Although this beauty is generally most conspicuous in the face, other parts often have a most pleasing grace and are enough by themselves to inspire love. A high forehead like the bright heavens, “the loveliest region of the sky; a brow where honour lives, a brow where love plays,” white and smooth as polished alabaster; a pair of vermilion cheeks where love lodges: “Love, who spends the night on a girl’s soft cheeks.” A coral lip, “the shrine of kisses,” in which

A thousand kisses lie revealed, a thousand lie hidden,

“the Graces’ most delightful dwelling”: a sweet-smelling flower from which bees may gather honey. “Honey-gathering winged creatures, why still seek hollow thyme-blossoms and roses?” and so on,

Come, all of you, to my mistress’s lips: She breathes roses, and so on.

A white, rounded neck, that “Milky Way”; a dimple in the chin; black eyebrows, “Cupid’s bow”; sweet breath; white, even teeth, which some call the feature that sells the whole; a lovely, soft, rounded breast: these lend exquisite grace.

What beauty in swelling breasts of Parian marble!

And they form a pleasant valley, “a milky hollow,” between two chalk-white hills: “little sister breasts, rousing cold lovers to lust by the mere sight of them.” Hence this line:

How well the shape of those breasts invited a caress!

Again: Firm, upright breasts set the eyes on fire.

Flaxen hair: golden hair was held in high esteem, and Virgil praises Dido for it—“Proserpina had not yet taken away the golden lock,” and “her hair is tied up in gold.” Apollonius, in Argonautica, book 4—“Jason’s golden hair set Medea’s heart on fire”—makes Jason’s golden hair the chief cause of Medea’s infatuation with him.

Castor and Pollux were both blond. Paris, Menelaus and most amorous young men in every age have been so: “soft and charming,” as Giambattista della Porta concludes in Physiognomy, book 2, lovely to behold. Homer praises Helen in this way, and makes Patroclus and Achilles both blond. There is “beautiful-haired Venus,” and Cupid himself was blond, “his hair gleaming and curling into gold,” like the exquisite image of Narcissus in Callistratus; for so Psyche saw him sleeping.

Briseis, Polyxena, and so on, all golden-haired,

——and beautiful Hero, Whom young Apollo courted for her hair.

Leland praises Guithera, King Arthur’s wife, for her beautiful flaxen hair; Paulus Aemilius describes Clovis, that handsome king of France. Synesius holds that every effeminate man or adulterer is fair-haired; and Apuleius adds that Venus herself, goddess of love, cannot give delight, even if she comes accompanied by the Graces and all Cupid’s attendants, wearing her own girdle and smelling of cinnamon and balm: if she is bald or has ugly hair, she cannot please her Vulcan.

This, probably, is why our Venetian ladies nowadays so often imitate blond hair, why great ladies crimp and curl it—“waving locks for beauty, twisted into so many coils to take captives”—and adorn their heads with spangles, pearls and artificial flowers, and why all courtiers cultivate an attractive appearance in this respect. In a word, hair is Cupid’s net, to catch everyone who comes near: a thicket where Cupid builds his nest, and in whose shade all lovers amuse themselves in a thousand different ways.

A small, soft hand, a pretty little mouth, slender, delicate, long fingers,

“What grace in those fingers!”——this is what Apollo admired in Daphne: “——he praises her fingers and hands.”

An upright, slender body, a small foot and a well-proportioned leg have an exquisite beauty: “on which the whole body rests, as a house upon its foundation.” Clearchus assured his friend Amyander in Aristaenetus that the most attractive part of his mistress, which first made him like her and fall in love, was her pretty leg and foot. Soft, white skin and so on have their particular charms: “A cloud is no softer than her skin. By Pollux, what a lovely little breast!”

In men, however, these parts are less admired. Sometimes a fierce Saracen,

——Pyracmon, bare-limbed,

a martial, hairy face pleases best. A dark man is a pearl in a fair woman’s eye, and as welcome as lame Vulcan was to Venus. Though he was a sweaty, sooty blacksmith, she loved him dearly, while handsome Apollo and nimble Mercury were rejected, and the rest of the sweet-faced gods abandoned.

Many women, as Petronius observes, “are inflamed by dirt”—just as many men are more stirred by kitchen girls and a poor market girl than by all these splendid ladies of court and city. They will fall in love sooner with a slave, a servant, a mud-plasterer, a Brontes, a cook or an actor, if they see his bare legs or arms, “his muscular arms,” and so on, like the hunter Meleager in Philostratus—even if he is dressed in rags, filthy and dirty, smeared like a red-ochre worker, a gypsy or a chimney-sweep—than with a noble gentleman, a Nireus, a Hephaestion, an Alcibiades, or those embroidered courtiers covered in silk and gold.

Justine’s wife, the wife of a citizen of Rome, fell in love with Pylades, an actor, and would have gone mad for him if Galen himself had not happened to help her. The empress Faustina was infatuated with a gladiator.

Not one person in a thousand falls in love without finding some particular part more pleasing and more inflaming than all the rest. Once a group of young philosophers quarrelled over which part of a woman was most desirable and pleasing. Some said the forehead, some the teeth, some the eyes, cheeks, lips, neck, chin, and so on. They referred the dispute to Lais of Corinth for a decision; but she smiled and said they were a pack of fools. For suppose they had her where they wanted her: what would they reach for first?

Nevertheless, I readily grant—and “none of you, I think, will deny”—that every part is attractive, but especially the eyes:

——“he sees eyes flashing with fire, Like stars”——