The Anatomy of Melancholy

God and men, heaven and earth combine to honour him. Everyone pities him more than others if he is in need, and the whole world is willing to help him. Chariclea fell into the hands of pirates, but when all the others were put to the sword, she alone was spared for her beauty. When Constantinople was sacked by the Turk, Irene escaped, and so far from being made a captive, she captivated the Grand Signor himself.

So Rosamond triumphed over King Henry II.

—— I was so fair a sight: The man whom fortune made my king, my love made subject. He learned through experience the privilege of beauty: It had the power to override all duty.

It takes even the gods themselves captive, those more exacting divinities:

—— The very god of gods, For beauty’s sake, became bull, horse, shower and swan.

And those evil spirits are captivated by it, as I have already shown. “Barbarians revere a beautiful woman, and at a beautiful sight a savage spirit grows gentle” (Heliodorus, book 5). Barbarians stand in awe of a beautiful woman, and a fierce spirit is calmed by a lovely face.

For when Troy had fallen and the wars were over, as Clement of Alexandria quotes from Euripides, angry Menelaus, armed with rage and fury, came with his sword drawn to kill Helen with his own hands, since she had been the sole cause of all those wars and miseries. But when he saw her beautiful face, astonished by her divine beauty, he let his weapon fall and even embraced her: he could not bring himself to strike so lovely a creature.

“Thus swords are blunted by beauty”: the edge of a sharp sword, as the saying goes, is dulled by a beautiful face, and severity itself is overcome. When the orator Hyperides’ client Phryne was accused at Athens of lewd behaviour, he used no other defence of her case: he tore her upper garment and exposed her bare breast to the judges. Her bodily beauty and lovely bearing so moved and astonished them that they immediately acquitted her and let her go.

O noble piece of justice, my author exclaims! Who would not rather lose his seat and robes, forfeit his office, than pass sentence against the majesty of beauty? Beautiful people enjoy such privileges, and they alone are free from danger. Parthenopaeus was so lovely and handsome that, when he fought in the Theban wars, if his face happened to be uncovered, no enemy would attempt to strike or hurt him. Such immunity beauty enjoys.

Even beasts are moved by it. Sinalda was a woman of such outstanding beauty, and a queen, that when she was condemned to be trampled by wild horses, “the wild beasts stood admiring her beauty and would not hurt her” (Saxo Grammaticus, History of the Danes, book 8).

Why did that royal maiden in Apuleius, when she fled from the thieves’ den in a wilderness, address the ass on which she rode in this way—for how could she know he was anything but an ass? “If you restore me to my parents and my handsome bridegroom, what thanks shall I give you, what honours shall I pay you, what food shall I offer you?”