The Anatomy of Melancholy

(You would swear he was a Boeotian born in thick air.)

The people of Attica were exceptionally quick-witted, agreeable, and refined. Climate changes customs, manners, and minds less than it changes bodily constitutions and temperament itself, as Aristotle in Politics VI.4, Vegetius, Plato, and Bodin in Method of History, chapter 5, have demonstrated at length. In every province experience confirms it: as the air is, so are the inhabitants—dull, sluggish, witty, subtle, neat, clean, rustic, sick, or healthy.

In Périgord in France the air is fine and healthy, with scarcely any plague or contagious disease, though the land is hilly and barren; the people are healthy, nimble, and vigorous. But in parts of Guyenne, full of moors and marshes, the people are dull, sluggish, and subject to many infirmities. Who fails to see a great difference between Surrey, Sussex, and Romney Marsh, or between the Lincolnshire Wolds and the Fens?

Anyone who values his health, therefore, must change places often, if his means allow, choosing places that are wholesome, pleasant, and suitable. Nothing is better for this illness, and for health in general, than a change of air: moving from place to place like those Zamolhense Tartars who live in hordes and take advantage of times, places, and seasons.

The kings of Persia had summer and winter houses: at Sardis in winter, at Susa in summer; now at Persepolis, then at Pasargadae. Cyrus spent seven cold months at Babylon, three at Susa, and two at Ecbatana, Xenophon says, and so enjoyed a perpetual spring. The Great Turk stays sometimes at Constantinople, sometimes at Adrianople, and so forth. The kings of Spain have the Escorial in summer’s heat, Madrid as a healthy residence, Valladolid as a pleasant site, and so on: a variety of retreats, as all princes and great men have, with their several journeys between them for this purpose.

The Roman Lucullus had houses at Rome, Baiae, and elsewhere. When Gnaeus Pompeius, Marcus Cicero, and many noblemen visited him in summer, Plutarch says, Pompeius joked over supper that it was an elegant, pleasant villa, full of windows, galleries, and every service room suitable for a summer house, but, in his judgment, quite unsuitable for winter. Lucullus replied that the master of the house had the wit of a crane, which changes its country with the season: he had other houses furnished and built for that purpose, every bit as comfortable as this one.

So Cicero had his Tusculan villa and Pliny his Laurentine villa, and every gentleman of any standing in our day has something similar. In former times the bishop of Exeter had fourteen separate houses, all furnished. In Italy, although people stay in the cities in winter, as befits a gentleman, they spend the summer at their country houses, refreshing themselves.