I think I have said enough. If not, let anyone who thinks otherwise remember the case of Apuleius of Madaura: “In his life he was a philosopher,” as Ausonius says in his defence; “in his epigrams a lover, in his precepts utterly strict, and in his letter to Caerellia, licentious.” Amnianus, Sulpitius, Evenus, Menander and many other ancient poets “itched with lust in their writings”: they wrote Fescennine verses, Atellan farces and lewd songs, “cheerful material.” Yet they possessed “restraint and strictness in their conduct”; they lived chaste, strict and upright lives.

The dutiful poet himself should be chaste; His little verses need not be— Only then do they have wit and charm.

I agree with Catullus and make the same defence on my own behalf: “What I write here also depends largely on the opinions and authority of others; perhaps I am not mad myself but follow those who are. Yet grant that I am mad in this: we have all been mad at one time; and you yourself, I think, are sometimes mad, as are this man, that man and I.” For, of course, “I am human; I consider nothing human foreign to me.”

What another urges in his defence when accused of the same fault, I can plead with equal justice:

My page is licentious; my life is upright. However my lines go astray, my life is honest. My life is modest; my muse is playful.

But I presume I need no such defences. I need not cover my face, as Socrates did in Plato when he spoke of love, or blush and hide my eyes under a hood as Pallas did when Jupiter consulted her about Mercury’s marriage, “because a virgin is consulted about a wedding.” This is no licentious, obscene or wanton discussion.

Nothing written here has offended your more modest ears, as many French and Italian authors have lately done in their vernaculars, and even some of our Latin writers on the papal side—Zanches, Asorius, Abulensis, Burchardus and others. Rivet accuses them of being more licentious than Virgil in the Priapeia, Petronius in the Catalecta, Aristophanes in Lysistrata, Martial, or any other pagan, secular writer, “who,” as someone observes, “have offended so grievously in this way that chaste minds recoil from many brilliantly written works because of their obscenities.”

This is no coarse abuse, but a chaste, honourable and mostly serious work, even treating religion itself. “Fired,” as he said, “by the love of finding love, we have sought it and found it.” Moreover, I have enlarged this light treatise—if it is light—and added things absent from earlier editions. I am not ashamed to admit, with a good author, “that many people asked for this subject to be expanded and enriched. Overcome by their insistence, I forced my somewhat reluctant mind to take up the pen now for the sixth time and undertake writing far removed from my studies and profession, meanwhile stealing a few hours from my serious occupations and setting them aside for a kind of play and recreation.”

I am compelled to turn back, Set sail again and retrace courses Long since abandoned.

“Although I knew very well that these new additions of mine would perhaps bring no shortage of new detractors.”

This much I thought fit to say by way of preface, lest anyone accuse me—as Godfridus feared in his book—of frivolity, wantonness or rashness in discussing love’s causes, enticements, symptoms and remedies, lawful and unlawful loves, and lust itself. “I speak of it only to censure it and deter others from it, not to teach it”: to expose the vanities and follies of this heroic or Herculean love and “apply remedies to it.” I will treat this subject as freely as the rest.

But I shall tell you; you in turn tell many Thousands, and make this page speak in its old age.

Do not condemn me, then, good reader, or judge me harshly if you still think some part of this treatise too frivolous; consider it more carefully. “To the pure all things are pure.” A naked man is no different from a picture to a modest woman, as the empress Livia rightly said. And “an evil mind, an evil disposition”: it depends on how one takes it.

If you judge it too frivolous, I advise you as Lipsius advised his reader about certain passages in Plautus: “Sail past these as though they were the Sirens’ rocks.” If they do not please you, pass them by; or set the good against the bad, and do not reject everything on that account. For, reversing Martial’s verse and applying it with Hieronymus Wolf to my present purpose:

Some things are bad, some middling, but more are good.

Some is good, some bad, some neither. I say further with him that I have inserted—“I have not shrunk from adding some light and ridiculous things, some marketplace chatter from theatres, streets and even taverns”—some homelier, lighter or comic material, “making an offering to the Graces,” and so on. I ask everyone to interpret it favourably. As Julius Caesar Scaliger begged Cardan, “If I have indulged in a little wit, I beg you by the immortal gods, Hieronymus Cardan, do not take me amiss,” so I beg you, good reader, not to misunderstand me or misconstrue what is written here.

“By the Muses and Graces, and all the poets’ divinities, kindly reader, I beg you not to take me amiss.” It is a comic subject; in all seriousness I ask pardon for what is wrong, and ask you to suspend judgement, overlook small faults or at least remain silent. But if you like it, speak well of it and wish me success.

Arethusa, grant me this final labour.

In any case, I am resolved, “whether you wish it or not, to enter the arena boldly,” like those Elean wrestlers at the Olympic games in Philostratus: to show myself boldly on this public stage and play several parts in this tragicomedy of love, some satirically, some comically, some in a mixed tone, as my subject gives occasion and the scene before me requires or presents itself.