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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

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Subsection 2 How Love Tyrannizes Over Human Beings. Love, or Heroical…

So Seneca lived with his Paulina, Abraham with Sarah, Orpheus with Eurydice, Arria with Paetus, Artemisia with Mausolus; and Rubenius Celer, who insisted on having it engraved on his tomb that he had lived with Ennea, his dear wife, for forty-three years and eight months, and they had never quarrelled. No pleasure in this world compares with it: it is “the highest good of mortal life”—

“Venus, giver of life, delight of men and gods”—“for in a woman there lies something greater and more powerful than all other human pleasures,” as one writer holds. There is something in a woman beyond all human delight: a magnetic force, an enchanting quality, a hidden and powerful impulse.

The husband rules her as head, but she in turn commands his heart. He is her servant; she is his only joy and contentment. No happiness equals it, no love is so great as this between husband and wife, no comfort like “a delightful wife”—a sweet wife:

All love is great, but greater for an openly acknowledged spouse.

When their love at the end is as fresh as it was at the beginning,

And she, beloved, grows old with her beloved husband,

As Homer presents Paris kissing Helen after they had been married ten years, declaring that he loved her as dearly as in the first hour of their betrothal.

And when they cherish one another in old age, speaking as the poet did to his wife,

Wife, let us live as we have lived, and die, Keeping the name we took in the bridal chamber. Let no day bring such change as we grow older That I am no longer young to you, nor you a girl to me.

Dear wife, let us live in love and die together, In all the goodwill we have shared till now. Let no day change or alter our affections, But let us still be young to one another.

Such should married love be: always the same. As they are one flesh, so they should be of one mind, as in an aristocratic government, sharing one accord; like Geryon, “growing together into one,” having one heart in two bodies, wishing and refusing the same things.

A good wife, according to Plutarch, should be like a mirror reflecting her husband’s face and feelings. If he is cheerful, she should be merry; if he laughs, she should smile; if he looks sad, she should share his sorrow and bear part of it with him. In this way they should continue in mutual love for one another.

And no old age will draw me away from love of you, Though I become a Tithonus or a Nestor.

No age will part my love from you, sweet wife, Though I live as long as Nestor or Tithonus.

And she in turn should say to him, as the bride greeted the bridegroom in ancient Rome: “Where you are Gaius, I am always Gaia.” Remain Gaius, and I will be Gaia.

This is indeed a happy condition, “when the fountain is blessed,” as Solomon says in Proverbs 5.17, “and he rejoices with the wife of his youth, and she is to him like the loving hind and graceful doe, and he delights in her continually.”

But the love we are concerned with is excessive, disordered and impossible to contain within any bounds. It will not confine itself to marriage or attach itself to one person, but is a wandering, straying, domineering, boundless, irresistible and destructive passion. Sometimes this burning lust rages after marriage, when it is properly called jealousy; sometimes before, when it is called heroic melancholy. Sometimes it extends to rivals in love, and so forth, producing rapes, incests and murders:

“Marcus Antonius had intercourse with his sister Faustina; Caracalla with his stepmother Julia; Nero with his mother; Caligula with his sisters; Cinyras with his daughter Myrrha,” and so forth. It respects no limits of kinship, age, sex or anything else.

Some are seized by this fury before they reach years of discretion or maturity. Quartilla in Petronius could never remember having been a virgin; and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath boasts,

Since I was twelve years old, believe me, I have had five husbands at the church door.

Aretino’s Lucretia sold her virginity a thousand times before she was twenty-four: “I had sold my virginity more than a thousand times,” and so forth, “and I will not conceal from you that there was no shortage of men who courted me as though I were untouched.”

Rahab the harlot began working openly as a prostitute at ten years old and was only fifteen when she hid the spies, as Hugh Broughton demonstrates; Serarius the Jesuit agrees with him in question 6 on Joshua, chapter 2.

Generally women begin “to reach puberty,” as they call it, or “to be in heat,” as Julius Pollux quotes from Aristophanes in his Onomasticon, book 2, chapter 3, at fourteen years old. Then they offer themselves, and some are openly frantic. Leo Africanus says that in Africa one will scarcely find a virgin at fourteen, so precocious are they; and many among us, once in their teens, do not live without husbands but merely languish.

The exploits of this kind committed by those in middle life are beyond recording.

If I had a hundred tongues and a hundred mouths,

8729.The list joins biblical, mythical and historical couples as examples of constancy. The epitaph attributed to Rubenius Celer and Ennea has not been independently identified; their printed names and the precise forty-three years and eight months are retained.

8732.Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 1.1–2, invokes life-giving Venus as the delight of humans and gods. The second quotation is attributed in the margin to Fonseca. Magnetique and motive continue Burton’s account of attraction as an effective but hidden force.

8734.Burton combines the husband’s formal headship with the wife’s emotional influence. Horace’s placens uxor occurs in Odes 2.14.21, where the speaker says that even a beloved wife must be left at death. Burton applies the phrase to the comforts of marriage.

8736.Propertius, Elegies 4.3.49, in a wife’s letter to her absent husband. The printed aperto in conjuge is also found in the consulted Latin text; it is understood here as a spouse acknowledged openly in marriage. It has not been silently changed to another editorial reading.

8738.The feminine chara and masculine charo preserve the reciprocal sense: a beloved wife growing old with a beloved husband. Burton attributes the line to Simonides in Greek; the exact Greek passage and the Latin version require further collation.

8739.Compare Iliad 3.441–446. Paris says his present desire exceeds even what he felt when he first carried Helen away and lay with her on Cranae. Burton recasts the scene as affection continuing after ten years of marriage; kissing and the language of betrothal belong to his retelling.

8741.Ausonius, To His Wife. Burton’s opening includes and let us die and his second line omits the relative pronoun; the consulted text instead has and let us keep the names we first took in the bridal chamber. The translation follows Burton’s printed version, supplying the understood relative link, and preserves his separate English quatrain.

8743.Will and nill means desire and refuse. Aristocraticall government suggests rule shared among a few, here used as an analogy for agreement. Geryon, the multiple-bodied mythological figure, is expressly made an emblem of friendship in the margin; Burton’s one heart in two bodies applies the emblem to the married pair.

8744.Plutarch, Advice to Bride and Groom 14, develops the mirror comparison and requires the wife to adapt her feelings to her husband’s. Burton adds his framing of mutual love. The unequal distribution of emotional duties is retained as part of the historical text.

8746.Propertius, Elegies 2.25.9–10. Burton prints Et where the consulted text has at. Nestor and Tithonus exemplify extreme longevity. Sweet wife is present only in Burton’s English paraphrase, not in the Latin couplet; the two versions remain separate.

8748.Plutarch, Roman Questions 30, discusses the formula Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia as participation in the household and its management. Burton adds semper, always, and gives a freer English version. Caius/Caia are modernized as Gaius/Gaia.

8749.The quoted material paraphrases Proverbs 5.18–19 rather than beginning at the printed verse 17. Burton’s locator remains in the modern text. Hind and roe are female deer in this imagery; the fountain belongs to the chapter’s praise of fidelity within marriage.

8750.This love of ours means the disordered love under examination. Extravagant means straying beyond bounds; irrefragable here means impossible to resist or restrain; corrivals are competing lovers. Burton’s division between premarital love melancholy and marital jealousy organizes his subsequent discussion.

8751.The catalogue mixes allegations about Roman rulers with the myth of Cinyras and Myrrha. Its names, relationships and accusations are reproduced as Burton prints them, including Marcus Antonius and Faustina as his sister and Julia as Caracalla’s stepmother. These details require independent historical collation and are not certified by translation.

8753.Maid here means virgin; cracks means boasts. Quartilla is a fictional speaker in Petronius, Satyricon 25. Burton uses a literary account of childhood sexual experience as evidence of precocious lust; the narrative is not evidence of a child’s informed consent. The translation preserves the report without adding detail.

8754.The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, lines 4–6. Burton compresses Chaucer into a rhyming couplet. She describes five successive marriages over the years since the age of twelve, not five marriages all contracted at twelve. Kirk means church; the church-door phrase refers to the marriage ceremony.

8756.Aratine means Pietro Aretino; the margin cites Caspar Barth’s Latin Pornodidascalus. Lucretia’s repeated sale of virginity is a claim within that literary dialogue. The Latin wording and its precise relation to the Italian remain uncollated.

8758.Quean means prostitute. Joshua 2 tells of Rahab hiding the spies but supplies neither of these ages. Burton attributes the chronology to Hugh Broughton and Nicolas Serarius; their exact passages remain uncollated. His proves is retained as his assessment of their authority.

8761.Epictetus, Enchiridion 40 in the consulted translation, describes men flattering girls from fourteen and their consequent concern with adornment; he urges valuing modest conduct instead. Burton’s compressed margin cites 42 and joins this with Lemnius. Its Latin intermediary remains uncollated. His African claim is attributed to Leo Africanus, not established as a general fact. Linger means languish; the Pollux, Lemnius and Leo passages remain unchecked.

8762.A conventional poetic image of the impossibility of telling everything. Burton’s wording is preserved; a precise direct or intermediary source for this form has not been assigned.