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Day 2: Sixth Tale
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Decameron, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Sex
Men and Women
Moderation and Excess
Intelligence
Class and Character
Faith vs. Religion
Summary
Analysis
Panfilo begins his tale with some general comments on fortune, noting that it’s hard for humans to judge their luck. Sometimes poor people acquire wealth only to be murdered, or lowly people gain power only to realize that it comes with endless fear and worry. Others have longed for strength or beauty. But no one is immune to the “accidents of fortune”—especially people who are sinful or prone to excessive desire. Panfilo singles out ladies, who desire to be beautiful and will often go to extreme lengths to improve their looks. As a corrective, he offers the tale of a girl whose extraordinary beauty brought her only ill fortune.
Like Emilia, Panfilo suggests that fortune’s randomness can sometimes intersect with the divine will; in the preface to his tale, he suggests that it can function as punishment for sin and excess. He also explicitly notes that fortune can only be judged by the outcome: sometimes good fortune masquerades as bad fortune and vice versa. However, although the protagonist of his tale is indeed incredibly beautiful, there’s no suggestion that she’s especially vain. Panfilo’s attempt to connect his tale to a larger moral against female vanity hints that his tale will be solidly in the tradition of antifeminist writings.
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Alatiel, a daughter of Beminedab, Sultan of Babylonia, is the most beautiful woman on earth in her day. Her father’s ally, the King of Algarve, asks to marry her, and her father puts her along with servants and guards aboard a ship bound for Algarve. Near the end of the voyage, they’re overtaken by a huge storm. On the third day of the storm, the ship begins to founder. The crew—and all the other men aboard—rush onto a smaller boat that ultimately sinks. Only Alatiel and her maids are still aboard when the ship runs aground in Spain.
Importantly to the coming action, Alatiel isn’t a Christian woman, but a Muslim. Like many other women throughout the tales, she becomes an object traded among men when her father offers her as a gift of thanks to his military ally. Sending her on a guarded ship only emphasizes the importance of her chastity in this role. The woman on a rudderless or storm-beset ship is a typical trope in medieval literature, both illustrating the movements of fortune (for example, Beritola’s unfortunate voyage across the Mediterranean in the immediately preceding tale) and also metaphorically suggesting a female tendency towards lawlessness or directionless-ness, which will come to bear on Alatiel’s story shortly.
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The next morning, after the storm has passed, Alatiel gathers her maids. The ladies bemoan their plight until midday, when a local nobleman named Pericone da Visalgo passes by. Despite their language barrier, he pities the ladies, retrieving them and their valuables. The quality of their goods demonstrates Alatiel’s nobility. And even though she’s pale and disheveled, her overwhelming beauty immediately inspires Pericone to possess her, if not as his wife then as his mistress. But, despite his handsome figure, she ignores his advances—which only increases his desire.
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Alatiel, recognizing that she’s landed in a Christian country, hides her identity. She instructs her maids to keep her secret and preserve their chastity if they can. Even as she realizes that she won’t be able to evade Pericone’s advances forever, she declares her intention to remain a virgin and submit sexually to no one but her promised husband. The harder Pericone romances her, the more firmly she rejects him, and the hotter his passion burns.
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Understanding that he can’t woo Alatiel with flattery and not wanting to force her, Pericone decides to use trickery. Alatiel (because she is Muslim) is unused to drinking wine, but she has quite a taste for it. So Pericone holds a feast and gets her drunk. After dinner, he follows her to her room, where she undresses and gets into bed. He snuffs the lights, undresses himself, and follows her into bed. Alatiel doesn’t resist his embraces, at first because she is naïve, and then because she enjoys it. It’s almost like she regrets having put Pericone off for so long.
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Fortune has reduced Alatiel from a king’s bride to a baron’s mistress and is planning to debase her even more. Pericone’s young brother Marato has also fallen in love with Alatiel and thinks that she reciprocates his feelings. He first makes arrangements to sail on a ship bound for Greece, then he and several of his friends kill Pericone in his sleep, kidnap Alatiel, and carry her with more of Pericone’s “most precious possessions” aboard the ship.
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Initially, this new catastrophe distresses Alatiel greatly, but Marato has the help of “Saint Stiffen-in-the-Hand” and he “consoles” her so pleasantly that she begins to love him and forgets Pericone.
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Fortune has still more in store: the two Young Masters who own the ship are moved by Alatiel’s beauty as well. Discovering that they both love Alatiel, they plan to share her, as if love were a fungible good like money. When the opportunity arises, they throw an unsuspecting Marato overboard and then rush to comfort Alatiel. But when they disagree about who gets to take her to bed, they pull their daggers. At the end of the fight, one man is dead, and the other is grievously wounded. Alatiel disembarks with the wounded survivor at Corinth.
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At Corinth, the fame of Alatiel’s great beauty reaches the Prince of Morea, who falls in love with her at first sight. Given her circumstances, he sees no reason why he shouldn’t have her, and the wounded Young Master’s family readily turns her over. Recognizing Alatiel’s inherent nobility only further delights the Prince, who treats her with the honor due to a wife, not just as a mistress. Alatiel is relieved to be absolved of responsibility for the Young Masters’ fight and by her improved luck.
But the Duke of Athens, a friend of the Prince of Morea, hears about Alatiel’s beauty and decides he must see her himself. After he asks the Prince if she is really that beautiful, the Prince brings his friend to Alatiel’s bedroom so he can show her off. The three sit together, and her beauty speaks even though she still doesn’t know the language. The Duke thinks that looking at her will be enough, but her beauty is powerful enough to poison him through his eyes. He becomes enflamed with passion and decides to take his friend’s “beautiful […] plaything” for himself.
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The Duke of Athens devises a cunning plan. With the help of Ciuriaci (the Prince of Morea’s most trusted servant), he enters the Prince’s room at night, stabbing him in the back while he peacefully looks out the window. Then the Duke strangles Ciuriaci and throws master and servant from the window. Alatiel, who slept through the murders, accepts the Duke into her bed thinking that he’s the Prince, and he makes love to her with his hands covered in the Prince’s blood. He takes Alatiel to Athens, leaving her in a splendid palace just outside the city as his mistress.
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Citizens find the Prince of Morea’s murdered corpse under the window. They assemble an army that sets out toward Athens to avenge him. The Duke of Athens mobilizes his own forces for war, calling on his brother-in-law Constant—who is the son of the Emperor of Constantinople—and Constant’s nephew Manuel. The Duke’s wife complains bitterly to her brother, Constant, about Alatiel, and begs him to fix the situation for her. Constant and Manuel ask the Duke to introduce them to Alatiel, and although he should know how lethal her beauty can be, he prepares a banquet in a beautiful garden so that he can show her off.
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Constant is so overpowered by Alatiel’s beauty that he understands why the Duke of Athens has gone to such great lengths to possess her. Soon he’s so in love with her that he’s lost interest in the war, and while the Duke is with his troops, Constant gives his responsibilities to Manuel, returns to his sister in Athens, and promises to end her husband’s affair. He does this out of lust instead of brotherly love, ultimately kidnapping Alatiel and setting sail for Chios, where he thinks they will be safe from the Duke and his father. Although initially distressed at this new misfortune, Alatiel eventually succumbs to Constant’s charms, and even begins to enjoy this newest gift of fortune.
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The Turkish King, Uzbek, hears rumors of Constant and his mistress, kidnaps the two from their bed one night, and takes Alatiel as his wife. The Emperor of Constantinople was negotiating an alliance with King Basano against Uzbek, which he formalizes quickly after his son’s kidnapping. Called to war against Basano, Uzbek leaves Alatiel in the care of a trusted advisor named Antioco, who has fallen in love with Alatiel because of her beauty. Antioco speaks her language, and, despite his advanced age, they are soon lovers.
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When Basano defeats Uzbek and marches on Turkey, Antioco and Alatiel flee to Rhodes. They are staying with a Cypriot Merchant when Antioco falls ill. On his deathbed, he leaves his possessions to the Merchant, asking him to cherish and take care of Alatiel. A few days later, the Merchant and Alatiel leave for Cyprus, pretending to be married for her protection. Accordingly, they bunk together on the ship and what with one thing and another—the heat, the pleasantly rocking ship, their enforced idleness during the voyage—they soon become lovers, despite the memory of their friend Antioco.
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While Alatiel is living as the Merchant’s wife in Cyprus, she encounters a lowly gentleman named Antigono—another one of fortune’s playthings—whom she recognizes from her father’s court at Alexandria. He tells her that her father and her people have thought her dead for many years. Alatiel replies that drowning would have been preferable to her “appalling misfortunes.” When she describes them to Antigono, he weeps for pity. And he assures her that because she concealed her identity, she can be restored to her rightful position.
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Antigono arranges Alatiel’s triumphant return to Egypt. To account for her absence, she tells her father that after the shipwreck she was taken in by a convent of nuns devoted to “Saint Stiffen-in-the-Hollows.” Hiding her identity on account of her religion, once she could communicate in their language, she claimed to be the daughter of a Cypriot nobleman. Eventually, the Abbess sent her “home” under the protection of some relatives. At the harbor, her identity was protected when she happened to see Antigono, who went along with her ruse that he was her father. Then he helped her return home. Antigono adds that Alatiel’s chaperones praised her excellence and virtue in the convent and while traveling.
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The delighted Beminedab rewards Antigono and reestablishes Alatiel’s betrothal to the King of Algarve. And somehow, even though she’s had thousands of sexual encounters with her eight lovers, Alatiel enters his bed as if she were a virgin, ultimately convincing him that she is. She thus proves the proverb that a kissed mouth turns up new again like the moon.
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