If promises, lies, oaths and protestations do not work, they turn to bribes, tokens, gifts and similar devices. “Much love is won by gold.” As Jupiter seduced Danae with a shower of gold, and Liber won Ariadne with a beautiful crown—which was afterwards raised into the heavens, where it shines for ever—so they will shower sequins, florins, crowns, angels, coins of every kind and stamp, into her lap.

And this, certainly, is what a man must do if he means to succeed: give many feasts and banquets, issue invitations, send her some present or other at every turn. “Let feasts be prepared with the greatest care,” says Haedus, “and gifts be frequent.” He must be most generous and liberal, paying court not only to her but to all her attendants, friends, intimates, fiddlers, panders, hangers-on and household servants. He must ingratiate himself—and certainly will—with everyone of every sort: messengers, porters and carriers. Nobody must go unrewarded or unacknowledged.

“I had a suitor,” says Aretino’s Lucretia, “who used to fling gold and silver about my house as if it were chaff. Another suitor of mine was a very hot-tempered fellow; but I managed him so well that, for all his blustering, I brought him to his knees. If there was a fine morsel in the market, any novelty, fish, fruit or fowl, muscatel or malmsey, or a cup of unmixed wine anywhere in the city, it was brought to me at once. However expensive or difficult to obtain, I had it. In the end the poor fellow was so infatuated that I believe I could have had one of his eyes out of his head if I had wanted it.”

“A third suitor was a Roman merchant, who courted me with exquisite music, costly banquets, poems and so on. I held him off until at last he protested, promised and swore ‘that he would give me a kingdom for my virginity’: I should have everything he owned, house, goods and lands, ‘merely for sleeping with him.’ No conjurer, I think, ever used such concentration or powerful words to charm his spirits as this man used exquisite phrases; nor did any general employ as many stratagems to capture a city as he used tricks and devices to win my love.”

Thus men both act upon others and are acted upon; and women are not far behind them in this respect: “A woman who loves or hates will dare anything.”

For no man can swear and lie Half as boldly as women can.

They will boast, counterfeit and flatter as well as anyone, with handkerchiefs, embroidered nightcaps, purses, posies and such trinkets, as the poet justly complained:

Why send me violets? Surely to make me burn more violently; Why, violent woman, do you violate me with your violets? And so on.

Why send me violets, my dear? To make me burn more fiercely, I fear; With violets you are too violent, Violating and wounding my tender heart.

When nothing else will do, their last resort is tears. “I wrote these words mingled with tears and sighs—I call Love to witness”: “Amid tears and sighs I write this, taking Love as my witness,” says Chelidonia to Philonius. “Eyes that just now were lightning bolts are now rivers of tears”: those blazing torches have now turned into floods of tears.

When her sweetheart came to town, Aretino’s Lucretia “wept on his breast, so that he would believe her tears were shed for joy at his return.” Quartilla in Petronius, when nothing else would move him, began to weep. As Baldassare Castiglione describes them: “To these crocodile tears they add sobs, burning sighs, a sorrowful expression, pallor and wasting. If you so much as venture outside, these fiends are ready to meet you at every turn, so slovenly and neglected in their dress, so downcast in their looks, as though they were about to die for your sake. How,” he asks, “is a young novice, beset like this, to escape?” But do not believe them.

Do not entrust your life to girls, For the waves are safer than a woman’s faith.

Perhaps her vows, tears, smiles and protestations make you think she is yours alone, that you possess her heart, hand and affection, when in fact nothing of the sort is true. As the Spanish Bawd said, “She delights in having one man in bed, another at the door, a third sighing at home”: one sweetheart in bed, another at the gate, a third sighing at home, a fourth, and so on. Every young man she sees and likes has as much of a claim, and will enjoy her as readily as you.

On the other hand, as I have said, men are just as false, for all their swearing, protesting and lying:

What they tell you, they have told a thousand girls.

Some of them love all those eleven thousand virgins at once, making each one believe he is besotted with her; or they love one until they see another, and then her alone, like Milo’s wife in Apuleius, book 2: “If she catches sight of a handsome young man, his beauty captivates her, and she turns her passion upon him.”

This is their usual form of courtship in such cases; they do not care what they swear, say or do. At one moment they slight the women, take no interest in them, abuse them outright and mock them; at the next, they will go mad, hang themselves, stab and kill if they cannot have them. Henceforth, therefore,

Let no woman trust a man who swears.

Let young women not believe them. These tricks and feigned passions are more common among women: “This day will end either my sorrow or my life; have pity on one who loves you,” said Phaedra to Hippolytus.

Joessa in Lucian told a young man, Pythius, to move him more deeply, that if he would not have her she was determined to kill herself. “There is a Nemesis, and you cannot help feeling grief and distress when you hear that I have hanged or drowned myself for your sake.”