They are Love’s bird-catchers, “love’s bird-snare,” its shoehorns, its hooks, as Arandus has it: the guides, touchstone and judges that in a moment cure madmen and drive sane people mad, the body’s watchmen. What do they not do? In what way do they not torment us? All this is true; and, as Athenaeus holds in his Deipnosophists, book 13, chapter 5, and Tatius too, they are the chief seats of love. James Lernutius wittily expresses it in an elegant ode:

I saw Love in my mistress’s fiery eyes, Seated there—believe me, generations to come— And his brothers sporting all around, Fluttering with quiver and bow, and so on.

I saw Love sitting in my mistress’s sparkling eyes— Believe it, all posterity— And his attendants playing all around, With bow and arrows ready to fly.

Scaliger calls the eyes Cupid’s arrows, the tongue Love’s lightning, and the breasts Love’s tents; Baldassare Castiglione calls the eyes love’s causes, chariots and lamps.

——eyes that rival the stars, Eyes that could stir even the gods.

Eyes that rival stars in light, Enticing gods at the first sight;

Love’s orators, says Petronius:

Oh, those alluring eyes, oh, those charming eyes, Speaking in a language of their own! There are Venus and playful Loves, And in their midst sits Pleasure herself.

Oh, sweet and pretty speaking eyes, Where Venus, love and pleasure dwell!

Love’s torches, powder-box, naphtha and matches, says Tibullus:

When fierce Love wishes to set the gods ablaze, He lights twin torches from her eyes.

Fierce Love, when he wishes to set the gods on fire, Lights eyes like torches to kindle desire.

Leander was set on fire at his first sight of Hero’s eyes, says Musaeus:

At once in the rays of her eyes love’s torch grew brighter, And his heart seethed under the force of the invading fire; For the renowned beauty of a pure maiden Is sharper for men than a swift arrow. The eye is its path: from the eye’s blows The wound spreads and flows into a man’s heart.

Love’s torches first began to burn in her eyes And set his heart on fire, a fire that never dies; For the lovely beauty of a pure maiden Is sharper than a dart, and inflicts A deeper wound, piercing through the eyes To the heart, and causing such cruel pain.

A modern poet presents Amnon lamenting over Tamar:

——and with their spell they kill me: That smile and charm of form, That radiance, that grace and true beauty, Those cheeks that rival purple and roses, Those eyes, and hair tied in a golden knot.——

It was your beauty, your pleasing smile, Your grace and loveliness that bewitched me; Your rose-like cheeks, beautiful as purple, Your lovely eyes and golden, knotted hair.

Philostratus of Lemnos cries out against his mistress’s basilisk eyes, “blazing torches,” those two burning glasses. They had so inflamed his soul that no water could quench it. “What tyranny,” he says, “what penetration of bodies is this! With your rocky eyes you violently draw me in and swallow me, as Charybdis does sailors. Anyone who falls into this gulf of love can never escape.” Let this, then, be the conclusion: beauty’s strongest beams are always shot from the eyes.

For who could gaze with his own eyes Upon eyes so splendid, so splendid, Without at once trembling and throbbing In the breath of burning desire? And so on.

For who could look upon such eyes Without at once falling in love!

And just as people catch dotterels by stretching out a leg or an arm, so lovers first lure one another with those exchanged glances.

Cynthia was the first to capture wretched me with her eyes.

Of all eyes, incidentally, black eyes are the loveliest, the most alluring and beautiful, as the poet observes in praising his mistress:

A sight worth seeing, with black eyes and black hair.

This is what Hesiod admires in his Alcmene:

From her head and dark eyes Breathes something like the charm of golden Venus.

From her black eyes and her golden face Came a lovely grace, as if from Venus.

And Triton, speaking of his Milaene: “black-eyed, beautiful to me.” Homer uses the epithet “ox-eyed” to describe Juno, because a round black eye is the best, the sun of beauty, and the farther from black, the worse.

Polydore Vergil criticizes this in our nation: “The English mostly have grey eyes.” For the most part, our eyes are grey. Giambattista della Porta, in Physiognomy, book 3, assigns grey eyes to children: they are childish eyes, dull and heavy.

Many, on the other hand, praise Spanish ladies and the Greek women of today for their black eyes, as Porta praises his young Neapolitan wives. Suetonius describes Julius Caesar as having “black, lively, sparkling eyes”—black, quick, sparkling eyes. And although Averroes, in his Colliget, calls such people timid, they are unquestionably the most amorous.

Now, last of all, I shall show you how beauty fascinates—bewitches, as some maintain—and works upon a person’s soul through the eye. For I certainly agree with the poet: love bewitches and strangely changes us.

Love tricks the senses, dazzles the eyes, and steals Freedom of mind, bewitching us by wondrous art. Some demon, I think, enters the heart and kindles A flame, wrenching the captive mind off its hinges.

Love tricks our senses, curbs our freedom, And bewitches us with his magic and rings. I think some devil enters our entrails, Kindles coals, and heaves our souls off their hinges.