The Anatomy of Melancholy

The comic poet neatly depicts this state, among others, in a dialogue between Micio and Aeschinus, a kindly father and a lovesick son. Micio: “Take heart, my son; you shall marry her.” Aeschinus: “Ah, father, are you mocking me now?” Micio: “Mocking you? Why?” Aeschinus: “The more earnestly I desire it, the more I doubt and fear it.” Micio: “Go home and send for her to be your wife.” Aeschinus: “What, a wife now, father? Now?”

These doubts, anxieties and suspicions are the least of their torments. They often pass from feelings to actions: speaking pleasantly and flattering, now completely compliant and willing, then resistant, arguing, fighting, swearing, quarrelling, laughing and weeping. Lucian holds that anyone who does not act like this by turns has not been thoroughly touched by love’s lodestone. Their actions and emotions are thus mixed together, but sorrow takes the greatest share. To many, love is bitterness itself. Plato calls it “a bitter thing”: a bitter potion, an agony, a plague.

Tear this plague, this ruin, away from me; Creeping like numbness into the depths of my limbs, It has driven every joy from my heart.

Oh, take this plague, this affliction from me, Which, like numbness throughout my body, Drives out my joys and weighs down my soul.

Phaedria felt this keenly when he cried:

O Thais, if only I had An equal share of love with you, and it could come about That this hurt you just as it hurts me.

O Thais, I wish you shared some of these pains of mine, Or that it made you suffer as it makes me suffer now.

So did that young man when he roared with distress:

I am tossed, tortured, driven, goaded, Wretchedly turned upon love’s wheel, Drained of life, swept away, pulled apart and torn down; Where I am, I am not; where I am not, there is my mind.

I am troubled, tossed and tortured on love’s wheel; Where I am not, I am; where I am, I have no feeling.

In Lucian, the Moon lamented to Venus that she was almost dying of love: “I am indeed perishing from love.” After a long tale she broke off abruptly and wept: “O Venus, you know my poor heart.” In Lucian, Charmides was so distraught that he sobbed and sighed, tore his hair and said he would hang himself. “I am undone, O sister Tryphaena; I cannot endure these pangs of love. What shall I do?” “O gods who avert evil, release me from these cares”: out of the anguish of his soul Theocles prays, “O gods, free me from these cares and miseries.”

Shall I say that most of a lover’s life is full of agony, anxiety, fear and grief, complaints, sighs, suspicions and cares—“Heigh-ho, my heart is woe”—full of silence and painful solitude?

Discontented, he frequents the shady bowers And pours his fruitless cries into the air.

Except when he has “lucid intervals,” pleasant breezes or sudden changes: when his mistress smiles on him, gives him a kindly look or a kiss, or some encouraging message arrives saying that his courtship is accepted, and so forth.