The Anatomy of Melancholy

Many will condemn men so infatuated as fools; others, however, praise them for it. Many reject the judgment of Paris, yet Lucian approves of it, admiring Paris for his choice: he would have done the same himself, and rightly, in his opinion. Beauty should be preferred to wealth or wisdom.

Athenaeus, in The Learned Banqueters, book 13, chapter 7, considers it no such disgrace for the Trojans and Greeks to fight for ten years, to expend so much effort and lose so many men’s lives for Helen’s sake—for the sake of so beautiful a lady:

For such a wife, whose surpassing beauty Has nothing mortal about it.

That one woman was worth a kingdom, a hundred thousand other women, a whole world. Well might Sterpsichores go blind for finding fault with so beautiful a creature: it was a just punishment.

Homer gives the same testimony about the old men of Troy, who watched the single combat between Paris and Menelaus at the Scaean Gate. When Helen stood before them, they all said the war was worth undertaking and prolonging for her sake. The very gods themselves, as Homer and Isocrates record, fought more for Helen than they did against the Giants.

When Venus lost her son Cupid, she had Mercury proclaim that whoever brought news of him would receive seven kisses: a noble reward, some say, and much better than as many talents of gold. To many men, seven such kisses would be worth more than seven cities or as many provinces. One such kiss alone would restore a man even if he were dying:

Thus a little kiss will bring you back from the valley of Styx, and so on.

Alexander the Great married Roxane, a poor man’s daughter, solely for her beauty. Well done, Alexander—and heroically done! I admire him for it. Orlando went mad for Angelica: who does not pity his misfortune? Thisbe died for Pyramus, Dido for Aeneas. Who does not weep in pity at her plight, as Augustine did before his conversion? She died for him; “I think,” as he said, “I could die for her!”

But this is not the matter before us: what privileges beauty has, what power and sovereignty it exercises, and how far people who so admire and dote upon it may be justified. No one doubts these things. The question is how, and by what means, beauty produces this effect.

Through sight. The eye betrays the soul and is both active and passive in this business: it wounds and is wounded; it is a principal cause and instrument, both in the person looking and in the person seen. Like tears, it begins in the eyes and descends to the breast; as I have said, it carries these beautiful rays to the heart. “As soon as I saw, I was lost.” “Mars sees her, and, having seen her, desires her.”