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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

Reading language

Persistence and Opportunity of Time and Place; Meetings, Conversation…

“Such charm of voice won her renown,” says Petronius in his fragment of pure impurities—I mean his Satyricon; “so sweet a sound caressed the air that you would have thought a choir of Sirens was singing on the breeze.” She sang so sweetly that she enchanted the air, and you would have thought you were hearing a choir of Sirens. “Good God, how sweet it is when Lais speaks!” exclaims Philocolus in Aristaenetus. To hear a beautiful young gentlewoman play the virginals, lute or viol and sing to her own accompaniment—which, as Gellius observes in book 1, chapter 11, are “the delights of the wanton,” lovers’ chief pleasures—must be a great enticement. Parthenis was captivated in this way.

That voice draws my soul out through my eager ear.

“Oh, sister Harpedona,” she laments, “I am undone! How sweetly he sings! I will say something bold: he is the handsomest man I have ever seen in my life. Oh, how sweetly he sings! I am dying for him. If only he would love me in return!” If you merely heard her sing, says Lucian, you would forget your father and mother, abandon all your friends and follow her. The poet Theocritus highly praises Helen’s sweet voice and music: no one could play as well as she. And Daphnis, in the same idyll—

How sweet your mouth is, Daphnis, how lovely your voice! To hear you singing is more delightful than licking honey.

How sweet a face has Daphne, how lovely a voice! Even honey is less pleasant to my taste.

A sweet voice and music are powerful enticements. Those Samian singing girls, Aristonica, Oenanthe and Agathoclea, “trampled on royal diadems”—lorded it over kings themselves, as Plutarch maintains.

Argus had a head encircled by a hundred eyes.

Argus had a hundred eyes, all so enchanted by one simple pipe that he lost his head. In Tatius, Clitophon complains of Leucippe’s sweet music. He happened to hear her playing the lute and singing a pretty song in praise of a rose—out of old Anacreon, perhaps.

The rose is the glory and ornament of flowers, The rose is the gods’ flower and fragrance, The rose is the delight of humankind, The ornament of the Graces, In love’s flowering season, The rose is Dione’s kiss, and so on.

Rose, the fairest of all flowers, Rose, delight of heavenly powers, Rose, the joy of mortal men, Rose, the pleasure of fine women, Rose, the Graces’ ornament, Rose, Dione’s sweet delight.

To this effect the lovely young woman played and sang a melodious air on her harp or lute with its golden strings—I am not quite sure which. It transported him beyond himself and ravished his heart. It was Jason’s conversation as much as his beauty, or any other of his fine qualities, that so delighted Medea.

For her heart delighted equally In his beauty and his sweet words.

Above all her other attractions, it was Cleopatra’s sweet voice and pleasant conversation that captivated Antony.

Words bind a man as ropes bind bulls’ horns.

As bulls’ horns are bound with ropes, so men’s hearts are bound with pleasant words. “Her words burn like fire,” Eccles. 9:10. Roxolana bewitched Suleiman the Magnificent, and Shore’s wife overcame Edward IV by this means.

She alone stole all the charms from all the others.

Chaucer’s Wife of Bath admits all this from her own experience.

Some people desire us for wealth, Some for our figure, some for beauty, Some because a woman can sing or dance, Some for good breeding, or for flirtation.

Pietro Aretino’s Lucretia says as much, and more, about herself: “I feigned virtue as though I were the most virginal of virgins, more than a Vestal virgin. I looked like a married woman, so demure and chaste. On every occasion I added such gestures, tones, speeches, signs and movements that those who saw and heard me were stupefied, enchanted, rooted to the spot like so many blocks of wood and stones.”

Many foolish gentlewomen are similarly taken in by a set of gulls and swaggering fellows who constantly boast falsely of noblemen’s favour: rhyming Corybantic madmen, Thraso-like Rhadamants or Bombomachideses, with nothing in them but a few scraps from plays and polite phrases; empty braggarts and impudent intruders who can talk at table about the combats of knights and lords, like Lucian’s Leontiscus, about other people’s travels, daring adventures and such commonplace, trivial news; who can ride, dance, sing old ballad tunes and wear fashionable clothes with a good air. What a fine, delightful gentleman, what a handsome man—who could fail to love him! She will have him even if all her friends object, even if she must beg with him.

Others are inflamed by reading amorous trifles—Amadis of Gaul, Palmerin of Oliva, The Knight of the Sun, and so on—or by hearing such tales of lovers, descriptions of their persons and lascivious accounts, such as Astyanassa, Helen’s waiting woman, wrote long ago, according to the Suda, “on the various ways of sexual intercourse,” followed by Philenis and Elephantine. Or those frivolous tales of Aristides of Miletus, mentioned by Plutarch and found by the Persians among the spoils of Crassus’s army, Aretino’s Dialogues, ditties, love songs and the like must set them on fire, together with such pictures as Aretino’s, or provocative sights of any kind. “There is no stronger device than hearing or reading amorous trifles, fables and stories,” says one writer, “and many are driven quite mad in this way.”

9443.Petronius, Satyricon 127, describes Circe speaking, not singing; the received Latin differs from Burton’s first clause. His “pure impurities” is a deliberate paradox. Virginals are a small keyboard instrument; a viol is a bowed string instrument. The Gellius and Aristaenetus references await detailed collation.

9445.The Latin makes the eager ear the channel through which the singer draws out the listener’s soul. Burton’s marginal Aristaenetus 2.5 citation also includes the Latin of the following exclamation; it is one continuous marginal note.

9448.The singer’s sex changes because Burton moves between different examples. Properest means most handsome. Lucian’s marginal quotation says “parents and homeland,” while Burton’s English says “father and mother” and “all thy friends”; both readings are retained.

9449.The praise of Helen is in Theocritus, Idyll 18; the praise addressed to Daphnis is in Idyll 8, not “the same” idyll. Both passages were checked in the collected Idylls. Burton’s following English couplet prints Daphne and renders os, mouth, as face; the two versions remain separate.

9451.Insulted over means lorded it over. Plutarch, Dialogue on Love 753d, names these three women among Samian flute-girls and dancers who dominated kings. The passage contrasts the risks of marrying a socially inferior woman with the proposed marriage to Ismenodora. The list and Samian designation are thus independently located; Burton’s particular Latin version remains uncollated.

9452.Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.625. Argus is the many-eyed watchman lulled to sleep by Mercury’s pipe and killed. Silly in the following sentence means simple or insignificant.

9454.The speaker is Clitophon in Achilles Tatius’s Leucippe and Clitophon. Burton’s “belike” marks conjecture: perhaps the song is from Anacreon. The precise relationship of the Latin rose verses to the song in Tatius remains unresolved; they are not silently reassigned to another poet.

9455.Dione is used here as a name of the love-goddess. Suavium literally means a kiss. The Latin and Burton’s English adaptation differ in their order and details; both are translated independently.

9457.Burton gives a Latin rendering of Apollonius’s Greek and identifies only Argonautica, book 3. The precise lines and intermediary translation have not been established.

9458.Compare Plutarch, Antony 27.2–3, which stresses the charm of Cleopatra’s conversation and the sweetness of her voice. Burton’s next Latin maxim develops the familiar comparison between binding an animal physically and binding a person by speech; its precise source remains unlocated.

9459.Eccles. here points to Ecclesiasticus, or Sirach. The parallel is 9:11 in the Douay–Rheims/Vulgate numbering, about a woman’s conversation burning like fire; Burton’s 9:10 is retained. Roxolana is Hürrem, Suleiman’s consort; Shore’s wife is Jane, or Elizabeth, Shore, Edward IV’s mistress.

9461.Catullus 86.6: the poet praises Lesbia, who has appropriated all other women’s charms. Burton applies the line to his examples of successful seduction.

9462.Wife of Bath’s Prologue, lines 257–260. Burton omits the opening “Thou seyst”: Chaucer’s Wife is reporting what a husband says, rather than simply confessing her own view. Gentillesse includes noble birth or good breeding; dalliance includes flirtatious talk.

9464.Pornodidascalus is the Latin title named in Burton’s marginal citation, which attributes the Italian work to Aretino and gives its translator as Jasper Barth. The attribution and precise passage need bibliographical collation. The Vestals were Roman priestesses bound to chastity; the speaker adopts their appearance of virtue.

9466.Fetched over means deceived; players’ ends are scraps of theatrical dialogue. Coribantiasmi evokes Corybantic frenzy, Thrasonëan the boastful soldier Thraso. Rhadamantes and Bombomachides are retained as Burton’s mock-heroic names. Compare Lucian, Dialogues of Courtesans 13, where Leontichus boasts of military exploits; Burton prints Leontiscus.

9470.Incensed means inflamed. The first three titles are chivalric romances; Burton then turns to explicitly sexual writings and pictures. Suidas is the traditional name attached to the Byzantine lexicon now called the Suda. The reports about ancient erotic authors, Aretino’s pictures and the Aeneas Silvius quotation remain for detailed source collation.