The Anatomy of Melancholy

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.