“Quem non mille ferae, quem non Sthenelejus hostis,
        Nec potuit Juno vincere, vicit amor.”

       “Whom neither beasts nor enemies could tame,
        Nor Juno’s might subdue, Love quell’d the same.”

Your bravest soldiers and most generous spirits are enervated with it, [4655]_ubi mulieribus blanditiis permittunt se, et inquinantur amplexibus_.  Apollo, that took upon him to cure all diseases, [4656]could not help himself of this; and therefore [4657]Socrates calls Love a tyrant, and brings him triumphing in a chariot, whom Petrarch imitates in his triumph of Love, and Fracastorius, in an elegant poem expresseth at large, Cupid riding, Mars and Apollo following his chariot, Psyche weeping, &c.

In vegetal creatures what sovereignty love hath, by many pregnant proofs and familiar examples may be proved, especially of palm-trees, which are both he and she, and express not a sympathy but a love-passion, and by many observations have been confirmed.

[4658] “Vivunt in venerem frondes, omnisque vicissim
        Felix arbor amat, nutant et mutua palmae
        Foedera, populeo suspirat populus ictu,
        Et platano platanus, alnoque assibilat alnus.”

Constantine de Agric. lib. 10. cap. 4. gives an instance out of Florentius his Georgics, of a palm-tree that loved most fervently, [4659] “and would not be comforted until such time her love applied herself unto her; you might see the two trees bend, and of their own accords stretch out their boughs to embrace and kiss each other:  they will give manifest signs of mutual love.”  Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. 24, reports that they marry one another, and fall in love if they grow in sight; and when the wind brings the smell to them, they are marvellously affected.  Philostratus in Imaginibus, observes as much, and Galen lib. 6. de locis affectis, cap. 5. they will be sick for love; ready to die and pine away, which the husbandmen perceiving, saith [4660]Constantine, “stroke many palms that grow together, and so stroking again the palm that is enamoured, they carry kisses from the one to the other:”  or tying the leaves and branches of the one to the stem of the other, will make them both flourish and prosper a great deal better:  [4661]"which are enamoured, they can perceive by the bending of boughs, and inclination of their bodies.”  If any man think this which I say to be a tale, let him read that story of two palm-trees in Italy, the male growing at Brundusium, the female at Otranto (related by Jovianus Pontanus in an excellent poem, sometimes tutor to Alphonsus junior, King of Naples, his secretary of state, and a great philosopher) “which were barren, and so continued a long time,” till they came to see one another growing up higher, though many stadiums asunder.  Pierius in his Hieroglyphics, and Melchior Guilandinus, Mem. 3. tract. de papyro, cites this story of Pontanus for a truth.  See more in Salmuth Comment. in Pancirol. de Nova repert.  Tit. 1. de novo orbe Mizaldus Arcanorum lib. 2. Sand’s Voyages, lib. 2. fol. 103. &c.