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Member 2. Subsection 2. Other Causes of Love Melancholy: Sight; Beauty of The…

Many will condemn men so infatuated as fools; others, however, praise them for it. Many reject the judgment of Paris, yet Lucian approves of it, admiring Paris for his choice: he would have done the same himself, and rightly, in his opinion. Beauty should be preferred to wealth or wisdom.

Athenaeus, in The Learned Banqueters, book 13, chapter 7, considers it no such disgrace for the Trojans and Greeks to fight for ten years, to expend so much effort and lose so many men’s lives for Helen’s sake—for the sake of so beautiful a lady:

For such a wife, whose surpassing beauty Has nothing mortal about it.

That one woman was worth a kingdom, a hundred thousand other women, a whole world. Well might Sterpsichores go blind for finding fault with so beautiful a creature: it was a just punishment.

Homer gives the same testimony about the old men of Troy, who watched the single combat between Paris and Menelaus at the Scaean Gate. When Helen stood before them, they all said the war was worth undertaking and prolonging for her sake. The very gods themselves, as Homer and Isocrates record, fought more for Helen than they did against the Giants.

When Venus lost her son Cupid, she had Mercury proclaim that whoever brought news of him would receive seven kisses: a noble reward, some say, and much better than as many talents of gold. To many men, seven such kisses would be worth more than seven cities or as many provinces. One such kiss alone would restore a man even if he were dying:

Thus a little kiss will bring you back from the valley of Styx, and so on.

Alexander the Great married Roxane, a poor man’s daughter, solely for her beauty. Well done, Alexander—and heroically done! I admire him for it. Orlando went mad for Angelica: who does not pity his misfortune? Thisbe died for Pyramus, Dido for Aeneas. Who does not weep in pity at her plight, as Augustine did before his conversion? She died for him; “I think,” as he said, “I could die for her!”

But this is not the matter before us: what privileges beauty has, what power and sovereignty it exercises, and how far people who so admire and dote upon it may be justified. No one doubts these things. The question is how, and by what means, beauty produces this effect.

Through sight. The eye betrays the soul and is both active and passive in this business: it wounds and is wounded; it is a principal cause and instrument, both in the person looking and in the person seen. Like tears, it begins in the eyes and descends to the breast; as I have said, it carries these beautiful rays to the heart. “As soon as I saw, I was lost.” “Mars sees her, and, having seen her, desires her.”

Shechem saw Dinah, Leah’s daughter, and violated her, Genesis 34:3; Jacob saw Rachel, 29:17, “for she was beautiful and fair”; David caught sight of Bathsheba from a distance, 2 Samuel 11:2; the elders saw Susanna; and Strato of Orthomenus saw beautiful Aristoclea, the daughter of Theophanes, bathing at the fountain of Hercyne in Lebadea. They were captivated in an instant. “The eyes saw; flames seized the heart.” Amnon fell ill for Tamar’s sake, 2 Samuel 13:2.

Esther’s beauty was such that she found favour not only in the eyes of Ahasuerus but in those of everyone who looked at her. Gerson, Origen and some others maintained that Christ himself was the fairest of the sons of men, with Joseph next to him: “more beautiful than the sons of men.” They insist that this should be understood literally: his bodily appearance was such that he won the affection and favour of everyone who looked at him.

Joseph was so handsome that, as the Ordinary Gloss puts it, “the girls ran along the wall and to the windows”: they ran to the tops of the walls and to the windows to gaze at him, as we commonly do to see some great personage pass by. Matthew Paris similarly describes the Empress Matilda passing through Cologne. The Jesuit Father Morales says as much of the Virgin Mary.

Antony had no sooner seen Cleopatra, says Appian, book 1, than he fell in love with her. Theseus, at his first sight of Helen, was so infatuated that he considered he would be the happiest man in the world if he could possess her. To that end he knelt and made impassioned prayers to the gods.

Charicles happened to catch sight of that exquisite image of smiling Venus, naked in her temple. He stood gazing for a long time in astonishment, then burst into that wildly passionate speech: “O fortunate god Mars, who was bound in chains and made a laughingstock for her sake!” Unable to restrain himself, he kissed her image I do not know how many times, and earnestly wished to be disgraced as Mars had been. And what did he do that his betters had not already done?

——and one of the more lighthearted gods wishes To be disgraced in just this way——

When Venus first came to heaven, her beauty was such that, as my author says, all the gods flocked around to greet her, and each went to Jupiter to ask for her as his wife. When handsome Antiochus appeared, his beauty shone like a candle in the dark. Everyone’s eyes, as Xenophon describes it, were immediately fixed on him, and they were so moved by the sight that they could not hide their feelings: their gestures and looks revealed and expressed them.

Those other senses, hearing and touch, may penetrate and affect us deeply, but none so deeply or so powerfully as sight. “Briseis’s beauty moved Achilles in the midst of warfare”: Achilles was moved in the middle of battle by beautiful Briseis; Ajax by Tecmessa. Judith captivated that great commander Holofernes; Delilah, Samson; Rosamund, Henry II; and Roxelana, Suleiman the Magnificent, and so on.

Being beautiful, a woman conquers Both iron and fire.

A beautiful woman overcomes fire and sword.

9047.Paris’s judgment chooses beauty over the competing gifts of the goddesses. Burton reports competing views of that choice; his praise here belongs to the deliberately expansive argument for beauty’s power.

9050.The body’s couplet renders a Homeric praise of Helen in Latin; its translator is not identified. The attached Propertius quotation parallels it. Propertius 2.3.35–36 has Priamo, “to Priam,” so that even Priam could approve the cause of the war. Burton’s Priamus instead makes Priam another possible man to die for her. The marginal version is retained and translated as printed.

9052.Sterpsichores is Burton’s printed name for the poet ordinarily called Stesichorus in the story of blindness and recantation after attacking Helen. The modern text retains Burton’s form; the precise source remains for collation.

9055.Burton invokes the Trojan elders’ praise of Helen in Iliad 3 and Isocrates’s Helen. The extra marginal example of Mahomet and Irene is from Knolles and refers back to a story used in Block 117. These reported judgments belong to the speakers in Burton’s argument.

9057.Apuleius, Metamorphoses 6.8, has Venus advertise a reward of seven kisses for information about Psyche, not Cupid. Burton also cites book 4. His name and citation are preserved, with the discrepancy recorded here. A talent is an ancient unit of weight and money.

9059.Secundus, Basia 13. The consulted text says that a kiss brought the speaker back from the valley of Styx; Burton adapts it to a future promise addressed to another person. Styx evokes the world of the dead.

9062.Burton’s Curtius citation and description of Roxane’s parentage require collation. Orlando and Angelica belong to chivalric romance. Augustine, Confessions 1.13, recalls weeping over Dido and criticizes his absorption in her fictional death; Burton’s further I could die for her has not been verified there. The modern version preserves the attribution without certifying the words.

9065.Asteares is read as As tears, with the word division made explicit in modern English. Active and passive means that an eye both acts upon another and receives an impression. The short Latin utterances repeat and dramatize sight’s immediate effect; exact sources for the first and for the Seneca marginal wording remain to be checked.

9067.The cited events include coercion and sexual violence, not only attraction: Shechem violates Dinah, the elders threaten Susanna, and Amnon’s desire leads to Tamar’s rape. Genesis 34:2 narrates Shechem’s act; 34:3 follows it. Burton’s 2 Reg. 11:2 uses the Latin numbering for what English Bibles call 2 Samuel 11:2. Orthomenian is retained in modern form as Orthomenus; the usual place-name is Orchomenus.

9068.Speciosus præ filiis hominum echoes Psalm 45:2 in English numbering, 44:3 in the Vulgate. Burton reports a literal reading of Christ’s physical beauty; the individual positions attributed to Gerson and Origen remain to be collated.

9070.The Ordinary Gloss, or Glossa ordinaria, is the standard medieval biblical commentary tradition. Cullen is Cologne. Burton’s Joseph, Matilda and Morales references remain to be checked against their cited texts.

9073.Picture can mean an image or representation, including a statue. Burton’s account concerns Venus in a temple, so image preserves this broader sense. The chains refer to the exposure of Mars and Venus together; Charicles envies the god’s humiliation.

9075.Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.187–188, not book 3 as printed in the margin. The gods are looking at Mars and Venus caught together. Burton omits the first word of the preceding line and quotes the wish to share Mars’s disgrace.

9078.Xenophon, Symposium 1.8–10, describes Autolycus. Burton’s body gives Antiochus and his margin Antiloquus; both source forms remain visible. The modern column retains Antiochus rather than silently replacing it with Xenophon’s name.

9080.Burton piles up examples from epic, scripture and royal stories. The Latin Briseis sentence is followed by his own English paraphrase; both are retained. The Rosamund and Roxelana traditions are reported as his examples, pending detailed source collation.

9082.The Greek couplet is followed by Burton’s own English version. The margin attributes it to Anacreon, poem 2; the exact text and numbering of his edition remain to be collated. Iron is rendered figuratively as sword in Burton’s English line.