Nicostratus

Nicostratus is a wealthy nobleman whose confidence in his household’s order becomes the means by which his wife Lydia and his favored servant Pyrrhus deceive him. A devoted hunter and master who trusts Pyrrhus above his other servants, he fails to recognize the affair between them even when it unfolds before his eyes: the story’s central comedy depends on his acceptance of convincing explanations over what he has seen.

Identity and Household

In Argos, Nicostratus is a nobleman of means, already approaching old age when fortune gives him Lydia, a woman of distinguished family who is both beautiful and high-spirited. His household reflects his wealth and rank: he keeps many servants, hounds, and hawks, and hunting is his great pleasure. Among the servants, Pyrrhus stands apart. Young, capable, handsome, and well-bred, he is the one Nicostratus loves and trusts above all the others.

That confidence forms the household’s crucial imbalance. Nicostratus treats Pyrrhus as a trusted dependent, while Lydia becomes passionately attached to the young man. She confides her desire to Lusca, her chamberwoman, and asks her to carry the message to Pyrrhus. He does not immediately yield: suspecting that the proposal might be a test arranged by Nicostratus, he asks Lydia to prove her sincerity through three acts directed against her husband. Nicostratus’s trust in Pyrrhus thus remains intact even as Pyrrhus uses that trust to prepare for an affair.

A Husband’s Habits Turned into Cover

The first proof comes at a dinner Nicostratus gives for several gentlemen. Lydia appears richly dressed, goes to the hawk’s perch, and kills the bird he prizes. Her explanation presents the act as retaliation: she says the hawk has taken the time that should be allotted to women’s pleasure, because Nicostratus rises early to hunt and leaves her alone. The guests accept the account as a jest about her grievance; Nicostratus himself laughs with them. What is actually a test set by Pyrrhus is made to look like a public complaint about the husband’s hunting habits.

Lydia next obtains a lock of Nicostratus’s beard while the two are playing together. When he objects to her pulling at his hair, she compares the small injury to the pain she suffered when he pulled hers, preserving the hair for Pyrrhus without making the exchange look suspicious. For the final test, she has Nicostratus’s tooth removed. She first persuades two boys who serve him to hold their heads back when they wait on him, then tells her husband their behavior means his breath is foul. Claiming that a rotten tooth is the cause, she insists on drawing it herself rather than calling a surgeon. With Lusca holding him, she pulls out a healthy tooth, then shows him a rotten one she had prepared. Nicostratus endures the pain and believes the false tooth is the one removed; Lydia sends the real tooth to Pyrrhus as the last proof he demanded.

The Pear Tree and the Collapse of Certainty

Once Pyrrhus is persuaded, Lydia arranges a meeting in the garden under the appearance of illness. Nicostratus and Pyrrhus help her outside and set her on the grass beneath a pear tree. She asks Pyrrhus to climb up and throw down pears. From his position above them, he pretends to see Lydia and Nicostratus making love. Nicostratus insists that Pyrrhus must be dreaming, since neither he nor Lydia has moved. Pyrrhus maintains that his vision is real, and Nicostratus becomes so perplexed that he climbs the tree himself to test it.

The trick works because the lovers act only while Nicostratus is in the tree: he sees them together, but when he descends, they resume the positions in which he left them. His own direct sight now conflicts with the unchanged scene before him. Pyrrhus exploits that contradiction, arguing that if Nicostratus rejects what Pyrrhus saw from above, he should also question what he saw from the same place. He adds that Lydia, supposedly so virtuous and discreet, could not have committed adultery before her husband’s eyes. Nicostratus is left with an explanation that dismisses the evidence he has just witnessed and shifts blame to the tree.

Deception, Forgiveness, and the Ending

Lydia completes the performance by calling the pear tree an enemy of her honor and saying that her anger has passed now that it has been overthrown. Nicostratus accepts her apparent forgiveness and returns with Lydia and Pyrrhus to the palace. The ending confirms that the deception has not merely concealed a single encounter: Pyrrhus thereafter continues to enjoy Lydia, and she him, with greater ease. Nicostratus remains unaware of the affair’s true course, while the servant he trusted most has become his wife’s lover and accomplice.

The story gives Nicostratus no comparable recognition or change of mind. His wealth, authority, and confidence in the people around him do not protect him from being misled; instead, those ordinary relations supply the lovers with their cover. His passion for hunting leaves Lydia alone, but the story’s decisive vulnerability is epistemic: he sees the lovers and is persuaded to distrust his own sight. The repeated deceptions—the hawk, the tooth, and the pear tree—escalate from concealed preparations to an open scene whose meaning is actively reversed. Nicostratus’s trust makes that reversal possible, and his return to the palace with both deceivers leaves the comic ending resting on a final, sustained misunderstanding.