The Anatomy of Melancholy

This, probably, is why our Venetian ladies nowadays so often imitate blond hair, why great ladies crimp and curl it—“waving locks for beauty, twisted into so many coils to take captives”—and adorn their heads with spangles, pearls and artificial flowers, and why all courtiers cultivate an attractive appearance in this respect. In a word, hair is Cupid’s net, to catch everyone who comes near: a thicket where Cupid builds his nest, and in whose shade all lovers amuse themselves in a thousand different ways.

A small, soft hand, a pretty little mouth, slender, delicate, long fingers,

“What grace in those fingers!”——this is what Apollo admired in Daphne: “——he praises her fingers and hands.”

An upright, slender body, a small foot and a well-proportioned leg have an exquisite beauty: “on which the whole body rests, as a house upon its foundation.” Clearchus assured his friend Amyander in Aristaenetus that the most attractive part of his mistress, which first made him like her and fall in love, was her pretty leg and foot. Soft, white skin and so on have their particular charms: “A cloud is no softer than her skin. By Pollux, what a lovely little breast!”

In men, however, these parts are less admired. Sometimes a fierce Saracen,

——Pyracmon, bare-limbed,

a martial, hairy face pleases best. A dark man is a pearl in a fair woman’s eye, and as welcome as lame Vulcan was to Venus. Though he was a sweaty, sooty blacksmith, she loved him dearly, while handsome Apollo and nimble Mercury were rejected, and the rest of the sweet-faced gods abandoned.

Many women, as Petronius observes, “are inflamed by dirt”—just as many men are more stirred by kitchen girls and a poor market girl than by all these splendid ladies of court and city. They will fall in love sooner with a slave, a servant, a mud-plasterer, a Brontes, a cook or an actor, if they see his bare legs or arms, “his muscular arms,” and so on, like the hunter Meleager in Philostratus—even if he is dressed in rags, filthy and dirty, smeared like a red-ochre worker, a gypsy or a chimney-sweep—than with a noble gentleman, a Nireus, a Hephaestion, an Alcibiades, or those embroidered courtiers covered in silk and gold.

Justine’s wife, the wife of a citizen of Rome, fell in love with Pylades, an actor, and would have gone mad for him if Galen himself had not happened to help her. The empress Faustina was infatuated with a gladiator.

Not one person in a thousand falls in love without finding some particular part more pleasing and more inflaming than all the rest. Once a group of young philosophers quarrelled over which part of a woman was most desirable and pleasing. Some said the forehead, some the teeth, some the eyes, cheeks, lips, neck, chin, and so on. They referred the dispute to Lais of Corinth for a decision; but she smiled and said they were a pack of fools. For suppose they had her where they wanted her: what would they reach for first?

Nevertheless, I readily grant—and “none of you, I think, will deny”—that every part is attractive, but especially the eyes:

——“he sees eyes flashing with fire, Like stars”——