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This our immoderate and illegitimate exasperation against this vice springs from the most vain and turbulent disease that afflicts human minds, which is jealousy:

“Quis vetat apposito lumen de lumine sumi?
Dent licet assidue, nil tamen inde perit;”

[“Who says that one light should not be lighted from another light? Let them give ever so much, as much ever remains to lose.”–Ovid, De Arte Amandi, iii. 93. The measure of the last line is not good; but the words are taken from the epigram in the Catalecta entitled Priapus.]

she, and envy, her sister, seem to me to be the most foolish of the whole troop. As to the last, I can say little about it; ’tis a passion that, though said to be so mighty and powerful, had never to do with me. As to the other, I know it by sight, and that’s all. Beasts feel it; the shepherd Cratis, having fallen in love with a she-goat, the he-goat, out of jealousy, came, as he lay asleep, to butt the head of the female, and crushed it. We have raised this fever to a greater excess by the examples of some barbarous nations; the best disciplined have been touched with it, and ’tis reason, but not transported:

“Ense maritali nemo confossus adulter
Purpureo Stygias sanguine tinxit aquas.”

[“Never did adulterer slain by a husband
stain with purple blood the Stygian waters.”]

Lucullus, Caesar, Pompey, Antony, Cato, and other brave men were cuckolds, and knew it, without making any bustle about it; there was in those days but one coxcomb, Lepidus, that died for grief that his wife had used him so.

“Ah! tum te miserum malique fati,
Quem attractis pedibus, patente porta,
Percurrent raphanique mugilesque:”

[“Wretched man! when, taken in the fact, thou wilt be
dragged out of doors by the heels, and suffer the punishment
of thy adultery.”–Catullus, xv. 17.]

and the god of our poet, when he surprised one of his companions with his wife, satisfied himself by putting them to shame only,

“Atque aliquis de dis non tristibus optat
Sic fieri turpis:”

[“And one of the merry gods wishes that he should himself
like to be so disgraced.”–Ovid, Metam., iv. 187.]

and nevertheless took anger at the lukewarm embraces she gave him; complaining that upon that account she was grown jealous of his affection:

“Quid causas petis ex alto? fiducia cessit
Quo tibi, diva, mei?”

[“Dost thou seek causes from above? Why, goddess, has your
confidence in me ceased?”–Virgil, AEneid, viii. 395.]

nay, she entreats arms for a bastard of hers,

“Arena rogo genitrix nato.”

[“I, a mother, ask armour for a son.”–Idem, ibid., 383.]

which are freely granted; and Vulcan speaks honourably of AEneas,

“Arma acri facienda viro,”

[“Arms are to be made for a valiant hero.”–AEneid, viii. 441.]

with, in truth, a more than human humanity. And I am willing to leave this excess of kindness to the gods:

“Nec divis homines componier aequum est.”

[“Nor is it fit to compare men with gods.”
–Catullus, lxviii. 141.]

As to the confusion of children, besides that the gravest legislators ordain and affect it in their republics, it touches not the women, where this passion is, I know not how, much better seated:

“Saepe etiam Juno, maxima coelicolam,
Conjugis in culpa flagravit quotidiana.”

[“Often was Juno, greatest of the heaven-dwellers, enraged
by her husband’s daily infidelities.”–Idem, ibid.]

When jealousy seizes these poor souls, weak and incapable of resistance, ’tis pity to see how miserably it torments and tyrannises over them; it insinuates itself into them under the title of friendship, but after it has once possessed them, the same causes that served for a foundation of good-will serve them for a foundation of mortal hatred. ‘Tis, of all the diseases of the mind, that which the most things serve for aliment and the fewest for remedy: the virtue, health, merit, reputation of the husband are incendiaries of their fury and ill-will: