obviously opportunistic intention of the text as a whole. 
Seneca’s endeavors to avoid any personal danger would 
have been doomed to failure by such an allusion. (11) 
‘There is some evidence that -colocynt- in A pocolocyn- 
tosis was not only meant to signify ‘fool’, but something 
else. M. Deltgen mentions that the term ‘ecucurbita’ 
occurs towards the end of the twelfth century in the 
feudal law of the Langobards, where we find the ex- 
pressions ‘cucurbitare’ and ‘cucurbitatio’ : 
ee cw ‘ ri . . FA . z 
si fidelis cucurbitaverit dominum, i.e. cum uxore ejus concubuerit 
...”? (liber feudorum, I, tit. 5, 1, in Deltzen, p. 33) 
‘Cucurbitare’ is a synonym of ‘to commit adultery’. 
Ducange explains: 
“‘uxorem alterius adulterio polluere, proprie de vasallo, qui domini 
uxorem adulterio polluit et ejus ventrem instar cucurbitae inflat, i.e. 
impregnat.’’ (In Deltgen, p. 33) 
‘*To dishonor a married woman by adultery. In particular, it refers 
to a vassal who has seduced the wife of his feudal lord and who in 
this way makes her abdomen swell like a pumpkin, i.e. he makes her 
pregnant.’’ (Transl. Deltgen/Kauer) 
Accordingly, ‘cucurbitatio’ indicates ‘adultery’, and 
‘cucurbita’ the deceived husband who comes out of the 
affair as a loser, a fool. 
Therefore, ‘cucurbita’ signifies not only ‘fool’, ‘idiot’ 
in general, but also a special kind of fool. Since the 
Langobards in many respects continued Roman tradi- 
tion, we might suppose that already in Roman times 
this word stood for cuckold, although we cannot prove 
it. There are, however, some hints that -colocynt-, con- 
tained in the title of Seneca’s satire, might be under- 
stood additionally in this sense, i.e. that it is possibly 
an allusion to the Emperor’s miserable married life. 
When he was still a little boy, he suffered both neg- 
lect and persecution by the women surrounding him. 
His grandmother Augusta, his mother Antonia, and his 
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