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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

Reading language

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

It was Lucretia’s advice in Aretino: “If you wish to enjoy your mistress, promise, invent, swear, forswear yourself, boast, pretend and lie.” And they put it thoroughly into practice, as Apollo did with Daphne:

The land of Delphi serves me, And Claros, Tenedos and the palace of Patara; Jupiter is my father.

Delphi, Claros and Tenedos serve me, And Jupiter is known to be my father.

The poorest country lads will do as much:

I too have a flock of a thousand snow-white lambs in the valleys.

I have a thousand sheep, a good stock of cattle, and they are all at her command:

I, my household goods, And my lands will be at your service.

House, land and goods are at her service, as he is himself. Dinomachus, a senator’s son in Lucian, was in love with a girl beneath him in birth and fortune. To achieve his desire more quickly, he wept before her and swore that he loved her with all his heart, and her alone; and that as soon as his father died—a very rich man, almost decrepit—he would make her his wife.

The girl happened to tell her mother about it. An old fox, well versed in such matters, her mother told her daughter, who was now ready to yield to his desire, that he had no such intention. “Do you think he will ever care for you, a poor girl, when he can choose from all the beauties in the city: someone nobly born, with so many talents for her dowry, as young as you, better accomplished and more beautiful? Daughter, do not believe him.” The girl was disconcerted, and so the affair came to an end.

When Jupiter first courted Juno—as Lilius Giraldus relates from an old commentary on Theocritus—he turned himself into a cuckoo to advance his suit. Seeing her one day walking alone, apart from the other goddesses, he suddenly raised a storm, which frightened her into seeking shelter. Jupiter too flew into her lap to escape the storm: “he flew down into the maiden Juno’s lap.” Out of pity, Juno covered him with her apron.

But he immediately resumed his own shape, began to embrace her and attempted to force himself on her. “But she refused, for fear of her mother”: she would not yield at all, “until he gained his end by promising marriage.” He vowed and swore to marry her, and then she consented. This happened on Mount Thorax, afterwards always called Cuckoo Hill; and a temple to Juno Telia was erected there to commemorate it for ever. Such is the power of fair promises, vows, oaths and protestations.

In these circumstances it is also common to lie about one’s age, as widows usually do when they mean to marry again, and sometimes bachelors too:

Whose age has trembled to behold Its eighth five-year span.

They say they are younger than they are. Charmides, in the same Lucian, loved Philematium, an unmarried woman of forty-five; she swore to him that she would be only thirty-two next December. But such deception is common on all sides, and often succeeds.

To deceive a trusting girl is a laborious business.

It is soon done, no great feat:

Splendid praise indeed, and rich spoils!

Nothing is more common than lying about their wealth to further their courtship and improve their standing. To take in a young woman, a widow, or whoever they love, many men will not hesitate to boast, fabricate and invent whatever comes to mind: telling the servant boy to fetch his cloak, rapier, gloves, jewels and so on from such-and-such a chest, his scarlet breeches of cloth of gold, and so forth, when none of these things exists.

Nor will they scruple to announce, like the fellow in Petronius, that they own a ship and keep so many servants. To play their part better, they pretend to be gentlemen of good families, well born and well connected; hire clothes from secondhand dealers and some street cleaner or louse-stabbing tailors to attend them for the occasion; swear they have great estates; bribe, lie, cheat and pass off their stories of how dearly they love her and how magnificently they will keep her, like any lady, countess, duchess or queen. She shall have gowns, headdresses, jewels, coaches and carriages, and the finest food:

The heads of parrots, tongues of nightingales, The brains of peacocks and of ostriches; Their bath shall be the juice of gillyflowers, Essence of roses and of violets, The milk of unicorns, and so on.

So old Volpone courted Celia in the comedy. In reality these men are nothing of the sort, not worth a groat, merely swindlers seeking a fortune or the fulfilment of their desires. Or they pretend to be in love to fill their idle hours, make themselves more welcome and secure better hospitality. The upshot is that they have no intention of keeping their promises:

They fear no oath, take no care over what they promise; But once the lust of their eager mind is satisfied, They fear nothing for their words and care nothing for perjury.

Oaths, vows and promises are loudly declared; But once their mind and lust are satisfied, Oaths, vows and promises are quite forgotten.

Though he solemnly swears by Caesar’s guardian spirit, by Venus’s shrine, by Hymen’s divinity, by Jupiter and all the other gods, put no trust in his words. For when lovers swear, Venus laughs: “Venus laughs at these false oaths.” Jupiter himself smiles and pardons them too, as the solemn Plato declares: of all perjury, only that committed in matters of love is forgiven by the gods.

9615.Lucretia belongs to the sexually satirical dialogue tradition Burton cites under Aretino, mediated elsewhere in his notes by Latin versions. This is advice spoken by a literary character. The exact Italian and Latin locations of the several Lucretia passages in this block remain to be collated.

9617.Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.515–517. Apollo boasts of his places of worship and divine parentage while pursuing Daphne. Burton’s English couplet omits Patara; both the Latin quotation and his shorter English version are retained and modernized separately.

9620.The body prints pecus, which is awkward beside the plural lambs; the translation supplies the sense of a flock. The Erasmus marginal line closely resembles Virgil, Eclogue 2.21, where the lambs are feminine agnae and the possessive is meae. The following body line also recalls the pastoral boast, but has not been established here as a verbatim Virgil quotation. Both separate marginal attributions are preserved.

9622.Lecheus is Burton’s sole attribution. The precise authorial form and location await collation. Supellex means household goods or furnishings; rura, country lands.

9624.Lucian, Dialogues of Courtesans 7, supplies the promise of marriage after a father’s death and the mother’s warning about a wealthy bride. In the Fowler translation the lover is Chaereas, son of Laches the Areopagite and Dinomache; Burton calls him Dinomachus. Musarium still defends him at the end: the dialogue does not say that she abandons the affair. Burton’s names and ending are retained; his Latin intermediary remains uncollated.

9626.Talents are ancient units of money, here a dowry, not personal abilities. Better qualified refers to accomplishments or other advantages. Meant nothing less means that he had no intention of doing what he promised; abasht, disconcerted or put out.

9628.Lilius Giraldus is Lilio Gregorio Giraldi. Burton expressly gives the story at second hand from a commentary on Theocritus. The apron is clarified by his own note as an outer garment. The precise commentary passage and the form Telia remain to be collated.

9629.Offer violence means attempt sexual force. The Latin explicitly gives fear of her mother as Juno’s reason for refusing, a detail absent from Burton’s ensuing English paraphrase. Both statements are retained. Fact here means deed or occurrence.

9631.Horace, Odes 2.4.23–24, has claudere lustrum, to complete a five-year period, where Burton prints cernere, to see it. The eighth lustrum points to forty years. Horace speaks of his own age; Burton transfers the lines to people misrepresenting theirs.

9633.Lucian, Dialogues of Courtesans 11: Charmides and Tryphaena discuss Philematium. The consulted text gives her claim as twenty-two on her next birthday, against an alleged actual age of forty-five. Burton’s thirty-two and next December, supported by his Latin margin, are retained.

9635.The 1651 text prints res est operosa, “is a laborious business,” but Burton’s immediate English says the opposite. Ovid, Heroides 2.63–64, reads non est operosa … gloria: deceiving a trusting girl is no difficult glory. The original column preserves Burton’s printed words; their literal translation is followed by his contradictory English gloss.

9636.Virgil, Aeneid 4.93: Juno sarcastically congratulates Venus on overcoming one woman, Dido. The fragment is similarly ironic here.

9637.Fetch over means trick or take in; crack, boast; estate, wealth or property. Tissue is a rich fabric woven with gold or silver thread. Burton shifts loosely between singular and plural in the feigned instructions to a servant.

9639.Pricklouse derides a tailor’s needle as piercing lice. Cog and foist mean cheat and pass off falsehoods; tiers are headdresses, caroches large carriages. Compare Petronius, Satyricon 117: Eumolpus and his companions stage a wealthy master and servants to exploit legacy-hunters at Croton, inventing African estates and losses in a shipwreck. This is a close parallel for pretended wealth, not a verified match for Burton’s shipowner detail. The gifts line is Tibullus 1.5.60, despite Catullus in the margin.

9640.Ben Jonson, Volpone, act 3, in the scene with Celia. Burton combines portions of the speech, changes the pronouns and omits intervening lines; scene divisions differ from his citation. Gillyflowers are fragrant cultivated flowers, especially carnations or pinks. The extravagant unicorn milk is part of the fictional seducer’s promised luxury.

9643.Catullus 64.146–148, from Ariadne’s lament. The checked Latin reads parcunt, “they refrain,” rather than Burton’s curant, “they care,” in the first line, and has other minor verbal differences. The translation follows Burton’s wording and context: they take no care over the promises they make. His separate English triplet follows.

9646.Genius is a guardian spirit; Hymen is the marriage god. The lovers’ exemption from ordinary oaths appears in Plato’s Symposium 183b, in Pausanias’s account, rather than the Philebus named in Burton’s margin. The Jupiter couplet is in the Tibullan collection, 3.6.49–50; Burton’s “lib. 3. & 6.” is retained as printed.