The Anatomy of Melancholy

Galeatus of Mantua went a little further. When he was almost mad with love for a beautiful girl in the city, she told him in jest to leap into the River Po if he loved her—presumably to test what he would do for her sake. He immediately jumped headlong from the bridge and drowned. Another, at Ficinum, was similarly in love. When his mistress happened to tell him to go and hang himself—intending no harm, I dare swear—he hanged himself at her door the following night.

“Money,” says Xenophon, “is a very welcome and pleasing guest; yet I would rather give it to my dear Clinias than receive it from others. I would rather serve him than command others, be his drudge than take my ease, face any danger for his sake than live in safety. For I would rather see Clinias than all the rest of the world, and lose the sight of everything else rather than of him alone. I resent night and sleep because I cannot see him, and thank the daylight and sun because they show me my Clinias. I will run into the fire for his sake; and if you merely saw him, I know you too would run with me.”

So Philostratus writes to his mistress: “Command whatever you wish: I will do it. Tell me to go to sea: I am gone at once. To take so many lashes: I am ready. To run through fire and lay down my life and soul at your feet: it is done.” So Aeolus answered Juno:

Your task, O queen, is to determine what you wish; My duty is to carry out your commands.

O queen, your task is always to command me, And I am bound to carry out your will.

And Phaedra to Hippolytus:

Call me your sister, Hippolytus, or your servant— Your servant, rather: I will bear every kind of servitude.

Call me sister or servant, as you choose; Rather, your servant: I am yours to use.

If you command me to go through deep snow, I would not shrink from climbing the frozen ridges of Pindus, Nor hesitate to pass through fire or hostile ranks, Ready to offer my breast to their swords. It is for you then to command, and for me to obey.

I shall not mind climbing straightaway To snowy hills or frozen Pindus’s peaks, Or running through fire or through an army. Only say the word, for I am always yours.

Callicratidas in Lucian bursts into this passionate speech: “O God of heaven, grant me this life for ever: to sit opposite my mistress and hear her sweet voice, to go in and out with her, to share every other occupation with her. I would work when she works and sail when she sails. Whoever hates her should hate me. If a tyrant kills her, he should kill me. If she dies, I would not live; one grave should hold us both.”

Dying, she will end my love, as I too die.

Abrocomus in Aristaenetus makes the same petition for his Delphia:

I would love to live with you, and gladly die with you.

It is the same refrain Theagenes used to his Chariclea: “If only I may enjoy your love, let me die at once.” So too Leander, for his Hero, when he begged the sea’s waves to let him reach his beloved undisturbed and kill him on the return journey: