Procrustes, Sciron, Termerus, and Sinis in Early Modern Print
Apart from Phalaris and Perillus, of the four other villains in Pulter’s poem, only Procrustes has a significant presence in the corpus of books printed in England 1450–1700. (It is important to note that just as Sciron, Termerus, and Sinis appear without their names in Pulter’s poem, so they might appear nameless and undetectable by keyword searching). Occasionally, all the figures from Pulter’s poem appear together, as in Richard Crashaw’s translation of Marino’s “Sospetto d’Herode,” which gives a catalog of the evil residents of Lady Cruelty’s “shop of slaughter”:
- Here Diomed’s Horses, Phereus dogs appeare,
- With the fierce Lyons of Therodamas.
- Eusiris ha’s his bloody Altar here,
- Here Sylla his severest prison has.
- The Lestrigonians here their Table reare;
- Here strong Procrustes plants his Bed of Brasse.
- Here cruell Scyron boasts his bloody rockes,
- And hatefull Schinis his so feared Oakes.
- What ever Schemes of Blood, fantastick frames
- Of Death Mezentius, or Geryon drew;
- Phalaris, Ochus, Ezelinus, names
- Mighty in mischiefe, with dread Nero too,
- Here are they all, Here all the swords or flames
- Assyrian Tyrants, or Egyptian knew.
- Such was the House, so furnisht was the Hall,
- Whence the fourth Fury, answer’d Pluto’s call.
Similarly, Daniel Featley, working on the story of “Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego” from Daniel 3, writes:
What Puny in the Schooles hath not read Ovids golden Motto upon Perillus his brasen Bull: —nec enim lex justior ulla est, / Quàm necis artifices arte perire suâ. There can be no juster law, than that the devisers of mans ruine should rue their owne devices, and that the inventers of new deaths should dye by their owne inventions. Sciron the Giant, that sate upon the cleft of a high rocke, and kicked downe all that scrambled up to it into the sea, was himselfe served in the like manner by Theseus, who comming behind him, push’t him downe with his foot into the deep. And Termerus, who had a strange fashion of beating out mens braines, by playing at hard head with them, in the end met with his match at that barbarous sport, and lost the little braine he had, his skull being broken by Hercules.
And Sir Walter Ralegh also groups the figures together in a passage describing the horrors of tyranny:
But the true name of Tyrannie, when it growes to ripenesse, is none other, than Feritie: the same that Aristotle saith to be worse than any vice. It exceedeth indeed all other vices, issuing from the Passions incident both to Man, and Beast; no lesse than Periurie, Murder, Treason, and the like horrible crimes, exceede in villanie, the faults of Gluttonie and drunkennesse, that grow from more ignoble appetites. Hereof Sciron, Procrustes, and Pityocamptes, that vsed their bodily force to the destruction of Mankinde, are not better examples, than Phalaris, Dionysius and Agathocles, whose mischieuous heads were assisted by the hands of detestable Ruffians. The same barbarous desire of Lordship, transported those old examples of Feritie, and these latter Tyrants, beyond the bounds of reason: neither of them knew the vse of Rule, nor the difference betweene Freemen, and slaues.
Ralegh also draws out the Theseus thread from the stories that he and Pulter have woven together (The history of the world, 2.434)—a fact made more interesting by the knowledge that Pulter was very likely using Ralegh’s writings as a source for her Unfortunate Florinda (Eardley, Poems, 272).
But it is the innkeeper, Procrustes, who attracted the most attention from early modern writers, who were drawn to the image of his iron bed as an analogy for the manipulation of states, books, laws, and especially texts to one’s own purposes. Fulke Greville’s use of Procrustes in his Tragedy of Cicero is exemplary of the innkeeper’s place in early modern romances and dramas. In a scene where Marcus and Quintus Cicero are discussing the health of the commonwealth, Quintus says: “the Common-wealth’s diseas’d indeed, / Sick as the heart, faints, can no longer stand, / Lies bedrid, and like fierce Procrustes guests / Must be distended or abbreviated / To th’ pleasure of her Lord the worst of theeves” (The Tragedy Of That Famous Roman Oratour Marcus Tullius Cicero [London, 1651], D2v–D3r). Elsewhere, the analogy was more material, as in this animadversion: “Or is thy Book troubled with the Cramp, and so hath its leggs twitch’d up to its breech? or hath it been on Procrustes his bed and had the lower parts of it cut off? Whatever the Cause is, the Effect is apparent; that thou art wringled up at the end like a Pigs tayl, and shriveled on heaps like a shred of parchment” (Henry More, The Second Lash Of Alazonomastix [London, 1651], 158).
Procrustes appears most strikingly in the realm of theology, where his bed serves as an analogy for the chopping or stretching of Scripture or an opponent’s words to fit one’s polemical aims. Reformed polemicists often used the image as part of an attack on Roman Catholics for their use of tradition in the interpretation of Scripture and for their intolerance, censorship, and misrepresentation of opponents’ positions:
For with a bold sacriledge, and horrible impiety, somewhat like Procrustes his cruelty, you perpetually cut off the head and foot, the begining and end of it; and presenting to your confidents, who usually read no more of the Bible, then is alleadged by you, only these words.
But in vouching Irenaeus what is the reason you curtal one place, and adde vnto another? Meant you to play the Giant Procrustes, and to shorten the one because it was too long for your bed, and to stretch out the other because it was too short? For whereas to those words, the Eucharist of the Bloud and Body of Christ is made, Irenaeus addeth immediatly, by which the substance of our flesh is augmented and consisteth: this you thought good to omit because it maketh directly against you.
What though Antichristian papisme, un-christian paganisme, and false-christian prophanesse will admit of peace with none but such as fit their own humor. So that whosoever will have peace with them must looke for such usage as the travellers found at the hands of Scyron and Procrustes, famous robbers in Attica: who by cutting shorter the taller, and stretching out the lesser, brought all to an even length with their bed of brasse. What though all peace and unity is not good: there being great peace betwixt the wicked, Exod. 32. 4. Betwixt Herod and Pilate. What though there may be discord in Gods Church aswell as betweene the Apostle of the Iewes and Gentiles: betweene Paul and Barnabas for small matters: aswell as amongst Primitive Christians, whose dissentions were such, that Christianity was publikely derided: and so great, that they condemned one another of heresie? Yet I earnestly desire, that those who are strong would beare with the weake: that the weake would not contemne the strong: yea, that all both strong and weake would live in peace, we all having fellowship one with another.
I should rather commend the Procrustes of Rome, that would proportion the bodies of all writers to the bed of the harlot, for inhibiting profane and obscene Pamphlets, did I not thinke that it were not so much for detestation of them, as to countenance his other expurgations, more cruell to the dead, then euer was Spanish Inquisition to the liuing.
And indeed what maruaile if he corrupt the Fathers, and wring their noses, till he fetch out blood, as Salomon saies (such bloody positions as they foster now in their schooles, with the danger of whole states) when he [Cardinal Bellarmine] abuses the Bishops words so before his face, as I euen now declared, cutting Etsi into Et and Si, and to shew you how punctuall he is in his recitings, marring and monstrifying anothers directest meaning, with his own most prodigious interpunctions. You would say he were a Procrustes, with his bed of tyrannies (worse then Ogs iron bed) to crucifie his strangers.
But this is a small wrest, in comparison of many other violences offered by him and his to the Scriptures; which they vse as Procrustes serued his guests, hacking them off, or racking them out, to fit them to their turnes.
Some writers saw Satan as behaving in the same manner as the Catholics, and others extended the analogy to include those who adapt their consciences to fit their own views of justice:
It is he that alledgeth Scripture to seduce soules the rather, and pretendeth pietie, vnder the bare shew of Gods word; but he bewraies hīselfe to be a subtle sophister. For as Procrastes the Tyrant of the citie Corydallus, dealt with his guests, making them alwayes fit for his bed; for if they were too long he cutte them shorter; if they were too shorte, he lengthened them with pieces of their owne bodies: So Sathan, (in whose steppes also the Heretikes of all Ages haue walked,) applies scripture to his wicked purpose; either omitting parte thereof, if it serue not his Argument; or else adding somewhat thereto, and interpreting, and wresting it to a wrong sense.
The Mathematicians tell vs, that of all figures, a a Circle is the most absolute, because the beginning and the end concurres in one. Such is this generall rule of Iustice. It comes from Christ in grace, and ends in Christ by the workes of grace. They then that neglect this generall rule of Iustice, and doe not as they would be done vnto, haue little or no grace in them; they can hope to heare well of none but of cowards and flatterers; and they can neuer haue a good Conscience in them, which is a continuall feast, and the best friend that is in the world. Plerique faman, pauci conscientiam verentur, saith Seneca, they little respect that, they can play fast and loose with that at their pleasure, & they can make it of what size or fashion they list themselues. They can vse it as Procrustes the Gyant did those whom hee layd in his bed; when they were too long, he had an axe to cut them shorter; and when they were too short, hee had a racke to stretch them longer. Conscientia est cordis scientia, and Gods golden dowry bestowed vpon the soule: and yet it hath had them worst hap, that any word had in the world, in the Common weale, & especially in the Church of Christ; for neuer as yet could it be found in her full sillables at once, but some sillable or other was wanting in her. Fasciculus temporum tels vs this, in A.D. 1426.
Catholic and Arminian writers responded by arguing that their Calvinist opponents were just as self-serving in chopping and stretching God’s commandments to fit their consciences:
In Gods court of conscience is required all the heart, and all the mind, and all the soule, and all the strength, and the true informed conscience for not giuing all, resteth conuicted of sinne: what court of conscience do they keepe, that giue but a part in steed of all, and yet haue a conscience to say, that they sinne not therein? What court of conscience do they keep, that frame Gods commandements to their conscience, and not their conscience to Gods commandements? whose conscience is like the bed of Procrustes the giant; whatsoeuer God saith, that is too short for it, they haue a rack to stretch it longer: whatsoeuer God saith, that is too long for it, they haue an axe to cut it shorter.
For certainly he hath giuen the world an example of such a courage, that no good Writer will euer follow, in daring thus to be disproued by any Reader, who hath the benefit of a Library, and the patience to compare truth with falshood. For without giuing credit to the testimonies I here alleage, if any man will search into the Authors themselues, he shall find them mangled, as that Tyrant [Procrustes] did his ghests (who with most barbarous torment shortned or lengthned their bodies, according to the proportion of his bed:) No man writes short of his sense, but is extended on the rack: no man beyond, but is mutilated without mercy.
And after the civil wars, the accusation was frequently leveled against Presbyterians:
Your Presbyterian Tenets, like Scyrrus and Procrustes beds (to which long men were equalled by curtaling, and the short by racking out their limbs) will have all manner of Consciences so adapted to them, as to make the tenderest hearts shed innocent blood, and bring the proudest Potentates to submit to their Mas-Johns Delphian Oracle, who possibly pretending to a Prophetical spirit, leaveth almost no place untouched with his entousiastick bolts, but that wherein is fixed the blank of Truth, which he maketh shew to level at.
It was the famous Tyranny of one Procrustes towards strangers, to lay them in his own bed, and if they were shorter, to stretch them out to the length of it if longer, to cut them short to his Stature. I heartily bewail the extream rigor of too many of those we hold Orthodox, that would have all other judgments cut even with the model of their own, especially in these first effectual workings of Gods Spirit, which are secret to reason, various in experience, and unsearchable; as to the way and means whereof, Jo. 3.8. there is none may limit him. For the Bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it, and the coverings narrower than that a man can wrap himself in them.
Those who would have been our oppressors in Scotland, but that God hath crushed the Cockatrice in the shell; and filled the Pit with their dead bodies, which they had digged for us: They also had prepared a Procrustes bed, a heavy yoak; a Beast, that had it grown to perfection, would have had Horns and Hoofs; and in maintaining this, they think their great interest to lie: And in holding this fast, are they after all their associations broken in pieces.
Pulter may have shared such a view of Calvinists whose “extream rigor” produces a Procrustean Orthodoxy “that would have all other judgements cut even with the model of their own.” Indeed, in her use of Procrustes, Pulter seems to follow closely to Henry Vaughan, the royalist writer, who uses the innkeeper along with Perillus, Sinis, and Sciron to describe “the guilt of Conscience,” which produces “worse torments then the wheel, and the saw.” “[N]o Tyrant is so cruel as a guilty spirit,” Vaughan writes, a “damning conscience” is the “most bitter and avenging torment”; it is a “gnawing worm”; it cannot be outrun because it is found in one’s “own bosome” where it is “ever clamorous, and spues out blood and guilt.” Vaughan’s language is strikingly similar to the final lines of Pulter’s poem:
He that suffers by the guilt of Conscience, endures worse torments then the wheel, and the saw: As that heat which ascending from the liver, and the region of the heart, doth diffuse it selfe through the body, is greater then the united flames of the dog-star and the Sun. What torturing invention of Amestris, Pheretima, or Perillus did ever so afflict distress’d wretches, as the fury of his owne Conscience did torment Orestes, though freed from all men but himself? no Tyrant is so cruel as a guilty spirit: Not Scylla with his prison, Sinis with his Isthmian pine, Phalaris with his bull, Sciron with his Rock, nor Fannus in his Inne. The Pelusians when they punished Parricides, conceived no torture so answerable to the heynousnesse of the crime, as this inward Divine revenge; neither the Sack, nor the Limekil pleased them so much as this gnawing worm, the terrible and luctual excogitation of the wise Father of Nature. They ordered therefore, and enacted it for a Law, that the murtherer for three daies and three nights should be pent up in some narrow roome together with the naked body of the slaine, and be forced to look upon it, whither he would, or not; which was effected by putting him in such a posture, as permitted him not to look any way, but just upon the dead. The Sicilian Tyrant himselfe knew that conscience was a more cruell torment then the bull of brasse. This made him spare the most unnaturall and bloody offenders, that they might be tormented, not with scalding metalls, and glowing Iron, but by a damning conscience. The first penaltie for murther was conscience: The first Actor of a violent death was punished with life: He that first saw, and introduced death, was thought worthy of no other punishment, but the security of life, which he first shewed to be not secure: for it is a more mercilesse punishment then death, to have long life secured with a killing conscience. So he that brought murther first into the World, was first punished with the terrourr of conscience: Which are then most torturing, when health and strength are the capital punishments. The Protoplasts themselves, the parents of death, and of mankind too, who gave us death before they gave us life, thought it a greater plague then death, to be still alive, and yet to be guilty of death? They would have fled to death, to flye from themselves. Apposite to this is that of Marius Victor,
- —They faine would (if they might)
- Descend to hide themselves in Hell. So light
- Of foot is vengeance, and so near to sin,
- That soon as done, the Actors do begin
- To fear and suffer by themselves: Death moves
- Before their Eyes; Sad dens, and duskie groves
- They haunt, and hope (vain hope which fear doth guide!)
- That those dark shades their inward guilt can hide.
Adde to this, that the certainty of it is as infallible, and inevitable, as the extremity and fiercenesse of it are implacable: there was never any Tyrant so cruel, but would pardon some offender: There was none so severely inquisitive, but some might either escape from him, or deceive him: But the rigour of conscience permits neither favour, flight, nor fraud. It is utterly inexorable, and neither our feete will serve us to ran away, nor our hands to free us: whither shall a man ran from himselfe, from the secrets of his own spirit, from his life? No man can be an Impostour or dissembler with his own heart, no man can undo what he hath already done: to have sinned is the remediless plague of the Soul. It was a slow expression of Victor, that Vengeance is near to sinne. It is swifter then so: It is not consectaneous, or in chase of it, but coetaneous with it, and its foster-sister: The punishment hath the same birth with the offence, and proceedes from it; It is both the Sister, and the Daughter of it: Wickednesse cannot be brought forth without its penalty: The brest that conceives the one, is big with the other, and when the one is borne, he is delivered of both. It is a fruitfullnesse like that of Mice, whose young ones are included the one in the other, and generate in the very wombe. Conscience, while man thinkes of Evill, even before he acts, doth rebuke that thought: so that the punishment is præexistent to the crime, though in the reigne of Virtue it is noiselesse and uselesse; as penal Lawes are dead letters, untill they are quickned by offenders. It is then in its minority, and without a sting, or else it is asleep, untill the Cry of Sinne awakes it. In the state of Evill, Conscience is the first and the last revenger: when smal offences are wiped out, enormous crimes like capital letters will still remain.
No man can find a Sanctuary to save him from himself. No evill doer can so fly for refuge, as to be secure, though he may be safe: Hee will be afraid in that place, where he thought not to fear: Though he fears not the friends of the murthered, yet he finds that within him, which makes him sore afraid: He may escape the Executioner and the sword, but he will be overtaken by himselfe; and being safe, hee will be afraid even of his safety: Though he may find fidelity in his fellow-Tyrants, yet shall he find none in his own bosome, which is ever clamorous, and spues out blood and guilt. Nature deviseth such a punishment for evill doers, as that which tyed living Malefactors unto the putrid Carkasses of dead men, that the horrour and stench of them might afflict their spirits, and the quick flesh be infected and devoured by the dead and rotten. The punishment sticks fast unto us after the offence, whose carkasse is terrour of Conscience, Shame, and a gnawing remorse, that feeds still upon the faulty, but is not satisfied.