The Anatomy of Melancholy

If anyone thinks what I say is a fable, let him read the story of two palm trees in Italy, the male growing at Brindisi and the female at Otranto. Giovanni Pontano relates it in an excellent poem; he was once tutor to the younger Alfonso, king of Naples, his secretary of state, and a great philosopher. The trees “were barren, and remained so for a long time,” until, growing taller, they came within sight of one another, although many stadia apart.

Pierio Valeriano, in his Hieroglyphics, and Melchior Guilandinus, in the third section of his treatise On Papyrus, cite Pontano’s story as true. See further Salmuth’s commentary on Panciroli’s New Discoveries, title 1, “On the New World”; Mizaldus’s Secrets, book 2; and Sandys’s Travels, book 2, page 103, and so forth.

If there is such frenzy in plants, what are we to think of sentient creatures? How much more violent and evident must it be in them!

Every race on earth, of humans and wild beasts, The creatures of the sea, the herds and brightly coloured birds, Rush into frenzy and fire: love is the same for all.

All kinds of creatures on the earth, And fishes in the sea, And brightly coloured birds rage alike: This love rules all equally.

This god subdues both the lands and the deep seas.

Common experience and our senses show us how violently animals are carried away by this passion, horses above all—

The frenzy of mares is extraordinary.

In Lucian, Cupid tells his mother Venus to be cheerful: he has now become familiar with lions, often climbs on their backs, holds them by the mane and rides them about like horses, while they fawn on him with their tails.

Bulls, bears and boars are so furious in this passion that they kill one another; especially cocks, lions and stags. The stags are so fierce that you can hear them fight half a mile away, says Turbervile. Often they kill each other or force their rivals to abandon the rut, so that they may remain masters in their place. “When one has driven his rival away, he raises his nose into the air and looks upwards as though thanking nature,” which affords him such great delight.

How birds are affected in this way appears in Aristotle: he maintains that they sing “in anticipation of mating,” from joy or hope of the sexual pleasure to come.

First the birds of the air proclaim you, goddess, And your arrival, their hearts struck by your power.

“Fish waste away for love and grow thin,” if we may accept Gomesius’s authority; some of them are sexually ravenous too. Pierre Gilles, in his History of Animals, book 10, tells wonders of a Triton in Epirus. There was a well near the shore where country girls fetched water. These Tritons would attack them “for the purpose of sexual violation,” carry them into the sea and drown them if they would not submit. So love tyrannizes over creatures without speech.