‘Optimi Pictoris Artificio in Tabula’: Elizabeth Cary’s Borrowing from Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris in The Tragedy of Mariam

And did not I to her [Felicity, the goddess of success] as presents send A table, that best art did beautify, Of two to whom heaven did best feature lend, To woo her love by winning Antony?(I.ii.85-88, italics mine) 1 This question alludes to an anecdote in Cary's main source for the play, Thomas Lodge's English version of Flavius Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews, which was included in Lodge's The Famous and Memorable Works of Josephus (1602).Alexandra, frustrated because Herod did not want to appoint her son, Aristobulus, high priest, asked for Antony's intercession and, considering the Roman general's notorious lust, sent him paintings of both her beautiful children.Cary extensively drew from Antiquities Book XV, where this anecdote is present in chapter II, narrating that Alexandra was persuaded to 'send the pictures of her two children to Antonius'. 2 Critics have often pointed out that The Tragedy of Mariam echoes its main source's 'verbal formulations at several points'; 3 this, however, is evidently not the case for I.ii.85-88.Line I.ii.86, in particular, features words and details that are not present in Lodge's work.First, the choice of 'table' in place of 'pictures' is peculiar, to the extent that most modern editors of The Tragedy of Mariam feel the need to gloss the 1