veteris vestigia flammae, he raved amain, Illa tamen emergens veluti lucida stella cepit elucere, &c., she did appear as a blazing star, or an angel to his sight.  And it is the common passion of all lovers to be overcome in this sort.  For that cause belike Alexander discerning this inconvenience and danger that comes by seeing, [5655]"when he heard Darius’s wife so much commended for her beauty, would scarce admit her to come in his sight,” foreknowing belike that of Plutarch, formosam videre periculosissimum, how full of danger it is to see a proper woman, and though he was intemperate in other things, yet in this superbe se gessit, he carried himself bravely.  And so when as Araspus, in Xenophon, had so much magnified that divine face of Panthea to Cyrus, [5656]"by how much she was fairer than ordinary, by so much he was the more unwilling to see her.”  Scipio, a young man of twenty-three years of age, and the most beautiful of the Romans, equal in person to that Grecian Charinus, or Homer’s Nireus, at the siege of a city in Spain, when as a noble and most fair young gentlewoman was brought unto him, [5657]"and he had heard she was betrothed to a lord, rewarded her, and sent her back to her sweetheart.”  St. Austin, as [5658]Gregory reports of him, ne cum sorore quidem sua putavit habitandum, would not live in the house with his own sister.  Xenocrates lay with Lais of Corinth all night, and would not touch her.  Socrates, though all the city of Athens supposed him to dote upon fair Alcibiades, yet when he had an opportunity, [5659]_solus cum solo_ to lie in the chamber with, and was wooed by him besides, as the said Alcibiades publicly [5660]confessed, formam sprevit et superbe contempsit, he scornfully rejected him.  Petrarch, that had so magnified his Laura in several poems, when by the pope’s means she was offered unto him, would not accept of her. [5661]"It is a good happiness to be free from this passion of love, and great discretion it argues in such a man that he can so contain himself; but when thou art once in love, to moderate thyself (as he saith) is a singular point of wisdom.”

[5662] “Nam vitare plagas in amoris ne jaciamur
        Non ita difficile est, quam captum retibus ipsis
        Exire, et validos Veneris perrumpere nodos.”

       “To avoid such nets is no such mastery,
        But ta’en escape is all the victory.”

But, forasmuch as few men are free, so discreet lovers, or that can contain themselves, and moderate their passions, to curb their senses, as not to see them, not to look lasciviously, not to confer with them, such is the fury of this headstrong passion of raging lust, and their weakness, ferox ille ardor a natura insitus, [5663]as he terms it “such a furious desire nature hath inscribed, such unspeakable delight.”

       “Sic Divae Veneris furor,
        Insanis adeo mentibus incubat,”