Member 2. Subsection 2. Other causes of love melancholy: sight; beauty of the face, eyes and other parts; and how it pierces us.

Many such causes may be listed, but they cannot take effect unless time and place offer an opportunity, and other beautiful objects or contrived enticements—kissing, meeting, conversation, gestures and similar lustful provocations—combine with them.

Kornmann, in his book On the Line of Love, sets out five stages of lust, apparently taken from Lucian, which he treats in five chapters: seeing, conversation, keeping company, kisses and touching.

Above all else, sight is the first step in this unruly love, though sometimes a report or something heard anticipates it—or, rather, inflames it. Some people are so prone, so credulous and so ready to love that, if they hear of a handsome man or woman, they fall in love before seeing them, merely from the description, as Achilles Tatius observes. “Such is their lack of restraint and their lust that they are as deeply wounded by a report as if they had seen the person.”

Callisthenes, a rich young gentleman of Byzantium in Thrace, heard of Leucippe, the beautiful daughter of Sostratus, and fell deeply in love with her. Her reputation and common report so inflamed him that he was determined to have her as his wife.

Sometimes reading affects them in this way, as the speaker in Lucian confesses of himself: “I never read that passage about Panthea in Xenophon without being as deeply moved as if I were in her presence.” Such people commonly imagine a kind of beauty for themselves. So those three gentlewomen in Baldassare Castiglione fell in love with a young man whom they had never known, merely from hearing him praised.

Or it may happen through reading a letter: for, as a moral philosopher tells us, charm comes through hearing as well as sight, and images of love enter the imagination through a description alone. “As desire comes from seeing, so longing comes from hearing”: both senses move us. “Sometimes we love those who are absent,” says Philostratus. He gives the example of his friend Athenodorus, who loved a girl at Corinth whom he had never seen: “It is the mind that sees, not the eyes.” We see with the eyes of our understanding.

But the most familiar and usual cause of love is what comes through sight, which carries those wonderful rays of beauty and pleasing graces to the heart. Plotinus derives the word for love from the word for sight: eros, as if from horasis.

In case you do not know, the eyes are our guides in love.

The eyes are love’s forerunners, and the first step in love is sight, as Lilio Giraldi demonstrates at length in his History of the Gods, treatise 13. Like two sluices, they admit the influences of that divine, powerful, soul-enrapturing and captivating beauty which, as one writer says, “is sharper than any dart or needle, wounds the heart more deeply, and opens a passage through our eyes for that lovely wound which pierces the soul itself.” “Through it love is kindled like a fire” (Eccles. 18).

This astonishing, bewildering, wonderful, lovely beauty—“than which,” says Isocrates, “there is nothing in all nature’s treasury more majestic and sacred, more divine, lovely or precious”—is nature’s crown, gold and glory: “a good which, if not the highest, nevertheless often triumphs over the highest.” We can recognize its power from this: in general we despise and abhor things that are foul and ugly to look at, consider them filthy, but love and covet what is beautiful.

It is beauty in everything that pleases and attracts us: a handsome hawk, a fine garment, a magnificent building, a beautiful house, and so on. When Xerxes the Persian destroyed all those temples of the gods in Greece, he ordered Diana’s alone “to be preserved intact,” because of its outstanding beauty and magnificence. Even inanimate beauty can exercise such authority.

It is what painters, craftsmen and orators all aim at. As Eryximachus the physician argues in Plato, “Beauty first gave art the occasion to discover the techniques of carving, painting and building; to devise models, perspective, rich furnishings and so many remarkable inventions.”

The whiteness of the lily, the red of the rose, the purple of the violet, the lustre of lifeless things, the moon’s clear light, the sun’s bright beams, the splendour of gold, purple and sparkling diamond, the horse’s fine form, the lion’s majesty, the colours of birds, peacocks’ tails and the silver scales of fish: we look on these with exceptional delight and admiration.

And beauty, “which is abundant in plants, delightful in flowers, wonderful in wild beasts, but most glorious in human beings,” makes us love and earnestly desire it. Just as, when we hear sweet harmony or an eloquent voice, or see some excellent quality, an ingenious human work, skilful art or anything exquisite, a longing for it immediately arises in us. We love such people, but chiefly for their good looks; we call them gods and goddesses, divine, serene, blessed, and so on.

And of all mortal people, they alone, Calcagnini maintains, are free from slander. “We attack with injustice those who flourish in wealth, office and glory”: we backbite, wrong and hate famous, rich and fortunate people; we resent their happiness and think they do not deserve it. Fortune is a stepmother to us, a parent to them.

“We envy wise, just and honourable people,” says Isocrates, “unless, by reciprocal services and kindnesses—some good turn or other—they force this love from us. Only beautiful people do we love at first sight, seek to know and adore like gods. We would rather serve them than command others, and consider ourselves the more indebted to them, the more service they demand of us.” Even if they are otherwise vicious and dishonourable, we love them, favour them and stand ready to do them any kindness for their beauty’s sake, although they have no other good quality.

“Speak, then, handsome youth,” as the eloquent Favorinus exclaims in Stobaeus: “Speak, Autilochus: your words are sweeter than nectar. Speak, Telemachus: you speak more forcefully than Ulysses. Speak, Alcibiades, however drunk you are: even drunk, we shall listen to you more gladly.”

Speak, handsome youth; speak, Antiloquus: your words are sweeter than nectar. Speak, Telemachus: you are more powerful than Ulysses. Speak, Alcibiades, though drunk: we will gladly hear you as you are.