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Subsection 3 Honourable Objects of Love

“I have always loved Marcus Brutus, as you know,” Cicero wrote to Dolabella, “for his great intelligence, exceptional integrity, steadfastness and gracious character. Believe me, nothing is so lovable and beautiful as virtue.”

“I love Calvisius dearly,” Pliny writes to Sosius, “a most industrious, eloquent and upright man, which counts for everything with me.” The affection arose from his good qualities.

And as Saint Augustine comments on Psalm 84: “There is a special beauty of justice, an inward beauty, which we see with the eyes of our hearts, love and become enamoured of—as in martyrs: though wild beasts tear their bodies to pieces, this beauty still shines, and we love their virtues.”

The Stoics hold that only the wise man is beautiful. Cato in Cicero’s On Ends, book 3, maintains the same: the features of the mind are far more beautiful than those of the body, incomparably surpassing them. Wisdom and courage, according to Xenophon, especially deserve the name of beauty and entitle a person to be called beautiful; “and Christian truth is incomparably more beautiful,” as Augustine holds, “than the Greeks’ Helen.”

“Wine is strong, the king is strong, women are strong, but truth overcomes all things,” 1 Esdras 3:10–12. “Blessed is the man who finds wisdom and gains understanding; for its merchandise is better than silver and its profit better than gold. It is more precious than pearls, and nothing you can desire can be compared with her,” Proverbs 2:13–15. A wise, truthful, just, upright and good man, I say again, is the only beautiful man.

It is reported of Magdalen, queen of France and wife of Louis XI, a Scottish woman by birth, that one evening, walking out with her ladies, she saw Master Alanus, one of the king’s chaplains, a simple, old, ugly man, fast asleep in a bower, and kissed him tenderly. When the young ladies laughed at her, she replied that she was not embracing and revering his person, but, with a Platonic love, the divine beauty of his soul.

Thus virtue has been adored and admired in every age; a special radiance has shone from it. The more virtuous a man is, the more pleasing and admired he becomes. No man on earth was followed as much as Christ himself; as the Psalmist says at 45:2, “He was fairer than the sons of men.”

Chrysostom, Homily 8 on Matthew; Bernard, Sermon 1 on All Saints; Augustine; Cassiodorus; and Jerome on Matthew 9 interpret this as the beauty of his person: divine majesty shone in his face like lightning and drew everyone towards it. But Basil, Cyril in book 6 on Isaiah 55, Theodoret, Arnobius and others understand the beauty of his divinity, justice, grace, eloquence and so on. Thomas, on Psalm 44, understands both; so do Baradas and Pedro de Morales in On the Beauty of Jesus and Mary, adding as much about Joseph and the Virgin Mary:

She will have surpassed all others in beauty,

according to that prediction of the Cumaean Sibyl. Whether its possessors are present or absent, near us or far away, this beauty shines and will draw people many miles to come and see it. Plato and Pythagoras left their country to see the wise Egyptian priests. Apollonius travelled into Ethiopia and Persia to consult the Magi, Brahmins and Gymnosophists.

The Queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon; and many, says Jerome, travelled a thousand miles from Spain and distant places to see the eloquent Livy. “Many set out from Cadiz for Rome, not to see that most beautiful city or Octavian, master of the city and the world, but to visit and hear this one man.”

No beauty leaves such an impression, strikes so deeply or binds people’s souls more closely than virtue.

By the gods, no painter could, Nor any sculptor fashion Such beauty as virtue possesses.

No painter, engraver or carver can express virtue’s radiance, or the wonderful rays that come from it: those enchanting rays that make posterity fall in love, those everlasting rays that endure to the world’s end.

Many who loved and admired Alcibiades in his youth, says Favorinus, did not know or care for the grown man: “now, looking at him, they searched for Alcibiades.” But Socrates’ beauty remains the same. Virtue’s radiance never fades: it is always fresh and green, “ever living” for every succeeding age, and a most powerful lodestone to attract and unite those who are present. For this reason, perhaps, Homer imagines the three Graces linked hand in hand, because such graces unite human hearts so firmly.

“O sweet bonds,” Seneca exclaims, “which unite so happily that those bound by them love their binders, desiring to be bound still more tightly,” and, like so many Geryons, to be united into one.

For the nature of true friendship is to unite, to share the same feelings and be of one mind:

Both have the same wishes and refusals, and a mind content Throughout life—

as the poet says: always to remain one and the same. Where this love exists, there is peace and quiet, true mutual understanding, perfect friendship, a harmony of vows and wishes, the same opinions—as between David and Jonathan, Damon and Pythias, Pylades and Orestes, Nisus and Euryalus, Theseus and Pirithous. They will live and die together and follow one kindness with another, “for they think it most shameful to be outdone in love.”

Not only while their friends are alive, but after their death, many ages later, they will still honour their memory—as Plato’s pupils did—with tombs and monuments, funeral songs, epitaphs, elegies, inscriptions, pyramids, obelisks, statues, images, pictures, histories, poems, annals, feasts and anniversaries, neglecting no kindness that might preserve their names, honours and everlasting memory.

8386.Cicero’s letter to Dolabella is Ad familiares 9.14.4–5 in the text consulted, rather than the margin’s book 8. Burton brings the praise of Brutus before the statement about virtue, reversing their order in Cicero. The adjacent Platonic margin recalls Phaedrus 250d, although it prints Phaedo.

8388.Pliny, Letters 4.4.1, addresses Sosius Senecio and praises Varisidius Nepos, then names Calvisius as his uncle. Burton makes Calvisius the object of the praise. That substitution is retained in both columns and identified here.

8390.The passage is Augustine, Exposition of Psalm 64.8, not 84: it describes justice’s inward beauty and the martyrs’ beauty despite bodily suffering. Psalm 64 in Augustine’s numbering corresponds to 65 in common English numbering, so the printed 84 is not explained by that difference. Burton’s locator, English paraphrase and Latin margin remain, including the margin’s additional reference to bodily deformity.

8393.Cicero, On Ends 3.75, calls the wise man more beautiful in mind than body. Augustine, Letter 40, §7 (subsection 4.7), compares Christian truth with Greek Helen while urging Jerome to correct an interpretation; Burton abbreviates the Latin. Lipsius’s and Xenophon’s exact intermediary passages remain uncollated.

8394.The contest about wine, kings, women and truth is introduced in 1 Esdras 3:10–12. Burton’s Proverbs 2:13–15 points instead to the praise of wisdom at 3:13–15; his chapter number is retained. His “pearls” also remains, rather than the “rubies” of the King James text consulted.

8398.This is the anecdote usually told of Margaret of Scotland and the poet Alain Chartier. Burton prints Magdalen and Alanus and calls her queen; these details are retained. Barbé’s historical study, pages 119–120, records the older account and discusses the chronological difficulty that makes it doubtful. “Silly” here means simple or unassuming; “hard-favoured” means ugly.

8400.Burton sets out competing interpretations of Christ’s beauty, bodily and spiritual. Psalm 44 in the Latin numbering corresponds to Psalm 45 in the English numbering. The chain of patristic references, including Cyril’s printed Isaiah 55, and the works of Baradas and Morales remain for detailed collation.

8401.The isolated verse is attributed to the Cumaean Sibyl through Burton’s preceding authorities; its precise source remains unidentified. Apollonius is the traveller and philosopher of Tyana. Magi, Brahmins and Gymnosophists designate the learned or ascetic groups whose wisdom draws visitors; the travel claims are Burton’s.

8404.Jerome’s Letter 53.1, also used as a biblical preface, describes visitors travelling to see Livy. Burton then quotes the Padua statue inscription as a separate testimony. Gadibus means from Gades, modern Cadiz. The exact inscription and its historical setting remain for collation.

8407.Burton’s margin names Stobaeus as the source of these translated Greek verses. The Latin is translated afresh and kept as three lines; Burton’s following English elaboration remains separate. The Greek author and precise anthology entry have not yet been established.

8409.Favorinus contrasts the fading attraction of youth with Socrates’ lasting beauty of character. “Semper viva” means ever living. The margin’s Solinus attribution and compressed “beauty has no face,” and the claim about Homer’s linked Graces, remain for collation; the text is not silently regularized.

8411.“Bands” means bonds. The body has those bound love their binders, while the Latin margin says they love the bonds; both are preserved. Geryon’s joined bodies supply Burton’s image of friends united into one. The exact Seneca passage remains to be established. The discussion of true friendship and a quotation from Statius follow.

8413.The margin names Statius, but compare Silius Italicus, Punica 9.406–407, on the comrades Marius and Caper. Silius has sociataque, “and united,” where this printing has satiataq;, “and satisfied.” The modern column renders the printed reading; the parallel would give “a mind united throughout life.”

8418.Diapason means a musical octave or complete harmony. Burton gathers celebrated pairs of loyal friends from scripture, myth and classical literature. The first biblical locator should be compared with 1 Samuel 18:1; the second phrase is from David’s lament in 2 Samuel 1:26. Virgil’s account of Nisus dying over Euryalus is Aeneid 9.444–445. Pliny’s maxim is Letters 4.1.5.

8419.Nænia means a funeral song; parentare means to perform commemorative rites for the dead. Good office means a service or kindness. Plutarch, Table Talk 8.1, describes celebrations of Socrates’s and Plato’s birthdays. This supports the later commemorative tradition, but does not establish Burton’s exact claim about observances by Plato’s pupils.