the very name hath been so terrible amongst them as they had rather encertein into their dark and sad dominions ten thousand of their wives then any one man who hears the least character of a Cuckold But having done with this sporting I proceed to what is more serious Of Women remarkable for their love to their Husbands IT is reported of the wives of Wynbergen a free place in Germany that the Town being taken in an assault by the Emperor and by reason the Citizens in so valiantly defending their lives and honours had been the overthrow of the greatest part of his army the Emperour grew so inplacable that the purposed though mercy to the women yet upon the men a bloody revenge Composition being granted and articles drawn for the surrender of the Town it was lawfull for the matrons and virgins by the Emperours edict to carry out of their own necessaries a burden of what they best liked The Emperour not dreaming but that they would load themselves with their jewels and coin rich garments and such like might perceive them issuing from the Ports with every wife her husband upon her back and every virgin and demosel her father or brother to expresse as much love in preserving their lives then as the men had before valour in defending their liberties This noble example of conjugall love and piety took such impression in the heart of Caesar that in recompence of their noble charity he not only suffered them to depart peaceably with their first burdens but granted every one a second to make choice of what best pleased them amongst all the treasure and wealth of the City Michael Lord Montaigne in his Essaies speaks only of three women for the like vertue memorable the first perceiving her husband to labour of a disease incurable and every day more and more to languish perswaded him resolutely to kill himselfe and with one blow to be rid of a lingring torment but finding him to be somewhat faint-hearted she thus put courage into him by her own noble example I quoth she whose sorrow for thee in thy sicknesse hath in some sort paralleld thy torment am willing by one death both to give date unto that which hath for thy love afflicted me and thy violent and unmedicinable torture So after many perswasive motives to encourage his fainting resolution she intended to die with him in her arms and to that purpose lest her hold by accident or affright should unloose she with a cord bound fast their bodies together and taking him in her loving embraces from an high window which overlooked part of the sea cast themselves both headlong into the water As pious affection shewed that renowned matron Arria vulgarly called Arria mater because she had a daughter of the name she seeing her husband Poetus condemned and willing that he should expire by his own hand rather then the stroke of a common hangman perswaded him to a Roman resolution but finding him somewhat danted with the present fight of death she snatcht up a sword with which she transpierc'd her selfe and then plucking it from her bosome presented it unto her husband only with these few and last words Poete non dolet Hold Poetus it hath done me no harm and so fell down and died of whom Martial in his first book of Epigrams hath left this memory Casta suo gladium cum traderet Aria Poeto Quem dedit visceribus traxerat illa suis Si qua fides vulnus quod seci non dolet inquit Sed quod tu facies hoc mihi Poete dolet When Aria did to Poetus give that steel Which she before from her own brest had tane Trust me quoth she no smart at all I feel My only wound 's to think upon thy pain The third was Pompeia Paulina the wife of Seneca who when by the tyrannous command of Nero she saw the sentence of death denounced against her husband though she was then young and in the best of her years and he aged and stooping notwithstanding so pure was her affectionat zeale towards him that as soon as she perceived him to bleed caused her own vein to be opened so to accompany him in death few such presidents this our age affordeth Yet I have lately seen a discourse intituled A true Narration of Rathean Herpin who about the time that Spinola with the Bavarians first entred the Pallatinate finding her husband Christopher Thaeon Appoplext in all his limbs and members with an invincible constancy at severall journies bore him upon her back the space of 1300 English miles to a Bath for his recovery These and the like presidents of nuptiall piety make me wonder why so many Satyrists assume to themselves such an unbridled liberty to inveigh without all limitation against their Sex I hapned not long since to steale upon one of these censorious fellowes and found him writing after this manner I wonder our fore-fathers durst their lives Hazard in daies past with such choice of wives And as we read to venture on so many Methinks he hath enow that hath not any Sure either women were more perfect then Or greater patience doth possesse us men Or it belongs to them since Eve's first curse That as the world their Sex growes worse and worse But who can teach me Why the fairer still They are more false good Oedipus thy skill Or Sphinx thine toresolve me lay some ground For my instruction good the like is found ' Mongst birds and serpents did you never see A milk white Swan in colour like to thee That wast my mistresse once as white as faire Her downie breasts to touch as soft as rare Yet these deep waters that in torments meet Can never wash the blacknesse from her feet Who ever saw a Dragon richly clad In golden scales but that within he had His goâ—ge stufe full of venome I behold The woman and methinks a cup of gold Stands brim'd before me whence should I but sip I should my fate and death tast from thy lip But henceforth I 'll beware thee since I know That under the more spreading Misceltow The greater Mandrake thrives whose shrieke presages Or ruine or disaster Who ingages Himselfe to beauty he shall find dependants Contempt Disdain and Scorn with their attendants Inconstancy and Falshood in their train Wait loosnesse and intemperance But in vain Before the blind we glorious objects bring Lend armour to the lame or counsell sing To them will find no ears be 't then approv'd None ever fair that hath sincerely lov'd If beautifull she 's proud if rich then scorn She thinks becomes her best But ' ware the horn Thou man if she be crost once bright or black Well shap'd or ugly doth she fortunes lack Or be she great in means haunts she the Court City or Countrie They all love the sport Further he was proceeding when I staied his pen and so stopped the torrent of his poeticall raptureo and so laid before him
have indeed no Law which gives licence for a brother to marry with a sister but we have found a Law O Soveraigne which warrants the King of Persia to do whatsoever liketh him best Thus they without abrogation of the Persian Laws soothed the Kings humor and preserv'd their own honours and lives who had they crost him in the least of his designs had all undoubtedly perished This he made the ground for the marriage of the first and not long after he adventured upon the second The younger of these two who attended him into Egypt he slew whose death as that of her brother Smerdis is doubtfully reported The Graecians write that two whelps the one of a Lion the other of a Dog were brought before Cambyses to sight and try masteries at which sight the young Lady was present but the Lion having victory over the Dog another of the same â—itter broke his chain and taking his brothers part they two had superiority over the Lyon Cambyses at this sight taking great delight she then sitting next him upon the sudden fell a weeping this the King observing demanded the occasion of her teares she answered it was at that object to see one brother so willing to help the other and therefore she wept to remember her brothers death and knew no man then living that was ready to revenge it and for this cause say the Greeks she was doom'd to death by Cambyses The Egyptians report it another way That she sitting with her brother at table out of a sallet dish took a lettice and pluckt off leafe by leafe and shewing it to her husband asked him Whether a whole lettice or one so despoiled shewed the better who answered a whole one then said she behold how this lettice now unleaved looketh even so hast thou disfigured and made naked the house of King Cyrus With which words he was so incensed that he kicked and spurned her then being great with child with that violence that she miscarried in her child birth and died ere she was delivered and these were the murderous effects of his detestable incest Of Livia Horestilla Lollia Paulina Cesonia c. IT is reported of the Emperour Caligula that he had not onely illegall and incestuous converse with his three naturall sisters but that he after caused them before his face to be prostitued by his ministers and servants thereby to bring them within the compasse of the Aemilian Law and convict them of adultery He vitiated Livia Horestilla the wife of C. Pisonius and Lollia Paulina whom he caused to be divorced from her husband C. Memnius both whose beds within lesse then two years he repudiated withall interdicting the company and society of man for ever Caesonia he loved more affectionately insomuch that to his familiar friends as boasting of her beauty he would often shew her naked To add unto his insufferable luxuries he defloured one of the vestall virgins Neither was the Emperor Commodus much behind him in devilish and brutish effeminacies for he likewise strumpeted his own sisters and would wittingly and willingly see his mistresses and concubines abused before his face by such of his favourites as he most graced he kept not at any time lesse then to the number of three hundred for so Lampridius hath left recorded Gordianus junior who was competitioâ— with his father in the Empire kept two and twenty concubines by each of which he had three or foure children at the least therefore by some called the Priamus of his age but by others in derision the Priapus The Emperor Proculus took in battell a hundred Sarmatian virgins and boasted of himselfe that he had got them all with child in lesse then fifteen daies this Vopiscus reports and Sabellicus But a great wonder is that which Johannes Picus Mirandula relates of Hercules as that he lâ—y with fifty daughters of Lycomedes in one night and got them all with child with forty nine boies only failing in the last for that proved a girle Jocasta APollodorus Atheniensis in his third book De deorum origine records this history After the death of Amphion King of Thebes Laius succeeded who took to wife the daughter of Menocoeas called Jocasta or as others write Epicasta This Laius being warned by the Oracle that if of her he begat a son he should prove a Parricide and be the death of his father notwithstanding forgetting himselfe in the distemperature of wine he lay with her the same night she conceived and in processe brought forth a male issue whom the King caused to be cast out into the mountain Cytheron thinking by that means â—o prevent the predicted destiny Polybus the herdsman to the King of Corinth finding this infant bore it home to his wife Periboea who nursed and brought it up as her own and causing the swelling of the feet with which the child was then troubled to be cured they grounded his name from that disease and called him Oedipus This inâ—ant as he had increased in years so he did in all the perfections of nature as well in the accomplishments of the â—ind as the body insomuch that as well in capacity and volubility of speech as in all active and generous exercises he was excellent above all of his age his vertues being generally envied by such as could nor equall them they thought to disgrace him in something and gave him the contemptible name of counterfeit and bastard this made him curiously inquisitive of his supposed mother and she not able in that point to resolve him he made a journy to Delphos to consult with the Oracle about the true knowledge of his birth and parents which forewarned him from returning into his own Countrie because he was destined not only to be the deaths-man of his father but to add misery unto mischiefe he was likewise born to be incestuous with his mother Which to prevent and still supposing himselfe to be the son of Polybus and Peribaea he forbore to return to Corinth and hiring a Chariot took the way towards Phocis It hapned that in a strait and narrow passage meeting with his father Laius and Polyphontes his Charioter they contended for the way but neither willing to give place from words they fell to blowes in which contention Polyphontes kill'd one of the horses that drew the Chariot of Oedipus at which inraged he drew his sword and first slew Polyphontes and next Laius who seconded his servant and thence took his ready way towards Thebes Damasistratus King of the Plataeenses finding the body of Laius caused it to be honourably interred In this interim Creon the son of Menecoeus in this vacancy whilst there was yet no King invades Thebes and after much slaughter possesseth himselfe of the Kingdome Juno to vex him the more sent thither the monster Sphinx born of Eâ—hidna and Tiphon she had the face of a woman the wings of a fowle and the breast feet and taile of a Lion she
and in that darknesse remained for the space of ten years After which time in great melancholly expired he received this comfort from the Oracle which was then in the City Butis That if he washt his eies in the urine of a woman who had been married a full twelve month and in that time had in no waies falsified in her own desires nor derogated from the honour of her husband he should then assuredly receive his sight At which newes being much rejoiced and presuming both of certain and sudden cure he first sent for his wife and Qu. and made proofe of her pore distillation but all in vain he sent next for all the great Ladies of the Court and one after one washt his eies in their water but still they smarted the more yet he saw no whit the better but at length when he was almost in despaire he hapned upon one pure and chast Lady by whose vertue his sight was restored and he plainly cured who after he had better considered with himselfe caused his wife withal those Ladies saving she only by whose temperance and chastity he had reobtained the benefit of the Sun to be assembled into one City pretending there to feast them honourably for joy oâ— his late recovery Who were no sooner assembled at the place called Rubra Gleba apparelled in all their best jewels and chiefest ornaments but commanding the City gates to be shut upon them caused the City to be set on fire and sacrificed all these adulteresses as in one funerall pile reserving only that Lady of whose loialty the Oracle had given sufficient testimony whom he made the partaker of his bed and Kingdome I wish there were not so many in these times whose waters if they were truly cast by the doctors would not rather by their pollution put out the eies quite then with their clearnesse and purity minister to them any help at all Laodice JVstine in his 37. book of History speaks of this Laodice the wife and sister to Mithridates King of Pontus After whose many victories as having overthrown the Scythians and put them to flight those who had before defeated Zopyron a great Captain of Alexanders army which consisted of thirty thousand of his best souldiers the same that overcame Cyrus in battell with an army of two hundred thousand with those that had affronted and beaten King Philip in many oppositions being fortunately and with great happinesse still attended by which he more and more flourisht in power and increased in majestie In this height of fortune as never having known any disaster having bestowed some time in managing the affairs of Pontus and next such places as he occupied in Macedonia he privately then retired himselfe into Asia where he took view of the scituation of those defenced Cities and this without the jealousie or suspition of any From thence he removed himselfe into Bythinia proposing in his own imaginations as if he were already Lord of all After this long retirement he came into his own Kingdome where by reason of his absence it was rumour'd and given out for truth that he was dead At his arrivall he first gave a loving and friendly visitation to his wife and sister Laudice who had not long before in that vacancy brought him a young son But in this great joy and solemnity made for his welcome he was in great danger of poison for Laodice supposing it seems Mithridates to be dead as it before had been reported and therefore safe enough had prostituted her selfe to divers of her servants and subjects and now fearing the discovery of her adultery she thought to shadow a mighty fault with a greater mischiefe and therefore provided this poisoned draught for his welcome But the King having intelligence thereof by one of her handmaids who deceived her in her trust expiated the treason with the blood of all the conspirators I read of another Laodice the wife of Ariarythres the King of Cappadocia who having six hopefull sons by her husband poisoned five of them after she had before given him his last infectious draught the youngest was miraculously preserved from the like fate who after her decease for the people punished her cruelty with death succeeded in the Kingdome It is disputed in the Greek Commentaries by what reason or remedy affection once so devilishly setled in the breast or heart of a woman may be aâ—ered or removed or by what confection adulterous appetite once lodged and kindled in the bosome may be extinguished The Magicians have delivered it to be a thing possible so likewise Cadmus Milesius who amongst other monuments of history writ certain tractates concerning the abolishing of love for so it is remembred by Suidas in his collections And therefore I would invite all women of corrupted breasts to the reading of this briefe discourse following A remarkable example was that of Faustina a noble and illustrious Lady who though she were the daughter of Antonius Pius the Emperor and wife to Marcus Philosophus notwithstanding her fathers majesty and her husbands honour was so besotted upon a Gladiator or common fencer that her affection was almost grown to frensie for which strange disease as strange a remedy was devised The Emperor perceiving this distraction still to grow more and more upon his daughter consulted with the Chaldeans and Mathematicians in so desperate a case what was best to be done after long consideration it was concluded amongst them that there was but only one way left open to her recovery and that was to cause the fencer to be slaine which done to give her a full cup of his luke-warm blood which having drunk off to go instantly to bed to her husband This was accordingly done and she cured of her contagious disease That night was as they sad begot Antoninus Commodus who after succeeded him in the Empire who in his government did so afflict the Common-weal and trouble the Theater with fensing and prizes and many other bloody butcheries that he much better deserved the name of Gladiator then Emperor This that I have related Julius Capitolinus writes to Caesar Dioclesianus Were all our dissolute matrons to be cured by the like Phisick there would no question be amongst men lesse offenders and among women fewer patients that complained of sick stomacks Phaedima CAmbyses having before unnaturally slain his brother Smerdis by the hands of his best trusted friend Praxaspes but after the death of the King for the horridnesse of the fact the Regicide not daring to avouch the deed to the people lest it might prejudice his own safety one Smerdis a Magician whose ears Cambises had before caused to be cut off took this advantage to aspire to the Kingdome and being somewhat like in favour to the murdered Princes who was by the Souldiers generally believed to live it purchased him so many abettors such as were deluded with his impostures that he was generally saluted and crowned Emperor This was
wals the Queen Nicocris who after some years succeeded her made much more stately exceeding her in all her 〈◊〉 Tagenna a women of seventy cubits high Lib. 1. Canusia Valer. Tus Opaea Berenices Arsinoe Herodias Faustina Lucilla Christiana Stratonice Casperia Livia Horestilla Lollia Paul Caesonia Commod born the same day that Calig vitiated the Vestall virgin Capitolin The riddle of Sphinx Plutarh de Homero De re Poet. lib. 3. * Aemus a hil in Thessaly where same say Homer was born A strange Incest L. 9. c. 47. Incest abominable in beasts 〈◊〉 Veronica Cap. 17. Faustina the wife of Claudius Lib. 4. The punishment of adultery De reip Gerevi praeceptis An impudent whoredome Messalina A Countrie fellow and his mistress Fabia Thimen Nevina A young Citizens wife A strange cure An unnaturall wife Faustina â—ife to Marcus Philosophus The birth of Commodus A notable Imopster Phaedima â—â—â—ceit discovered Adultery The wife of Otho the 3. Noble justice The birth of Alexander Lib. 14. * By Euridice and King Aristaeus 〈…〉 A miserable death A rare example of chastity Ethelburga A merry accident Aelian l. 7. Bias Prianaeus Pittacus Matilaenus Clâ—obuluâ— Lindius Peâ—tandâ— Corintâ—◠〈…〉 〈◊〉 Lâ—cedemâ— Thales Mâ—â—eliuâ— A true discourse The wife of Gengulphus Isabella Corumbona Friga Zoe Carlotta Deuteria Julia Grecâ— Eugenia Malentia Elfritha Emma A strange Tale. Justina Mariamnes Dosides Metheta Cleopatra Beronica Saloma Herodias The reward of Covetousnesse Tarpeia Acco Tulliota Junia Claudilla Agnodice Corona Theodosia How Welchmen come to be called Brittains Plutarch in Amatorâ— narrat Democrita Phillis Joannes Wyerius lib. 1. Cometho The daughters of Aristodemus Pheretrina Dyrce Antiopa Consinge Pyrene Gatis Atergatis Sygambes Semele Martia Helena Polyzo Acco Jocasta Bisalcia Zoe Austrigilda Serena Glausinda Fredegunda Fausta Lysides Melissa Auctoclea Antista Perimela Lymone Deuteria Leucothoe Lucilla Lychione Dyraptis Sabina Neaera Cleopatra Neaera and Charmione Monima Milesia Veronica Chya The Milesian Virgins Phaedra Two mothers The Hostlers Tale. Jesabel Dalila Athalia Helena Hippodam Ischomach Aspasia Chrysaeis Lavinia Arsinoe Anaxarite Berenice Nicostrate Hermione Polydices Plebe Ilairae Octavia Tullia Martia Teuca Fridegund Margarita Lib. 1. cap. de Amazonib The custome of the Scythians The brave acts of Scythians A base slight The first beginning of the Amazons Whence the name of Amazons was derived Marthesia Lampedo Orythia Menalippe Hyppolite Penthisilaea Minithra or Thalestris Harpalice Harpe A law among the Amazons * Venus * Cupid Of Feare Examples of Feare Deborae Helerna Meâ—abus Maria Puteolana Bona Longabarba Atalanta Three sorts of Furlongs The race of Hippomenes and Atlanta Candaces Lacena Valasca Bellovacae Amalasuntha Teuca Hasbites Tiburna Saguntina Zenobia Hypsicrataeae Artimesia Cleopatra Tomyris 〈◊〉 in a Prince A description of the Messagets Petr. Crinit lib. 1. cap. 11 Aulus Gel. A Sheep A Shrow 〈…〉 A pretty revenge Guendoline Elphleda * Toten Hall Elswina Maud. Another English Viâ—ago Joane de Are or de Pucil Emma Queen Margaret Sthenoboea Herodica Panthaea Theodole Suabilda Seritha Signis Bryseis Thargelia Molesia Anutis Timosa Zenopithia Patica Cipria Violentilla Agarista Hyppodamiâ— Sisigambis Praecia Roxana Aegina Antiopa Galataea Pisistratâ— amica Lib. 3. Athenae lib. 13. cap. 7. Athenae lib. 13. cap. 4. Lib. 3. Lib. 6. 8. Berseba Herodotus in Clio. â—â—lat 2. de Repub. Stowe Harding Estrilda Harding in Fabian Plut. Amat Narration Plutarch in Amatorio Chloris Aethra Danae Helenaâ— Auge The daughters of Danaeus * Venus Terentia Mecenatis Terentia Ciceronis A Vicarâ— daughter A faire witty Wench Vetustina Philenis Plut. in Apo. Caelius l. 24. c. 26. 〈◊〉 Plutarch in Lacoa Apo. Plut. Apo. Reg. Fulgos l 4. cap. 3. Erasmus l. 6. Apotheg Aegipta Ranulphus Marian. l. 2. Iohan. Wyerius de Lamiis lib. 3. Suidas Appâ—a Eustochium Tora Maria. Aegypt Columba Amata Sara Sylvia S. Ebbe Ildegunda Euphrosyna Marina Gunzonis Baldraca Scrytha Tara Dula Statyra Roxana Eâ—rusca Vâ—rgo Isabella Martia 〈…〉 〈◊〉 Daphne Rhodogune Theoxena Tyro Hypsicrataea Homer l. 1. Odyss Odyss lib 17 Perioch 〈…〉 〈…〉 〈…〉 Perioch 21. Perioch 22. Perioch 23. Evadne Loadamia Panthaea Sophronia Antonia Timoclea Brasilla Dyrrachina A woman of Casanova She was the contracted bride to the Prince Indiâ—ilis Anastasias Paula Romana Barbara Edeltrudis Edithae Susanna Judith Maud. Retana Panachis Quartilla Timandra Campaspe Satyrus in vitu Plin lib. 21. cap. 2. Pythonica Dicaearch de discensu ad Trophonium Irene Athenae Dipr. lib. 13. Lib. 12. Danae and Laodice Just. l. 30. Laodice Justin Hist lib. 12. Aâ—â—enaeus In Conegide Joan Bal. Act Eng. Votar Guliel 〈◊〉 lâ—b 2. de reg c Athen. in Dypnos In Agrestis In Novaculis Athen in Dypnes Hist liâ— 3. Lib. 3. Polemon de Var. Porticu Heraâ—l Lambus Histor l. 33 Lynceâ—s Comicus Prop. lib. 1. Origines Athenae Gimos lib. 13. cap. 18. Clearch in reb Amator Nicol. Damascen The maner of the Babylonians A poor man a Bear A cold countrey My Hostesses Lie â— Physitian Santius of Spain Philip of Macedon The wifeâ— the Marquess of Este The History of a Pious Daughter The love of mothers to their children Loving Mothers The mothers of Carthage The wife of Proclus The wife of Adiatoriges Friendship in women Examples of fraternall piety The wife of Intaphernes Times forbidden in Marriage Ceremonies before Marriage Of Contracts Of Nuptiall Dowries Of Nuptiall Gifts or Presents Nuptiall Ornaments The Bride comming out of her chamber The Bridegrooms first appearing The Nuptiall offering The Nuptiall Song A ceremony for them to casâ— Nuts about used amongst the Romans Their going 〈◊〉 Nuptiall Pomp. Alex. ab Alex. lib. 1. cap. 24. Hymns and Invocations Nuptiall Diet. Nuptiall Copulation Indian women Thracians Geates Catheoreans Herulians Winedi Of him camâ— the Nicolaâ—â—â— Of Age. The first drinking of Healths Gratitude * From him al rich and costly Arras Hangings are called Attalia Women that have dissembled their shape Women that hâ—ve changed their Sex * Barbiâ—os id est Carmen Lyricum * Alcaeus a Lyrick Poet of Myâ—elene * Nisea a mountainous country neer Aetna * Venus called so of Erix a mountain Sicily where she had a famous Temple * Choranus who doted on the famous strumpet Rhodope whom he bought of Aesopus for a great sum of money * Claeis a wanton daughter to Sapho * The tears of Mâ—rrha with which they used to perfume their hair * Philomela * Lothos the daughter of Neptune turnd into a 〈◊〉 so called * Ambracia a City in Epire so called of King Ambraces How the Devil rewards his servants The 〈…〉 Severall sorts of superstitious Jugling * From the Ilâ—nd of the â—velops where he thrust out Polyphemus his eie * Islands in the Sea so called 〈…〉 A Spanish Magician A Witch of Brill Lycaon who was transformed into a Wolfe A strange Witchcrafte Miraculous transformations She-Devils A Tale of a Witch A Witch of Geneva Another kind of Witchcraft Example of the like Witches called Extasists A strange kind of Witchcraft Things observed in Witches Cynarus Mirha The punishment of Incest The punishment of Adultery Fratricides The punishment of Fratricides â—arricides c. Punishment due to Regicides Punishments of unjust Divorce Whoredome punished Punishment of Loquacity Punishment of Lying Punishment of Perjury Aristotle cals this Fountain Acedinus Punishment of Prodigality and Excesse Punishment of Witchcraft Some say a Serpents egge Deut. 13. Levit. 24. Exod. â—0 22 Dâ—ut 13 27 Numb â—5 Levit. 21. Deut. 18. Deut. 18. Deut. 13. Ier. 5 12 9. Deut. 19. Honor and Reward to Fortitude * Orchestra a place in the Theater only for the nobility Honor due to Temperance Reward of Beauty * The Province belonging to Padua Bounty rewarded Charity rewarded A Convertire rewarded So called of Sabbea chiefe City of Arabia
' gainst Hercules both dearly lov'd Faire Deianeâ—â—a who having understood Her husbands scapes dipt in the Centaures blood A fatall shirt Alcides doth expire Being after made a a star Lychas her squire Is fixt a sea-rock whilst Alcmena hies To Iole and as they two devise She tels her of Galantis before made A monstrous Weasil th' other showes the glade In which at that time she might growing see Her elder sister now grown to a tree To them comes Iolaus in the way Made young by Hebe Jove himselfe can say And instance Aeacus this to be true From him Mileâ—us sled and thence withdrew Himselfe to Asia from whom descended Caâ—nus and Biblis whose hot love extended To her own brother as the stories tell And weeping was dissolv'd into a well This had appear'd more strange were it not known Young Iphis on her marriage day was grown To be a compleat man these nuptials saw Hymen and thence he doth himselfe withdraw To Orpheus spousals but his bright robes di'd In funerall black Euridice the bride Expires upon her marriage day being stung In th' anckle by a snake when Orpheus sung His various transformations to the Lyre The trees to hear him from all parts desire Amongst whom came the Cypresse and Vine The one clasps Cyparissus in her twine The other Aris every Thrasian fro That in his death had hand besides them grow And are made trees Bacchus departs from Thrace And because Midas gave Silenus place With entertainments due to quittance this He guerdons Midas with his golden wish Who fâ—er wearried with his ravishing dreams Was made to wash him in Pactolus streams They since that time their golden tincture keep Stil glistring when the Sun shines on the deep Pan's musick and Apollo's Midas hears And by false sentence gains him Asses eares Phoebus this done an humane shape put on And build's Troy's wals to be excess'd by none This City great Alcides having rac't With Priam's sister be the valor grac't Of Ajax â—elamon who in these brauls Was fixt set foot upon the Dardan wals Peleus weds Thetis though against her will For though she by her godhead had the skill To shift in sundry shapes yet was comprest And Peleus lodg'd upon her ivorie brest To Ceix he past thence one of his blood Where he part saw and partly understood Dedalion take on him a goshawkes shape And Wolfe made stone that flying thought to scape Soon after this Alcinoe in her bed Dreaming she saw her Lord shipwreckt and dead And from the shrre his livelesse body floting Both were made birds which some spectatours noting Straight call to mind how Aesacus before Was chang'd into a Sea-gull him deplore Priam and all his sons as lost and dead Excepting Paris who to Greece was sped And brought thence Hellen him the Greeks pursue At Aulis Gulfe they anchor where in view Of the whole fleet 〈◊〉 Dragon they espie Obdur'd to stone To Troy-ward thence they hie Where Cygnus on whose skin no steel could bite Was by the great Achâ—lles bruis'd in fight And at the instant made a silver Swan So Coenis once a woman now a man Was after likewise to a bird converted This tale ' mongst others Nestoâ— had inserted Periclimenes change to her repeats Neptune mean time the other gods intreats About Achilles death being much offended At his late losse he dead Ajax contended With slie Ulyâ—â—es for his arms and shield Ajax disgrac't expires and in the field Where his blood dropt a purple Hycinth grew In memory that Ajax Ajax slew Troy fact by th' Aâ—gives Hâ—cuba the Queen Turns to ash dog keeping still her spleen Her sad disaster all the gods lament Aurora sheds most 〈◊〉 still discontent For Memnons death Aeneas leaving Troy To Anius comes a Prince depriv'd all joy Because his daughters were made house-doves sad That be of them no greater comfort had Thence past he divers shores and sundry nations With wonders â—â—ll'd and various transformations Till piercing Italy yet free from scar With the bold Turnus he begins new war He sends to importune Diomedes aid By Venulus whose fellowes were all made Light feathered birds th' imbassador deni'd And back returning by a rivers side Spies a wild Olive which before had bin A lovely shepherd but now chang'd for sinne Aeneas ships are in the haven burn'd But pitied by the gods to sea nymphs turn'd Ardea to a bird more strange then these Himselfe into a god call'd Indiges Him other Kings succeed and ' mongst the rest Liv'd under Proca that faire Nymph who best Can skill of Gardens unto whom resorted The fresh Vertumnus and Pomona courted He in an old wives shape to her relates The tale of Anaxarites how the fates For her obdurenesse turn'd her into stone Pomona listning and they both alone He to his youthfull shape again retires And in the garden quencht his amorous fires In processe under Numitor the King Where earst cold waters slid now warm baths spring Him Romulus succeeding is created The god Quirinus and his wife instated The godâ—esse Ora ' Him Numa next ensues Who of the birth of Croton asking newes He chanc'd on pebbles who in all mens sight Once being black were chang'd to perfect white He likewise heard Pythagoras declame All the transhapes beneath the heavenly steam Aegeria next King Numa's death deploring Not comforted at all with thy restoring Hippolitus nor yet to hear thee tell Thy change she wept her selfe into a well Nor is this to he wondered since we see Tâ—y Lance oh Romulus a flourishing tree And Cyppus to weare horns having gone so far We end with Julius Caesar made a star Explicit lib. primus Inscriptus CLIO THE SECOND BOOK inscribed EUTERPE Of the Muses the Sybils the Vestals the Prophetesses the Hesperides the Graces c. THE bodies of all reasonable creatures as Ficinus saith are naturally pregnant as having in them the seeds of issue so likewise is the mind both still procreating and bringing forth as we see at such a time the heire appeares after the teeth break forth of the gums at such an age the beard growes upon the chin and in time alters and changes colourâ— and still the naturall faculties are in action If then the body be so fertile how much more is the nobler part of man the Soule and the Mind plentifully furnisht with these seeds that long for production as the instinct of manners of arts of disciplines and such like which are generated in the breast and in their fit and due time have their seasonable birth For no sooner are we past the cradle but we begin to affect few things good honest or profitable but none at that age acquires after things unknown It is therefore a consequent that there is born with us and bred in us certain notions of those outward things the forms of which we apprehend and their practice study to imitate This every man if he will but observe may
receive her to conceale her from the Sanne into her bosome from whence she at first proceeded to whose request her mother condescended and kept her so long till from her brest she sprung out a Laurell tree whom Phoebus notwithstanding courted but in vaine The manner of her transportation Ovid with great elegancy relates in his Metamorph. Without this Laurell as some think the Tripos in Bâ—oetia plac'd neer the vaticinating cave cannot be erected All writers confirm her a Sybill and a Prophetesse belonging to the Delphian Oracle howsoever the Poets have fabled Her prophesie was to this purpose An Angell shall descend and say Thou blessed Mary haile Thou shall conceive bring forth yet be A virgin without faile Three gifts the Chaldaeans to thy sonne Shall tender with much piety Myrrhe to a Man Gold to a King And Incense to a Deity Sybilla Cumaea SHe was called Cimmeria and was one of Apollo's Priests born in Cuma a City of Aeolia Leonard Aretine in his book de Aquila volante cals her Omeriae and would derive her from Italy Hâ—rodotus in his first book hath left this history recorded That Pactias the Persian flying for refuge into the City Cuma he was demanded thence by Mazares the great Generall but the Cumaeans would not deliver him up without advise from the Oracle There was in those daies an ancient and much adored Altar sacred to Apollo to which the Aeoles and the Ionians in all their hesitations repaired for counsell it was scituate in the Milesian fields neer to the Port called Panormus to this place were sent men both of birth and trust to demand from the Cumaeans Whether Pactias should be delivered unto the Persians who answered Let him be surrendred up which when the men of Cuma heard they with a joint suffrage concluded to send him thence and to obey the Oracle To which decree Aristodicus the son of Heraclius violently opposed himselfe a man amongst the rest at that time most illustrious either not giving credit at all to the answer or distrusting their fidelity that brought it therefore he himselfe with other of the prime Citizens prepared themselves for a second expedition these repairing to the Branchidae or Priests of which this Cumaea was one Aristodicus humbly kneeling before the Altar thus bespake Apollo Pactias the Lydian O King and god to shun a violent death gave himselfe into our patronage the Persians redemand him of the Cumaeans we though we fear not their forces yet dare not surrender up a suppliant to death who hath tendred his safety into our hands till we heare from thee what in this distraction is most fit to be done To these words the Priest as from Apollo returned this answer Let Pactias be delivered up to the Persians This done Aristodicus it seems not well pleased to betray the life of his friend surveying the Temple round he spi'd where sparrows and other small birds had builded their nests who taking away their young was about to depart the Temple when instantly was heard from the Altar the sound of a voice thus speaking Oh thou most wicked of men what arrogant boldnesse hath so far possest thee that thou presumest to take hence my supplyants and such as I have taken to my protection at which words Aristodicus returning made this free and bold answer Dost thou O King succour and protect thy supplyants and commandest us to betray the life of Pactyas to the Persians Some have cavilled with these Oracles that their verses have been harsh and not in smoothnesse of stile or elegancie or phrase to be compared with those of Hesiod or Homer to which may be answered We are sick with the disease of the eare and the eie let us not blame a Pythian Prophetesse because she sings not so sweetly as Glauce the minstrel nor appears in her hair perfumed with pretious unguents and her selfe jetting in Tyrian purple when the Sybill utters her divinations with a troubled brame and a distracted countenance her words harsh and unpleasant as not relishing laughter delight or ornament for such things are least pleasing to us in shew that are most beneficiall to us in proof Voluptatem enim non admittit quod integrum castum That admits no pleasure which of it self is perfect and chast Besides these were answers to be leasurely writ not suddenly spoke studied with long meditation and not extemporall it is probable that they in sweetnesse and smoothnesse might equall if not exceed the facundity of the former neither is it the sound the voice the language or the number or meeter of the god himselfe but of a woman and she too extasi'd in spirit and ravisht with a divine fury These shall suffice for Sybilla Cumaea I will only conclude with her prophesie The ancient of daies shall then submit to time The Maker yield himselfe to new creation The deity and Godhead most sublime Take shape of man to ransome every nation Die to make others live and every crime Committed from the round worlds first foundation Take on himselfe as low as Hell descending To win man Heaven upon his grace depending Sybilla Samia SHe is called Erophile or Hierophile taking the name of Samia from the Ille Samos where she was born Simon Grinaeus in his annotations upon Justin thus saith That this continent was called Samothracia because it buts so neer Thracia in that place was Pythagoras the Philosopher born with one of the Sybils stiled Samia The Island is dedicated to Juno because as they believe there Juno was born brought up and espoused unto Jupiter Heraclides in Pâ—litus saith That it was first a solitude or desert only inhabited by wild beasts amongst which were the Neides first seen in that wildernesse It was once called Partheniâ— after that Driuse there Ancaeus raigned of whom came the Proverb first Multa cadunt inter c. Many things fall between the cup and the lip In this Island have been seen white Swallows as big in body as a Partridge In this place flourisht Aesop where he first publisht his Fables and Theagines Samius after the scholer of Euripides Plut. in Quaest Graecis relates that when any sacrifice was offered to Mercurius Charidota which is as much as to say Munificent it was lawfull for any to steale and catch away each others garments because that having by the command of the Oracle left their own countrie and were forced by shifting into Micale there to live by rapine and theft that time being expired and at their return by vanquishing their enemies being possest of their own inheritance in remembrance of their former confinement they have observed that custome Of this Sybils particular actions much hath not been commended to posterity only of her person that such a one there was and of her prophesie which was thought to be this The world shall to six thousand years aspire By water once but then destroi'd by fire The first two thousand void the next the Law
is said to be Incertae patriae as no man knowing from what particular region to derive her and therefore is known by no particular name nor by the ancient Historiographers numbred amongst the ten only amongst the twelve she hath the place as may appeare by this her Prophesie When the great King of all the world shall have No place on Earth by which he can be known When he that comes all mortall men to save Shall find his own life by the world o'rthrown When the most just injustice shall deprave And the great judge be judged by his own Death when to death a death by death hath given Then shall be op'd the long shut gates of Heaven Sybilla Tiburlina IT seems she derives her selfe from the River Tyber she is otherwise called Albunaea of the City Alba which was erected before Rome as also Italica and by some Alburnaea It is reported that the Romans going about to deifie Augustus Caesar demanded advise of this Sybill who after three daies fast standing before the Altar where the Emperour himselfe was then present after many hidden words miraculously spoken concerning Christ upon the sudden Heaven opened and Caesar saw a beautifull virgin standing before the Altar who held in her arms as lovely an infant at this apparition Caesar affrighted fell on his face at which instant was heard a voice as from Heaven saying This is the Altar of the son of God In which place was after built a Temple dedicated to the Virgin Mary and called Ara Coeli i. The Altar of Heaven This Polycronicon affirms and for the truth thereof citeth Saint Augustine lib. 18. cap. 24. There is little more remembred of her life saving that in her books she prophesied of the comming of the Saviour of the world much after this manner Seven wonders of the world have been proclaimed But yet a greater then these are not named The Egyptians high Pyramides who seem'd To meet the stars a work once much esteem'd The Tower of Pharos The miraculous wall That Babylon begirt The fourth we call Diana's Church in Ephesus Fame sings T' had six and thirty Pillers built by Kings As many Next to these Mausolus Tombe Than which the Earth supporteth on her womb No braver structure Next to these there was The huge Colossus that was cast in brasse Of height incredible whom you may espie Holding a lamp fifty seven cubits high Bestriding an huge river The seventh wonder Was of great love that strikes with trisule thunder His Statue carv'd in Ivory and contriv'd By Phideas the best workman then surviv'd What at these trifles stands the world amaz'd And hath on them with admiration gaz'd Then wonder when the troubled world â— ' appease He shall descend who made them that made these Of these wonders briefly to make her divination the more plaine Of these Pyramides there were divers of which the greatest took up eight acres of ground parted into foure angles each equally distant eight hundred eighty foot and in height twenty five A second foure angles every one containing by even spaces seven hundred thirty and seven foot A third comprehended three hundred sixty three foot betwixt every angle A fourth erected by Rhodope the strumpet the mistresse of Aesop by the monie which she got by her trade Herodotus speaks of a Pyramis made by Cleopys King of Egypt of stones ferch'd from Arabia whose length was five furlongs the breadth ten paces He erected a second more magnificent which was not not finisht in twenty years upon which he spent so much treasure that he was forc'd to prostitute his daughter a most beautifull young virgin to supply his own necessity Pliny reports that in this structure he imploied so many workmen that they eat him 1800. talents in onyons and garlick 2. The Tower of Pharos built by Ptolomaeus in that Isle which served as a lanthorn to direct Navigators by sea in the night he spent upon it 5300. Talents Sostrata was the Architectour as appears by the inscription of his name upon the Cittadell 3. The wals of Babylon were built by Semiâ—amis they were as Hermodorus writes in thicknesse fifty cubits in height two hundred within the compasse of which were an hundred Ports having brazen gates that all mov'd upon hinges they were beautified with three hundred Turrets and Chariots might meet upon the top of them and have free passage without impediment 4. The Temple of Diana of which I have spoken before was in length 425 foot in breadth 220. It was beautified with 127. Columns 5. The tombe of Mausolus built by Artimesia Queen of Caria was in height 25. Cubits it was compast with 36 Columns it contained from the South to the North 33. foot the whole compasse contained 1411. That part which lay towards the East was perfected by Scopas that which was towards the North was ended by Briax that towards the Meridian by Timothaeus that which butted upon the West by Leocares 6. The Colossus of the Sun which bestrid the River Rhodes betwixt whose legs ships without vailing their top-sails came into the harbour was of that vastnesse that a man with his spread arms could not compasse his thumb every finger being as big as a common statue After it had stood six and fifty years it was emolisht by an earthquake The Souldan of Egypt having invaded Rhodes with the broken brasse thereof laded thence 900. Camels The chiefe workman was Chares Lindius the scholler of Licippus 7. The image of Jupiter to which some equall the Pallace of Cyrus King of the Meads built by Memnon the stones of which were cemented together with gold But I leave further to speake of these and proceed to the next Sybill Sybilla Aegyptia SHe was called Agrippa not numbred amongst the ten out hath place among the Twelve she prophesied upon the number of Three and on this manner Sacred's the number Three as Sybils tell Betwixt three brothers the Heaven Sea and Hell Were cast by lot The Earth as all men write In their divisions is called Tripartite Jove three waies striking hath his Trisulc Thunder Neptune's allow'd his Tâ—ident to keep under The mutinous waves Three fatall sisters spin Our thread of life Three Judges punish sin Even monsters are described so Geryon weares Three heads Grim Cerberus as many bears Sphinx hath three shapes of Bird of Beast of Maid All three in wings in feet in face displai'd Chimaera is Triform'd the monstrous creature Scilla 's of dogs fish and a womans feature The Erynnaes Harpyes Gorgons three-fold all The Sybils Trifatidicae we call Divining from the Tripos Orpheus Lyre Sings that 't was made of water earth and fire Three Charites three Fates three Syrens be Number the Muses they are three times three She 's triple Hecat's call'd Diana stil'd Trivia The ground of Musick was compil'd But on three cords at first and still exprest By voice by hand by breath In the Physicks
rest Three Principles God World and Creature fram'd Creator Parent Issue these are nam'd In all production Into Three we cast Mans age two legs next three then foure at last Physitians three things to observe are sure First to preserve prevent and then to cure Three governments are famous in Romes state That of the Tribunes and Triumvirate Three sorts of people they distinguish can The Senate Souldier and the common Man In the taking height of stars w' observe these Three First Distance then the Form next Quality But which of us observes that sacred Trine Three persons in one Godhead sole divine That individuall essence who dares scan Which is shall be and ere the world began Was in eternity When of these Three One of that most inscrutable Trinity The second person Wisedome shall intombe All majesty within a Virgins wombe True Man true God still to that blest Trine linckt True light shall shine and false stars be extinct Sybilla Erythraea SHe is the twelfth and last born in Babylon of the Assyâ—ian nation and daughter to Berosus a famous Astrologian She writ in Greek a book called Vasillogra which some interpret Penalis Scriptura which as Eugenius in his Res de Sicilia testates was transferred into Latin She prophesied of all the Greeks that came to the siege of Troy designed the places whence and how long they should continue there In those books she spake of Homer and that he should write of those wars partially according to his affection and not truth In the same volume she prophesied of Christ after this manner The times by the great Oracle assign'd When God himselfe in pitie of mankind Shall from the Heav'n descend and be incarnate Entring the world a lamb immaculate And as himselfe in wisedome thinks it meet Walke in the earth on three and thirty feet And witâ— six fingers all his subjects then Though a King mighty shall be fisher men In number twelve with these war shall be tride Against the devill world and flesh their pride Humility shall quell and the sharp sword With which they fight shall be the sacred Word Establisht upon Peter which foundation Once laid shall be divulg'd to every Nation The onely difficulty in this prophesie is Trenta tre piede which signifies thirty three year sand Mese dito six fingers intimating the time of six months And thus I take leave of the Sybils Of the Virgins Vestals FEnestella in his book entituled de Sacerdotiis Romanis proposeth Numa Pompilius to be the first that devised the form of this Vestall adoration though the first institution thereof was held to be so ancient that Aeneas transferred it â—rom the Trojans to the Albans as Virgil. witnesseth in these words Vestamque potentem Aeternumque aditis adsert penetralibus ignem To this goddesse Vesta whom some call the earth others the Mother of the gods Fire perpetually burning was consecrated and to this observation and custome certaine Virgins pickt out of the noblest families were chosen as directors and chiefe overseers of that Order by whose negligence if by chance at any time that sacred fire was extinguished their judgement was to be beaten to death with strokes by the hand of the chiefe Priest or Flamin Valerius Maximus reports that the same judgement was executed upon the same negligence by P. Licinius Crassus then in the high Priesthood All such as were found guilty of incest were condemned to be buried alive nor was it lawfull as Labeo Antistius writes for any under six years or above ten to be admitted into that service besides she must not be the only child of her father and mother neither must she have a lisping or stammering tongue be deaf of her eares nor marked with any blemish about her body neither such an one whose parents one or both have lived in servitude or have been conversant in any base offices neither such a one whose sister hath been elected into the Priesthood all these are excused from the service of Vesta neither she whose father is a Flamin a South-saier or one of the Decemviri in the sacrifices or of the Septemvirate in the banquets There is likewise a dispensation with the daughters of Kings and Priests as uncapable of this ministery neither can that mans child be admitted that hath not a known house and an abiding place in Italy for so Capito Atteius writes so likewise the children of all such as are restrained as have the number of Three or more By the edict of the Praetor that no Virgin Vestall or Dialis which belongs to the sacrifices of Jupiter shall be compelled to any thing these be the words of the Praetor by the mouth of the crier Through all my jurisdiction I will not urge or force an oath from the Vestall Virgins nor from the Flamin Dialis in the chusing of the Vestall these things were observed There is a caution by the law called Lex Papia That by the approbation of the chiefe Priest and by his speciall appointment twenty virgins were selected out of the people but this ordinance with many other were abrogated and abolisht by Time insomuch that it was sufficient if any of free parents and honestly descended petitioned or made means to the high Priest she might without more difficulty enter her oath and be admitted into the sacred order being received by him as one snatcht and taken violently from the hands of her enemies The words he used were these This vestall Priest whom I enter into this holy office according to the institution of the best law I receive by the name of Amata to make her intercessions for the Nobility and people of Rome It was a custome to admit them all by the name of Amata because she that was first chosen by King Numa was so called and with these Ceremonies she was as it were hurried to the Temple of Vesta In Labeons commentaries it is thus found recorded The Vestall virgin is incapable to be made heire of any man or woman that dies intestate her goods likewise after her death return to the common treasury Pomponius Laetus in his book de Sacerdotiis agrees with Fenestella That Aenâ—as first brought the Vestall fire from Troy into Italy and Lavinium being built he there erected a Temple to her honour After this Ascanius consecrated another in a part of the hill Alba beneath which or at the foot thereof was a thick grove in which Mars vitiated Illia the mother of Romulus These Ministers of Vesta were tied to an oath of perpetuall viginity for it was a custome among the Latines to make choice of the most noble and chast virgins After many years Romulus devised all the chast ceremonies belonging to that Order and as Varro declares to us created threescore Priests to those publick services selected by their Tribes and Families but of the most noble and unblemisht stocks amongst the Romans The Temple of Vesta is built round and is betwixt the Capitol and the Palace in
mortem somnum divers◠〈◊〉 somnia naâ—os Hos peperit nulli dea nox 〈…〉 marito Night evill fate brought forth black Parcâ— bred With Death and Sleep and divers Dreams beside Of all these sons she was delivered And yet the goddesse never husband tride Cicero in his third book De natura Deorum having numbred all the children oâ— Night derives them also from their father Erebus as may appear in these words Quod si ita est c. If it be so saith he those that are the Parents of heaven should likewise be reckoned in the number of the gods Aether and Dies i. Air and Day with their brothers and sisters by the ancient Geneologists thus nominated Amor Dolus Metus Labor Invidentia Fatum Sinectus Mors Tenebrae Mâ—sâ—ria Querelâ— Gratia Fraus Pertinacia Parcae Hesperides Somnia that is Love Deceit Feare Labour Envy Faâ—â— old Age Death Darknesse Misery Complaint Favor Fraud the Paâ—cae and the Helperides All which are by some imagined to be the children of Nex and Erebus I will only speak a little of two of these as they now lie in my way and that briefly too and because it may perchance be late before I have done with them I will conclude with Night Death and Sleep are brother and sister and both the children of Night Aristo cals Somnus a severe exacter from mankind who as it were viâ—lently snatcheth away the halfe part of our age to bestow on Sleep and therefore by Orpheus he is called the brother of Lethe which insinuates Forgetfulnesse which he most elegantly expresseth in his hymn to Sleep Somne beatorum Rex Rex summe virorum Quem fugiunt curiae c. Sleep of the blest man King and King of men Whom cares still flie and rest imbraceth then Of mischiefes the sole solace and best friend To give them due repose and comfort lâ—nd Who putting on the shape of Death dost give Only by that all creatures means to live Sleep thou hast but two sisters and these are Death and Oblivion both which shorten care Ovid in his Metamorphos for his so many benefits conferred upon Mortals placeth him in the catalogue of the gods The house of Seep the same Poet hath ingeniously described upon whom he confers a thousand children or rather a number not to be numbred nominating only three Morpheus Icelus and Phantâ—sus for sleep it is be moderately used is of all mortall things the sweetest best and most profitable to whom all creatures whatsoever are subject therefore not improperly by Orpheus tearmed the King of men and gods Homer in â—is Iliads makes an elegant expression to shew how wretched their conditions are above other men that are in high and eminent place and office and have predominance over the greatest affairs which he thus introduceth by making all both gods and men asleep at once saving Jupiter which Juno seeing she with great bribes and rewards corrupts Somnus that he would amongst the rest charm the eies of Iupiter which he attempting and the other perceiving the inraged god feeling sleep to steal upon him unawares cast him headlong from heaven into the sea where he had doubtlesse for ever perisht had not Night snatcht up her son and in her darknesse hid him from the wrath of Iupiter But had he been destroied Sleep had been exiled the earth and so all creatures deprived of their quotidian rest From hence likewise may be collected how wretched those sleeping gods are when Iupiter the only wise and potent is ever awake to see provide foresee and gooern by his infinite providence both men and creatures The City of Sleep Lucianus in his second book Verarum Historiaâ—um though tabulously yet hath facundiously described This City saith he is scituate in a most spatious and silent plaine yet round incompast with tall and spreading trees amongst whose leaves the wind only whispers but never robustiously blowes There Poppy growes abundantly Mandragora and all such plants herbs and simples as have the innate vertue to procure and provoke sleep There are multitudes of Bats which flie continually this way and that and betwixt one tree and other great store of Nâ—ght-ravens Owles and Screechowles no bird that is ashamed of day but is here frequently to be found But neither the crowing Cock the chattering Pie the quacking Duck the gagling Goose nor any other fowle either of song or clamor can thither have accesse Fast by this City glides a river with a slow and silent pace making a murmure but no noise rather to rock and â—ull asleep than to waken the water is thick and soft like oile the floods name is Lethe whom others call Nicty porus it flowes from two fountain heads both hid and obscured in places to no man known the one is called Pannychius the other Negreâ—as This City hath two ports or gates one of horn composed with miraculous workmanship in which as in a Table are expressed all such true dreams as exercise the fantasies of men in their depth of rest The other is made of the most purest and most white Ivory in which are carved all sorts of dreams but these as it were artificially shadowed by the pencill but none fully drawn and exprest to the life Within this City wals is a magnificent and spatious structure called the Temple of Night which with all superstitious ceremonies is religiously honoured there is a second instituted to the goddesse Apales and a third to Alethia in both which there are Oracles The sole inhabitants of this place are an infinite company but not a Citizen in shape or favour one like another some are lean lanck and little with crooked legs and hutch-backs rather like monsters then men others are comely well featured tall and proper with cheerfull faces and promising looks some are of a froward and terrible aspect as if they threatned mischiefe and disaster others portly gallant and regally habited and whosoever shall enter the gates of this City some domestick dream or other continually will encouter him and give him a familiar and friendly salute in the shape of some one of these formerly rehearsed relating to him some sad things some pleasant things to minister content or distaste sometimes they whisper truths but that seldome for the greatest part of that multitude are lying and deceitfull because for the most part they speak one thing and intend another and thus far Lucianus of the house of Sleep I had once occasion to write my selfe in this manner Neer to the dark Cimmeâ—ians lies a cave Beneath the foot of a declining hill Deep in the earths warm intrails like a grave Where charming silence makes all husht and still Hither did never piercing Sun-beam crave Admittance nor the voice of hunter shrill Pierce through the crannies of this concave deep Where stands the dull and leaden house of sleep Here the thick vapours from the earth exhal'd Mists all the place about a doubtfull light Begot twixt night and day
imperiall purple Narses the Eunuch had fought under him many brave and victorious battels against the Goths who had usurped the greatest part of Italy from whence he expelled them slew their King and freed the whole Country from many outrages Notwithstanding his great good service he was calumniated to the Emperor and so hated by the Empresse Sophia that she sent him word That she would make him lay by his sword and armour and with a distaffe spin wool amongst her maids to which message he returned answer That he would make such a thread to put in her loom that all the weavers in the Empire should scarce make good cloath on Upon this ground he sent to Alhinus King of the Huns who then inhabited Pannonia asking him why he would dwell in the barren continent of Pannonia when the most fertile Countrie of Italy lay open to his invasion Albinus apprehending this incouragement from Narses in the yeare six hundred threescore and eight made his first incursion into the Emperors consines who sent certain spies to discover the forces of Albinus of which he having intelligence caused all the women to untie their haire and fasten it about their chins thereby to seem men and make the number of his army appear the greater The spies observing them wondred amongst themselves and asked what strange people these were with the Long beards and from hence their names were first derived which hath since been remarkable in the most pleasant and fertile climate of all Italy from them called Lombardy Others say that when they went to fight against the Vandals There was a man that had the spirit of Prophesie whom they besought to pray for them and their good successe in the battell now when the Prophet went to his orisons the Queen had placed her selfe and her women just against the window where he praied with their haire disposed as aforesaid and just as he ended his devotions they opened their casements and appeared to him who presently said to himselfe what be these Long beards to whom the Queen replied To these Long-beards then whom thou hast named let the victory happen thus saith the history Rhodegondis was Queen of France but after her not any Now some may demand the reason why the Salick law was first made by which all women were made incapable of succession in the principalities which as Policronicon relates was this The Crown lineally descending to a Princess of the blood whom for modesties sake he forbears to name or at least their Chronicles are loath to publish this Lady having many Princely sutors neglected them all and fell in love with a Butcher of Paris whom she privately sent for and as secretly married since when all of that sex were by an irrevocable decree disabled of all soveraignty Cassiope was the famous Queen of Aethiopia Harpalice of the Amazons Hippolite of Magnesia Teuca of the Illyrians c. Of these in their places Amongst whom let me not be so unnaturall to her merit or so ungratefull to my Country thrice blest and divinely happy in her most fortunate reign as not to remember that ever to be celebrated Princesse Elizabeth of late memory Queen of England She that was a Saba for her wisedome an Harpalice for her magnanimity witnesse the Camp at Tilbury a Cleopatra for her bounty a Camilla for her chastity an Amalasuntha for her temperance a Zenobia for her learning and skill in language of whose omniscience pantarite and goodness all men heretofore have spoken too little no man hereafter can write too much sacred be still her memory to us on earth as her blessed soule lives ever glorified in heaven Her succeeded though not in her absolute Monarchy yet a Princesse of unspotted fame incomparable clemency unmatchable goodnesse and most remarkable vertue Queen Anne whom all degrees honoured all Nations loved and â—â—â—ongue was ever heard to asperse with the least calumny who in her too short eminence here amongst us was known to be the step of dignity to many but detriment to none in whom all were glad by whom none had ever the least cause of sorrow unlesse in the lamented losse of so grave and gracious a Princesse And for my own part gentle and courteous Reader let me borrow so much of thy pacience that I may upon this so just and good occasion remember a long neglected duty by inserting in this place a few funerall tears upon her hearse A Funeral Ode upon the death of Anna Panareta NOw Hymen change thy saffron weeds To robe and habit sable For joyfull thoughts use Funerall deeds Since nothing's firm or stable This alas we May read and see As in a map or printed table It was not at the time of yeare Birds bid the spring good-morrow Nor when we from the Summer cleare Her warmth and pleasures borrow Nor when full fields Ripe Autumne yields That we are thus involv'd in sorrow But when the barren earth denies Fruits to the reapers mowing When Meteors muster in the skies And no faire fruits are growing When winter cold Dry feare and old His frozen fingers o'r the fire sits blowing When the Sun scants us of his heat And Phoebe tempests threateth When Boreas blustring in his seat His frozen pinions beateth And as a King Above the Spring The fresh and timely buds defeateth In this great barrennesse were we Our plenty made to smother But what might this rare jewell be A Saint a Queen a Mother An Hester faire A Judith rare These dead oh point me out another Save Debora that 's likewise dead Fam'd for her Countries freeing But shall we henceforth see or read Of such another being Oh what a dearth Is now on earth That here none lives with these agreeing Saba was wise so was our Queen For beauty others famed Some for their vertue crown'd have been And in large legends named Who living shall Contend in all With her alas shall be but shamed But since our praises at their best Shorten so farre her merit Leave her to her eternall rest A glorious Sainted spirit For aye to sing Vnto heavens King Thanks for these joies she doth inherit Yet 't is a duty that we owe To give our griefe impression The greater that our sorrowes grow It shewes the lesse transgression A losse like this 'T is not amisse That we then leave to all succession Skies mourn her death in stormy clouds Seas weep for her in brine Thou earth that now her frailty shrouds Lament though she be thine Only rejoice Heaven with loud voice That you are now become her shrine For this appear'd the Blazing starre Yâ—â— fresh in our memory Thaâ— Christâ—ndome both neer and far Might tell it as a story Great Jove is sent With an intent Only to get her to her glory In the Catalogue of Queens having so late remembred the mother how can I forget the daughter she to whom I must give that attribute which all souldiers bestow upon her
of the body This was proved in the Daughter of Democion the Athenian who being a virgin and hearing that Leosthenes to whom she was contracted was slain in the Lemnian wars and not willing to survive him killed her selfe but before her death thus reasoning with her self Though I have a body untoucht yet if I should fall into the embraces of another I should but have deceived the second because I am still married to the first in my heart Not of their minds was Popilia the daughter of Marcus who to one that wondred what should be the reason why all feminine beasts never admitted the act of generation but in their time and when they covet issue and woman at all times desires the company of man thus answered the reason is only this Because they are beasts The wife of Fulvius THis Fulvius the familiar and indeered friend of Augustus Caesar heard him privately complain of the great solitude that was then in his house since two of his grand-children by his daughter were taken away by death and the only third that remained was for some calumnies publisht against the Emperour now in exile so that he should be forced to abandon his own blood and constitute a son in law and a stranger to succeed in the Imperiall purple and therefore he had many motins in himselfe and sometimes a purpose to recall the young mans banishment and to restore him to his favour and former grace in the Court This Fulvius hearing went home and upon promise of secresie told it to his wife she could not contain her selfe but makes what speed she can and tels this good newes to the Empresse Livia Livia she speeds to Augustus and briefly expostulates with him about the banishment of her grand-child and what reason he had not to restore him to his former honors and why he would prefer a stranger before his own blood with many such like upbraidings The next morning Fulvius comming as his custome was into the Presence and saluting the Emperor Augustus cast an austere look upon him and shaking his head said only thus You have a close breast Fulvius by this he perceiving his wife had publisht abroad what he had told her in secret posts home with what speed he can and calling his wife before him O woman saith he Augustus knowes that I have revealed his secret therefore I have a resolution to live no longer to whom she replied Neither is that death you threaten to your selfe without merit who having lived with me so long and known my weaknesse and loquacity had not the discretion to prevent this danger to which you have drawn your selfe by tempting my frailty but since you will needs die it shall be my honour to precede you in death which she had no sooner spoke but snatcht out his sword and with it slew her selfe A noble resolution in an heathen Lady to punish her husbands disgrace and her own oversight with voluntary death and a notable example to all women that shall succeed her to be more chary in keeping their husbands secrets all which I would wish to follow the counsell of the comick Poet Philippides who when King Lysimachus called him unto him and using him with all curtesie spake thus What of the things that are within or without me shall I impart unto thee O Philippides he thus answered Even what thou pleasest O King so thou still reservest to thy selfe thy counsels This puts me in mind of King Seleucus Callinicus who having lost a battell against the Galatians and his whole army being quite subverted and dispersed casting away his Crown and all regall ornaments was forced to flie only attended with two or three servants and wandering along through many deserts and by-paths as fearing to be discovered and growing faint with hunger he came to a certain ruinate cottage where he desired bread and water the master of the house not only afforded him that but whatsoever else the place could yield or the suddennesse of the time provide with a large welcome In the interim of dinner fixing his eys upon Seleucus face he knew him to be the King and not able to contain his own joies nor conceal the Kings dissimulation after dinner the King being ready to take horse and bidding his host farewell he replied again And farewell O King Seleucus who finding himselfe discovered reached him his his hand as to imbrace him beckoning to one of his followers who at the instant at one blow stroke off his head so that as Homer Sic caput estque adhuc cum pulvere mistum These were the fruits of unseasonable babling for this fellow had he kept his tongue till the King had been restored to his former dignities might have received large rewards for his hospitality who suffered an unexpected death for his loquacity Arctaphila ARetaphila Cyrenaea is deservedly numbred amongst the heroick Ladies she lived in the time of Mithridates and was the daughter of Aeglatur and the wife of Phedimus a woman of excellent Vertue exquisit Beauty singular Wisedom and in the managing of the Common-weals business and civill affairs ingeniously expert this Lady the common calamities of her Country made eminent for Nicocaentes the Tyrant having usurped the principality over the Cyrenaeans amongst many other of his humane butcheries slew Menalippus the Priest of Apollo and assumed to himselfe the sacred office and dignity In the number of these noble Citizens he caused Phedimus the wife of Aretaphila to be injuriously put to death and married her against her will who as well distrest with her private discontents as suffering in the publique calamity meditated a remedy for both and by advise of some of her neerest allies attempted to poison the King but the project being discovered was prevented and upon that ground Calbia mother to Nicocrates a woman of an unplacable spirit and prone to any thing wherein there might be blood and slaughter first condemned her to insufferable torture and next to a violent death but the tyrant her son in regard of the extraordinary love he bore unto her being the more relenting and humane of the two was pleased to put her cause first to examination and after to censure In which triall she answered boldly and with great courage in the defence of her own innocence but being by manifest proofs convicted insomuch that her purpose could not be denied she then descended so low as to excuse her selfe alledging that indeed apprehending the greatnesse of his person and that she was in degree no better to him then an bandmaid and fearing lest some other more accomplisht beauty might step betwixt him and her to insinuate into his favour and grace she therfore had prepared an amatorious confection minding only to continue his love not to betray his life and if her womanish weaknesse had in any kind through ignorance transgrest the bounds of Ioialty she submitted her selfe to his â—oiall clemency whose approved judgement she made no
and abundance she being but of humble fortunes and descended from me in parentage It hapned this Aspasia was by a Persian souldier taken from her father as all their Cities in those daies were subject to the like oppressions and presented unto Cyrus the son of Darius and Parasatides but much against her own will or the liking of her father thus presented to him in the company of other to the most choice virgins she was commended above them all both for the modesty of her countenance the civility of her carriage and an irreprovable beauty without all stame or blemish and that which heightned the love of all men towards her she was of singular wisedome for which Cyrus afterward often admitted her into his counsels and so oft as he was swar'd by her advise his designs never failed their wished successe The first time she stood before the King was at supper time which ended and Cyrus after the Persian manner willing to take his cups somewhat lavishly in middest of their healthing there were presented before him â—ouâ— Grecian damosels with Aspâ—sia the Phocensian making up the number the other three being richly adorned whose friends had set their 〈◊〉 out in 〈◊〉 beautified their heads with jewels and polisht their face and bodies with sweet odouis and unguents besides they had instructions how to behave themselves towards the King how to insinuate into his favour not to mâ—ve back when he câ—me forward not make squemish of any curtesie he should 〈◊〉 but freely to recompence kisse for kisse being rolly instructed in the amoâ—orious precept belonging to such a businesse But on the contrary Aâ—pasia would not present here felte in any curious or gay vesture nor suffer any robe of â—â—uour or state to be put upon her neither would she wash or bath her selfe but in sadnesse and sorrow she invoked all the Graecian and Eâ—â—â—therian gods to her assistance shall calling upon her fathers name accounting those unusuall arguments and superâ—â—uous 〈◊〉 rather the marks 〈◊〉 servitude then honour 〈…〉 could she be forced to appear 〈◊〉 any 〈…〉 cast and unblemisht virgin 〈…〉 comming before Cyrus smiled using 〈…〉 gestures she only with her eies 〈…〉 in her cheeks by her tears expressed an extraordinary bashfulnesse The King commanding them to sit down in his presence the rest boldly contended who should place her selfe next him but this Phocean damosell at first seemed not to hear nor without the robustious usage of that souldier who first surprised her could be won to sit downe The King beginning to dallie with them and playing with their cheeks necks and brests the rest willingly suffered him she only struck his head aside and if he offered but to touch her in the least part she presently 〈…〉 and told him he should not do it unpunished The King much delighted with this unexpected 〈…〉 every offer of his she fled his embraces which was against the custome of the Persians he more ardently fixe his affection upon her and turning to the Souldiers who first presented them thus said This Phocean onely thou hast brought me chast and uncorrupted the rest both in beauty and behaviour are impostures and from thenceforth she was sollicited and beloved of the King above all others with whom he had before or after converst with and from that time a mutuall affection grew betwixt them so great that it increased as far as the modest and absolute confirmation of marriage conformable to the custome of the Graecians Insomuch that the love of the King to Aspasia was not rumoured in Ionia solely but through all the spacious Provinces of Greece even Peloponnesus was filled with the bruit thereof to the glory of the great King who after his familiar acquaintance with her was never known to have used the company of any other woman And now began the vision of Aspasia concerning the Dove to be much spoken of and of the goddesse that appeared to her to whom she dedicated after a goodly statue called the image of Venus beautified with many rich jewels withall the picture of a Dove to which she made daily supplications sacrifices and oblations still imploring the favour of the goddesse To her father Hermotimus she sent many rich and unvalued presents making him of a subject almost unparalleld for wealth using in the processe of her life as witnesse as well the Persian as Graecian Ladies a wonderous modesty and continence Hormus sometimes of Thessaly was sent from Scopa the junior who was of Sicily with an admirable rich jewell to Cyrus for a present Who having shewed it to many all wondering at the cost and workmanship and proud of so rich a gem presently after dinner repaired to the chamber of Aspasia and finding her asleep cast himselfe upon the bed by her without disturbing her rest who waking and espying the King so neer began to imbrace him according to her accustomed manner who presently taking the jewel from the casker shewed it to her using these words This I bestow on thee as a gift worthy the daughter or mother of an Emperor which I charge thee to wear for my sake in a carkanet about thy neck To whom she wisely and considerately answered And how dare I be the possessor of so great a treasure which rather becomes the majesty and estate of your mother Parasatides therefore I intreat you send it to her for I without this ornament can present you with a neck sufficiently beautiful The King much pleased with her answer daily and hourly more and more increased his love towards her and what she said and did sent in a letter to his mother with the jewell inclosed For which she was not only much graced and favoured by the Princesse but after by Cyrus rewarded with mony rich gifts of value inestimable all which she modestly sent back with this message These things O King may be usefull to thee that hast the charge of such infinites of men when my greatest riches is to be solely beloved of thee with these and the like she tied the King in inseparable bonds of affections towards her For without all competitorship in the beauty of face feature of body integrity of life and noblenesse of mind she was above all those of her time admirable But after Cyrus being slain in battell by his brother and his whole army overthrown she likewise fell into the hands of the enemy whom the King Artaxerxes with singular care and diligence caused to be sought and brought before him as one whose name and vertues he held in great respect and estimation and being presented before him bound he grew wondrous angry commanding all such to prison as were the authors of her least durance withall commanding a costly and magnificent robe to be cast about her which she with many tears and much sorrow refused till she was compell'd to it by the King still taking to heart and lamenting the death of Cyrus But thus adorned according to the Persian state she
appeared in the eies of all men the fairest of women especially in the Kings much surprised with her extraordinary beauty still perswading her to raze out the memory of Cyrus dead and in his room to admit of Artaxerxes living which slowly and at length though late he obtained respecting her above all other his wives and concubines Soon after his Eunuch Toridates died more then a child and scarce full man the most beautifull youth in Asia and of the King the most beloved who so much lamented his death that all the pricipalities and nations under him seemed to participate of his griefe yet none that durst be so bold as to come into his presence or minister to him any words of comfort Three daies being past in these lamentations and sorrowes Aspasia in a funerall habit and with her eies fixt upon the earth appeared before the King who no sooner espied her demanded the cause of her comming To comfort thee said she O King if thou beest so pleased else to return to the place of sorrow from whence I came At which seeming to rejoice the King intreated her to her chamber whither he would presently repaire to whom she obeied And having put on a robe of the Eunuchs so much bewailed and in that casting her selfe upon her bed she gave the King such content that he commanded her till the daies of mourning were past never to appear to him but in that habit she more prevailing with him then all his Princes wives subjects and servants about him stil living in his most especiall grace and favour And so far Aelianua The Matrons of Lacedemon in all battel 's sought against the common enemy as many of their husbands sons or allies as they found slain they used to search what wounds they had about them if the greater number were in the face or breast with great joy and solemnity they bore them to be intombed in the monuments of their ancestors but it on the contrary those on their backs exceeded the number of the former surprised with shame and sorrow they either left them to the common buriall or gave them such private interment as if they wisht their memories to have perisht with their bodies This history Aelianus in his twelfth book records This discourse for the rarenesse of it I hold not impertinent to insert amongst the women most illustrious Chares Mitylenus in his tenth book of Histories thus writes Zariadres the younger brother of Hystaspes both of them being so naturally beautifull that they were said to be the sons of Adonis and Venus The elder reigned in the lower parts of Media the junior kept his principality in the higher Countrie as farre as the river Tanais not many leagues distant from thence there lived the King Homartes who had one onely daughter called Odaâ—â—s whom as divers authors affirm seemed in a dream to have seen this Zariadres and of his person to be much enamoured The liek in a vision hapning to him insomuch that he was ardently affected to her whom as yet he had never seen This Odaâ—â—â— was the fairest Princesse in that time living in Asia and Zariadres no whit to her inferior who sent to the King Homartes to demand her in marriage he would by no 〈◊〉 yeeld to the motion because not having any â—ale issue he was â—oth to transfer the succession of 〈◊〉 Kingdome upon a stranger purposing rather to bestow her 〈…〉 Prince of his Countrie though a subject Not long 〈◊〉 caused to be assembled all the Friends 〈…〉 and Gentry of his land inviting them to his daughâ—â—â—s 〈◊〉 but not yet knowing or having 〈…〉 on whom to confer her His subject 〈◊〉 assembled he invited them all to a solemn and high Priest 〈…〉 having called his daughter in the hearing of all his gueste 〈…〉 bespake 〈◊〉 We are now â— Princeâ—ly daughter 〈…〉 thy nuptials take therefore this golden 〈…〉 with rich Greekish wine and having throughly and advisedly perused all this Noble 〈◊〉 to 〈…〉 shal◠〈…〉 to drink he is undoubtedly thy husband 〈◊〉 having viewed and reviewed them all and 〈…〉 like that person presented to her in her 〈…〉 some few daies respite which 〈…〉 word to Zariadres bow her affairs stood 〈…〉 her marriage and withall much 〈…〉 in his army neer 〈…〉 conceived himselfe 〈…〉 or auendâ—nt saving 〈…〉 into the City of 〈◊〉 having 〈…〉 this done 〈…〉 his Chariot and driver and withall 〈…〉 he came to the place where this marriage was to be celebrated and 〈◊〉 in amongst the rest he behold the beautifull 〈…〉 countenance and tempering her draught with all 〈◊〉 unwilling hand to whom approching more 〈◊〉 he thus whispered Behold Odatis thy 〈…〉 for whom didst lately send ready to do thee all service She casting an advised eie upon him and receiving him to be a stranger beautifull and in all semblance so like the person of whom she had dreamt in a great extasie of joy drank to him and gave him the cup and whilst â—â—â—rest were amazed at the novel he snatcht her up and carried her where his Chariot stood ready and so transported her into Media This their love was so famous amongst the barbarous people that the history was portraied in all their Palaces and Temples nay even in their private houses many of the Nobility in memory of her calling their daughters by the name of Odatis 〈◊〉 the Tyrant banisht Dâ—on out of Sicily taking into his own custodie the exiles wife Aristomache and her daughter but after at the great intercession of one of his servants Polycrates â— man by him much affected he compelled the Lady who still lamented the absence of her Lord 〈…〉 second marriage with this Polycrates who was by 〈…〉 But Dâ—on having gathered fresh forces and expelling Dionysius from Syracusa unto the Locrenses 〈◊〉 his sister meeting him and congratulating his famous victory made intercession for Aristomache who with great shame had kept her selfe from the presence of her first husband not daring to look him in the face howsoever her second nuptials were made by force and compulsion But the necessity of the cause the wondrous submission and modest excuse of Aristomache together with the mediation of Arete so much he prevailed with Dion all confirming her innocence that he received his wife and daughter into his family still continuing their former love and society Hippo a woman of Greece travelling by sea with her husband and being surprised by Pirats finding the chiefe of them to be enamoured of her beauty rather then yield to his lustfull desires she voluntarily threw her selfe into the sea and was drowned leaving behind her a remarkable president of chastity her body was driven upon Ericheon or as some will have it the Erythrean shore in memory of whom a sacred monument was raised which was many years after yearly celebrated with many condign honours Valer. Max. lib. 7. cap. 1. Chiomara of whom Livius Frontinus Florus and others have written was the
the best How much then is it to be underprized when it is contaminated and spotted with lust and unlawfull prostitution since it is a maxime That things common are so far from begetting appetite and affection that they rather engender the seeds of contempt and hatred for how should any thing festered and corrupt please the eie or that wich is rotten and unsound give content unto the palate But to return to my first Apology needfull it is that to the Tragick Muse Melpomene I should suit Tragicall history wherein if any women be personated for Inconstancy Intemperance Adultery Incest or any such vile and abominable action she hath in that disgraced her selfe not her sex as stretching no further then the delinquent It any man object and say they are bad presidents to him I answer they are examples of horror to be eschewed not imitated which in their own natures beget a loathing not liking and for placing them next to and so neer to the women Illustrious I will excuse my selfe in this short Epigram A skilfull Painter having limm'd a face Surpassing faire of admirable feature Sets by the same to give it the more grace The pourtrait of some foule deformed creature No doubt as much art in the last is shown As in the first albeit that pleaseth most How ever to the workman 't is 〈…〉 They both to him arâ— of likâ— care and cost 'T is so with me I have set before you many Bâ—ave Ladies of theâ— all to take full view Pleasing to th' eie 〈…〉 Whom a more willing workman 〈…〉 Should these appeare rough hew'd or of bad savour And whose aspect cannot so well 〈◊〉 you Perhaps the next of more delight 〈…〉 And grinding other colours I 'll preâ—â—â— you A smoother piece and liâ—â—â— if I be able A fairer face in a more curious fable Of women incestuous and first of Q. Semiramis IT is questioned by some authors concerning this potent and mighty Queen whether she be more renowned for her brave and magnanimous exploits or notorious for her ignoble and infamous actions some willing that for her vertues sake her vices should be utterly buried in oblivion others in regard of what was bad in her that nothing good or commendable might of her to posterity be remembred I purpose to give you a taste of both Some say she was called Semiramis of the birds named Semiramides by which it is said she was fostered in her infancy but that bearing no shew of truth others derive her denomination from Samir which in the Hebrew and the Syrian dialect imports as much as Adamant because her noble and brave atchievements attracted the hearts of that barbarous rude Nation to her admiration and love as the Adamant drawes iron Plutarch in libro Amator saith she was a damosell of Syria and concubine to the King of that Country with whose love Ninus being after besotted took her to his wife of whom she had that predominance that though before he had conquered all the Eastern parts subjugated his neighbour Kings and subdued Zoroastres Monarch of the Bactrians he that was the first inventor of the Art magick that devised the principles of Astrology and found out the true motions of the stars notwithstanding she so far prevailed with him that for one day she might sit in the roiall throne and for that space have the regall jurisdiction in her full power with intire command over the whole Empire In the morning of her soveraignty she imposed upon the subjects such modest and mild injunctions that ere noon she had insinuated into their bosomes so far that she found them so pliable and conformable to her desires that she presumed there was nothing so difficult and impossible which for her sake they would not boldly and resolutely undertake Upon this presumption she stretched her usurpation so far that she commanded them to lay hands upon the King her husband before night and committing him to prison caused him within few daies to be put to death She had by Ninus one son called Ninus junior who should have succeeded his father that for fifty two years space had swaied the Babylonian Empire but whether in her own ambition desirous of the principality or finding her son too effeminate to be Lord over so great a people and uncertaine withall whether so many men and of so many sundry Nations would submit themselves to the soveraignty of a woman all these suppositions being doubtfull certain it is that instead of the mother of Ninus she assumed the person of Ninus her son changing her womans shape into the habit of a mans for they were of one stature proportioned in lineaments alike semblant in voice and in all accomplements difficultly to be distinguished insomuch that never mother and child could have more true resemblance having therefore lull'd her son in all effeminacy and atâ—iâ—â—d him in her Queen-like vesture the better to shadow her own proportion she suited her selfe in long garments and commanded all her subjects to do the like which habit hath been amongst the Assyrians Bactrians and Babylonians in use even to this day Upon her head she wore a Turbaâ—â— oâ— Myter such as none but Kings used to adorn their heads with so that in the beginning she was known for no other then the Prince in whose name she accomplisht many notable and noble atchievements at whose amplitude Envy and Emulation stood amazed confessing her in all her attempts supereminent neither did her heroick actions any way derogate from the honour of the Empire but rather add to the splendour thereof admiration in regard a woman had not only excelled all of her sex in valour but might claim a just priority over men She built the mighty City Babylon and the stately wals reckoned amongst the seven wonders She not only conquered all Aethiopia and made that Kingdome to her state tributary but invaded India being the first that durst attemptie and saving her no 〈…〉 but Alexander who was the second and the last Thus 〈◊〉 Justin out of the history of Trogus Pompeius Berosus affiâ—ms as mâ—ch these be his words Nemo unquam huic seminae comparandus est virorum tanta in ejus vita scribuntur cum ad vituperationem tum maxime ad laudem No man was ever to be compared with this woman such great things have been written of her partly to her disgrace but chiefly to her praise He proceeds further She was the fourth that reigned in Assyria for so it is approved Nimâ—oâ— was the first being father to Belus and grand-father to Ninus which Ninus was the first that made war upon his neighbours and usurped their dominions in whom began to cease the Golden world whom his widdow Queen succeeded counterfeiting the shape of man She was after slain by her sonne Ninus the second of that name who as Eusebius writes after her death swai'd the Scepter thirty and eight years One memorable thing is recorded of her by Diodorus S. culuâ— lib. 3.
as also by Vitruvius This Quâ—en being making her selfe ready in her Palace roiall when the one part of her hair was bound up and the other halfe hung loose upon her shoulders suddenly newes was brought her That the Citizens of Babylon were revolted and all or most of them in mutiny and uprore She presently posted into the City and what with her presence and perswasion atton'd the discord and before she had leasure to put her disordered curls in form reconciled the hearts of that innumerable people to her obedience for which her statue was erected in the City being pourtraied half ready halfe unready in memory of that noble and magnananous adventure Something of the best that was in her though not all you have heard the worst is to come Juba apud Pli. relates that she imitated the fashions of men neglecting the habit of her own Sex and in her latter years grew to that debauch'd effeminacy and sordid lust that she did not only admit but allure and compell into her goatâ—sh embraces many of her souldiers without respect of their degrees or places so they were well featured able and lusty of performance whom when they had wasted their bodies upon her she caused to be most cruelly murthered She was slain by her own sonne because most incestuously sought his bed but which of all the rest is most prodigious and abominable she is reported to have company with a horse on whom she unnaturally doted But these things whether related for truth or recorded of malice I am altogether ignorant and therefore leave it to censure Herodotus Plutarch and others wrâ—t that she caused these words to be inscribed upon her Tomb. Quicunque Rex pecunâ—â— indiget apâ—â—to monumento quod voluerit accipiat that is What 〈…〉 hath need of coin search this monument and 〈…〉 find what 〈◊〉 desires This when King Darius 〈…〉 thinking some magazine of treasure had been therein included he caused the Tomb stone to be removed where he found upon the other side thereof these words engraven Nisi Rex avarus esses pecuniae insatiabilâ—s morâ—uorum monâ—menta non violassis i. Hadst thou not been an avaritioas King and insatiable of coâ—n thou wouldst not have ransacked the grave of the dead Thus as Franciscus Patricius Pontifex saith the excellent Lady in her death â—â—unted the 〈◊〉 avarice of the living That the monuments of the deâ—d are no way to be violated or detaced Sertorâ—us hath taught us who having subdued the City Tigenna scituate in the Countrie of Maurusia in which a noble sepulchre was which the inhabitants said belonged to Antaeus which was the gyant slain by Hercules when the greatnesse of the grave exceeded all beliefe Sertorius caused it to be ruined and there digged up a body as Plutarch witnesâ—eâ—h of seventy cubits in length which beholding and wondering at he caused it to be repaired with greater beauty then before lest by diminishing that he might have ruined a great part of his own honour Some think it was the body of Tagenna the wife of Antaeus whom Hercules prostituted after the death of her husband of her he begot Siphax who after erected that City and in memory of his mother called it by her name Pasiphae THis Lady though I cannot fitly introduce her within the number of the incestuous yet for that horrid act which the Poets have reported of her I shal not impertinently place her next to Semiramis Apollodorus Grammaticus in his book de Deorum origine as Benedictus Aeginus Spoletinus interprets him thus sets down her history Ninus King of Creet espoused Pasiphae daughter of the Sun and Perseis or as Asclepiades cals her Creta the daughter of Aterius she had by him foure sons Cretaeus Deucalion Glaucus and Androgeus and as many daughters Hecate Xenodice Ariadne and Phaedra This Minos peaceably to enjoy his Kingdome had promised to offer such a bull to Neptune but having obtained his desires he sent that Bull before markt out back to the herd and caused another of lesse value to be sacrificed at which Neptune inraged knew not with what greater punishment to afflict him for the breach of his faith then to make his wife most preposterously and against nature to dote on that beast which he had so carefully preserved She therefore confederated with Dedalus a great Artsmaster one that for murder had fled from Athens and with his son Icarus there secured himselfe he devised by his mischievous skill a woodden Cow hollowed within with such artificiall conveyance that the Queen enclosed had satisfaction of her desires to the glutting of her libidinous appetite Of this congression she conceived and brought forth a son called Asterion or as the most will have it Minotaurus shaped with a buls head and a mans body About this monstrous issue Minos consulted with the Oracle which advised him to shut him in a Labyrinth and there see him safely brought up and kept This Labyrinth the first that ever was was built by Dedalus being a house so intricated with windings and turnings this way and that way now forward then backward that it was scarce possible for any that entred therein to find the direct way back thus far Apollodorus But Palephatus in his fabulous Narrations reduceth all these commented circumstances within the compasse of meer impossibility and thus delivers the truth concerning Pasiphae Minos being afflicted with a disease in his secret parts with which he had been long grieved was at length by Crides who belonged to Pandion cured In the interim of this his defect and weaknesse the Queen cast an adulterate eie upon a fair young man called Taurus whom Servius saith was the scribe or secretary to the King she prostituting her selfe to his embraces when the full time was expired she produced her issue which Minos seeing and taking a true supputation of the time comparing the birth with his discontinuance from her bed by reason of his disease apprehended the adultery notwithstanding he was unwilling to kill the bastard because it had a resemblance to the rest of his children though an impression of the fathers face by which the adulterer might easily be known Minos therefore to conceal his own discontents and as much as in him lay to hide his wives shame whom no endearedly affected caused the infant to be carried into a remote mountain and there by the Kings herds men to be fostered But growing towards manhood he likewise grew intractable and disobedient to those whose charge he was committed The King therefore confin'd him into a deep cave digg'd in a rock of purpose not to curb his fierce and cruell disposition but rather encourage it for whosoever at any time he feared or whatsoever he was that had offended him he sent him to this Minotaur on some impertinent or other by whom he was cruelly butchered The cave was called Labyrinthus and therefore described with so many intricate blind Meanders in regard of the difficulty of his return
by his keeper was brought to horse his dam but in the action the cloth falling from his eies and he perceiving what he had done presently seised upon his keeper and slew him in detestation of the act he had committed and to revenge himselfe upon him that had betraied him to the deed The like the same author reports of a horse belonging to a King of Scythia who could by no means be brought to cover his dam but being in the same fashion beguiled and the cloath falling away and perceiving what he had done never left bounding flinging and galloping till comming unto an high rock he from thence cast himselfe headlong into the sea If this sinne be so hatefull in brute beasts and unreasonable creatures how much more ought it to be avoided in men and women and which is more Chrisioans Cyborea the mother of Judas Iscariot THis that I now speak of is remembred by Ranulphus Monke of Chester Jerome and others There was a man in Jerusalem by name Râ—uben of the Tribe of Isachar his wife was called Cyborea The first night of their marriage the women dreamed that she was conceived of a sonne who should be a traytor to the Prince of his own people she told it to her husband at which they were both sad and pensive The child being born and they not willing to have it slain and yet loath to have it prove such a monster to his own nation they in a small boat cast it to sea to try a desperate fortune This vessell was diven upon an Island called Iscariot where the Queen of that place had then no child This babe being found she purposed to make it her own and put it to be nobly nursed and educated calling his name Judas and Iscariot of the Island where he was taken up But not long after she was conceived of a son who proving a noble and hopefull Gentleman Iudas whose favour in Court began to wane and his hope of inheritance which but late flourishe now quite to wither he plotted against his life and privately slew him but fearing lest the murder in time might be discovered and he compell'd to suffer according to the nature or the fact he fled thence to Jerusalem where he got into the service of Pontius Pilatus and found means to be protected by him being then in the City Deputy Governour of the Romans Iudas because their dispositions were much of one condition grew into his especiall familiarity and favour The Palace of Pilat having a faire bay window whose prospect was into Râ—ubâ—ns Orchard he had a great appetite to eat of some of those ripe Apples which shewed so yellow and faire against the Sun This Iudas understanding promised him to fetch him some of that fruit and mounting over the Orchard wall he was met by his father who rebuking him for the injury Iudas with a stone beat out his brains and unseen of any conveied himselfe back Reubens death was smothered and the murderer not known Cyborea being a rich widow Pilate made a march betwixt her and his servant Iudas who being married to his mother was now possest of his own fathers inheritance Not long this incestuous couple had lived together but Cyborea being upon a time wondrous sad and melancholy and Iudas demanding the cause she began to relate to him her many misfortunes First of her dream them of her son in what manner he was put to sea then how she lost her husband being slain and the murderer not found and lastly how by the authority of Pilat she was now compell'd to match against her will who had protested to her selfe a lasting widdowhood By these circumstances Judas most assuredly knew that he had slain his father and had married his mother which acknowledging to her she perswaded him to repent him of these great evils and to become a Disciple of Jesus who was then an eminent prophet amongst he Jewes It shall nor be amisse to speak a word or two or Pilat It is said that a King whose name was Tyrus begat him on a Millers daughter Lyla whose father was called Aâ—us who from his mother and grand-father was called Pylatus at four years of age he was brought to his father who by his lawfull wife had a Prince just of the same age These were brought up together in all noble exercises in which the Prince having still the best Pilat awaited his opportunity and slew him loath was the King to punish him with death lest he should leave himselfe altogether issulesse therefore he sent him an hostage to Rome for the paiment of certain tribute which was yearly to be tendred into the Roman treasury Living there as hostage he associated himselfe with the son to the King of France who lay pledge in Rome about the like occasion and in a private quarrell was also slain by Pilat The Romans finding him of an austere brow and bloody disposition made him governour of the Island called Pontus the people were irregular and barbarous whom by his severity he reduced to all civill obedience for which good service he was removed to Jerusalem bearing the name of Pontius from that Island there he gave sentence against the Saviour of the world Tiberius Caesar being then Emperor was sick of a grievous malady who hearing that in Jerusalem was a Prophet who with a word healed all infirmities whatsoever he sent one Volutianus to Herod to send him this man but Christ was before condemned and crucified There Volutianus acquainted himselfe with one Veronica a noble Lady of the Jewes who went with him to Rome and carried with her the linnen cloth which still bore the impresse and likeness of Christs visage upon which the Emperour no sooner looked but he was immediately healed The Emperor then understanding the death of this innocent and just man caused Pilat to be brought to Rome who being called before Caesar the history saith he had at that time upon him the robe of our Saviour which was called Tunica insutilis a garment without seam which whilst it was about him nothing could be objected against him to his least dammage or disgrace this was three times proved and he still came off unaccused but when by the advise of this Veronica and other Christians the garment was took off he was then accused for causing guiltlesse men to be slain for erecting statues of strange nations in the Temple against the ordinances of the Jewes that with mony wrested and extorted from the holy treasures he had made a water-conduit to his own house that he kept the Vestments and sacred robes of the Priests in his own house and would not deliver them for the service of the Temple without mercenary hire of these and other things being convicted he was sent to prison where borrowing a knife to pare an apple he slew himselfe his body after was fastned to a great stone and cast into the river Tiber. Of Adulteresses FRom the Incestuous I proceed
season till he found an opportunity to strumpet the others wiâ—e which was the cause of of a bloody and intestine war almost to the ruin of the whole City The like combustion was kindled betwixt Pardalus and Tyrrhenus upon semblant occasion Livy in the tenth book of his Decades relates that Q. Fabius Gurges son to the Consul amerced the matrons of Rome for their adulteries and extracted from them so much coin at one time as builded the famous Temple of Venus neer to the great Circus So much of the same in generall now I come to a more particular survey of the persons Of many great Ladies branded with Adultery amongst the Romans and first of Posthumia THis Posthumia was the wife of Servius Sulpitius as Lollia the wiâ—e of Aulus Gabinus Tertullia of Marcus Crassus Mutia the wife of C. Pompâ—ius Servitia the mother of Marcus Brutus Iulia the daughter of Servitia and the third wife of Marcus Crassus Furies Maura the Queen of King Bogades Cleopatra of Aegypt and after beloved of Marcus Antonius and of the Triumviraâ—e all these Queens and noble Matrons is Iulius Caesar said to have adulterated Livia the wife of Augustus Caesar was by him first strumpetted and being great with child to recompence her wrong he hastned the marriage This was objected to him in an oration by Antonius Tertullia Dâ—usilla Salvia Scribonia Tilisconia with all these noble matrons he is said to have commerce Likewise with a great Senators wife whose name is not remembred Augustus being at a publike banquet in his own palace withdrew himselfe from the table in the publick view and before the cloth was taken up brought her back again and seated her in her own place with her haire rufled her cheeks blushing and her eies troubled Messalina the wife of Claudius Tibezius first privately then publickly prostituted her selfe to many insomuch that custome grew to that habit that such as she affected and either for modesties sake or for fear durst not enter into her imbraces by some stratagem or other she caused to be murdred as Claudian saith her insatiat desires yet stretched further making choice of the most noble virgins and matrons of Rome whom she either perswaded or compelled to be companions with her in her adulteries She frequented common brothel houses trying the abilities of many choice and able young men by turns from whence it is said of her she returned wearied but not satisfied if any mâ—n refused her imbraces her revenge stretched not only to him but unto all his family And to crown her libidinous actions it is proved of her that in the act of lust she contended with a mercenary and common strumpet which in that kind should have the priority and that the Empresse in the 25 action became victor Of her Pliny Iuvenal and Sex Aurelius speaks more at large a strange patience it was in an Emperour to suffer this I rather commend that penurious fellow who having married a young wife and keeping her short both in liberty and diet she cast her eies upon a plain Country fellow one of her servants and in short time grew with child the old churle mistrusting his own weaknesse being as much indebted to his belly as to his servants for their wages for his parsimony made 〈◊〉 gâ—d to both and now fearing a further charge would come upon him he got a warrant to bring them both before a Justice They being convented and he having made his case known the Gentlewoman being asked upon divers interrogatives modestly excused her selfe but not so cleanly but that the complaint sounded in some sort just and the case apparant The Country fellow was next call'd in question to whom the justice with an austere countenance thus spake Syria 〈◊〉 resolve me truly saith he and it shall be the better for thee Hast thou got this woman with child yea or no to whom the plain fellow thus bluntly answered Yes Sir I think I have how quoth the justice thou impudent and bawdy knave shew me what reason thou hadst to get thy mistresse with child to whom the fellow replied I have served my master a very hard man so many years and I never got any thing else in his service How this businesse was compounded I know not certainly only of this I am assured that our English women are more courteous of their bodies then bloody of their minds Such was not Roman Fabia who as Plutarch in his Parallels relates was the wife of Fabius Fabricanus and gave her selfe up to a young Gentleman of Rome called Petroniuâ— Valentianus by whose counsell she after slew her husband that they might more freely enjoy their luxuries Salust and Valerius Maximus both report of Aurelia Oristilla who suffered her selfe to be corrupted by Catalin against whom Cicero made many eloquent Orations who the freelier to enjoy her bed caused her son to be poisoned Comparable to Fabia saving in murder was Thimen the wife of King of Agis who forsaking the lawful bed of her husband suffered her selfe to be vitiated by Alcibiades of Athens Martial in his Epigrams writes of one Nevina who going chast to the Bath returned thence an adulteresse of her thus speaking Incidit in Flammam veneremque secula relicto Conjuge Penelope venit abitque Helena Which is thus Englished She fell in fire and followed lust Her husband quite rejected She thither came Penelope chast Went Hellen thence detected Paula Thelesina Proculina Lectoria Gellia all these are by some authors branded for the like inchastities An Egyptian Lady I Have heard of a young Citizen who having married a pretty wanton lâ—sse and as young folke love to be dallying one with another set her upon his knee and sporting with her and pointing one of his fingers at her face now my little rogue saith he I could put out one of thine eies to whom with her two longest fingers stretched forth right and aiming at him in the like fashion she thus answered If with one finger thou put out one of mine eies with these two I will put out both yours This was but wantonnesse betwixt them and appeared better in their action then in my expression and though I speak of a blind King he lost not his eies that way Herodotus relates that after the death of Sesostris King of Egypt his son Pherâ—nes succeeded in the Kingdome who not long after his attaining to the principality was deprived of his sight The reason whereof some yeeld to be this Thinking to passe the river Nilus either by inundations or the force of the winds the waters were driven so far back that they were flowed eighteen cubits above their wonted compasse at which the King inraged shot an arrow into the river as if he would have wounded the channell Whether the gods took this in contempt or the Genius of the river was inraged is uncertain but most sure it is that not long after he lost all the use of sight
smell by which means they preserved their honours for the present and they for their vertues sake were after bestowed upon Gentlemen of noble quality The â—ame Author puts me in mind of another Adulteresse who to 〈◊〉 guilt of inchastity added the bloody sin of murder Our modern Chroniclers remember us of one Ethelburga daughter to King Oâ—â—a and wife to Brithricus King of the West-Saxons who aiming at nothing so much as her own libidinous delights that she might the more freely and securely injoy them by many sundry treasons conspired the death of her husband but having made many attempts and not prevailing in any the devill to whom she was a constant votaresse so far prevailed with her that she never gave over her dammable purpose til she had not only dispatcht him of life by poison but was the death also of a noble young Gentleman the chiefe favorite of the King and one whom in all his designs he most trusted These mischiefs done and fearing to be questioned about them because she had incurr'd a generall suspition she packt up her choicest jewels and with a trusty squire of hers one that had been an agent in all her former brothelries fled into France where by her counterfeit tears and womanish dissimulations she so far insinuated into the Kings breast that the wrinckles of all suggestions were cleared and she freely admitted into the Kings Court and by degrees into his especiall favour so rich were her jewels so gorgeous her attire so tempting her beauty being now in her prime and withall so cunning and deceitfull her behaviour that all these agreeing together not only bated the hearts of the Courtiers but attracting the eies of the great Majesty it selfe insomuch that the King sporting with her in a great Bay window the Prince his sonne then standing by him he merrily demanded of her If she were instantly to make election of a husband whether she would chuse him or his son to whom she rashly answered That of the two she would make choice of his son The King at this somewhat moved and observing in her a lightnesse of behaviour which his blind affection would not suffer him before to look into thus replied Hadst thou made election of me I had possest thee of my son but in chusing him thou shalt injoy neither So turning from her commanded her to be stripped out of her jewels and gay ornaments and presently to he shriven and sent to a Monastery where she had not long been cloistered but to her own infamy and the disgrace of the religious house she was deprehended in the dissolute imbraces of a wanton and lewd fellow for which she was turned out of the cloister and after died in great poverty and misery In memory of whom there was a law established amongst the West Saxons which disabled all the Kings wives after her either to be dignified with the name of Queen or upon any occasion to sit with him on his regall throne yet this woman though she died poorly yet died as it is said penitently therefore methinks I hear her leave this or the like memory behind her En Epitaph upon Ethelburga Queen of the West Saxons I was I am not smil'd that since did weep Labour'd that rest I wak'd that now must sleep I plai'd I play not sung that now am still Saw that am blind I would that have no will I fed that which feeds worms I stood I fell I bad God save you that now bid farewell I felt I feel not followed was pursu'd I warr'd have peace I conquer'd am subdu'd I mov'd want motion I was stiffe that bow Below the earth then something nothing now I catch'd am caught I travell'd here I lie Liv'd to the world that to the world now die This melancholy is not amisse to season with a little mirth In some other Country it was for I presume ours affoords none such but a common huswife there was who making no conscience of spouse-breach or to vitiate her lawfull sheets had enterteined into her society a swaggering companion such a one as we commonly call a Roaring boy This lad of mettall who sildome went with fewer weapons about him then were able to set up a trade-falne cutler had to maintain his mistresses expenses and his own riots committed a robbery and likewise done a murder and being apprehended for the fact judged condemned and according to the law in that case provided hanged in chains the gibbet was set neer to the common hiâ—-way and some miles distant from the City where this sweet Gentlewoman with her husband then inhabited who because in regard of the common fame that went upon them she durst neither give her Love visitation in prison be at his arraignment or publike execution her purpose was as affection that breeds madnesse may easily beget boldnesse unknown to her husband or any other neighbour to walk in the melancholy evening and to take her last leave of him at the gallowes Imagine the night came on and she on her journie It hapned at the same time a traveller being a footman whose journy was intended towards the Town as purposing to lodge there that night but being alone and darknesse overtaking him he grew doubtfull of the way and fearfull of robbing therefore he retired himselfe out of the road and lay close under the gibber still listning if any passenger went by to direct him in the way or secure him by his company as he was in this deep meditation the woman arrives at the place and not able to contain her passion breaks out into this extasie And must I needs then go home again without thee at which words the traveller starting up in hast No by no means quoth he I shall be glad of your company and with what speed he can makes towards her away runs the woman thinking her sweet heart had leapâ— down from the gibbet and followed her after speeds the man as loath to be destitute of company still crying Stay for me stay for me but the faster he called the faster she ran fear added to both their hast down they tumbled often but as quickly they were up again still she fled still he pursued But contrary was the issue of their fears for she never looked back till she came to her own house where finding the doors open and her husband set at supper for hast tumbled him and his stool down one way and the table and meat another he rising with much adoe askt what the pox she ailed and if she brought the devill in with her at her taile long it was ere she could make him any answer or come to her right sences how she excused it I knew not the traveller when he found himselfe neer the City and saw light slackned his pace and went quietly to his Inne whether they ever met after to reconcile their mistake or no I know not neither is it much pertinent to enquire A Modern History of an
a chain of Diamonds which gave a wondrous addition to that beauty when 〈◊〉 of it selâ—e without any ornament was not to be 〈◊〉 A contrary effect it wrought in the King and 〈◊〉 husband To Edgar she seemed some goddesse at least a miracle in nature to Ethelwold in regard of his fear a fury or what worse he could compare her to O frail woman in this one vanity to appear beautifull in the eies of a King thou hast committed two heinous sins Adultery and Murder for accordingly it so fell out Edgar was as much surprised with her love as incensed with hate against her Lord both which for the present he dissembled neither smiling on the one nor frowning on the other In the afternoon the King would needs 〈◊〉 the stag in the forrest of Werwelly since called 〈◊〉 wood In the chase by the appointment of Edgar Earl Ethelwold was strook through the body with an arrow and so slain the King after made Elfritha his bride and Queen The Earl had a base son then present at the death of his father of whom the King asked how he liked that manner hunting to whom he answered Roial Sir what seemeth good to you shall be no way offensive from that time forward he was ever gracious with the King And Elfritha 〈◊〉 to make attonement with heaven for the murder of her husband or â—â—ther as Ranulphus saith for causing Edward 〈◊〉 whom she was step mother to be slaine 〈◊〉 her own son Egelredus might reign builded an Abby for Nunnes at Worwell where she was after buried Gunnora IN the time that Agapitus was Pope Lewis King of France the son of Charls caused William Longa Spata the Duke of Normandy to be treacherously slain this William was son to Rollo The Lords of Normandy with this murder much incensed watched their advantage and surprised the King in Rhothemage where they committed him to safe custody till he had promised and sworn to yeeld up Normandy to Richard son and immediate heire to William the late murdered Duke and moreover in what place soever the King and the young Duke should have meeting to confer that Richard should car his sword but King Lewis neither to have sword nor knife about him This Richard being young was called Richard the Old he had besides another attribute given him which was Richard without Feare because he was never known to be dismaid at any thing but a third above these was that he pretended to be wondrous religious He was Duke two and fifty years and took a Lady to his bed from Denmark whose name was Gunnora by whom he had five sons and two daughters the eldest of which was married to Etheldredus King of England her name was Emma and she was called the flower of Normandy Concerning this bold yet religious Duke it is reported by Marianus lib. 2. Henricus Ranulphus and others that besides many other testimonies of his sanctity this one made him most eminent A Monk of Andoenus in Rothomage a Town in Normandy going one night to meet with his Sweet heart his way lay over a bridge and under that bridge was a deep foord or river it so hapned that mistaking his footing he fell into the water and there was drowned He was no sooner dead but there came to carry away his soul an Angel and a Fiend these two contended about it the one would have it so would the other great was the controversie betwixt them at length they concluded to put the case to Duke Richard and both to stand to his arbitriment much pleading there was on both sides at length the Duke gave sentence That the soul should be restor'd again to the body and be placed again upon that bridge from whence he had falne and if then he would offer to go from thence to his Sweet heart the Devill should take him but if otherwise he because he was a Church-man should be still in the Angels protection This was done and the Monk left his way to the woman and fled to the Church as to a sanctuary whither the Duke went the next day and found the Monks cloths still wet and told the Abbot every circumstance as it fell out therefore the Monk was shriven did penance was absolved and reconciled This I have read which I perswade no man to beleeve This Duke lived with the faire Gunnora long time dishonestly and without marriage had by her those children aforesaid but at length by the perswasion of the nobility and intercession of the Clergy he took her to wife The first night after the marriage when the Duke came to her bed she turned her back towards him which she had never done till that time at which he marvelling demanded of her the reason why she did so To whom she answered before I was your strumpet and therefore as a servant was tied to do your pleasure in all things but now I am your wife and made part of your selfe therefore henceforth I claime with you an equall soveraignty and will do what me list bearing my selfe now like a Princesse not like a prostitute This I am easily induced to beleeve for how soon do honours change manners Juvenall in his sixth Satyr speaking of marriage thus saith Semper habet lites aeternaque jurgia lectus c. The marriage bed is seldome without strife And mutuall chidings he that takes a wife Bargains for mighty trouble and small rest Sleep growes a stranger then whilst in her brest She lodgeth Passion Selfe-will Anger Feare And from her 〈◊〉 drops many a feigned teare c. Somewhat to this purpose spake Terentius in his Adelpâ—â—s Duxi uxorem quam ibi non miseriam vidi c. I made choice of a wife with judgement sound What miserie have I not therein found Children are born they prove my second care They should be comforts that my corfives are For her and them I study to provide And to that purpose all my time 's apply'd To keep her pleas'd and raise their poor estate And what 's my meed for all but scorn and hate And so much for Gunnora It seems the Emperor Valentinianus was neither well read in Juvenal nor Terence He when his wife commended unto him the beauty of the Lady Justina took her to his bed and for her sake made a law That it should be lawful for any man to marry two wives It is read of Herod the Great that he had nine wives and was divorsed from them all only for the love of Mariamnes niece to Hirâ—anus for whose sake he caused himselfe to be circumcised and turned to the faith of the Jewes he begot on her Alexander and Aristobulus on Dosides Antipater on Metheta Archelaus on Cleopatra Philip and Herodes Antipas he that was afterward called Tetrarch one of the four Princes Aristobulus that was Herodes son begotten on Beronica the daughter of his own Aunt called Saloma he begot the
the women of the City with the Virgins houshold servants and intent 〈◊〉 meeting but the matrons and wives of the nobility 〈…〉 night-festivall in a conclave or parlor by themselves 〈◊〉 she 〈◊〉 her selfe with a sword and with her two daughters secretly conveied her selfe into the Temple 〈◊〉 the time when all the matrons were most busie about the ceremonies and mysteries in the conclave then having made fast the doors and shut up the passages and heaped together a great quantity of billets with other things combustible provided for the purpose but especially all that sweet wood that was ready for the sacrifice of that solemnity she set all on fire which the men hastning to quench in multitudes she before them all with a constancy undaunted first slew her daughters and after her selfe making the ruins of this Temple their last funerall fire The Lacedemonians having now nothing left of Alcippus against which to rage they caused the bodies of Democrita and her daughters to be cast out of the confines of Sparta For this ingratitude it is said by some that great earthquake hapned which had almost overturned the City of Lacedemon from Democrita I come to Phillus Demophron the son of Theseus and Phaedra the halfe brother to Hippolitus returning from the wars of Troy towards his Country by tempests and contrary winds being driven upon the coast of Thrace was gently received and affectionately enterteined by Phillis daughter to Lyâ—urgus and Crustumena then King and Queen of that Country and not only to the freedome of all generous hospitality but to the liberty and accesse unto her bed He had not long sojourned there but he had certain tidings of the death of Muesthaeus who after his father Thesâ—us was expulsed Athens had usurped the principility pleased therefore with the newes of innovation and surprized with the ambition of succession he pretending much domestick businesse with other negotiations pertaining to the publike government after his faith pawned to Phillis that his return should be within a month he got leave for his Countrie therefore having calked and moored his ship making them serviceable for the sea he set saile towards Athens where arrived he grew altogether unmindfull of his promised faith or indented return Four months being past and not hearing from him by word or writing she sent him an Epistle in which she complains of his absence then perswads him to cal to mind her more then common courtesies to keep his faith ingaged to her and their former contract to make good by marriage the least of which if he refused to accomplish her violated honour she would recompence with some cruel and violent death which she accordingly did for knowing her selfe to the despised and utterly cast off she in her fathers Palace hanged her selfe From Phillis I proceed to Deianeira Jupiter begat Hercules of Alâ—mena in the shape of her husband Amphitrio joining three nights in one whom Euristius King of Micena at the urgence of his stepmother Juno imploid in all hazardous and fearfull adventures not that thereby he might gaine the greater honour but by such means sooner perish but his spirit was so great and his strength so eminent that from forth all these swallowing dangers he still plunged a victor amongst these difficulties was that combat against Achelous a Flood in Aetolia who transhaped himself into sundry figures for the love of Deianeira daughter to Oeneus and Althaea King and Queen of Calidon and sister to Meleager he whom no monsters nor earthly powers could came by the conquest of Achilous won Deianeira for his bride But he whom all tyrants and terrours were subject to submitted himselfe to effeminacy and the too much dotage upon women for when Euritus King of Oechalia had denied him his daughter Iole before promised him the City taken and the King slaine he took her freely into his embraces with whose love he was so blinded that her imperious command he laid by his club and Lions skin the trophies of his former victories and which was most unseemly for so great a conquerour parâ—on a womanish habit and blusht not with a distasse in his hand to spin amongst her damosels In briefe what slavery and servitude soever he had before suffered under the tyranny of Omphale Queen of Lydia of whom he begot Lamus he endured from her which Deianeira hearing in a letter she â—aies open to him all his former noble act and victories that by comparing them with his present 〈◊〉 it the better might encourage him to 〈◊〉 the first and deter him from the last But having receved newes of Hercules calamity by reason of the poisoned shire sent him by her servant Lychas dipt in the blood of the Centaur Nessus in which she thought there had been the vertue to revoke him from all new loves and establish him in his first for so Nessus had perswaded her when in her transwafcage over the flood Evenus he was slain by the arrow of Hercules dipt in the poison of Lerna when the I say heard of the death of her husband and that though unwilling it hapned by her means she died by a voluntary wound given by her own hand Nor such as that which followes The Ionians through all their Province being punisht with a most fearfull and horrible pest insomuch that it almost swept the City and Country and had it longer continued would have left their places and habitations desolate they therefore demanded of the Oracle a remedy for so great a mischiefe which returned them this answer That the plague should never cease till the young man Menalippus and the faire Cometho were slain and offered in sacrifice to Diana Tryclaria and the reason was because he had strumpeted her in the Temple And notwithstanding their deaths unlesse every yeare at the same season a perfectly featured youth and a virgin of exquisite beauty to expiate their transgression were likewise offered upon the same Altar the plague should still continue which was accordingly done and Menalippus and the faire Cometho were the first dish that was served up to this bloody feast The same author speaks of the daughter of Aristodemus in this manner The Messenians and the Lacedemonians have continued a long and tedious war to the great depopulation of both their Nations those of Missenâ— sent to know of the event of the Oracle at Delphos and to which party the victory would at length incline Answered is returned That they shal be conquerors and the Lacedemonians have the worst but upon this condition To chuse out of the family of the Aepitidarians a virgin pure and unblemisht and this damosel to sacrifice to Jupiter This Aristodemus hearing a Prince and one of the noblest of the family of the Aepitidarians willing to gratifie his Countrie chused out his only daughter for immolation and sacrifice which a noble youth of that Nation hearing surprized both with love and pity love in hope to enjoy her and
other insomuch that the horse opprest with hunger devoured her hence came that Adage 〈◊〉 upon Diogineanus More cruel then Hyppomanes Gregorius Turonensis remembers one Deuteria fearing lest her young daughter now grown ripe and marriageable who might be deflâ—ured by King Theodebertus cast her headlong into the river that runs by the City Viridunum where she was drowned Orchamus finding his daughter Leucothoe to be vitiated by Apollo caused her to be buried alive Lucilla the daughter of Marcus Antonus and Fausta as Herodian reports was slaine by the hand of her brother Commodus against whom she had before made a conjuration Lychione the daughter of Dedalion because she durst compare her selfe with Diana was by the goddesse wounded to death with an arrow at the celebration of whose exequies when her body was to be burnt her father likewise cast himselfe into the fire Hylonome the she Centaur seeing her husband Cillarius slain in the battell betwixt the Centaurs and the Lapithes fell upon his sword and so expired Anmianus and Marcellus lib. 16. have left recorded that Mithridates King of Pontus being overcome in a battell by Pompey committed his daughter Dyraptis to the safe custody of the Eunuch Menophilus to be kept in a strong Cittadel called Syntiarium which when Manutius Priscus had straitly besieged and the Eunuch perceived the defenders of the Castle dismaid and ready to submit themselves and give up the fort he drew out his sword and slew her rather then she should be mode a captive to the Roman General Sextas Aurelius writes of the Empresse Sabina the wife of Adrian who having suffered from him many grosse and servile injuries gave her selfe up to a voluntary death when she considered she had supported so inhumane a tyrant and such a contagious pest to the Common weal. Pontus de Fortuna speaks of a virgin amongst the Salattines called Neaera who grieving that a young man to whom she was betrothed had forsaken her and made choise of another caused her veins to be opened and bled to death Cleopatra after the death of Anthony lest she should be presented as a Captive to grace the triumphs of Augustus gave her arm to the biting of an Asp of which she died for in that manner was her picture presented in Rome of whom Propertius lib. 3. thus speaks Brachia spectavi sacris admorsa colubris Neaera and Charmione were the two handmaids of Cleopatra These as Plutarch and others report of them would by no perswasion survive their Queen and mistresse who perceiving as they were gasping betwixt life and death the Crown to be falne from the temples of their dead Lady raised themselves from the earth with the small strength they had left and placed it right again on her forehead that she might the better become her death which they had no sooner done but they both instantly fell down and breathed their last an argument of an unmatchable zeal to the Princesse their Lady Monima Miletia and Veronicha Chia were the wives of Mithridates who understanding of his tragicall fall and miserable end gave up their lives into the hands of the Eunuch Bochides Monima first hanged her self but the weight of her body breaking the cord she grew somewhat recovered and fell into this sad acclamation O execrable power of a diadâ—â— whose command even in this small sad service I cannot use which words were no sooner spoke but she offered her 〈◊〉 to the sword of the Eunuch who instantly dispatched 〈◊〉 both of life and torment Veronica drank oft a 〈◊〉 of wine tempered with person which dispersing into her veins and keeping her in a languishing torment her death was likewise hastned by the Eunuch Bochides A strange madnesse possest the Virgins of Milesia these as Aeltanus and others have writ gave themselves up to voluntary deaths many or the most strangling themselves this grew so common amongst them that scarce one day past in which some one or other of them were not found dead in their chambers To remedy which mischiefe the Senators of the City made a decree That what maid soever should after that time lay violent hands upon her self the body so found dead should be stript naked and in publick view dragg'd through the streets freely exposed to the â—ies of all men The impression of which shame more prevailing then the terror of death none was ever after known to commit the like outrage upon themselves Phaedra the step-mother to Hippolitus her son in law and wife of Theseus when she could not corrupt a young man her son in law to make incestuous the bed of his father despairing hung her selfe yet before her death she writ certain letters in which she accused Hippolitus to his father of incest which after proved the speedy cause of his death Amongst many strange deaths these of two mothers are not the least remarkable most strange it is that sudden joy should have much power to suffocate the spirits as the power of lightning The rumour of the great slaughter at the Lake of Thrasimenes being published one woman when beyond all hope she met her son at the City gate safely returned from the generall defeats cast her selfe into his arms where in that extasie of joy she instantly expired Another hearing her son was slain in the battell after much sorrow for his death sitting in her own house and spying him unexpectedly comming towards her safe and in health she was so overcome with sudden joy that not able to rise and give him meeting she died as she sate in her chaire Most strange it is that joy should make speedier way to death then sorrow these mothers Zoe remembred by Valerius Maximus lib. 9. cap. 12. So much I hope shall suffice for women that have died strange deaths for I had rather hear of many to live well then that any one should die ill I only intreat patience of the courteous Reader that as I have begun this book in sadnesse so he will give me leave to conclude it in jest Some no doubt though not justly will tax me for my too much intermixtion of history and say there be many things inserted not pertinent to my project in hand which might better have been left out then put in They in my conceit do but dally with me and put such a trick upon me as a Gentleman did upon a Country hostler My tale is but homely but it hath a significant Moral This traveller often using to a thorowfare Inne was much annoied by reason that betwixt his chamber and the stable where he commonly used to see his horse drest and meated there lay great heaps of pullens dung in his way which much offended him and being willing either to be rid of that inconvenience or punish him that might remedy it he took occasion to ask the hostler what dâ—nghill that was which was so offensive He answered him his
Lapithae genus Heroinae Centaurâ—s mâ—dâ—o grata rapâ—â—a meâ—o Such as Iscomache that was Of the Lâ—â—y 〈…〉 She whom the Centaurs would have rapt Amâ—dst their cups of wine Perâ—â—les for his love to Aspasia made was against the Samians For Chrysaeis the daughter of Chryses Priest to Apollo 〈◊〉 by 〈◊〉 a plague was sent amongst the the Greekish host which ceased not till she was returned back to her father for so writes Tortellius Lavinia's beauty the daughter of King Latinus and the Queen Amata was cause of the combâ—â—ion betwixt Turnus and Aeneas so saith 〈◊〉 lib. 4. de Sâ—â—llis Lysimachâ—â— the son of Agathocles poisoned his own son Agathocles by whose fortunate hand he had received the honour and benefit of many glorious victories at the instigation of his wife Arsinoe the sister of Prolomaeus 〈◊〉 Iphis a youth of exquisite feature stranglâ—â— himselfe because he was despised by the fair but cruell Anaxarite Archelaus King of Macedon was slain by a young man called Craâ—â—na because having first promised him his faire daughter he after bestowed her upon another The Poet Archilocus called Iambographus because Lycâ—â—bes denied him his daughter in marriage writes against him such bitter Iambicks that he despaired and hanged himselfe therefore Ovid thus writes Post modo si pâ—ges in te mihi liber Iambus Tincta Licambaeo sanguine â—ela dabit If thou pursu'st me still my book Just vengeance shall implore And in Iambick weapons yeeld Dipt in Lycambes gore Justine in his twenty seventh book relates That Seleucus Callinicus King of Syria for exiling Berenice his step-mother sister to Ptolomaeus was by the same Ptolomaeus invaded and prosecuted by armes Deipâ—â—bus after the death of Paris having married Hellâ—n to which infortunate match her beauty had invited him was by her treachery not only murdered but his body hackt and mangled being almost made one universall wound Tortellius reports of one Evander the nephew 〈◊〉 Pallâ—s King of the Arcadians at the perswasion of his mother Nicostrate slâ—w his own father Orestes the son of Agameâ—â—â—n slew Pyrrhus the son of Achilles being surprised with the beauty of Hermione daughter to Meneâ—eus and Helena 〈◊〉 King of the Thebans was slain by King Crâ—eon being betraied by his own Polydices Cleopatra was the cause of that bloody war betwixt Ptolomaeus Philâ—pater and her own father Alexander King of Syria Idas and Lyncaeus the sons of Aphareus and Arbarne fought a great battel neer to Sparta about the two fair daughters of Leuâ—ippus Phebe and â—â—aira against Castor and Pollux both which were slaine in that battell and perisht not by shipwrack as some write in the pursuit of Paris by sea for the rape of their sister Hellen. Liâ—y lib 36. writes of Antiochus who warning against Rome was so taken with the beauty of a 〈…〉 that neglecting all warlike discipline to spend his 〈…〉 with his wanton he became a 〈…〉 to the enemy Octavia the sister of Augâ—lius being repudiâ—ted by Anthony was the 〈◊〉 of a civill and intestine war The Poet Lucretius growâ—â—◠〈◊〉 for the love of a 〈◊〉 damosell drank poison and so died Tullia incited â—â—rquinius Sâ—perbus to kill her own father Servius Tullius Martia the strumper caused Antonius Commodus the Emperor whose Concubine she was to 〈◊〉 slain by a souldier with whom she had many times lustfull congression Titus Corrancanus being sent on Embassie to Teuca Queen of the Illyrians because he spake to her â—reely and boldly she caused him to be put to death against the lawes of Kingdomes and Nations Livius and Florus Vollaâ—eranus writes of one Rhodoricus King of the Goths who because he stupâ—ated the daughter of Iulianus who was Prefect in the Province or Tingitana the father of the ravisht virgin brought in the Mooâ—s and raised a war which before it was ended was the death of seven hundred thousand men Chilpericus the son of Clothâ—rius was slain by the instigation of his wife Fridegunda in his return from hunting Luchinus a Court of Italy waâ—ied upon Vgolinus Gonzaga because he had adulterated his fair wife Isabella Vollaâ—â—ran Otratus King of Bohemia accused of sloath and cowardise by his wife Margarita for entring league with Rodulphus Caesar raised war betwixt them in which her husband was defeated Gandulphus the martyr for but counselling his wife to a more chast and temperate life was murdered betwixt her and the adulterer Of wars and many other mischiefes of which faire women have been the originall Ovid elegantly delivers in 2 Eleg. thus concluding Vidi ego pro nivea pugnantes conjuge tauros Spectatrix animos ipsa 〈…〉 For a white Heâ—fer I have seen 〈◊〉 â—ight Both gathering rage and couâ—age frâ—â— her sight At the building of Rome Râ—mâ—lus to people the City and get wives for his souldiers caused them to ravish the Sabin women and demosels for which waâ— grew betwixt the two Nations Of which Proper lib. 2. Cur exempla 〈◊〉 Graecum Tu criminis author Nutribus 〈…〉 lactâ— lupae c. What need I from 〈◊〉 Greekâ— example ask Thou 〈◊〉 by 〈…〉 she-woâ—fe nurs'd To rape the 〈◊〉 mâ—d'st thy souldiers task Rape Rome still loveâ— because thou taught'st it fiâ—st Since men the form at best 〈◊〉 â—oon fades and thâ— beauty hath been the came of so much blood-shed Why should women be so proud of that which rated 〈◊〉 the highest is no better then in excellent evill or a wretched wonder that had beginning therefore subject to end created from earth and therefore consequently transâ—â—â—ry but on the contrary since the vertues of the mind â—â—ely acquire after 〈◊〉 and glory conquer oblivion and survive envy and Phâ—nix-like recover fresh youth from forgotten ashes To such I yeeld the first place and so begin with the Amazons Of the Amazons AND first of their Country Cappadocia is a land that breedeth goodly and brave horses it hath on the East side Armenia on the West Asia the lesse on the North Amazonia on the South Mount Taurus by which lieth Sicilia and 〈◊〉 as far as the Cilicke Sea that stretcheth towards the Island of Cyprus The lesse Asia called Asia minor joineth to Cappadocia and is closed in with the great sea for it hath on the North the mouth and sea that is called Euxinus on the West Propontides on the South the Aegyptian sea This lesse Asia conteineth many Provinces and Lands 〈◊〉 the North side Bythinia butting upon the sea against Thracia and is called Phrygia the greater The chiefe City of Bythinia is Nicomedia Galathia takes name of the 〈◊〉 that assisted the King of Bythinia in his wars and therefore had that Province given them to inhabit It was first called Gallograecia as being people mixt of the Gals and Grecians but now they be called Galathians and these are they to whom Saint Paul writ his Epistles Ad Galatas The third part of
her Let me alone the tenement is mine own and I may lie where I list so long as I pay rent for the house Some few nights after comming home in the like tune and sitting asleep in a chair before the chimnie his wife being gone to bed presently the man fals into the fire the maid cries out to her Mistresse O mistresse my Master is falne and lies in the fire even in the midst of all the fiâ—e she lay still and turning her on the other side said so long as he paies rent for the house he may lie where he please But to more serious businesse for I have done sporting Of English Viragoes And of Joan de Pucil OF Guendoline the wife of King Locrine and daughter to Corinaeus Cuke of Cornwall I shall take more occasion to speak more at large in the discourse of the beautifull Estreld Elphleda was sister to King Edward before the conquest sirnam'd the fourth she was wife to Etheldredus Duke of Mercia who assisted her husband in the restoring of the City of Chester after it had been destroied and demolished by the Danes encompassing it with new wals he was Generall to the King in all his expeditions against the Danes in the last battell that he fought against them at a place called Toten Hall in Stafforshire he gave them a mighty overthrow but a greater at Wooddensfield where were slain two Kings two Earls and of the souldiers many thousands which were of the Danes of Nothumberland In this battel were the King and Elphleda both present Soon after this victory Etheldredus died and she governed many years after him in all Mercia or middle England except the two Cities of London and Oxford which the King her brother reserved to himselfe She builded many Cities and Towns and repaired others as Thatarn Brimsbury the Bâ—idge upon Sâ—vern Tamworth Liechfield Stafford Warwick Shrewsbury Watrisbury Edisbury in the Forrest besides Chester which is since utterly defaeced and destroied Also she built a Cily and a Castle in the North part of Mercia which then was called Runcofan and after Runcorn Thus far Ranulphus William de regib with others give her this noble Character This Lady having once assaid the throwes of childbirth would never after be drawn to have any carnall society with her husband alledging that it was not sitting or seemly for a woman of her degree being a Princesse a Kings daughter and a Kings sister to 〈◊〉 selfe to such wanton embraces whereof should 〈◊〉 so great pain and sorrow She tamed the Welchmen and in many conflict chased the Danes after whose death the King took the province of Mercia intirely into his own hand 〈◊〉 her daughter Elswina whom he led with him into West-Saxon Henricus lib. 5. hath left this Epitaph as a memoriall over her Tomb Oh Elphlede mighty both in strength and mind The dread of men and victoresse of thy kind Nature hath done as much as nature can To make thee maid but goodnesse makes the man Yet pity thou shouldst change ought save thy name Thou art so good a woman and thy same In that growes greater and more worthy when Thy seminine valour much out shineth men Gâ—eat Caesars acts thy noble deeds excell So sleep in peace Virago maid farewell Mucâ— to this purpose hath Trevisa expressed these verses in old English Maud the daughter of Henry the fourth Emperour of that name after the death of her husband she bore the title of Maud the Empresse her father in his life time swore all the nobility to her succession but he being dead many fell from their oaths of Alleagiance adhering to Stephen Earl of Bullein who by the sisters side was Nephew to the deceased King He notwithstanding he had before sworn to her homage caused himselfe to be crowned at London upon St Stephens day by William Archbishop of Canturbury one that had before past his Oath of Alleapiance to the Empress Much combustion there was in England in those daies betwixt Maud and Stephen and many battel 's fought in which the successe was doubtfull the victory sometimes inclining to the one and again to the other the circumstances rather would become a large Chronicle then a short tractate I will therefore come to that which sorts best with my present purpose This Lady took the King in battell and kept him prisoner at Bristoll from Candlemas day to Holyrood day in harvest for which victory the people came against her with procession which was approved by the Popes legate From Bristol she came to Winchester thence to Wilton to Oxford to Reding and St Albans all the people acknowledging her their Queen and soveraign excepting the Kentish men only she came thence to London to settle the estate of the Land whither came King Stephen for her husbands delivery upon condition that Stephen should surrender the Kingdome up entirely into her hands and betake himselfe ever after to a sequestred and religious life But to this motion the Empresse would by no means assent the Citizens likewise intreated her that they might use the favourable lawes of S Edward and not those strict and severe Statutes and Ordinances devised and established by King Henry her father neither to this would the bold spirited Lady agree For which the people began to withdraw their affections from her and purposed to have surprized her of which she having notice left all her houshold provision and furniture and secretly conveied her selfe to Oxford where she attended her forces who were by this time dispersed and divided But taking with her her Uncle David King of the Scots she came before Winchester laying a strong siege to the Bishops Tower which was defended by the brother of King Stephen But now observe another another female warrior The wife of the imprisoned King being denied his freedome now takes both spirit and arms and associated with one William Iperus came with such a thundring terror to raise the siege that the hardy Empresse to give way to her preâ—ent â—ury was from strength forced to sâ—e to stratagem for finding her powers too weak to withstand the incensed Queen she counterseited her selfe dead and as a Corse caused her body to be conveied to the City of Glocester and by this means escaped But Robert her brother was there taken prisoner and committed to safe custody Then the Queen emploied her selfe on the one part for the release of her husband and the Empresse on the other for the enfranchisement of her brother at length after long debating of the businesse it was determined by the mediators on both sides that Stephen should be restored to the Kingdome and Duke Robert to his Lordship and Earldome and both as they had disturbed the peace of the Land so now to establish it To this the Earl would not assent so that all that year there was nothing but spoile man-slaughter direptions and all manner of violence robbing of the rich and oppressing of
the poor The King upon Holy-Rood day was released and besieged the Empresse in the City of Oxford from Michelmas day to mid winter where being oppressed with famine she took the advantage of the Frost and Snow and attiring her selfe all in white escaped over the Fens and came to the Castle of Wallingford And so much shall suffice to expresse the magnanimity and warlike dispositions of two noble and heroick English Ladies A French Lady comes now in my way of whom I wil give you a short character In the minority of Henry the sixt when France which was once in his entire possession was there governed by our English Regents the famous Duke of Bedsord and others Charls the Dolphin stiled after by the name of Charls the seventh being a Lord without land yet at that time maintaining what hostility he was able whilst the English forraged through France at their will and commanded in all places at their own pleasure the French in utter despaire of shaking oft the English yoke there arose in those desperate times one Joane Are the daughter of James Are and his wife Isabel born in Dâ—mprin This James was by profession a Shepherd and none of the richest Joane whom the French afterwards called Joane de Pucil whilst she was a young maid and kept her fathers sheep would report to divers That our blessed Lady S. Agnes and S. Katharine had appear'd unto her and told her that by her means France should regain her pristine liberty and cast off the yoke of English servitude This comming to the eare of one Peter Bradicourt an eminent Captain then belonging to Charls the Dolphin he used means that she should be sent to have conference with his master who sojourned then in Chynon in his lowest of dejection and despair of hope supply or comfort In her journie thither she came to a Town called Faire-bois where taking up her Inne a place which she had never before seen she desired a souldier to goe to a secret by-corner where was a heap of old iron and from thence to bring her a sword The souldier went according to her direction and searching the place amidst a great quantity of old tongs shovels hand irons and broken horse shooes found a faire bright sword with five Flower-Deluces upon either side engraven This sword with which she after committed many slaughters upon the English she girt to her and so proceeded to Chynon to give the Dolphin meeting Being there arrived Charls concealed himself amongst many others whilst he was brought into a faire long gallery where he had appointed another to take his place and to assume his person she looking upon him gave him neither respect nor reverence but sought out Charls among all the other in that assembly and pickt him from amongst the rest to whom making a low obeisance she told him that to him only was her businesse The Dolphin at this was amazed the rather because she had never before seen him and was somewhat comforted by reason that she shewed chear and alacrity in her countenance they had together long and private conference and shortly after she had an army given him to be disposed and directed by her She then bespake her selfe armor Cap a Pe bearing a white Ensign displaid before her in which was pourtraied the picture of the Saviour of the world with a Flower-de-luce in his hand and so marched to Oâ—leance Her first exploit was fortunately to raise the siege and â—elieve the Town From thence she passed to Reams took the City and caused the Dolphin there to proclaim himselfe King and take upon him the Crown of France She after took Jargueux a strong Town and in it the Earl of 〈◊〉 with many other brave English Gentlemen She â—ought the great battell of Pathay with good successe in which were taken prisoners the Lord Talbot the scourge and terror of the French Nation the Lord Scales the Lord Hungerford with many others both of name and quality she took in Benveele Mehun Trois and divers other Towns of great import and consequence at length in a caâ—â—â—ado or skirmish she was taken prisoner by Sir John of Entenburch a Burgonian Captain and sent to Roan The French Chronicles affirm that the morning before she was surprized she took the Sacrament and comming from Church told to divers that were about her that she was betraid her life sold and should shortly after be delivered up unto a violent death For Sir John gave a great sum of monie to betray her The English comming to invest themselves before Mondidier Joan was advised to issue out by Flaâ—y and skirmish with them who was no sooner out but he shut the gates upon her being taken she was sent to Peter Bishop of Bevoise who condemned her to the fire for a forceresâ—e which judgement was accordingly executed upon her in Roan in the Market place Twenty six years after Charls the King for a great sum of monie procured an annihilation of the first sentence from the Pope in which she was proclaimed a Viâ—ago inspired with divine instinct in memory of whose vertuous life and unjust death he caused a faire crosse to be erected just in the place where her body was burned I return again to the English Fâ—bâ—an and Harding speak of Emma sister to the Norman Duke called Richard who for her extraordinary beauty was called The flower of Normandy she was married to Eâ—helâ—ed King of England By 〈◊〉 heroick spirit and masculine instigation the King seat to all parts of the Kingdome secret and strict commissions That upon a day and hour assigned all these Danes which had usurped in the Land and used great cruelty should be slaughtered which at her behest and the Kings command was accordingly performed which though it after proved ominous and was the cause of much misery and mischiefe yet it shewed in her a noble and notable resolution Oâ— Queen Margaret the wiâ—e of Henry the sixt her courage resolution and magnanimity to speak at large would ask a Volume rather then a compendious discourse to which I am strictly tied And therefore whosoever is desirous to be further instructed in the successe of those many battels fought against the house of York in which she was personally present I refer them to our English Chronicles that are not sparing in commending her more then womaâ—ish spirit to everlasting memory With her therefore I conclude my female Martialists And now me thinks I am come where I would be and that is amongst you faire ones Of faire Women IT is reported of a King that for many yeers had no issue and desirous to have an heire of his own blood and begetting to succeed in the throne upon his earnest supplication to the divine powers he was blessed with a faire son both of beauty and hope And now being possessed of what he so much desired his second care was to see him so educated that he might have as much comfort
at the upper end of a long gallery which when the Embassador should enter the great Ladies of either side richly attired were placed through the middest of whom as he passed along he as amazed at the state or admiring at their beauties cast his eie first on one side then on the other and that not without some pause as if he had been to take a particular survey of all their features but by degrees comming up towards the Queen who sate like Diana amongst her nymphs or Ariadne in her crown of stars instated above the lesser lights to give him entertainment and observing his eies still wander she thus bespake him Averte oculos ne videas vanitatemâ— Turn away your eies least you behold vanâ—ty to whom he suddenly replied Imo potius miribilia opera Deiâ—â—â— Nay the wonderfull works of God Since then you are such rather let your vertuous actions beautifie then your vitious deeds any way disgrace his so great and glorious workmanship Of Faire Women OF these Herodica shall have the first place Niceus in his book de Rebus Arcad. relates That one Cypselus purposing to raise a new Colony erected a faire and goodly City in a spacious Plaine bordering upon the river Alphaeus to which place multitudes of the Parrhasians came to inhabit At the same time was a Grove and an Altar celebrated with much pomp and solemnity to Elusina Ceres with annuall feast at this publike meeting was a contention Which of all the women was censured to be the fairest The first that had the priority and Palm for beauty bestowed upon her was Herodica the wife of Cypselus Zenophon apud Coelium lib 7. cap. 53. speaks of one Panthaea the wife of Abraditus a Noble man of Persia whom Cyrus having defeated the army of the Aslyrians and spoiled their tents took captive Abraditus at that time being absent as not long before emploied upon an Embassie to the Bactriaus in which interim Panthaea was in the custody of a Noble man of Media called Araspes who affirmed of her to the King with great admiration of her feature and beauty That in all Asia her like was not to be seen or found Pâ—ulus Dâ—aconus writes of Theodole a Roman Lady of that admirable splendour that she attracted the eies of all men that but glanced that way to dwell upon her with wonder her haire was bright and yellow which when she pleased to unloose and leâ— fal about her shoulders it covered her from the crown to the heel A large description he makes of her perfections howsoever most certain it is that the King Cambeâ—les was exâ—â—eamly entangled in the snares of her beauty Saxo Grammaâ—icus in his Danish history commemorates one Suabilda a Queen in 〈◊〉 the lineaments both of body and face to be of that rare pulchritude that being doomed unto a wreâ—ched and miserable death and bound with thongs of leather to be trod upon by the hoofs of wild horses her beauty strook such an impression even in those unreasonable creatures that they could not be forced with their rude 〈◊〉 to leave the least character of violence upon lambs so fair and exquisitely fashioned The same Author remembers us of Seritha and Signis the first a virgin of incomparable splendour to whom one Otharus was a 〈…〉 the other was the daugher to one Sygarus who paralleld the first and was importunately sollicited by 〈…〉 Brysaeis was so faire that she endeaâ—ed 〈…〉 of all the Greeks Achilles 〈…〉 or handmaid yet he 〈…〉 of her above all his other women of whom Horace 〈◊〉 Insolentem Serva Brysaeis niveo colore 〈…〉 His 〈…〉 with her colour white Iasolent 〈◊〉 moved to delight Of 〈◊〉 Ovid likewise speaks lib. 2. de Arte Amandit 〈◊〉 ut in capta Lyrnâ—side magnus Achilles Cum premeret 〈◊〉 lossus ab hoâ—te torum This 〈…〉 of his Love 〈◊〉 When with the slaughâ—er of his enemies tired He doff'd his Cushes and unarm'd his head To 〈◊〉 with her on a soft day bed It did rejoice Bryseis to embrace His braised arms and kisse his blood stain'd face Those hands which he so often did imbrew In blood of warlike Trosans whom he slew Were now imploâ—'d to tickle touch and feel And shake a Lance that had no point of steel Thargelia Molesia was of that excellent aspect that as Hyppias the Sophist testifies of her she was married by course to fourteen severall husbands for so he writes in a Treatise entituled De inscripta Congregatione in which besides her character of beauty he gives her a worthy attribute for her wisedome in these words Perpulchra sapiens Anutis was the wife of a noble person called Bogazus and sister to Xerxes by the fathers side She as Dinon writes in his Persick history in the chapter entituled De prima Coordinatione in these words Haec ut pulcherrima fuit omnium mulierum quae fuerant in Asia c. She saith he as she was the fairest of all women in Asia so of them all she was the most intemperate Timosa as Philarchus in his Lib. 19. contends was the mistresse of Oxiartes who in the accomplishments of nature anteceded all of her age she was for her beauty thought worthy to be sent as a present from the King of Aegypt to the most excellent Queen of King Statyra but rather for a wonder of nature then a president of chastity Theopompus in his fifty sixth book of History records That Zenopithia the mother of Lysandrides was the fairest of all the women in Peloponnesus She with her sister Chryse were slain by the Lacedemonians at the time when Agesâ—laus in an uprore and mutinous sedition raised gave command That Lysandrides as his publick enemy should be banished from Lacedemon Patica Cipria was born in Cyprus Philarchus remembers her in his tenth book of history She attending upon Olympias the mother of Alexander was demanded to marriage by one Monimus the son of Pythioa But the Queen observing her to be of more beauty in face then temperance in carriage O unhappy man said she that chusest a wife by the eie not by counsell by her beauty and not behaviour Violentilla was the wife of the Poet Stella she for all accomplishments was much celebrated by Statius of her lib. 1. Syll. thus speaks Al tu pulcherrima forma Italidum tantem casto possessa marito Thou of our Latium Dames the fair'st and best Of thy chast husband art at length possest Agarista as Herodotus cals her was the daughter of Clisthenes the Syconian she was of that unexpressable form that her beauty attracted suitors from all parâ—s of Greece amongst whom Hypocledes the son of Tisander is numbred From Italy came Smyndrides Sibarites Syritanus and Damnasus From the Coast of Ionia Amphimnestrus Epidamnius Aetolus and Meges From Peloponnesus Leocides Amianthus Aâ—â—has Hâ—leus Laphanes and Phidon son to the King of the Argives From
and feature they were most frequent amongst the inhabitants of Tenedos and Lesbos Heraclius Lembus writes That in Sparta with great admiration and reverence they observe the fairest man or woman and commonly the Spartane beauties are the most illustrious Therefore of the King Archidamus it is left registred That being to make choice of a Queen when one singularly beautifull but of small doweâ— and another wondrous rich but extraordinary deformed were placed before him he cast 〈◊〉 upon the goods of Fortune and neglecting the treasures of Nature preferred bondage before beauty For which the Ephori which in Athens were the same Officers that The Tribunes were in Rome called him to account and put him to an extraordinary great 〈◊〉 saying This man in stead of Soveraigns would beget subjects and for Princes leave peasants to succeed and raign over us Euâ—ioides saith That beauty hath the first place in the claim of Empire therefore those that in Homer were admirers of Helens beauty spake to this purpose Indignum nihil est Troâ—s sortes Achivos Tempore tam longo perpessos esse labores Ob talem uxorem cui praestantissima soâ—ma Nil mortale refert superisque simillima dâ—vis The Greeks and Trejans who can say were base So long and so great labours to endure For such a wife whose most excellent face Shewes nothing mortall but all God like pure This made the Spartans the place from whence Helen was ravished as the greatest 〈◊〉 to entertain a stranger to shew unto them their Virgins naked A custome they had likewise in the Isle of Châ—os in certain times of the yeer after the same manner to behold the young men and maids in publick wrastle together Nitetis CAmbyses hearing that the Aegyptian women did much differ from other nations in manners and behaviour especially from the custome of the Persians sent to Amasa King of the Aegyptians to demand his only daughter in marriage The King something troubled at this Embassie as fearing he would rather keep his daughter as a concubin then to give her the right of her birth and to honor her with the titles of a Queen and Bride he devised this policy to delude Cambyses and still to conserve her chastity he had there in his Court a young Lady called Nitetis the daughter of Aprias an Aegyptian whom because he had been defeated in a battel against the Cyrenaeans Amasa had caused to be slain This Nitetis being the prime and choice beauty of the Court in all her lineaments so exquisite that he presumed she would not only content but much delight the King he instructed her how to take upon her the name of his daughter and in every circumstance and complement how to demean her selfe so with a Princely train accommodates her for the journie Being arrived in Persia she was reially enterteined by the King her behaviour and beauty more pleasing him then any of his choice damosels selected out of his many Provinces insomuch that he hastned the marriage which was with no small pomp according to the manner of the Persians Nitetis lying in the Kings bosome and knowing how much she was endeared to him as now not casting his eie or affection upon any other began to call to remembrance her fathers death and what a plain and smooth way lay open to her to be revenged on him that slew him and forgetting the honours she had received by Amasa's means in preferring her to be Queen of Persia not rating that good equall with the ill she received in the shedding of her fathers blood she opened to Cambyses all the whole imposture withall importuned him to revenge the death of her father Aprias The King as much pleased with her plain and seeming simplicity as incensed with so great an injury done to him by Amasa as well to revenge her father as his own wrongs with an invincible army invaded Aegypt Dinon in his book of the Persian History and Lynceas Naucratica in his Aegyptian History they agree that Nitetis was sent to Cyrus and that by him she was the mother of Cambyses and that after the death of Cyrus the Army with which he went against Amasa and invaded Aegypt was to revenge the wrongs of a mother and not a wife Bersane SHe as Curtius and Gellius both assent was the widdow of one Daâ—aseus of that singular aspect that Alexander the great became enamoured of her above all other so that when neither the rare beauty of Darius his wife and daughters could tempt him nor the whorish blandishments of Thaâ— and others corrupt him indeed where his in desty and temperance is preâ—â—rred before many other Princes almost all yet with her he was intangled For those that write of him affirm that he was never known to enter into the familiar embraces of any save his own wife and this Bersane whom he made one of the Queens women It is not to be questioned but that Berseba she was a goodly faire woman and of extraordinary fâ—â—rure which pierced so deep into the brest of that wise King and Prophet David that all religion and sanctity set apart he for her love committed the two most heinous and horrible sins of adultery and murder for he caused her husband Vriah to be slain and after married her a great blemish to his former holinesse of whom Strozzâ— Pater thus writes Ille sacri vates operis Jessâ—â—a proles Prafecit populo quem Deus ipse suo Bersabeae captus forma The Psalmisl born of the Jesseian Line The famous Author of that work Divine Whom God made Ruler 〈◊〉 his people he Dotes on the feature of faire Bâ—â—sabe Lycaste one of the daughters of Priam. was faire above measure insomuch that Polydamus the sonne of Anthenor whom he begor of Theano the sister of Hecuba of a Concubine made her his wise There was another Lycasle that we read of who for her perfection in all degrees of comliness had the name of Venus bestowed upon her The wise of Candaules THis Candaules whom the Grecians call Myrsilus was King of the Saâ—dians and descended from Alcaeus the son of Hercules having a wise whom he affectionatly loved and therefore judging her to be the fairest of women could not contain his pleasures but comming to one Gyges the son of Dascylus a servant of his to whom he vouchsafed his greatest familiarity he to him exâ—ols the beauty of his wife above measure and because saith he I would have thee truly know that she is no otherwise then I have reported her and that mens ears naturally aâ—e more incredulous then their eies I will devise a means that thou shalt see her naked To whom Gyâ—es replied O roiall Sir What words be these you speake thee which rather â—avours of a man distract then well coâ—â—sulled and advised women that put off their garments with them put off their modesty therefore it was well determined and provided by our fathers wherein
they proposed unto us honest rules and examples among which this was one That every man should have inspection into his own and guide himselfe by that compasse I verily beleeve she is matchlesse above all other women and deservedly to merit that character you have given her but withall I beseech you that you will not perswade me to any thing which is not lawfull At these words the King seemed to be displeased and repli'd Be confident O Gygâ—s and neither distrust me in so perswading thee nor my wife who is altogether ignorant of what I intend since from neither of us any damage or detriment no not so much as the least displeasure can arise for first I have devised that she shall not know nor once suspect that thou hast beheld her for I will order it that thou shalt be secretly conveied into the chamber and unseen behold every passage of her making unready and comming to bed Now when thou hast freely surveied her in every part and lineament and spiest her back towards thee convey thy selfe out of the room only in this be carefull that at thy removing she cast no eie upon thee This done the next morning give me thy free and true censure Gyges that could by no means avoid his importunity was prepared against the time The King according to his accustomed hour conveys himselfe into his chambâ—â— and so to bed the Queen soon after entring â—â—poils her selfe of all her 〈◊〉 and ornaments even to her 〈◊〉 all which Gyges was spectator of who no soner spied her back 〈◊〉 to go towards bed but Gyges slips from the place where he was hid which was not so cuâ—â—ingly done â—ut he 〈◊〉 espied by the Queen she demanding the reason of it from her husband and ne certifying the truth but 〈◊〉 what modesty he could excusing it she neither seemed to be angry nor a â—rogether well pleased but in her silence meditated revenge for amongst the Lydians and almost all those barborous nations it is held great incivility and immodesty to behold a man much more a woman naked The next morning by such servants as she best trusted she caused Gyges to be sent for who misdoubting nothing that had past as one that had many times free accesse unto her instantly came she causing her servants to withdraw themselves thus bespake him Two waies are proposed thee O Gyges and one of them instantly and without least premeditation to make choise of Either thou must kill Candaules and that done be possessed of me and with me the Crown of Lydia or instantly die for thy doom is already determined of because thou shalt know that in all things it is not convenient to obey the King or search into that which thou oughtest not to know There is now a necessity that either he that counselled thee to this must perish or thou that obeiedst him against all Law or Justice to behold me against reason or modesty naked Gyges at these words was first wondrously amazed but after recollecting himselfe entreated her not to compell him to so hard an exigent as to the choice of either But finding that necessity that he must be forced to one or the other to kill the King or to be slain by others he rather made choice to survive and let the other perish and thus answered her Since generous Lady you urge me to an enterprize so much opposite to my milder nature and disposition propose some safe course how this may de done Even saith she in the selfe-same place where he devised this mischiefe against himselfe namely his bed-chamber where to thee I was first discovered Therefore providing all things necessary for so determinate a purpose and the night comming on Gyges who knew no evasion but to kill his master or die himselfe awaited his best advantage and having notice when Candaules was asleep followed the Queen into her chamber and with a Ponyard by her provided for the purpose stabbed him to the heart by which he attained both the Queen and Kingdome Of this history Archilochus Parius makes mention in his Iambicks who lived about the same time affirming that Gyges was by the Oracle of Delphos confirmed in the Kingdome after the faction of the Heraclides had opposed his soveraignty Rowan and Estrilda ROwan was a maid of wonderfull beauty and pleasantnesse daughter to Hengest a Captain of the Saxons Of this Lady Vortiger then King grew so enamoured that for her sake he was divorced from his wife by whom he had three sons for which deed the greatest part of the Brittains forsook him therefore he by the instigation of Rowan still caused more and more Saxons to be sent for under pretence to keep the Land in subjection But the Brittains considering the daily repair of the Saxons came to the King and told him the danger that might ensue entreating him whilst it was yet time and to prevent a future miserie to expell them the Land But all in vain for Vortiger was so besotted in the beauty of his fair wife by whose counsell he was altogether swaied that he would in no wife listen to the counsell of his subjects Wherefore they with one united consent deprived him of his Crown and dignity making Vortimerus his eldest son King in his stead Who was no sooner Crowned but with all expedition he raised an army and pursued the Saxons and in four main battels besides conflicts and skirmishes became victorious over them The Saxons and their insolencies thus supprest and the King now governing the Land in peace after he had reigned seven years was by this Rowan in revenge of the disgrace done to her King deposed and her Countrimen disgraced most trecherously poisoned Locrin the eldest son of Brute chased the Huns which invaded the realm of England and so hotly pursued theâ—â— that many of them with their King were drowned in a river which parteth England and Scotland and after the name of the King of the Huns who there perished the river is to this day called Humber This King Locrin had to wife Guendoline a daughter of Corineus Duke of Cornwall by whom he had a son called Madan He kept also a Paramour called the beautifull Lady Estrilda by whom he had a daughter called Sabrina Locrine after the death of Corineus of whom he stood in awe divorced himselfe from his lawfull wife and took to his embraces his fair concubine moved with this injury Guendoline retired her self into Cornwall where she gathered a great power fought with her husband slew him in battell and after caused him to be buried in Troy-novant That done she caused the fair Estrilda with her daughter Sabrina to be drowned in a river that which parts England and Wales which still bears the name of the young Virgin and is called Severn These her designs accomplished for so much as Madan her young son was but in his pupillage and not of capacity or age to govern the Land by the
Lady with her son to King Polydectes He surprized with her beauty married her and caused her son Perseus to be educated in the Temple of Minerva and after made attonement betwixt them and Acrisius But Polydectes dying at the funerall games celebrated at his death in casting of a mighty stone being one of the exercises then used Perseus whose hand failed him cast it unawares upon the head of Acrisius and slew him against his own purpose making good the will of the Oracle Acrisius being buried Perseus succeeded his grandfather in the City Argos Helena was first â—avished by Theseus and afterwards by Paris she had these suitors Antiochus Ascalaphus Ajax Oeleus Antimachus Aeceus Blanirus Agapenor Ajax Telamonius Clyrius Cyanaeus Patroclus Diomedes Penelaeus Phaemius Nyraeus Polyâ—â—tes Elephenor Fumetus Stâ—nelus Tlepolemus Protesilaus Podalyrius Euripilus Idomâ—naeus Telioâ—es Tallius Polyxeâ—us Protus Menestaeus Machaon Thoas Vlysses Philippus Meriones Mâ—ges Philocletes Laeonteus Talpius Prothous but she was possessed by 〈◊〉 Auge was the faire daughter of Aleus and comprest by Hercules and delivered of her son in the mountain Parthenius at the same time Atalanta the daughter of Jasius exposed her son begot by Mâ—leager unto the same place these children being found by the Shepherds they called the son of Hercules Telephus because he was nursed by a Hart which sed him with her milk they called the son of Meleager Parthenopaeus of the mountain Auge fearing her fathers displeasure fled into Moesia to King Teâ—thrus who for her beauties sake having himselfe no children adopted her his heire These following are the fiâ—ty fair daughters of Danaeus with the fifty sons of Aegiptus whom the first night of their marriage they slew Idea killed Antimachus Philomela Pantheus Scilla Pâ—oteus Philomone Plexippus Euippe Agenor Demoditas Chrysippus Hyale Perius Trite Enceladus Damone Amintor Hypothoe Obrimus Mirmidone Mineus Euridice Canthus Cleo Asterius Arcania Xanthus Cleopatra Metalces Philea Phylinas Hyparite Protheon Chrysothemis Asterides Pyraule Athamas her name is lost that slew Armoasbus Glaucippâ— Niavius Demophile Pamphilus Antodice Clytus Polyxena Egyptus Hecabe Driantes Achemantes Echominus Arsalle Ephialtes Monuste Euristhenes Amimone Medamus Helice Evideus Amoeme Polydector Polybe Iltonomus Helicta Cassus Electra Hyperantus Eubule Demarchus Daplidice Pugones Hero Andromachus Europone Atlites Pyrantis Plexippus Critomediâ— Antipaphus Pyrene Dolychus Eupheno Hyperbius Themistagora Podasiâ—us Palaeno Ariston Itaea Antilochus Erate Endemon Hypâ—â—â—â—nestra was the only Lady that in that great slaughter spaâ—ed her husband Lyncaeus What should I speak of Antigona the sister of Polynices Electra the daughter of Clytemneâ—tâ—a Hermâ—â—ne of Heten Polyxena of Hecuba Iphigenia of Agameniaon Erigone Merope Proserpina Amimone Oenone Calisâ—e Alope the daughter of Cercyon and Theophane of Bysaltis both stuprated by Neptune Theonoe and Zeutippe the daughters of Thestor Chione otherwise called Philâ—nide the daughter of Dedalion Coramis the daughter of Phlegia adulterated by Apollo Nictimine comprest by her father Epopeus The very Index or Catalogue of whose names only without their histories would ask a Volume For their number I will refer you to Ovid in his first book de Aâ—te Amandi Gargara quot sâ—getes c. Thick as ripe ears in the Gargarian fields As many green boughs as Methimna yeelds Fâ—sh Foule or Stars in Sea Air Heaven there be So many pretty wenches Rome in thee Aeneas mother is still lov'd and fear'd In that great City which her son first rear'd If only in young girls thou do'st rejoice There 's scarce one house but it affoords thee choice If in new-married wives but walk the street And in one day thou shalt with thousands meet Or if in riper years but look before Where ere thou go'st thou shalt find Matrons store If then one City and at one time could affoord such multiplicity of all ages and degrees how many by that computation may we reckon from the beginning amongst all the nations of the world I doubt not then but this draught of water fetch'd from so vast a fountain may at least cool the palate if not quench the thirst of the insatiate Reader Manto ZEbalia a man whose birth ranked him in the file of nobility being emploied upon service in the Turkish wars brought with him his most estimated and greatest treasure his deerest spouse stiled Manto But he dying in the crimson bed of honour the sinister hand of war gave her into the captivity of Bassa Jonuses who beholding with admiration a creature of so divine a feature was though her conqueror taken captive by her beauty who having put her vertue to the Test found it to parallel if not out shine her form Wherefore being covetous to engrosâ— so rich a booty to himselfe he took her to wife bestowing on her a more honourable respect then on his other wives and concubines and she likewise endeavoured to meet his affection with an answerable observance and obedience This fervent and mutuall love continued long inviolate betwixt them insomuch that they were no lesse honoured for their eminence of state then remarkable for their conjugall affection but that cursed fiend Jealousie envying at their admired sympathy stâ—aight usurpâ— the throne of reason and sits a predominant tyrant in his fantastick brain for he grew so strangely jealous that he thought some one or other to corrivall him but yet knew noâ— whom to â—aint with any just suspicion nay he would confesse that he had not catcht the least spark of loosenesse from her that might thus fire this beacon of distraction in him Briefly his wife as beautifull in mind as feature wearied with his daily peevish humours and seeing all her studies aimed at his sole content were enterteined with neglect and insolent scorn she resolved to leave him and secretly to flie into her native Country to further which she unlocks this her secret intent to an Eunuch of the Bassaes giving him withall certain letters to deliver to some friends of hers whom she purposed to use as agents in the furtherance of her escape but he proving treacherous in the trust committed to his charge betrai'd her to her husband shewing her letters as testimonies to his allegations The Bassa at this discovery swoln big with rage called her before him whom in his desperate fury he immediately stabbed with his dagger thus with the cause of jealousie taking away the effect But this bloody deed somewhat loosened him 〈◊〉 the peoples hearts where he before grew deeply and â—â—st rooted nor did he out-run vengeance for at the last her leaden feet overtook him and in this manner Selymus the first at his departure from Cairo his soldiers whom he there left in garrison made suit unto his Highnesse That in consideration of the great labours they had already undergone together with the many dangers they were hourly in expectation of that their wages might be enlarged which he granted and withall gave this Bassa Jonuses the charge to see the performance thereof At last the
Hetâ—urian Damosell taken by a Souldier who to preserve her Virginity leapt off from the bridge Ancisa into the Arnus of whom Benedictus Varchius hath left this memory in one of his Epigrams Perderet intactum ne Virgo Etrusca pudorem In rapidas sese praecipitavit aquos c. The Hetrurian Girl her honour still to keep Precipitates her selfe into the deep And from the bottom three times being cast Vp into th' air as loth that one so chast Should there be swallow'd she as oft sinks down Her modest face her martyrdome to crown And shame the lustfull world What shall we say Of the chast Lucrece famous to this day She for one death is call'd the Romans pride To save her Fame this Tuscan three times di'd Bernardus Scandeonus lib. 3. Classe 34. Histor Patavinae writes that when Maximilian the Emperor made spoil of the Paduan territories divers of the Country people leaving the villages empty fled into the City amongst whom was one Isabella a Damosell of Ravenna who being seized on by some of the Venetian souldiers that then had the charge of the City and surprized with her beauty drew her aside with purpose to have dishonoured her but finding no other means to shun the violence of their lust she from the bridge cast her selfe headlong into the river Medoacus where she was drowned and afterwards her body being drawn out of the river was buried under a bank without any other ceremony belonging to a Funerall Martia the daughter of Varro was of that admirable continence and chastity that being most excellent in the Art of Painting she not only alienated and restrained her Pencill from limning any thing that might appear obscene or shew the least immodesty but she was never known to delineate or draw the face of a man Ravis in Officin The like is reported of 〈…〉 alike excellent in Painting and as remarkable for her Virgin Chastiâ—y Britonia a beautifull maid of Creet giving her selfe wholly to Hâ—nting and the Chase to shun the importunities of King Minos who laid trains to vitiate her threw her selfe into a river and was drowned Daphne the daughter of Amicla retired her selfe both from walled Cities and all publick society and was at length enterteined into the fellowship of Diana frequenting the Laconian fields and Peloponnesian mountains Of her Leucippus the son of Oenemaus was enamoured who having attempted divers waies to compasse his will but not prevailing in any he bethought himselfe what course Jupiter took to stuprate Calisto the daughter of Lycaon and attiring himselfe in the habit of a female Huntresse was entertained by Diana and admitted into their number where he grew familiar with all and especially endeared to Daphne insomuch that she thought no hour well spent without him Of which acquaintance Apollo being jealous in regard they had such convenience of time place and opportunity he put his own dearly beloved Daphne in mind to entice Leucippus to a river where Diana with all their nymphs intended to both themselves Whither when they came the Virgins disrobed themselves even to nakednesse and being all stript to their skins but finding Leucippus only to move delaies they pluckt off his garment by force and so discovered him to be one of the contrary Sex at which Diana enraged commanded all her Virgins to take up their Bowes and Quivers and so they shot him to death with their arrowes This is recorded by Parthen de Amator Theodor. Flaietes in Eleg. and Philarchus lib. 15. Of Chast Wives AN excellent president of Chastity was that in Rhodogune the daughter of Darius who caused her Nurse to be slain because her husband being dead she perswaded her to a second marriage A more admirable remark of Nuptiall Chastity it was of the wives of the Theutonicks remembred Hieron in his Epistle to Gerontia whose husbands being slain and they taken captive by Marius humbly besought him on their knees that they might be sent to the Vestals in Rome as a present protesting they would be equally with them still from the society of men and professe perpetuall chastity but their request being denied by the Consul Marius the next night following all of them with an unite consent strangled themselves Theoxena was famous for her Chastity who being environed at Sea by the Navy of Philip King of Macedon seeing her husband thrown over-booâ—'d leapt after him to follow him in death not only to express her love to her husband but her scorn to stand to the mercy of the conqueror Baptista Pius lib. 2. Elegiar speaks of Tyro a woman of Thessalia who her husband being dead could by no counsell of friends or perswasion of kindred be won to survive him Plutarch in Pompeio speaking of Hypsicrataea saith she was so endearedly affected to her husband King Mithridates that for his love she made a voluntary change of her most becoming womanish shape and habit into a mans for cutting her hair she accustomed her selfe to the practise of Horse and Arms that she might with the more facilitie endure the labours and dangers of the wars Her husband being subdued by Câ— Pompeius and his Army quite dissipate and overcome she followed him flying through many barbarous Nations where her life and safety were in hourly hazard and these she enterprized with a mind undaunted and a body unwearied her faith and loialty in all his extremities being to him no small solace and comfort for though an Exile being still in the society of his Queen and bed fellow he imagined himsâ—lfe in what place soever he reposed to have been in his own palace and amongst his houshold gods Of Penelope THE beauty of Penelope attracted a number of suitors who from divers Countries came to adulterate the bed of Vlysses From Dâ—lichim came two and fifty from Samos four and twenty from Xacynthus twenty from Ithaca two and twenty of which these are nominated by Homer Antinous Eurinous Eurimachus Leocritus Neso Pysander Hesippus Agatus Leocles Ampinomus Demotholomaeus Medon a common Crier Euphemus a Minstrel and Irus a Beggar all which Vlysses at his return from his years travels slew in his own house Some of these Ovids Penelope reckons up in these verse Dulichii Samiique quos tulit alta Xacinthus c. Dulichium Samos and Xacinthus Hill Throng me with troops of wanton suitors still What should I speak to thee of Medon fell Of Polibus or of Pysander tell What of Antinous giddy head deplore Covetous Eurimachus and others more These in thine absence cannot be withstood But still thou feed'st them with thy wealth and blood The Begger Irus and Melanthius too The Herdsman c. And since we are in the history of Penelope It shall not be amisse to dilate it a little further out of Homer who in his first book intituled Odyssaea of Phaemius the Harper speaks to this purpose Phaemius the Harper to the boord invited Where the bold suitors
power then the King himselfe who long sleeping in this dream of majesty having given away all that was essentiall in a King he fell sick and died leaving behind him a child of five years old by his afore murthered wife and sister Laodice But his death was by these favourites long concealed whilst they had by all covetous Rapine snatched what they might out of the Kings treasurie by this to strengthen a faction of the most base and dissolute subjects that by monie thus ill got and debauch'd souldiers thus levied they might set safe footing in the Empire but it fel out far otherwise for the Kings death and their design was no sooner discovered but in the rude Concourse of the multitude the Minion Agathocles was first slain and the two women the mother and the daughter were in revenge of murthered Laodice hanged upon gybets being now made a scorn to every man that was before a terror to all the pupillage of the infant and the sâ—feâ—y of the Realm to his use the Romans most nobly after took to their protection Cleophis ALexander the Great after many conquests entring into India that he might contermine his Empire with the Ocean and the utmost parts of the East and to which glory that the ornaments of his army might suit the trappings of his horses and the armor of his souldiers were all studded with silver and his main army of their Targets of silver as Curtius writes he caused to be called Argyraspides In processe by gentle and pleasurable marches they came to the City Nisa the Citizens making no opposition at all trusting to the reverence due to Liber Pater by whom they say the City was first erected and for that cause Alexander caused it to be spared passing those fruitfull Hils where grapes grow in abundance naturally and without the help of aiâ— or hand of man he thence passed the Dedalian mountains even to the Provinces and Kingdome of the Queen Cleophis who hearing of his victories and fearing of his potency thought rather to affront him by fair means then by force by policy then power for knowing her self to be a woman of extraordinary state and beauty the by her Embassadors sollicited an enterview which Alexander granting she appeared before him of such a Queen-like majesty and her accomplishments of nature so helpt with the ornaments of art for she was adorned with the richest and best shining stones of India that her glory so captivated the heart of the conqueror that they came to treat of composition she proposing to him That it were no honour for so magnificent a victor so famous through the world for his conquests over men to insult upon the weak spoils of a woman inured to no other arms then the arms of a sweet and loving bedfellow yet if for the ransome of her Empire he would accept of her love and service in that kind she was there in person at his command his subject and servant Her beauty with this submission wrought such impression in the King that it was concluded betwixt them and by both parties agreed That at her honour should be the ranson of her Empire In conclusion they lovingly lay together and so ended these threatned hostilities in an amorous peace her body he left tainted but her Kingdome untouched She was that night with child by him of a son whom after his fathers name she called Alexander he inherited the Kingdome after her but by the Indians from that time forward in regard of her prostitution she was called the Kings whore Callipyge SO much were the Grecians given to all voluptuousnesse and pleasure that amongst others divers Chappels and Temples were dedicated to Venus Callipyga the word importing Quasi pulchras habens nates i. She that hath faire buttocks the originall of that superstition as Aegenaeus relates was this A Countrey Farmer being the father of two beautifull young Virgins these two concluded betwixt themselves which should have the priority in beauty But modesty forbidding them to dispute it with open faces they concluded between themselves to come to a place adjoining to the high-way and there to expose their back-parts naked to all such as passed by and so by the most voices to be censured Amongst many others a noble young young Gentleman of the next City by accident passing that way and somewhat astonished at so unwonted an object enquired the reason thereof and by one of the spectators being presently resolved â—e as suddenly gave the Palm to the elder and intimating by that he saw what the rest might prove grew greatly enamored and returning to his fathers house surprized with melancholly was of his brother demanded the cause he after some few bashful denials stil urged with the others importunacies discovered to him the whole circumstance of the businesse The brother desirous to be further instructed was by the lover conducted to the place and object which made him first grow enamoured whither he was no sooner brought but he grew presently inflamed with the love of the younger and gave his censure on her part These two had an old Senator to their father who much observed his children of him they demanded these virgins in marriage but he proposing to themselves matches more honourable they would no way assent But won at length with their importunacies he sent in their behalfe to the Farmer to demand his daugters in marriage An enterview was granted the parties agreed a marriage concluded and after comsummate with satisfaction on all sides From which time ever after the two young married wives were called Callipyga Of these Cercidas Megapolitanus in his lambicks to this purpose speaks These two lived in Syracusa who by their marriage having attained to wealth sufficient erected a famous Chappell to Venus whom they stiled Dea Callipyga These divers other Cities of Greece after them imitated This History Archelaus likewise in his Lambicks records Alogunes Cosmartidenes Andia YOU shall read in the History taken out of Ex Ctesiae Persicis That Artaxerxes being dead Xerxes his sonne succeeded the legitimate heir by his wife Damaspia who died the same day with her husband therefore to be registred amongst the women most illustrious after their deaths the Eunuch Bagorazus caused both their bodies to be born into Persia and there to be entombed amongst their ancestors It is remembred of this Emperor Artaxerxes that he had by severall concubins seventeen bastards amongst these was Secundianus born of Alogunes he by treason succeeded Xerxes having before slain his brother this Alogunes was born in Babylon By another concubine in the same City called Cosmartidenes he had two sons Ochus and Arsiâ—es this Ochus by supplanting his brother Secundianus reigning some few months succeeded him in the Empire Xerxes had issue likewise by one Andia a Lady of the same Nation Bagapaeus and Parisatis who was the mother of one Cyrus and another Artaxerxes Xerxes the Persian Emperour yet living gave to his
designs successfull proud of his victories and thinking himselfe to be Fortunes minion insomuch that despising the off-spring from whence he came he caused himselfe to be called the Son of Iupiter Being pufâ—ed up with these thoughts and swelling up in all ambitions he betook himselfe to all voluptuous delicâ—cies and of them to the most tempting riots of wine and women insomuch that lulled in all effeminacy he so far forgot both his high majesty and that commendable temperance for which he was before all his predecessors renowned that he sent as far as Athens for a notorious strumpet branded in her life though famous for her beauty called Potonice on whom the King was so much besotted that he not only gave her most Princely and magnificent gifts in her life time but after her death caused a Tomb to be erected over her body on which structure the King bestowed thirty talents It were strange if our English Chronicles should not affoord some or other to have correspondence with these Harlotta or Arlotta THis History is recorded by an Historiographer of ancient times who writes himselfe Anonymus or without name by Gulielm Malmsbury Vincentius Ranulphus Fabian Polydore and others As Robert Duke of Normandy and father to William the Conqueror rid through the Town of Falois he beheld a beautifull Virgin a Skinners daughter playing and dancing amongst other Virgins with whose feature being on the sudden surprized he so far prevailed by his secret messages and gifts that she was privatly conveied into the Dukes Chamber and there lodged and put in a bed to await his comming who glad of such a purchase without much circumstance made himselfe ready for the businesse intended The chamber cleared and the place voided and he ready to accomplish his desires she rent her smook from the chin to the foot to make the freer way for the Prince and he demanding the reason of her so doing she made him this pretty and ready answer It were neither fit nor comely that the neither part of my smock should be turned up and kisse the lips of my Lord at which the Duke was much delighted And 〈◊〉 night was begot William the Bastard whom our Chronicles honour with the name of Conquerour whether at first in memory of this least or since in disgrace of the Wanton it is not decided But from that Harlotta or Arlotta our prostitutes and common wenches are to this day in our Vulgar Tongue called Harlots In the yeer of our Lord 1036 Henry the second Emperour of that name was married to Guinilde the daughter of Canutus a Dane and King of England This Emperor had a sister a professed Nun whom he loved so entirely that oft times he would have her lie in his own Pallace and neer to his own privy chamber It hapned in a cold Winters night a Chaplain belonging to the Court it seems to keep her the warmer and one that had been before much suspected lay with her and in the morning lest both their fâ—otingâ— should be seen in the Snow newly fallen that night she took him up and carried him out of the Court towards his chamber The Emperour chancing as his custome was to rise just at the same hour was spectator of this close conveâ—ance and beheld how all the businesse hapned Not long after fell a Bisopwrick which the Priest expected and a Nunnery which the Nun much desired Whereupon the Emperour calling them before him the one after the other Take that Benefice saith he to the Priest but faddle no more the Nun And you the Abbesse saith he to his sister saddle no more the Priest or look thou never more bear Clerk riding upon thy back It is said that this served after for a modest chiding betwixt them and that they were parted upon these friendly terms Of divers Wantons belonging to sundry famous men and others ARistophanes Apollodorus Ammonius Antiphanes and Georgia Atheniensis of your Athenian strumpets writ at large as also of the like argument Theomander Cyrenaeus Elâ—us Amasides Theophrastus in lâ—bro Amatorio Polemon de Tabellis lib. 3. Ovid and infinite others out of whom may be collected many famous wantons in their times Oâ—ymus is the name of a strumpet much beloved of a skilfull Sophist in Corinth Thalatra of Dâ—ocles Corianno of Phâ—recrates Antea of Philillius otherwise called Eunicus Thais and Phannium of Menander Opora of Alexis Clepsydra of Eubulus for so Aâ—clepiades the son of Arius reports in his Commentary upon Demetrius Phalareus where he affirms her proper name to be rather Methica which Antiphanes writes to be the name of a wanton The Poet Timocles speaks of Cinâ— Nannium Plangon Lyca Pithionica Myrhina Christis Covallis Ieroclea Lopadium Of these likewise Amphis makes mention Anaxandries in his description of the madnesse of old men amongst others he reckons up Lagisca and Theolyte Polemon the Hâ—storiographer speaks of one Cottina whose Sâ—atue is erected in the City of Lacedemon not far from the Temple of Dionysius she is mounted upon a brazen Bull. Alcibiades was beloved by a woman of Aegida of whom he was likewise amorous after relinquishing Athens and Lacena of one Medontide of Abidos and with her sailed through the Hellespont with Axiochus a friend of his and much devoted to his fellowship for so the Orator Lysias witnesseth of him in an Oration made against him He had two other mistresses with whom he was conversant Damasandya the mother of Laâ—s Junior and Theodota by whom he was preserved when remaining in Melissa a City of Phrygia Pharnabazus laid trains to entrap his life Abrotonax was the mother of Themâ—stocles a strumpet as Amphicrates relates Neanthes Cyzicenus a Greek Historiographer cals him the son of Euterpe The second Philadelphus King of Aegypt had many famous Concubines as Ptolomaeus Everges in his Commentaries witnesseth Didima and Bilistiâ—he besides these Agathoclea and Stratonica whose monument was erected in the sea Elusina Myrtium with many others Polybius in his fourteenth book of Histories remembers one Clino that was his Cup-bearer in whose honour many Statues were erected in Alexandria Mnesides a she musician of the City Mnesis and one Pothinae his most delicate houses in which he took much delight he was wont to call after the name of two of his Paraâ—ors either Myrtiae or Pothinae Timothaeus the great Captain of the Athenians was known to be the son of a common woman of Threissa which being objected to him as an aspersion he answered I am glad to have been born of such a mother that had the wisedome to chuse Coâ—on to be my father Caristius in his historicall Commentaries avers Phileterus who soveraignized in Pergamus and the new Region called Boca to be the son of a wanton she Minstrel born in Paphlagonia Aristophon the Orator who in the reign of King Euclides published a Law That all such as were not born of civill and free women
son over-rules his mother Olympias the mother of Alexander caused Iollas grave to be â—ipt up who was Butler to her son and his bones to be scattered abroad raging against him in death on whom in his life time she could not be revenged on for the death of her sonne to whom this Iollas was said to have minstred poison Agrippina the mother of Domitius Nero by all means and industry possible labouring to confirm the Empire unto her son enquired of the Chaldaeans and Astrologers Whether by their calculations they could find if he should live to be created Caesar who returned her this answer That they found indeed by their Art that he should be Empeâ—our but withall that he should be the death of his mother To whom she answered Inter ficiat modo Imperet i. I care not though he kill me so I may live to see him reign Sab. lib. cap. 4. The same Author tels us that in the second Punick war the Romans being overthrown with infinite slaughter in the battel 's fought at Thrasymenus and Cannas many that were reported to be assuredly dead escaping with liâ—e after their funerals had been lamented returning home unexpectedly to their mothers such infinite joy oppressed them at once that as if sinking beneath too great a burthen betwixt their kisses and embraces they suddenly 〈…〉 the Roman being proscribed by the Triumâ—irate his wife would needâ— have him take her dearly beloved son along with him to associate and comfort him in his travels who when they were gone a ship-boord intending for Sicilia and crost by an adverse tempest could neither proceed on in their voyage not return to any safe landing such was their faâ—e that they perished by â—amine which the mother understanding more â—or the gâ—iefe of her son whom she her selfe proscribed then for her husband â—xiled by the Triumvirate slâ—w her selfe The 〈◊〉 Carthage in the third Punick war when the 〈◊〉 of all the Noble young men of the City were selected to be sent as hostages into Sicilia with weeping and 〈◊〉 followed them to the water â—ide and kept them hugged in their strict embraces not suffering them to go aboord but when they were forcibly plucked from them and sent unto the ships they no sooner â—oiâ—â—d saiâ—e but many of these woful and lamenting mothers opprest with the extremity of sorrow cast themselves head long into the sea and there were drowned Sabel lib. 3. cap. 4. The wife of Proclus Nausâ—atiâ—es having a wild and misgoverned son addicted meerly to voluptuousnesse and pleasure and withall to Cocks Horses Dogs and such like pastimes his mother did not onely not 〈…〉 in this licentiousnesse but would be still present with him to feed his Cocks diet his Horses and châ—rish his Dogs for which being reproved by some of her friends as an incourager of his unstaid and irregular courses to whom she answered No such matter he will sooner see then into himselfe and correct his own vices by conversing with old folks then keeping company with his equals Niobes sorrow for her children Auctoliaos death at the false rumour of her son Vlysses his Tragedy Hecuba's revenge upon Polymnestor for the murder of her young sonne Polydore and Tomirâ—s Queen of the Massagers against Cyrus for the death of her son Sargapises are all rare presidents of maternall piety nay so superabundant is the love of mothers to their children that many times it execeds the bounds of common reason therefore Terence in Heuton thus saith Matres omnes filiis In peccato adjutrices auxilio in patres Solent esse â— All mothers are helpers in their childrens transgressions and aid them to commit injuries against their fathers Therefore Seneca in his Tragedy of Hippolitus breaks out into this extasie Oh nimium potens Quanto parentes sanguinis vâ—do tenes Natura quam te colimus inviâ—â— quoque Nature oh Too powerfull in what bond of blood thou stâ—ll Bind'st us that parents are commanding so We must obey thee though against our will So great was the love of Parisatis the mother of Cyrus the lesse to her son that he being slain her revenge upon the murtherers exceeded example for she caused one of them whose name was Chaâ—etes to be ten daies togetheâ— excruciated with sundry tortures after commanded his eies to be put out and then moulten lead to be pâ—nâ—ed down into the hollow or his ears the second Metroâ—ates for the same treason she commanded to be boâ—nd â—ast betwixt two boats and to be sed with figs and honie leaving him there to have his guts gnawn out by the worms which these sweet things bred in his enâ—rails of which lingring torment he after many daies perished the third Metasabates she caused to be slayed alive and his body to be stretched upon three sharp pikes or stakes and such was his miserable end a just reward for Traytors Fulgos lib. 5. cap. 5. tels us That Augustus Caesar having subdued Cappadocia and taken the King Adiatoriges prisoner and his wife and two sons after they had graced his triumphs in Rome he gave command That the father with the eldest son should be put to death now when the ministers designed for that execution came to demand which of the two brothers was the elder for they were both of a sâ—ature they exceedingly contended and either affirmed himselfe to be the eldest with his own death to repâ—â—eâ—e the others life this pious strife continuing long to the wonder and amazement of all the beholders At length 〈◊〉 at the humble intercession of his mother who it seems loved him some deal above the other gave way though most unwillingly for the younger to perish in his stead Which after being known and told to Augustus he did not only lament the innocent young Princes death but to die elder who was yet living with his mother he gave great comforts and did them after many graces and favours so great a reverence and good opinion doth this 〈…〉 love be get even amongst enemies Neither was this Queen to be taxed of severâ—y or rigour to the youngest since it was a necessity that one must die it was rather a Religion in her hoping to leave her first-born to his true and lawfull inheritance Now lest I should leave any thing unremembred that comes in my way that might â—end to the grace and honour oâ— the Sex there is not any vertue for which men have been famous in which some women or other have not been eminent namely for mutuall love amity and friendship Marul lib. 3. cap. 2. tels us of a chast Virgin called Bona who lived a retired 〈◊〉 in a house of religious 〈◊〉 She had a bedfellow unto whom above all others she was entired who lying upon her death-bed and no possible help to be devised for her recovery this Bonae being then in perfect health of body though sick in mind for the infirmity of her sister full upon 〈◊〉 and devoutly besought the
Almighty that she might not so vively love so their chast bodies might not be separated in death As she earnestly praied so it futurely hapned 〈◊〉 died in one day and were both buried in one Sâ—pulchre â—â—ing â—ellowes in one House 〈◊〉 bed and Graâ—â— and now no question 〈◊〉 and 〈…〉 Kingdome Thus 〈…〉 But now to return 〈…〉 have been kind to their parenâ—◠〈…〉 Sicilia when the mountain Aetna began first to burn Damon snatcht his mother from the 〈◊〉 Aeneas in the fatall massacre of Troy took his father upon his back his son Ascanius in his hand his wife Câ—â—usa following him and pasâ—ed through the sword and fiâ—e We read like wise in Hyginus of Cleops and Bilias whom Herodotus cals Cleobis and 〈◊〉 who when their mother Câ—dâ—ppe the Priest of Juno Are you should be at the Temple at the appointed hour of the Sacrifice or failing to furfeit her life but when she came to yoke the Oxen that should draw her Châ—rior they were found dead her two sons before named laid their necks under the yoke and supplying the place of those beasts dâ—ew her in time convenient unto the place where the sacred Ceremonies were according to the custome celebrated The Oblations ended and she willing to gratifie theâ—â— filiall duty besought of the goddesse That it ever with chast and undefiled hands she had observed her sacrifice or iâ— her sons had born themselves prouâ—ly and religiously towards her that she would grant unto them for their goodnesse the greatest blessing that could happen to any 〈◊〉 or humane creatures This Praier was heard and the two zealous sons drawing back their mother in her chariot from the Temple unto the place where she then sojourned being weary with their travell laid them down to sleep The mother in the morning comming to give her sons visitation and withall thanks for their extraordinary and unexpected pains and travel found them both dead upon their Pallers by which she conceived That there is no greater blessing to be conferred upon man then a fair death when Love good Opinion and Honor attend upon the Hearse These I must confesse are worthy eternall memory and never dying admiration But hath nor the like piety towards their parents been found in women I answer Yes How did Pelopea the daughter of Thâ—estes revenge the death of her father Hypsile the daughter of 〈◊〉 â—ave her father life when he was utterly in despair of hope or comfort Calciope would not lose her father oâ— leave him though he had lost and left his opinion 〈◊〉 the daughter of Harpalicus restored her father in battel and after defeated the enemy and put him to slight Erâ—gonâ— the daughter of Icarus hearing of the death of her father strangled her selfe Agave the daughter of Cadmuâ— slew the King 〈◊〉 in Illyâ—i and pastest her father of his before usurped Diadâ—m Xantippe fed her father Nyâ—onus or as some will have it Cimonus in prison with milk from her breasts Tyro the daughter of Salmoneus to relieve her father slew her own children Who will be further resolved of these let him search Hyginus And so much shall suffice for filiall duty towards their Pâ—â—eâ—ts Of Sâ—sters that have been kind to their Brothers THE Poets and Historiographers to impresse into us the like naturall piety have left divers presidents to posterity Innumerable are the examples of fraternall love betwixt Brother and Brother To illustrate the other the better I will give you 〈◊〉 of some few Volater lib. 14. cap. 2. dâ— Aâ—ropo relates how in that war which Cai. Cornelius Cinna Tribune being expelled the City with Calus Marius and others commenced against the Romans there were two brothers one of the Pompey's army the other of 〈◊〉 who meeting in the battel in single encounter one slew the other but when the victor came to rifle the deâ—d body and found it to be his own naturall brother after infinite sorrow and lamentation he cast himselfe into the fire where the sloughtered carcasâ—e was burned M. Fabius the Consul in the great conflict against the Heâ—rutians and Veâ—entians obtained a gloâ—ious victory when the Senate and the people of Rome had with great magnificence and cost at their own charge prepared for him an illustrious triumph he absolutely refused that honour because Q. Fabius his brother fighting manfully for his Countrie was slain in that battel What a fraternal piety lived in his breast may be easily conjectured who refused so remarkable on honour to mourn the losse of a beloved brother Valer cap 5. lib. 5. We read in our English Chronicles of Archigallo brother to Gorbomannus who being crowned King of Brittain and extorting from his subjects all their goods to enrich his own Coffers was after five years deposed and deprived of his roiall dignity in whose place was elected Elidurus the third son of Morindus and brother to Archigallo a vertuous Prince who governed the people gently and Justly Upon a time being hunting in the Forrest he met with his brother Archigallo whom he lovingly embraced and found such means that he reconciled him both to the Lords and Commons of the Realm that done he most willingly resigned unto him his Crown and Scepter after he himselfe had governed the Land five years Archigallo was re-instated and continued in great love with his brother reigning ten years and was buried at York after whose death Elidurus was again chosen King What greater enterchange of fraternall love could be found in brothers To equall whom I will first begin with the sisters of Phaeton called by some Heliades by others Phaetontides who with such funerall lamentation bewailed the death of their brother that the gods in commiseration of their sorrow turned them into trees whose transformations Ovid with great elegancy expresseth lib. 1. Metamorph as likewise Virgil in Cutice their names were Phaethusa Lampitiae Phebe c. Antigone the daughter of Oedipus when her brother Eteocles was slain in battel she buried his body maâ—gre the contradiction of the Tyrant Creon of whom Ovid lib. 3. Tristium Fratrem Thebana peremptum Supposuit tumulo rege vetante soror The Theban sister to his Tomb did bring Her slaught'red brothers Corse despight the king Hyas being devouted of a Lyon the Hyades his sisters deplored his death with such infinite sorrow that they wept themselves to death And for their piety were after by the gods translated into stars of whom Pontanus Fratris Hyae quas perpetuus dolor indidit asâ—ris Thus you see how the Poet did strive to magnifie and eternize this Vertue in Sisters No lesse compassionate was â—lectra the daughter of Agameâ—nâ— on her brother Oâ—estes and Iliona the issue of Priam when she heard of the death of young Polydore Stobaeus Serm. â—2 out of the History of Nicolaus de morib gentum saith That the Aethiopians above all others have their sisters in greatest reverence insomuch that their Kings leave their succession not to their children but to these sisters
part of it may at this day be seen as an antient Monument in the Castle of Dover Saturn made Money of Brasse with inscriptions thereon but Numa was the first that coined Silver and caused his name to be engraven thereon for which it still retains the name in the Roman Tongue and is called Nummus Aspasia was a Milesian Damosel and the beloved oâ— Pericles she was abundantly skilled in Philosophicall studies she was likewise a fluent Rhetorician Plutarchus in Pericles Socrates imitated her in his Facultas Politica as likewise Dâ—otima whom he blushed not to call his Tutresse and Instructresse Of Lasthenea Mantinea Axiothaea and Phliasia Plato's scholers in Philosophy I have before given a short Character Themiste was the wife of Leonteius Lampsucenus and with her husband was the frequent Auditor of Epicurus of whom Lactantius saith That save her none of the Ancient Philosophers ever instructed any woman in that study save that one Themiste Arete was the wife of Aristippus the Philosopher and attained to that perfection of knowledge that she instructed her son in all the liberall Arts by whose industry he grew to be a famous professor He was called Aristippus and she surnamed Cyrenaica She followed the opinions of that Aristippus who was father to Socrates She after the death of her father erected a School of Philosophy where she commonly read to a full and frequent Auditory Genebria was a woman of Verona she lived in the time of Pius the second Bishop of Rome Her works purchased for her a name immortal She composed many smooth and eloquent Epistles polished both with high conceits and judgement she pronounced with a sharp and loud voice a becomming gesture and a facundious suavity Agallis Corcyrua was illustrious in the Art of Grammar Caelius ascribes unto her the first invention of the play at Ball. Leontium was a Grecian Damosel whom Gallius cals a strumpet she was so well seen in Philosophicall contemplations that she feared not to write a worthy book against the much worthy Theophrastus Plin. in Prolog Nat. Hist Cicero lib. de Natur. Deorum Dama the daughter of Pythagoras imitated the steps of her father as likewise his wife Theano her husband the mother and the daughter both proving excellent scholars Laert. Themistoclea the sister of Pythagoras was so practised a studient that in many of his works as he himselfe confesseth he hath implored her advice and judgement Istrina Queen of Scythia and wife to King Aripithes instructed her son Sythes in the Greek Tongue as witnesseth Herodotus Plutarch in Pericte saith That Thargelia was a woman whom Philosophy solely illustrated as likewise Hyparchia Greca Laert. Cornelia was the wife of Africanus and mother to the noble family of the Gracchi who left behind her certain Epistles most elaborately learned From her as from a fountain 〈◊〉 the innate eloquence of her children therefore Quintil. thus saith of her We are much bound to the Mother or Matron Cornelis for the eloquence of the Gracchi whose 〈…〉 learning in her exquisite Epistles she hath bequeathed to posterity The same Author speaking of the daughters of Laelius and Quint. Hortensius useth these words The daughters of Laelius is said in her phrase to have refined and excelled the eloquence of her father but the daughter of Q. Hortensius to have exceeded her Sex in honor So likewise the facundity of the two Lyciniaes flowed hereditarily from their Father L. Crassus as the two daughters of Mutia inherited the learning of either parent Fulvia the wife of M. Antonius was not instructed in womanish cares and offices but as Volater lib. 16. Antrop reports of her rather to direct Magistracies and govern Empires she was first the wife of Curio Statius Papinius was happy in a wife called Claudia excellent in all manner of learning Amalasuntha Queen of the Ostrogoths the daughter of Theodoricus King of those Ostrogoths in Italy was elaborately practised in the Greek and Latin Tongues she spake distinctly all the barbarous languages that were used in the Eastern Empires Fulgos lib. 8. cap. 7. Zenobia as Volateran speaks from Pollio was Queen of the Palmirians who after the death of Odenatus governed the Kingdome of Syria under the Roman Empire she was nominated amongst the thirty Tyrants and usurped in the time of Gallenus but after being vanquished in battel by the Emperor Aurelianus was led in triumph through Rome but by the clemency of that Prince she was granted a free Pallace scituate by the river of Tyber where she moderately and temperately demeaned her selfe she is reported to be of that chastity that she never enterteined her husband in the familiar society of her bed but for issues sake and procreation of children but not from the time that she found her conception till her delivery she used to be adored after the majestick state and reverence done to the great Sophies of Persia Being called to the hearing of any publick Oration she still appeared with her head armed and her helmet on in a purple mantle buckled upen her with rich jems she was of a clear and shril voice magnanimous and haughty in all her undertakings most expert in the Aegyptian and Greek Tongues and not without merit numbred amongst the most learned and wisest Queens Besides divers other works she composed the Orientall and Alexandrian History Hermolaus and Timolus her two sons in all manner of disciplines she liberally instructed of whose deaths it is not certain whether they died by the course of nature or by the violent hand of the Emperor Olympia Fulvia Morata was the ornament and glory of our later times the daughter of Fulv. Moratus Montuanus who was tutor in the Arts to Anna Pâ—ince of Ferrara she was the wife of Andreas Gunthlerus a famous Physitian in Germany she writ many and elaborate works in either tongue at length in the year of our Lord 1555 in the month of October being of the age of twenty nine years she died of Hedelburgh Saint Helena may amongst these be here aptly registred for thus Stow Harding Fabian and all our modern Chroniclers report of her Constantius a great Roman Consul was sent into Britain to demand the tribute due unto Rome immediately after whose arivall before he could receive an answer of his Embassie Coil who was then King died therefore the Britains the better to establish their peace dealt with the Roman Embassador to take to wife Helena the daughter of the late deceased King a young Lady of an attractive beauty adorned with rare gifts and endowments of the Mind namely Learning and Vertue the motion was no sooner made but accepted so that Constantius having received the Brittish tribute returned with his new Bride to Rome and was after by the Senate constituted chiefe Ruler of this Kingdome After twenty years quiet and peacefull government which was thought her wisedome Constantius died and was buried at York in his time was Sâ— Albon married at Verolam since called St. Albons as John
counsell with her about his recovery who told him there was no hope of his life unlesse he would yield that his young son then sucking at the Nurses breast should have his mortall infirmity confirmed upon it The father to save his own life yields that his son should perish of which the Nurse hearing just at the hour when the father should be healed is absent and conceals the child The father is no sooner toucht but helped of his disease the Witch demands for the child to transfer it upon him the child is missing and cannot be found which the Witch hearing broke out into this exclamation Actum est de me puer ubinam est i. I am undone where is the child when scarce having put her foot over the threshold to return home but she fell down suddenly dead her body being blasted and as black as an Aethiope The like remarkable Judgement fell upon a Witch amongst the Nanvetae who was accused of bewitching her neighbor The Magistrates commanded her but to touch the party distempered with her Inchantments which is a thing that is used by all the German Judges even in the Imperiall chamber it selfe The Witch denied to do it but seeing they began to compell her by force she likewise cried out I am then undone when instantly the sick woman recovered and the Witch then in health fell down suddenly and died whose body was after condemned to the fire And this Bodinus affirms to have heard related from the mouth of one of the Judges who was there present In Thoâ—oâ—a there was one skilful in Magick who was born in Burdegall he comming to visit a familiar friend of his who was extreamly afflicted with a Quartane Ague almost even to death told him he pitied his case exceedingly and therefore if he had any enemy but give him his name and he would take away the Feaver from him and transfer it upon the other The sick Gentleman thanked him for his love but told him there was not that man living whom he hated so much as to punish him with such a torment Why then saith he give it to my servant the other answering That he had not the conscience so to reward his good service Why then give it me saith the Magician who presently answered With all my heart take it you who it seemeth best knowes how to dispose it Upon the instant the Magician was stroke with the Feaver and within few daies after died in which interim the sick Gentleman was perfectly recovered Gregory Turonensis lib. 6. cap. 35. saith That when the wife of King Chilperick perceived her young son to be taken away by Witchcraft she was so violently incensed and inraged against the very name of a sorceresse that she caused diligent search to be made and all such suspected persons upon the least probability to be dragged to the stake or broken on the wheel most of these confessed that the Kings son was bewitched to death for the preservation of Mummo the great Master a potent man in the Kingdom this man in the midst of his torments smiled confessing that he had received such inchanted drugs from the Sorcerists that made him unsensible of pain but wearied with the multitude of torments he was sent to Burdegall where he not long after died I desire not to be tedious in any thing for innumerable Histories to these purposes offer themselves unto me at this present but these few testimonies â—roceeding from authentique Authors and the attestations 〈◊〉 such as have been approvedly learned may serve in this place as well as to relate a huge number of unnecessary discourses from writers of less fame and credit Neither is it to any purpose here to speak of the Witches in Lap-land Fin land and these miserable wretched cold Countries where to buy and sell winds betwixt them and the Merchants is said to be as frequent familiarly done amongst them as eating and sleeping There is anâ—ther kind of Witches that are called Extasists in whose discovery 〈◊〉 strive to be briefe A learned Neapolitan in a history 〈◊〉 since published that treats altogether of naturall Magick speaks of a Witch whom he saw strip her 〈◊〉 naked and having annointed her body with a certain 〈◊〉 fell down without sence or motion in which extasie she remained the space of three hours after she came to her selfe discovering many things done at the same time in divers remote places which after enquiry made were found to be most certain Answerable to this is that reported by the President Turetranus who in the Delphinate saw a Witch burned alive whose story he thus relates She was a maid-servant to an honest Citizen who comming home unexpected and calling for her but hearing none to answer searching the rooms he found her lying all along by a fire which she had before made in a private chamber which seeing he kickt her with his foot and bid her arise like a lazy huswiâ—e as she was and get her about her businesse but seeing her not to move he took a tough and smart wand and belaboured her very soundly but perceiving her neither to stir nor complain he viewing her better and finding all the parts of her body unsensible took fire and put it to such places of her body as were most tender but perceiving her to have lost all feeling was perswaded she was dead and called in his next neighbors telling them in what case he found her but concealing unto them the shrewd blowes he had given her the neighbors left the house the master and mistresse caused her to be laid out so left her and went to their rest but towards the morning hearing some body to stir and grone in the chamber they found their servant removed and laid in her bed at which the good man much amazed asked her in the name of God being late dead how came she so soon recovered to whom she answered Oh master master why have you beaten me thus the man reporting this amongst his neighbors one amongst the rest said if this be true she is then doubtlesse a Witch and one of these extasists at which the Master growing suspitious urged her so strictly that she confessed though her body was there present yet her soul was abroad at the assembly of divers Witches with many other mischiefs for which she was held worthy of death and judged At Burdegall in the year 1571 when there was a decree made in France against the strict prosecution of Witches an old Sorceresse of that place amongst many horrid and fearfull things confessed by her she was convicted and imprisoned where D. Boletus visited her desiring to be eie-witnesse of some of those things before by her acknowledged to whom the Witch answered That she had not power to do any thing in prison But desirous to be better satisfied concerning such things he commanded her for the present to be released and brought out of the Goale to another lodging
rest or the weary Traveller to come to his Inne To this purpose Seneca speaks in his Tragedy of Agamemnon Qui vultus Acherontis atri Qui Stygia tristem non tristis videt Audetque vitae ponere finem Par ille Regi par superis erit Fearlesse who dare gaze upon Black and grisly Acheron He that merrily dare look On the gloomy stygian Brook Who so bears his spirit so hie That he at any hour dares die A King he is in his degree And like the gods in time shall be Some may wonder why I have took this occasion to speak of death I will give them this satisfaction The Muse Calliope under whom I patronize this last book being no other then a redundance of sound or one entire Musick arising from eight severall instruments and therefore as she participates from every one so she exists of all therefore in this succeeding tractate I purpose by the help of the divine assistance to take a briefe survey of what hath passed in the eight former books to shew you the punishments belonging to all such vices as I have discovered in the frailty of the Sex to deter the Vicious and expose unto the eies of the Noble Chast and Learned the honour and reward due to their excellent gifts thereby to encourage the Vertuous Then since besides the Shame or Honour in this life the one is punished and the other glorified in the life to come what more necessary meditation then that we may live the better hourly to think of death and that is the scope I aim at but before I can arrive so far I purpose to deliver to you the dispositions conditions and qualities of divers sorts of women by me not yet remembred Of Women Ravished c. MArpissa the daughter of Euenus was ravished by Apollo she was the wife of Idas So Proserpine the daughter of Jupiter and Ceres by Pluto therefore he is called by Claudian Ovid and Sylus lib. 14. the infernall Ravisher Perhibea by Axus the son of Oceanus as Europa by Jupiter and Auge by Hercules Castor and Pollux who for their valour were called Dioscuri which imports as much as the issue of Jupiter they from Messene raped the two daughters of Leucippus Phoebe and Ilaira whom they after married of Pollux and Phoebe was begot and born Mnesilius of Castor and Ilaira Anagon They with their associats Idas and Lynceas the sons of Aphareus had driven away a great prey of Cattel when they came to divide the booty a motion was made that an Ox should be divided into four according to the number of the brothers with this condition that he which could devour his quarter first should have the one halfe of the Cattell and he that had next made an end of his part should possesse the remainder This was no sooner agreed upon but Idas suddenly eat up his own portion and presently devoured that which belonged to his brother by which he claimed the whole herd and being stronger in faction then the Dioscuri drave the prey back to Meffene With which injury the two brothers incensed they levied fresh forces invaded Meffene and took from thence a much greater booty then the former the spoil being safely disposed of Castor and Pollux awaited the pursuers ambushed themselves beneath a broad spreading Oak quick-sighted Linces espying Castor shewed him to his brother whom Idas slew with an arrow whom Pollux pursuing transpierced Linceus with his javelin and unadvisedly chasing Idas was brained by him with a stone for which Jupiter stroke Idas with a thunderbolt and translated the two Princely brothers the Dioscuri into stars Of these Propert lib. 1. thus saith Non sic Leucippi succendit Castora Phoebe Pollucem cultu non Ilaira soror Fair Phoebo did not so inflame Her Castor with desire Nor Ilaira Pollux brest Deckt in her best attire Theseus rapt Ariadne daughter of King Ninus as also Hellen the daughter of Tindarus and Laeda and sister to Castor and Pollux long before Paris but returned her back unvitiated Achilles forced Diomeda the daughter of Phorbas from Lesbos as Boreas the fair Orithea daughter of Erisicthon from Athens Hercules ravished the Nymph Pyrene of Bebritia from her the Pyrenaean Mountains took name of whom Syllius Nomen Bebricia duxere à virgine colles Hospitis Alcidae crimen c. From the Behrician maid these bils took name Of her guest Hercules the fault and blame Pyrrhus surnamed Neoptolemus the sonne of Achilles and Deiadamia rapt Lanissa the Niece of Hercules Ajax the son of Telamon did the like to Tâ—â—messa of whom Horace Movit Ajacem Telamone satam Forma captivae dominum Teâ—mâ—ssae Captive Teâ—messas beauty gaz'd upon Insnar'd her Lord the son of Telamon Ajax Oilaeus ravished Cassandra Nessus the Centaur Deineira the wife of Hercules sister to Meleager and daughter to Oeneus and Althea King and Queen of Calidon Tleoptolemus stole Axiothia from Ephira a City of Peloponnessus he was the son of Hercules and Astioche he waâ— first a suitor to Hellen and came to the siege of Troy with nine ships and was after slain by the hand of King Sarpedon Hypodamia the daughter of Atracius and wife of Perithous suffered the like violence by the Centaurs being heated with Wine and Lust especially by Euritus of whom Ovid lib. 12. thus speaks Euritus Hyppodamea alii quam quisque probabat Aut poterat rapiunt Euritus rapt Hyppodame and after him the rest By his example did the like and snatcht where they lik'd best The great enmity betwixt the Grecians and Barbarians though it might seem to arise by reason of the distance of Countries and difference of manners yet most probable it is that their inveterate hate and irreconcilable malice took first originall from divers rapes committed on either part for first the Phoenician Merchants exposing their commodities to publique sale in the City of Argis when Io the Kings daughters amongst other damosels came down to the Key to take a view of what Merchandise she best liked to furnish her selfe according to her womanish fancy the Merchants being extreamly surprized with her beauty seized both her and the rest of her attendants and stowing them under hatches hoised sail and transported them into Aegypt Not long after the Cretenses awaiting the like opportunity stole away Europa the daughter of the King of the Tyrians and bore her into Creet in requitall of the former rape The Heroes of Greece next sailed in the great Argoe to Cholcos pretending their journie for the golden fleece and raped thence Medea the daughter of Areta after whom sending Embassadors into Greece to redemand his daughter they returned him answer That the barbarous Phoenicians had made no restitution nor satisfaction at all for the rape of Io neither would they for Medea After that Paris the son of Priam rather to revenge the injury done to his Aunt Hesione then for any love or affection to Spartan Hellen stole her from Lacedemon and brought her
the Tomb. Next to the sin I will place the punishment Jacob blessing his children said to Reuben Thou shalt be poured out like water thine excellency is gone because thou hast defiled thy fathers bed Gen. 49. Absolon went in to his fathers concubines and was soon after slain by the hand of Joab 1 Kings 2. 16. 18. Of later times I will instance one Nicolaus Estensis Marquesse of Ferrara who having notice that his son Hugo a toward and hopefull young Gentleman had borne himself more wantonly then reverence and modesty required in the presence of his stepmother Parisia of the family of Malatestae and not willing rashly either to reprove or accuse them he watch them so narrowly by his intelligencers and spies that he had certain and infallible testimony of their incestuous meetings for which setting aside all conjugall affection or paternall pity he caused them first to be cast in strict and close prison and after upon more mature deliberation to be arraigned where they were convicted and lost their heads with all the rest that had been conscious of the act Fulgos lib. 6. cap. 1. I will borrow leave to insert here one remarkable punishment done upon a Jew at Prague in Bohemia in the year 1530 who being then in adultery with a Christian woman they compelled him to stand in a ton pitched within they bored a hole in which they forced him to put in that part with which he had offended just by him was placed a knife without edge blunred for the purpose and there he stood loose save fastned by the part aforesaid fire being given he was forced through the torment of the heat with that edgelesse knife to cut away that pars virilis and ran away bleeding after whom they set fierce mâ—stiffs who worried him to death and after tore him in pieces Lycostin Theatro Human. vitae Of Adultery THe wife of Argento-Coxus Calidonius being taunted by Julia Augusta because it was the custome of their Country for the noble men and women promiscuously to mix themselves together and to make their appointments openly without blushing to her thus answered I much commend the custome of our Country above yours we Calidonians desire consociety with our equals in birth and quality to satisfie the necessary duties belonging to love and affections and that publiquely when your Roman Ladies professing outward temperance and chastity prostitute your selves privately to your base grooms and vassals The same is reported to have been spoken by a Bâ—itish woman Dion Nicaeus Xiphilin in vita Severi Her words were verified as in many others I could here produce so in the French Queen Fredigunda who though she infinitly flattered the King Chilpericus her husband outwardly yet she inwardly affected one Laudricus to whom she communicated her person and honor these in the Kiugs absence were scarce to be found asunder insomuch that Chilperick himselfe could not more freely command her person by his power then the other by his loose and intemperete effeminacies It hapned the King being on hunting and leaving the Chase before his hour stole suddenly upon his Queen and comming behind her as she was taking her Prospect into the Garden sportingly toucht her upon the head with the switch he had then in his hand without speaking she not dreaming of the Kings so sudden return and thinking it had been her private friend without looking back Well sweet-heart Landricus saith she you will never leave this fooling and turning towards him withall discovered the King who only biting his lip departed in silence She feaâ—â—ng the Kings distaste and consequently his revenge sends for Landricus and as if the King had been the offender betwixt them two conspired his death and within few daies effected it for seldome doth Adultery but go hand in hand with Murther From the Sin I come to the Punishment Among the Israelites it was punished with fines as may be collected from the history of Thamar who being with child by Judas he threatned her to the stake and had accordingly performed it had she not shewed by manifest tokens that he himselfe was the author of her unlawfull issue Gen. 38. The Aegyptians condemned the Adulterer so deprehended to a thousand scourges the Adulteresse to have her Nose cut off to the greater terror of the like delinquents Diodor. Sicul. lib. 2. cap. 2. Coel. lib. 21. cap. 25. By Solons Lawes a man was permitted to kill them both in the act that so found them Ravis In Judaea they were stoned to death Plat. lib. 9. de Legibus punisheth Adultery with death The Locrenses by tradition from Zaluces put out the Adulterers eies The Cumaei prostituted the Adulteresse to all men till she died by the same sin she had committed Alex. ab Alex. lib. 4. cap. 1. It was a custome amongst the ancient Germans for the husband to cut off his wives hair so apprehended to turn her out of doors naked and scourge her from Village to Village One bringing word to Diogenes That a fellow called Dydimones was taken in the act He is worthy then saith he to be hanged by his own name for Didymi in the Greek Tongue are Testiculi in English the Testicles or immodest parts By them therefore from whence he derived his name and by which he had offended he would have had him to suffer Laert. lib. 6. Hyeâ—tuâ— the Argive slew one Molurus with his wife apprehending them in their unlawfull congression Coelius Iulius Caesar repudiated his wife for no other reason but because P. Clodius was found in his house in Womans Apparell And being urged to proceed against her he absolutely denied it alledging That he had nothing whereof to accuse her but being further demanded Why then he abandoned her society he answered That it was behoofefull for the wife of Caesar not only to be clear from the sin it selfe but from the least suspition of crime Fulgos lib. 6. cap. 1. Augustus banished his own Daughter and Neece so accused into the Island called Pandateria after into Rhegium commanding at his death That their bodies being dead should not be brought neer unto his Sepulcher To omit many Nicolaus the first Pope of that name excommunicated King Lotharius brother to Lewis the second Emperor because he divorced his wife Therberga and in her room instated Gualdrada and made her Queen Besides he degraded Regnaldus Archbishop of Tâ—evers and Gunthramus Archbishop of Collen from their Episcopall dignitie for giving their approbation to that adulterate Marriage And so much for the punishment I will conclude with the counsel of Horace lib. 1. Satyr 2. Desine Matronas sectarier unde laboris Pluâ—haurire mali est quam ex re decerpere fructum est Cease Matrons to pursue for of such pain Thou to thy selfe more mischief reap'st then gain Sisters that have murdred their Brothers AFter the untimely death of Aydere his brother Ismael succeeded him in the Persian Empire who arriving at Caâ—bin was of his
into Cappadocia Cuspinianus in vita Heraclii A more terrible judgement was inflicted upon Bâ—unechildis whose History is thus related Theodericus King of the Frenchmen who by this wicked womans counsel had polluted himselfe with the blood of his own naturall brother and burthened his conscience with the innocent deaths of many other noble gentlemen as well as others of meaner 〈◊〉 and quality was by her poisoned and deprived of 〈◊〉 when he had made a motion to have taken to wife his Neece a beautifull young Lady and the daughter of his late slain brother Brunechildis with all her power and industry opposed the Match affirming that Contract to be meerly incestuous which was made with the brothers daughter she next perswaded him that his son Theodebertus was not his own but the adulterate issue of his wife by another at which words he was so incensed that drawing his sword he would have instantly transpierc'd her but by the assistance of such Courtiers as were then present she escaped his fury and presently 〈◊〉 plotted his death and effected it as aforesaid Trittenbemâ—â—s de Regib 〈◊〉 and Roberâ—us Gaguinus lib. 2. Others write that he was drowned in a River after he had reigned 〈◊〉 years Aventinus affirms That presently after he had slain his brother entring into one of his Cities he was struck with thunder Annal. Boiorum lib. 3. But this 〈◊〉 Butcheresse Brunechildis after she had been the 〈…〉 an infinit number of people and the death of 〈◊〉 Kings at length moving an unfortunate war against Lotharius to whom she denied to yield the Kingdome she was taken in battell and by the Nobility and Captain of the Army condemned to an unheard of punishment She was first beaten with four Bastoons before she was brought before Lotharius then all her Murthers Treasons and Inhumanities were publiquely proclaimed in the Army and next her legs and hands being fastned to the tails of wild horses pluckt to pieces and dissevered limb from limb Anno 1618. Sigebertus Trittemhemius Gaguinus and Aventinus And such be the earthly punishments due to Patricides and Regicides Touching Patricides Solon when he instituted his wholsome Lawes made no Law to punish such as thinking it not possible in nature to produce such a Monster Alex. lib. 2 cap. Romulus appointing no punishment for that inhumanity included Patricides under the name of Homicides counting Manslaughter and Murther abhorred and impious but the other impossible Plutarch in Romulo Marcus Malleolus having slain his mother was the first that was ever condemned for that fact amongst the Romans his Sentence was to be sowed in a sack together with a Cock an Ape and a Viper and so cast into the river Tiâ—er a just infliction for such immanity The Macedonians punished Patricides and Traitors alike and not only such as personally committed the fact but all that were any way of the comederacy Alex. ab Alex. lib 3. cap. 5. and all such were â—â—â—ned to death The Aegyptians stabbed them with Needles and Bodkins wounding them in all the parts of their body but not mortally when bleeding all over from a thousand small orifices they burnt them in a pile of thorns Diodor. Sicul. lib. 2. de rebus antiq The Lusitanians first exiled them from their own confines and when they were in the next forreign air stoned them to death Nero having slain his mother Agrippina by the hand of Anicetes had such terror of mind and unquietnesse of conscience that in the dead of the night he would leap out of his bed horribly affrighted and say when they that attended him demanded the cause of his disturbance That he heard the noice of trumpets and charging of battels with the grones of slaughtered and dying men from the place where his mother was interred Therefore he often shifted his houses but all in vain for this horror still pursued him even to his miserable and despairing end for so Xâ—philâ—nus testates the Abbreviator of Dion in Nerone The perfidiousnesse of Husbands to their Wives hath been thus punished By the Law of Julia all such were condemned as rioted and wasted the dowries of their Wives The Romans did not only hold such impious and sacrilegious that prophaned their Temples and despised the Altars of the gods but those also that were rudely robustious and laid violent hands upon their wives and children in such a reverent estimation they held fatherly issue and conjugal piety Alex. lib. 4. cap. 8. Almaricus having married the sister of the French King and using her most contumeliously and basely for no other reason but that she was a faithful follower of the true Religion and quite renounced Arianisme was by her brother Chilbertus vexed and tormented with a bloody and intestine war Michael Ritius lib. 1. de Regib Francorum M. Valerius Maximus and Cai. Junius Brutus being Censors removed L. Antonius from the Senate for no other reason but that without the advice and counsell of his friends he had repudiated a virgin to whom he had been before contracted Val. Maxim lib. 2. cap. 4. So Tiberius Caesar discharged an eminent Roman from his Quaestorship for divorcing his wife the tenth day after he had been married accounting him meerly void of faith or constancy that in a businesse so weighty and of so great moment in so small a time exprest himselfe variable and inconstant Alex. lib. 4. cap. 8. Rodulphus Veromandorum Comes forsook his wife to marry the sister of the Queen Petronilla for which he was excommunicated by the Church of Rome and the Bishop Laudunensis Bartholomaeus Noviocomensis and Simon Peter Sylvanectensis that were assistants to the Earl Rodulphus in that unjust divorce were all suspended by the Pope Robertus in Chronicis The revenge of these libidinous insolencies was most apparant in the Emperor Andronicus who after the death of Emanuel who preceded him caused his son the immediate heir to the Empire to be sowed in a sack and cast into the sea And being now securely installed in the Constantinopolican Principality besides a thousand butcheries slaughters and other insufferable cruelties he addicted himselfe to all luxurious intemperance as vitiating virgins corrupting Matrons contaminating himselfe with shamefull Whoredomes and Adulteries not sparing the religious Nunneries but forcing the Cloisters ravishing thence whom he pleased to glut his greedy and insatiate lust and when 〈◊〉 own desires were qualified would deliver them up to be stuprated by his grooms and vassals With whose unbridled appetites and insufferable madnesse the people being vexed and tired they invited Isacius to the 〈…〉 besieging the Tyrant took him and presented him before the Emperor elected who because he had so malitiously trespassed against every man devised for him a punishment that might give satisfaction to all he therefore caused him to put off his Imperiall Robes and to appear no other then a private man such as he had maliciously offended next caused one of his eies to be pluckt out the punishment devised by
Judges called the Areopagitae when they deprehended a Witch and were to deliver her to death if she were with child staied the execution till she were delivered of her Infant because they would not punish the innocent with the delinquent Aelian de var. Histor lib. 5. The Law to punish Witches amongst the Persians was to bring them to a place where their heads were beaten to pieces betwixt two Rocks So suffered Gyge the hand-maid to Parisatides the mother of Cyrus Plutarch in Artaxerxes Charls the seventh King of France or the Frenchmen caused Prince Egidius de Roxa Marshall of France to be first hanged then burnt because he confessed himselfe to be a Witch and professor of Magick and withall to have been the death of an hundred and twenty children and women great with child A Witch of Avern was burnt alive for killing young infants and salting their flesh and putting them into pies and baking them for publique sale Fulgos lib. 9. cap. 2. Johannes Bodinus lib. Mag. Demonomaniae 4. cap. 5. tels us that there is a Law sacred in France that if any Magician or Witch or Soothsaier or Mathematician that shall go beyond the true rules of Astrology or expounder of Dreams shall frequent the Court be he never so great in favor or potent in office he shall be immediately degraded from all his honours and put to the rack and torture And this Law is fitting saith he to be writ in golden Characters upon every Court gate because there is no greater Pest extant to Prince or people then this viperous brood therefore above our Christian Princes he commends the Ethnick Kings In the time of Marius an Inchantress whose name was Martha who pretended to foretell to the Roman Senat the successe of the Cimbrian war was banished Plutarch in Mario Claudius Caesar condemned a Knight of Rome to death and forfeited all his goods to the people because he wore about him a Cocks egge as a Charm to dispence of Religion and that all the causes which he had in controversie should in despight of the Judges paste of his side Even fellowes that were scarce of any name or opinion in the world that were but suspected of Negromancy were condemned to death under Tiberius Caesar The Emperor Caracalla adjudged all such as but used inchanted herbs to the curing of Agues and Feavers Spartian in Caracalla The Scripture saith Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live Bodinus contrary to Wyerius who will scarce beleeve there be any such accounting all those Judges 〈◊〉 condemn them to the Stake or Gallowes no better then Executioners and Hangmen he shewes divers probable Reasons why they ought not to live The first is Because all Witches renounce God and their Religion now the Law of God saith Whosoever shall forsake the God of Heaven and adhere to any other shall be stoned to death which punishment the Hebrews held to be the greatest could be inflicted R. Maymon lib. 3. The second thing is That having renounced God and their Religion they curse blaspheme and provoke the Almighty to anger The law saith Whosoever shall blaspheme their sin shall remain with them and whosoever shall take his name in vain or in contempt shall be punished with death The third thing is That they plight faith and make covenant with the Devil adore him sacrifice unto him as Apâ—lâ—ius testifies of Pamphila Larissana a Witch of Thessaly as liâ—ewise a Witch of the Laodunensian suburbs in the month or May 1578. who blushed not to do the like before many witnesses now the Law saith Who that shall but incline or bow down to Images which the Greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shall be punished with death The Hebrew word 〈◊〉 and the Chaldaean Fisgud which all our Latine Interpreters translate Adorare imports as much as to incline or worship now these Witches do not only incline unto him but invoke and call upon him A fourth thing is which many have confessed That they have vowed their children to the Devil now the Law saith God is inflamed with revenge against all such as shall offer their children unto Moloch which Josephus interprets Priapus and Philo Satanus but all agree that by Moloch in signified the Devill and malignant spirits A fifth thing is gathered out of their own confessions That they have sacrificed Infants not yet baptized to the Devill and have kill'd them by thrusting great pins into their heads Sprangerus testifies that he condemned one to the fire who confessed that she by such means had been the death of one and forty children A sixth thing is That they do not only offer children in the manner off sacrifice against which the Holy Ghost speaks That for that sin alone God will extirp and root out the people but they vow them in the womb A seventh is That they are not themselves blasphemers and Idolaters only but they are tied by covenant with the Devil to allure and perswade others to the like abominations when the Law teacheth That whosoever shall perswade another to renounce his Creator shall be stoned to death An eighth is That they not only call upon the Devil but swear by his name which is directly against the Law of God which forbids us to swear by any thing save his own Name A ninth is That adulterate incests are frequent amongst them for which in all ages they have been infamous and of such detectable crimes convicted so that it hath almost grown to a Proverb No Magician or Witest but was either begot and born of the father and daughter or the mother and son which Caâ—ullas in this Distick expresseth Nam Magus ex Matre gnato gignatur oportet Si vera est Prâ—sarum impia Religio Infimating that if the impious Religion of the Persians were true Witches of necessity should be the incestuous issue of the mother and son or else è contra A tenth That they are Homicides and the murtherere of Infants which Sprangerus observes from their own confessions and Baptista Porta the Neapolitan in his book de Magia Next That they kill children before their baptism by which circumstances their offence is made more capitall and heinouâ— The eleventh That Witches eat the flesh of Infants and commonly drink their bloods in which they take much delight To which Horace seems to allude when he saith Nâ—u pransae Lamiae vinum pucrum extrahat Alvo Noâ— from the stomack of a Witch new din'd Plucks he a yet live infant If children be wanting they dig humane bodies from their sepulchers or feed upon them that have been executed To which purpose Lucaâ— writes Liqueam nodosque nocentes Ore 〈…〉 corpora carpsit Abrasit 〈◊〉 c. The Felons strongling 〈◊〉 she nothing fears But with her teeth the fatall Knot she tears The hanging bodies from the 〈◊〉 she takes And shaves the Gallowes of which dust she makes c. Apuletus reports That comming
to Larissa in Thessaly he was hired for eight pieces of Gold to watch a dead body but one night for fear the Witches of which in that place there is abundance should gnaw and devour the flesh of the party deceased even to the very bones which is often found amongst them Also Murther by the Laws of God and man is punishable with death besides they that eat mans flesh or deliver it to be eaten are not worthy to live Cornel. lib de Sicariâ—s A twelfth is That they kill as oft by Poisons as by Powders and Magick Spels now the Law saith It is worse to kill by Witchcraft then with the Sword Lib. 1. de Maâ—â—sic A thirteenth is That they are the death of Cattell for which Augustanus the Magician suffred death 1569. A fourteenth That they blast the Corn and Grain and being barrennesse and scarcity when there is a hoped plenty and abundance A fifteenth That they have carnall corsociety with the Devill as it hath been approved by a thousand severall confessions Now all that have made any compect or covenant with the Devill if not of all these yet undoubtedly are guilty of many or at least some and there one coâ—sequently not worthy to live And so much for the Punishment 〈…〉 and other known malefactors I come now to the Rewards due to the Vertuous and first of 〈…〉 Ladies for divers excellencies worthy to be remembred Of Tirgatao Moeotis Comiola Tuâ—ingâ— and others TIrgatao a beautifull and vertuous Lady was joined in marriage to Hecataeus King of those Indians that inhabit â—eer unto the Bosphor which is an arm of the Sea that runneth betwixt two coasts This Hecataeus being cast out of his Kingdome Satyrus the most potent of these Kings reinstated him in his Principality but conditionally That he would marry his only daughter and make her Queen by putting Tirgatao to death But he though forced by the necessity of the time and present occasion yet loving his first wife still would not put her to death according to the Covenant but caused her to be shut in his most defenced Castle there to consume the remaindeâ— of her life in perpetuall widowhood The Lady comforted with better hopes and born to fairer fortunes deceived the eies of her strict keepâ—â—s and by night escaped out of prison This being made known to the two Kings the sonne in law and the father they were wonderfully perplexed with the newes of her flight as fearing if she arrived in her own Country she might accite the people to her revenge They therefore pursued her with all diligence and speed but in vain for hiding her selfe all the day time and travelling by night through pathlesse and unfrequented places at length she arrived amongst the â—xomatae which was the Countrey of her own friends and kindred But finding her father dead she married with him that succeeded in the Kingdome by which means now commanding the Ixomatae she insinuated into the breasts of the most warlike people inhabiting about Moeotis and so levied a brave army which she her selfe conducted She first invaded the Kingdome of Hecataeus and infested his Country with many bloody incursions she next wasted and made spoil of the Kingdome of Satyrus insomuch that they both were forced with all submisse entreaties by embassadors to sue unto her for peace to which she assented having before as hostage of their truce received Metrodorus the son of Satyrus But the two Kings falsified to her their faith and honour for Satyrus dealt with two of his subjects whom he best trusted with whom he pretended heinous displeasure for which flying and retiring themselves to her for refuge they there attend a convenient opportunity to insiderate her life They submitting to her her Court becomes their sanctuary Satyrus sends to demand the offenders she by her letters entreats and mediates their peace and pardon These attend their next occasion the one pretends private conference with her and bowing submissly to her as she enclines her body to attend him the other invades her with his sword her fortunate Belt kept the steel from entring Clamor is made her servants enter the Traitors are apprehended and confesse all that before had passed betwixt Satyrus and them Therefore she commands his son Metrodorus the Hostage to be slain and the two conspirators with him gathers another army and invades the Bosâ—â—â—ean Tyrant She punisheth his perfidiousnesse with Rapes Murthers Combustions and all the Calamities of war till Satyrus himselfe oppressed with miseries and surcharged with griefe expired whom Gorgippus his son succeeded in the Principality but not with any security till he had acknowledged his Crown as given to him by her and with many costly and rich gifts compounded for his peace Polyb. lib 8. This Lady hath a merited name for an invincible courage and a masculine spirit No lesse worthy to be remembred is Comiola Turinga her history is thus reported In that great Navy which Peter King of Sicily sent against Robert King of Naples in the aid of the Lyparitans with other Pâ—inces 〈◊〉 Nâ—â—lemen there was in that fleet one Roland bâ—stard brother to King Peter The Sicilians being defeated by 〈…〉 Roland amongst many other Gentlemen was surpâ—â—â—ed and cast into prison Now when the friends and kinsmen of all such Captives had been carefull of their release and almost all of them were ransomed thence King Peter 〈◊〉 the sloth and cowardise of his subjects the Sicilians neglected his brother and would entertein no discourse that tended to his redemption Whereupon he was put into a more close prison no better then a Dungeon where he was debarred the benefit of light and shortned of his diet where he spent his time in discontent and misery This extremity of his with the Dukes slackneâ—â— in his release comming to the ear of a beautiful young widow of Messana who had a large Dower from her parents and was left infinitely rich by her husband she pitying his distressed estate and withall being somewhat enamored of his person sent to him privately by such as he best trusted to know of him if he would accept of her as his wife if she did instantly pay down his ransome The motion being made he seemed overjoied thanked the heavens for their assistance and with great willingnesse accepted of the motion They are contracted by Proxie and she paies down two thousand ounces of gold for his freedome This done and Roland comming back to Messana he was so far from acknowledging the Contract that he would not so much as see her or confesse himselfe obliged unto her in the smallest courtesie who had it not been for her charitable love and piety might have languished in an uncomfortable durance all the daies of his life Comiola Turninga at this ingratitude much grieved for she had not only paid down so great a sum but that which most afflicted her was that the fame of her marriage being â—ll over-spread the Contract being denied and by