The Anatomy of Melancholy

She used many other tricks besides this, as she confesses there: she would deliberately quarrel with him and make him angry, picking fights without any cause because she wished to be reconciled again. “Lovers’ quarrels renew love,” as the old saying has it: falling out renews their love. And, as Aristaenetus says, “Love’s delights are sweeter after wrongs”: injuries increase love, just as sunshine is more welcome after a cloud.

And surely this maxim is very true; for, as Ampelis tells Chrysis in the same Lucian, “If a lover is not jealous, angry, irritable, prone to quarrel, sigh and swear, he is no true lover.”

Kissing and fondling, hanging about her neck, protesting, swearing and invoking wishes are only ordinary symptoms, “signs of love still beginning and growing.” But if he is jealous, angry, ready to take offence, and so on, “you may hope for the best”: sweet sister, he is yours. Yet if you leave him untroubled, indulge him and please him, and he once sees that he has you securely, without any rival, his love will fade and he will care less for you.

“So far,” he says, “I can speak from experience. A rich fellow, Demophantus, was a suitor of mine. I appeared to neglect him and treated Calliades the painter more favourably before his eyes. ‘At first he went away, assailing me with words’: he left in a rage, cursing and swearing. But eventually he came back in submission, vowing and protesting that he loved me most dearly, that I should have everything he owned, and that he would kill himself for my sake. Therefore I advise you, dear sister Chrysis, and all young women, not to treat your suitors too kindly: ‘they grow insolent when they realize this’; it will make them proud and insolent.”

“Instead, reject them now and then; keep your distance. ‘If you will listen to me, shut him out once and again’: close your door to him once or twice; let him wait on you. Follow my advice, and you will make him frantic, bring him to pay handsomely, accept any terms, and do whatever you want.”

These are the usual practices; yet Melissa, in the same Lucian, seems to me to have devised a trick beyond them all. When her suitor grew lukewarm, she wrote her own name and that of one of his rivals on a piece of paper—“Melissa loves Hermotimus; Hermotimus loves Melissa”—and had it fastened to a post for everyone to see, and left it on the path where he used to walk. When the simple novice noticed it, “he believed it as soon as he read it”: he immediately took it for the truth and came raging to me, and so on. “And so, when I had despaired of his love, four months later I won him back.”

Eugenia drew Timocles as her valentine and wore his name at her breast for a long time afterwards. Camena picked Pamphilus as her dancing partner at Myson’s wedding, some say, for that was where she first saw him. Felicianus caught up with Caelia beside the road and offered his services; from this came further acquaintance, and from acquaintance, love. But who could recount half their devices? What experienced Aretino, what ingenious Lucian, or amorous Aristaenetus could do it?