The Anatomy of Melancholy

“Such charm of voice won her renown,” says Petronius in his fragment of pure impurities—I mean his Satyricon; “so sweet a sound caressed the air that you would have thought a choir of Sirens was singing on the breeze.” She sang so sweetly that she enchanted the air, and you would have thought you were hearing a choir of Sirens. “Good God, how sweet it is when Lais speaks!” exclaims Philocolus in Aristaenetus. To hear a beautiful young gentlewoman play the virginals, lute or viol and sing to her own accompaniment—which, as Gellius observes in book 1, chapter 11, are “the delights of the wanton,” lovers’ chief pleasures—must be a great enticement. Parthenis was captivated in this way.

That voice draws my soul out through my eager ear.

“Oh, sister Harpedona,” she laments, “I am undone! How sweetly he sings! I will say something bold: he is the handsomest man I have ever seen in my life. Oh, how sweetly he sings! I am dying for him. If only he would love me in return!” If you merely heard her sing, says Lucian, you would forget your father and mother, abandon all your friends and follow her. The poet Theocritus highly praises Helen’s sweet voice and music: no one could play as well as she. And Daphnis, in the same idyll—

How sweet your mouth is, Daphnis, how lovely your voice! To hear you singing is more delightful than licking honey.

How sweet a face has Daphne, how lovely a voice! Even honey is less pleasant to my taste.

A sweet voice and music are powerful enticements. Those Samian singing girls, Aristonica, Oenanthe and Agathoclea, “trampled on royal diadems”—lorded it over kings themselves, as Plutarch maintains.

Argus had a head encircled by a hundred eyes.

Argus had a hundred eyes, all so enchanted by one simple pipe that he lost his head. In Tatius, Clitophon complains of Leucippe’s sweet music. He happened to hear her playing the lute and singing a pretty song in praise of a rose—out of old Anacreon, perhaps.

The rose is the glory and ornament of flowers, The rose is the gods’ flower and fragrance, The rose is the delight of humankind, The ornament of the Graces, In love’s flowering season, The rose is Dione’s kiss, and so on.

Rose, the fairest of all flowers, Rose, delight of heavenly powers, Rose, the joy of mortal men, Rose, the pleasure of fine women, Rose, the Graces’ ornament, Rose, Dione’s sweet delight.

To this effect the lovely young woman played and sang a melodious air on her harp or lute with its golden strings—I am not quite sure which. It transported him beyond himself and ravished his heart. It was Jason’s conversation as much as his beauty, or any other of his fine qualities, that so delighted Medea.

For her heart delighted equally In his beauty and his sweet words.

Above all her other attractions, it was Cleopatra’s sweet voice and pleasant conversation that captivated Antony.

Words bind a man as ropes bind bulls’ horns.