Papirius

Papirius

The mother of a young boy named Benjamin (or, in the original tale, Papirius) dies when the boy is three years old. His father is initially inconsolable, but one day notices a beautiful maiden on the street, and falls immediately in love. He marries her, despite how much younger she is. After their marraige, the young wife's fidelity gradually declines, and, with the help of a procuress, she takes a lover; he is able to visit her by disguising himself as a virgin.

As is tradition, Benjamin's father begins to bring him along to the senate-house when the boy is in his tenth year. Like other boys his age, Benjamin listens to debates, and is instructed to keep the code of silence about any laws that are in progress until the matter is decided. One day, when he returns home, his stepmother grows curious about the secretive goings-on in the senate, and she begins to seek out conversation with the boy. She takes him on walks in the garden, and their burgeoning relationship pleases his father greatly. She questions him again and again about the senate's business, and Benjamin soon tired of his stepmother’s questioning. Finally, rather than break his sworn silence, he tells her a lie: he claims that what was under debate was whether a man might have two wives, or whether a woman might have two husbands. Incited by his stepmother, the women of the town organise a revolt and riot outside the senate hall, much to the confusion of the members of the senate. The women force the senate to issue a decree that no man might have two wives - though they are in favour of women being able to have two husbands.

(From Murko; translated by Ava Byrne, edited by Jane Bonsall)

Note
The story of the boy Papirius who lies to his mother about the secret proceedings of the sanate is recorded in Roman author and grammarian Aulus Gellius's (c. 125-180 AD) work Noctes Atticae (1.23). However, Papirius is convinced to speak to his mother, not his step-mother, and the brief description here of the stepmother's adultery, and the lover disguised in women's clothes, is not part of the tale. Nishimura notes the following: Motifs and Types: TMI J1546: Overcurious wife learns of the senate’s deliberations. T146: Polyandry. ATU 1381d: Secret Senate. TU5269: Wife and secret senate. Analogues:* Gellius, The Attic Nights, 1.23. Vincentius Bellovacensis, Spiculum Doctrinale, 5.10 (p. 409. From Macrobius). Jacques de Vitry, Exempla, 235 ‘A wife importuned her husband…’ (Papirius does not appear, but as a matrimonial matter). The Book of Tales by A.B.C., 394 (338) ‘In young lads…’ (from Macrobius, Scipio’s Dream). Scala Coeli, 282 ‘Les secrets des conseils romains’. Gesta Romanorum, 126 ‘Der verschwiegene Knabe Papirius’. Novellino, 67 ‘Wie Papirius als Kind von seinem Vater in den Senat mitgenommen wurde‘. Sercambi, Il Novelliere, 49. Sachs, nr.4836, nr.73, ‘Der knab Lucius Papirius Cursor’. Pauli, Schimpf und Ernst, 392 ‚Papirius sagt,…‘. Reference stories, etc.: Zashosan, ‘Yakimochi (Jealousy)’ (Sentence to keep one concubine for every one hundred Koku of rice. Wives go to return the amount of Koku. According to Muto Sadao, Edo Kobanashi Ruiwa Jiten, p.59 ⑥). The stories that show the wife’s inability to keep secrets include Plutarchos’s On Eloquence, 11 (507B-F); La Fontaine’s Fables, 8.6 ‘Women and Secrets’; Grimm’s Fairy Tales, KHM 115 ‘Der klare Sonne bringt’s an den Tag’; Afanasjew, Russian Ridiculous Tales, 63 ‘The Talkative Wife’; Jataka, 481 ‘Takkariya-j.’, etc. Bibliography: Chauvin VIII184, 238. Note 42 of my translation of Disciplina Clericalis.

Critical Literature
Murko (1890), Nishimura (2001)

Papirius appears in the following versions and secondary versions

Papirius is narrated in the following occurrences
No recorded narrations available.

Papirius appears in the following manuscripts
This inset story appears in no manuscripts of the database