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Suffering for my Underwear
Once upon a time there was a chap who probably didn’t exist and who probably wasn’t called Pantaleon. Legend has it that he was personal physician to Emperor Maximianus. When the emperor discovered that his doctor was a Christian he got terribly upset and decreed that the doctor should die.
The execution went badly. They tried to burn him alive, but the fire went out. They threw him into molten lead but it turned out to be cold. They lashed a stone to him and chucked him into the sea, but the stone floated. They threw him to wild beasts, which were tamed. They tried to hang him and the rope broke. They tried to chop his head off but the sword bent and he forgave the executioner.
This last kindness was what earned the doctor the name Pantaleon , which means All-Compassionate .
In the end they got Pantaleon’s head off and he died, thus becoming one of the megalomartyrs (the great martyrs) of Greece. By the tenth century Saint Pantaleon had become the patron saint of Venice. Pantalon therefore became a popular Venetian name and the Venetians themselves were often called the Pantaloni .
Then, in the sixteenth century, came the Commedia Dell’Arte : short comic plays performed by travelling troupes and always involving the same stock characters like Harlequin and Scaramouch.
In these plays Pantalone was the stereotypical Venetian. He was a merchant and a miser and a lustful old man, and he wore one-piece breeches, like Venetians did. These long breeches therefore became known as pantaloons . Pantaloons were shortened to pants and the English (though not the Americans) called their underwear underpants . Underpants were again shortened to pants , which is what I am now wearing.
Pants are all-compassionate. Pants are saints. This means that my underwear is named after an early Christian martyr.