Callicratides in [5437]Lucian breaks out into this passionate speech, “O God of Heaven, grant me this life for ever to sit over against my mistress, and to hear her sweet voice, to go in and out with her, to have every other business common with her; I would labour when she labours; sail when she sails; he that hates her should hate me; and if a tyrant kill her, he should kill me; if she should die, I would not live, and one grave should hold us both.” [5438]_Finiet illa meos moriens morientis amores_.  Abrocomus in [5439]Aristaenetus makes the like petition for his Delphia, —­[5440]_Tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam lubens_.  “I desire to live with thee, and I am ready to die with thee.”  ’Tis the same strain which Theagines used to his Chariclea, “so that I may but enjoy thy love, let me die presently:”  Leander to his Hero, when he besought the sea waves to let him go quietly to his love, and kill him coming back. [5441]_Parcite dum propero, mergite dum redeo_.  “Spare me whilst I go, drown me as I return.”  ’Tis the common humour of them all, to contemn death, to wish for death, to confront death in this case, Quippe queis nec fera, nec ignis, neque praecipitium, nec fretum, nec ensis, neque laqueus gravia videntur; “’Tis their desire” (saith Tyrius) “to die.”

“Haud timet mortem, cupit ire in ipsos
------obvius enses.”

“He does not fear death, he desireth such upon the very swords.”  Though a thousand dragons or devils keep the gates, Cerberus himself, Scyron and Procrastes lay in wait, and the way as dangerous, as inaccessible as hell, through fiery flames and over burning coulters, he will adventure for all this.  And as [5442]Peter Abelard lost his testicles for his Heloise, he will I say not venture an incision, but life itself.  For how many gallants offered to lose their lives for a night’s lodging with Cleopatra in those days! and in the hour or moment of death, ’tis their sole comfort to remember their dear mistress, as [5443]Zerbino slain in France, and Brandimart in Barbary; as Arcite did his Emily.

[5444]  ------when he felt death,
Dusked been his eyes, and faded is his breath
But on his lady yet casteth he his eye,
His last word was, mercy Emely,
His spirit chang’d, and out went there,
Whether I cannot tell, ne where.

[5445]When Captain Gobrius by an unlucky accident had received his death’s wound, heu me miserum exclamat, miserable man that I am, (instead of other devotions) he cries out, shall I die before I see my sweetheart Rhodanthe? Sic amor mortem, (saith mine author) aut quicquid humanitus accidit, aspernatur, so love triumphs, contemns, insults over death itself.  Thirteen proper young men lost their lives for that fair Hippodamias’ sake, the daughter of Onomaus, king of Elis:  when that hard condition was proposed of death or victory, they made no account of it, but courageously for love died, till Pelops at last won her by a sleight. [5446]As