Tarquin heard Collatine commend his wife, and was so far enraged, that in the midst of the night to her he went. [6081]Theseus stole Ariadne, vi rapuit that Trazenian Anaxa, Antiope, and now being old, Helen, a girl not yet ready for a husband.  Great men are most part thus affected all, “as a horse they neigh,” saith [6082]Jeremiah, after their neighbours’ wives,—­ut visa pullus adhinnit equa:  and if they be in company with other women, though in their own wives’ presence, they must be courting and dallying with them.  Juno in Lucian complains of Jupiter that he was still kissing Ganymede before her face, which did not a little offend her:  and besides he was a counterfeit Amphitryo, a bull, a swan, a golden shower, and played many such bad pranks, too long, too shameful to relate.

Or that they care little for their own ladies, and fear no laws, they dare freely keep whores at their wives’ noses.  ’Tis too frequent with noblemen to be dishonest; Pielas, probitas, fides, privata bona sunt, as [6083]he said long since, piety, chastity, and such like virtues are for private men:  not to be much looked after in great courts:  and which Suetonius of the good princes of his time, they might be all engraven in one ring, we may truly hold of chaste potentates of our age.  For great personages will familiarly run out in this kind, and yield occasion of offence. [6084] Montaigne, in his Essays, gives instate in Caesar, Mahomet the Turk, that sacked Constantinople, and Ladislaus, king of Naples, that besieged Florence:  great men, and great soldiers, are commonly great, &c., probatum est, they are good doers.  Mars and Venus are equally balanced in their actions,

[6085] “Militis in galea nidum fecere columbae,
        Apparet Marti quam sit amica Venus.”

       “A dove within a headpiece made her nest,
        ’Twixt Mars and Venus see an interest.”

Especially if they be bald, for bald men have ever been suspicious (read more in Aristotle, Sect. 4. prob. 19.) as Galba, Otho, Domitian, and remarkable Caesar amongst the rest. [6086]_Urbani servate uxores, maechum calvum adducimus_; besides, this bald Caesar, saith Curio in Sueton, was omnium mulierum vir; he made love to Eunoe, queen of Mauritania; to Cleopatra; to Posthumia, wife to Sergius Sulpitius; to Lollia, wife to Gabinius; to Tertulla, of Crassus; to Mutia, Pompey’s wife, and I know not how many besides:  and well he might, for, if all be true that I have read, he had a license to lie with whom he list. Inter alios honores Caesari decretos (as Sueton, cap. 52. de Julio, and Dion, lib. 44. relate) jus illi datum, cum quibuscunque faeminis se jungendi.  Every private history will yield such variety of instances:  otherwise good, wise, discreet men, virtuous and valiant, but too faulty in this.  Priamus had fifty sons, but seventeen alone lawfully begotten. [6087]Philippus Bonus left fourteen bastards.  Lorenzo de Medici,