HKB
3 passages · search this phrase →
Often appears with: marriage and betrothal · household management and servants · twelve axes challenge · treatment of slaves · suitor behavior · stringing a bow · slavery and bondage · public storytelling at the pilgrimage · pliny’s generosity · mediation by host and clergy · marriage contest · marital power-sharing
Usually: detachment (2) · argument (1) · narrative (1) · speech or oration (1) · reconciliation (1) · the test or trial (1) · irony (1) · praise (1)
“He gave me all the bridle in mine hand To have the governance of house and land, And of his tongue, and of his hand also.” Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems · vivid
Penelope publicly challenges the suitors: anyone who strings Ulysses’s bow and shoots through twelve axes may marry her, while Antinous and Telemachus oversee the orderly setup and trials.
stood by one of the bearing-posts supporting the roof of the cloister, holding a veil before her face, and with a maid on either side of her. Then she said: “Listen to me you suitors, who persist in abusing the hospitality of this house because its owner has been long absent, and without other pretext than that you want to marry me; this, then, being the prize that you are contending for, I will bring out the mighty…
After the fights, they make an agreement: Jenkin gives her control over household governance and burns his book, and the Wife’s performance prompts the Friar, Summoner, and Host to argue over who should speak next.
*beseech And yet eftsoons* I hit him on the cheek, *immediately; again And saidde, “Thief, thus much am I awreak.* *avenged Now will I die, I may no longer speak.” But at the last, with muche care and woe We fell accorded* by ourselves two: *agreed He gave me all the bridle in mine hand To have the governance of house and land, And of his tongue, and of his hand also. I made him burn his…
It continues praising Pliny’s friends, emphasizing his wealth and generosity, his role supporting younger writers and officials, and his household ethics—especially his treatment of slaves and his concept of the home as a kind of polity.
"Viximus insignes inter utramque facem." This is no isolated example. One of the most pathetic letters is that in which Pliny writes of the death of the younger daughter of his friend Fundanus, a girl in her fifteenth year, who had already "the prudence of age, the gravity of a matron, and all the maidenly modesty and sweetness of a girl." Pliny tells us how it cut him to the quick to hear her father give directio…