The Anatomy of Melancholy

At Abdera in Thrace, when Euripides’ tragedy Andromeda was performed, the spectators were so moved by the spectacle and Perseus’s impassioned speeches of love—especially “O Cupid, prince of gods and men”—that for a good while afterwards almost everyone spoke in pure iambics, continually raving over Perseus’s speech, “O Cupid, prince of gods and men.” Just as carters, boys and apprentices here keep singing a new tune in the streets when a song is published, they continually acted Perseus’s tragic part. In every mouth it was “O Cupid”; in every street, “O Cupid”; in almost every house, “O Cupid, prince of gods and men,” always declaiming like actors, “O Cupid.” They were all so possessed by this rapture and the thought of that impassioned love speech that for a long time they could neither forget it nor drive it from their minds: “O Cupid, prince of gods and men” was always on their lips. Perhaps this made Aristotle, in Politics, book 7, chapter 18, forbid young men to see comedies or hear amorous tales.

Let dissolute young men and yielding girls Look upon these things, then—

Let young people have nothing whatever to do with such matters. And this made the Romans, as Vitruvius relates, put Venus’s temple in the suburbs, “outside the wall, so that young people should not grow accustomed to sexual pleasures,” avoiding every occasion and provoking sight. For what will such a sight not do? Ismenius, walking in Sosthenes’s garden when he was already in love, was almost beside himself at the sight of so many lascivious pictures—the marriage of Thetis, and I know not what else. In truth, who is unmoved by a lascivious sight, by seeing others dally, kiss or dance? And much more so when he becomes an actor himself.

To kiss and be kissed is, among other lascivious provocations, like the refrain of a song, a most powerful assault, as infectious, Xenophon thinks, as a spider’s venom: a great enticement, a fire in itself, “a prelude or appetizer,” the prologue to burning lust—or, as Apuleius adds, lust itself.

Venus has steeped it in a fifth part of her nectar.

A powerful assault, conquering captains and the forces that command all others: “You subdue with the sword, but are subdued by a kiss.” When Aretino’s Lucretia wished to overcome a suitor by affection and obtain what she wanted from him, she put her arms around his neck and kissed him again and again. What she could not otherwise achieve, she thus made him grant promptly and willingly. And it is a continual assault: “it does not fail, but is always beginning,” always fresh and ready to begin as at first; “a kiss reaches no final ending, but is always new,” and it has a fiery touch.

Only try to touch the body: At once your limbs will melt with honeyed heat.

Especially when the kisses are given lasciviously, as he said from experience: “and Fotis kissed me close, with her arms intertwined”; “with her lip twisted awry”; “with open-mouthed kisses”—