In the preface to The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton imagines his text as a tool to combat melancholy in fearsome fashion. Like the drum of Zisca (Jan Žižka), the famous fourteenth-century Hussite military commander, his ‘lines’ take on power when they are activated, by being spoken aloud or read silently. Burton probably found the example of Zisca in John Florio's translation of Michel de Montaigne's Essays (1603), among a collection of stories about leaders whose bodies were used as talismans in battle, and his choice of this story creates an apt parallel with the act of writing. The skin stretched across the drum recalls the animal hides tightened across frames to make parchment for manuscripts. The comparison points to the status of the written word as a material object. Zisca took literally the idea that his presence would confound his enemies, wishing to make himself into an object that would retain the power he had when living. Even in his absence, he thought, the drum would continue to embody him, broadcasting his fierce reputation to his foes.