The Anatomy of Melancholy

A radiance like fire followed them all; Such brilliance shone from their golden borders, And kindled sweet desire in his eyes.

A lustre followed them like flaming fire; Such beams came from their golden borders That they stirred sweet desire in his eyes.

We have a similar account in Plutarch: queens came and offered themselves to Antony with various gifts and enticing ornaments. Such Asiatic attractions, such extraordinary joy and festivity, so beguiled the Romans that no one could restrain himself; everything became delight and pleasure. The women took on the shapes of Bacchus, the boys those of satyrs and Pans. Antony himself was utterly besotted with Cleopatra’s sweet words, love-charms, beauty and pleasing dress. When she sailed along the river Cydnus with incredible pomp in a gilded ship, dressed as Venus, her maids as the Graces and her pages as so many Cupids, Antony was amazed and carried beyond himself.

Heliodorus, in book 1, introduces Demaenete, Cnemon’s stepmother, driven quite mad with love for him when she saw him in his scarves, rings, robes and garland. It was Judith’s slippers that ravished Holofernes’s eyes. Cardan is not ashamed to confess that the first time he saw his wife, dressed all in white, he admired her and immediately fell in love. If these outward ornaments had no such power, why does Naomi advise Ruth how to please Boaz? And Judith, seeking to captivate Holofernes, washed and anointed herself with sweet ointments, dressed her hair and put on costly clothes.

Extravagance of this kind has been excessive in former times: almost no man went out without curled hair and perfume,

And Crispinus sweating with morning perfume— As much as two funerals together scarcely give off.

One spent as much as two funerals at once, and wore perfumed hair: “their grey locks scented with roses and Assyrian nard.” What extraordinary things Suetonius relates about Caligula’s extravagance in this matter! And Pliny, in books 12 and 13. Read further in Dioscorides, Ulmus, Arnoldus and Rondelet, On Cosmetics and Adornment; for it is now a craft, as it was in antiquity: “there are workshops where perfumes are concocted,” as Seneca records.

Women are bad and men worse; there is no difference at all between their times and ours. “Good conduct,” as Seneca complains, “is extinguished by wantonness. In decking themselves out, men surpass women; they wear prostitutes’ colours, and do not walk, but strut and dance.” Masculine woman, feminine man: more like actors, butterflies, baboons, apes and grotesques than men.

Moreover, our clothes are so ridiculous and so excessively costly that, as Jerome said long ago, “A single thread contains the price of country estates; a million sesterces are woven into one strand.” It is an ordinary thing to put a thousand oaks and a hundred oxen into a suit of clothes, to wear a whole manor on one’s back. With shoe-ribbons, sword-belts, fastening laces, caps and feathers, scarves, collars, cuffs, and so on, entire inheritances are soon consumed.