[4801] “Unde tot in Veneta scortorum millia cur stint? 
        In promptu causa est, est Venus orta mari.”

Et hinc foeta mater Salacea Oceani conjux, verbumque fortasse salax a sale effluxit.  Mala Bacchica tantum olim in amoribus praevaluerunt, ut coronae ex illis statuae Bacchi ponerentur. [4802]Cubebis in vino maceratis utuntur Indi Orientales ad Venerem excitandum, et [4803]Surax radice Africani.  Chinae radix eosdem effectus habet, talisque herbae meminit mag. nat. lib. 2. cap. 16. [4804]Baptista Porta ex India allatae, cujus mentionem facit et Theophrastus.  Sed infinita his similia apud Rhasin, Matthiolum, Mizaldum, caeterosque medicos occurrunt, quorum ideo mentionem feci, ne quis imperitior in hos scopulas impingat, sed pro virili tanquam syrtes et cautes consulto effugiat.

SUBSECT.  II.—­Other causes of Love-Melancholy, Sight, Being from the Face, Eyes, other parts, and how it pierceth.

Many such causes may be reckoned up, but they cannot avail, except opportunity be offered of time, place, and those other beautiful objects, or artificial enticements, as kissing, conference, discourse, gestures concur, with such like lascivious provocations.  Kornmannus, in his book de linea amoris, makes five degrees of lust, out of [4805]Lucian belike, which he handles in five chapters, Visus, Colloquium, Convictus, Oscula, Tactus. [4806]Sight, of all other, is the first step of this unruly love, though sometime it be prevented by relation or hearing, or rather incensed.  For there be those so apt, credulous, and facile to love, that if they hear of a proper man, or woman, they are in love before they see them, and that merely by relation, as Achilles Tatius observes. [4807]"Such is their intemperance and lust, that they are as much maimed by report, as if they saw them.  Callisthenes a rich young gentleman of Byzance in Thrace, hearing of [4808]Leucippe, Sostratus’ fair daughter, was far in love with her, and, out of fame and common rumour, so much incensed, that he would needs have her to be his wife.”  And sometimes by reading they are so affected, as he in [4809]Lucian confesseth of himself, “I never read that place of Panthea in Xenophon, but I am as much affected as if I were present with her.”  Such persons commonly [4810]feign a kind of beauty to themselves; and so did those three gentlewomen in [4811]Balthazar Castilio fall in love with a young man whom they never knew, but only heard him commended:  or by reading of a letter; for there is a grace cometh from hearing, [4812] as a moral philosopher informeth us, “as well from sight; and the species of love are received into the fantasy by relation alone:”  [4813]_ut cupere ab aspectu, sic velle ab auditu_, both senses affect. Interdum et absentes amamus, sometimes we love those that are absent, saith Philostratus, and gives instance in his friend Athenodorus, that loved a maid at Corinth whom he never saw; non oculi sed mens videt, we see with the eyes of our understanding.