’s control of its conditions; Nicostratus, meanwhile, is left inside the household, unaware that the servant he trusted has become his wife’s lover.