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In Lucian’s Dialogues of the Gods, volume 3, dialogue 3, Juno complains to Jupiter about Ixion: he gazed at her intently and sometimes sighed and wept in her company. “When I happened to drink and handed the cup to Ganymede, he would always ask to drink from the very cup I had used, at the same place where I had drunk. He would kiss the cup, then gaze steadily at me, sometimes sighing, then smiling again.”
If they cannot get close enough to caress one another, lacking the opportunity, intimacy or acquaintance to converse, their eyes will still reveal them when they are together. “Where love is, there the eye is,” as the common saying goes: where I look, I like; where I like, I love. They will lose themselves in her gaze.
Casting their eyes upon one another’s faces, They silently asked where our love might be.
They cannot take their eyes off the person they love: they would “make her pregnant with their very eyes,” deflower her with their gaze. They are always gazing, staring, stealing looks, smiling and glancing at her, as Apollo at Leucothoe, or the Moon at her Endymion, when she stood still in Caria and had her chariot halted at Latmos. They must stand and admire; if she passes, they watch her for as long as she remains in sight. She is “the charioteer of the soul,” as Anacreon calls her. They cannot pass her door or window without her drawing their eyes to it like a magnet. Even when she is absent, they must glance that way and look back.
Aristaenetus says as much of Exithemus, Lucian of himself in his Portraits, and Achilles Tatius of Clitophon: “He never took his eyes off Leucippe.” Many lovers confess that in their mistress’s presence they could not turn their eyes away, but looked at her intently and steadily, “with an unblinking gaze,” so eagerly and greedily that they seemed to want to see right through her, or as though they could never have enough of seeing her.
Burning with passion, she remains fixed in her gaze.
She will do the same to him: drink to him with her eyes—indeed, drink him up, devour him, swallow him, as Martial’s Mamurra is said to have done:
He inspected the delicate boys and ate them with his eyes.
There is an amusing story of this in Varthema’s Travels, book 3, chapter 5. Because Varthema was handsome and fair-skinned, the wife of the sultan of Sana in Arabia could not take her eyes off him, from sunrise to sunset. She could not stop. One day she had him come into her room: “For two hours she gazed at me, never turning her eyes away, regarding me as a kind of Cupid.” For two hours she kept gazing at him.
A young man in Lucian fell in love with an image of Venus. Every morning he came to her temple and stayed there all day, from sunrise to sunset, reluctant to go home at night. Sitting opposite the goddess’s image, he continually gazed at her, muttering I know not what to himself.
If they cannot see the people they love, they will keep walking and waiting about their mistresses’ doors, taking every opportunity to see them. In Longus the sophist, the two lovers Daphnis and Chloe were always hovering at each other’s gates. He sought every chance to be with her: hunting in summer and catching birds in the frost around her father’s house in winter, so that she could see him and he her.
“A king’s palace was not so closely attended,” says Aretino’s Lucretia, “as my house when I lived in Rome. The porch and street were always full of people walking or riding there expressly to see me. As they passed, their eyes remained on my window. They could not help looking back at my house after they had gone by, and would sometimes clear their throats or cough, or seize some irrelevant occasion to speak loudly, so that I might look out and notice them.”
It is the same elsewhere; it is common to every lover. All his happiness lies in being with her and talking to her. He is never at ease except in her company, and will walk seven or eight times a day through the street where she lives, inventing pointless errands to see her, always planning where, when and how to visit her:
And soft whispers at nightfall Are sought again at the appointed hour.
Once he has left, every minute seems an hour, every hour as long as a day, ten days a whole year, until he sees her again.
If you count the time—and we lovers count it well.
If you are in love, you will say so too. “And a long farewell, beautiful one”; farewell, sweetheart; “farewell, dearest Argenis.” Farewell, my dear Argenis; once more farewell, farewell. Although they have arranged to meet again very soon, perhaps tomorrow, he is reluctant to leave. He says goodbye again and again, then comes back, looks after her, waves his hand, waves his hat from far away. Once gone, he finds the wait until he sees her again too long, and she feels the same about him. Surely the clocks have been put back; the appointed hour is past:
Demophoon, I, your hostess Phyllis of Rhodope, Complain that you are absent beyond the promised time.
She keeps looking out of the window to see whether he is coming. Phyllis is said to have gone to the shore nine times that day to see whether her Demophoon was approaching; and Troilus went to the city gates to look for his Cressida. She is uneasy and sick until she sees him again: meanwhile irritable, dissatisfied, dejected and sad. Why does he not come? Where is he? Why does he break his promise? Why does he take so long? Surely he is unwell; surely some accident has befallen him; surely he has forgotten himself and me—and countless other such thoughts.
Then she grows confident again: up she gets, out she looks, listening and asking, straining her ears and searching the distance. Surely every far-off man is he; every movement in the street means he is there. That is he! “She curses the dawn, curses the sun, and swears.” It is the longest day there ever was. So she raves, restless and impatient, for “love allows no delays”: love will not wait. Time spent with her passes quickly; the miles are short, the road pleasant. All weather is good while he travels to her house. Heat or cold—even if his teeth chatter—does not trouble him. Wet or dry, it is all the same; soaked to the skin, he does not feel it, or at least does not care. He readily endures it and much more, because he does it gladly for his sweet mistress’s sake. However heavy the burden, love makes it light.