after things that be unreadie and unsure made choise of saving his life by the surer way rather than by the juster meanes for he discovered unto Nero that which the man had whispered secretly unto him whereupon presently the partie was apprehended and carried away to the place of torture where by racking scortching and scourging he was urged miserable wretch to confesse and speake out that perforce which of himselfe he had revealed without any constraint at all Zeno the Philosopher fearing that whē his body was put to dolorous and horrible torments he should be forced even against his will to bewray and disclose some secret plot bit-off his tongue with his owne teeth and spit it in the Tyrants face Notable is the example of Leaena and the reward which she had for conteining and ruling her tongue is singular An harlot she was and verie familiar with Harmodius and Aristogiton by meanes of which inward acquaintance privie she was and partie as farre foorth as a woman might be to that conspiracie which they had complotted against the usurping tyrants of Athens and the hopes that they builded upon Drunke she had out of that faire cup of Love and thereby vowed never to reveale the secrets of god Cupid Now after that these two paramours and lovers of hers had failed of their enterprise and were put to death she was called into question and put to torture and therewith commaunded to declare the rest of the complices in that conspiracie who as yet were unknowen and not brought to light but so constant and resolute she was that she would not detect so much as one but endured all paines and extremities whatsoever whereby she shewed that those two yoong gentlemen had done nothing unfitting their persons and nobilitie in making choise to be enamoured of her In regard of which rare secrecie of hers the Athenians caused a Lionesse to be made of brasse without a tongue and the same in memoriall of her to be erected and set up at the verie gate and entrie of their Citadell giving posteritie to understand by the generosity of that beast what an undanuted and invincible heart she had and likewise of what taciturnitie and trust in keeping secrets by making it tonguelesse and to say a trueth never any word spoken served to so good stead as many concealed and held in have profited For why A man may one time or other utter that which he once kept in but being spoken it cannot possibly be recalled and unsaid for out it is gone alreadie and spread abroad sundrie waies And hereupon it is I suppose that we have men to teach us for to speake but we learne of the gods to hold our peace For in sacrifices religious mysteries and ceremonies of divine service we receive by tradition a custome to keepe silence And even so the Poët Homer feigned Ulysses Whose eloquence otherwise was so sweet to be of all men most silent and of sewest words his sonne likewise his wife and nourse whom you may heare thus speaking As soone shall stocke of sturdy oake it tell Or iron so strong as I will it reveale And Ulysses himselfe sitting by Penelope before he would be knowen unto her who he was Griev'd in his mind and pitted to behold His wife by teares to shew what heart did feele But all the while his eies he stiffe did hold Which stird no more than horne or sturdie steele so full was his tongue of patience and his lips of continence For why reason had all the parts of his bodie so obeisant and readie at command that it gave order to the eies not to shed teares to the tongue not to utter a word to the heart not to pant or tremble nor so much as to sob or sigh Thus unto reason obeisant was his heart Perswaded all to take in better part yea his reason had gotten the mastrie of those inward and secret motions which are voide and incapable of reason as having under her hand the verie blood and vitall spirits in all obeysance his people also and traine about him were for the most part of that disposition for what wanted this of constancy loyalty to their lord in the highest degree to suffer themselves to be pulled haled to be tugged tossed yea dashed against the hard ground under foote by the giant Cyclops rather than to utter one word against Ulysses or to bewray that logge of wood which was burnt at the one end an instrument made readie for to put out his onely eie that he had nay they endured rather to be eaten devoured raw by him thā to disclose any of Ulysses his secrets Pittacus therefore did not amisse who when the King of Egypt had sent unto him abeast for sacrifice and willed him withall to take out and lay apart the best and woorst piece thereof plucked out the tongue and sent it unto him as being the organ of many good things and no lesse instrument of the woorst that be in the world And Ladie Ino in Euripides speaking freely of herselfe saith that she knew the time When that she ought her tongue to hold And when to speake she might be hold For certeinly those who have had noble and princely bringing up in deed learne first to keepe silence and afterwards how to speake And therefore king Antigonus the great when his sonne upon a time asked him When they should dislodge and breake up the campe What sonne quoth hee art thou alone afraid that when the time comes thou shalt not heare the trumpet sound the remove Loe how he would not trust him with a word of secrecie unto whom he was to leave his kingdome in succession teaching him thereby that he also another day should in such cases be wary and spare his speech Olde Metellus likewise being asked such another secret as touching the armie and setting forward of some expedition If I wist quoth he that my shirt which is next my skinne knew this my inward intent and secret purpose I would put it off and fling it into the fire King Eumenes being advertised that Craterus was comming against him with his forces kept it to himselfe and would not acquaint any of his neerest friends therewith but made semblance and gave it out though untruly that it was Neoptolemus who had the leading of that power for him did his souldiours contemne and make no reckoning of whereas the glory and renowme of Craterus they had in admiration and loved his vertue and valour now when no man els but himselfe knew of Craterus his being in the field they gave him battell vanquished him slew him before they were aware neither tooke they knowledge of him before they found him dead on the ground See how by a stratageme of secrecie and silence the victorie was archieved onely by concealing so hardie and terrible an enemie insomuch as his very friends about him admired more his wisedome in keeping this secret from them than complained
two vertues of one woman by the one she first gave the citizens an affection minde and heart to begin and enterprise and by the other she ministred unto them meanes to execute and performe the same for which good service of Xenocrita those of the citie offred unto her many honors prerogatives and presents but she refused them all onely she requested this favour at their hands that she might enterre the corps of Aristodemus which they graunted and more than so they chose her for to be a religious priestresse unto Ceres supposing that this dignitie would be no lesse acceptable and pleasing unto the goddesse than beseeming and fitting the person of this lady THE WIFE OF PYTHES IT is reported moreover that the wife of rich Pythes in the daies of Xerxes when he warred upon Greece was a vertuous and wise dame for this Pythes having as it should seeme found certeine mines of gold and setting his minde thereon not in measure but excessively and unsatiably for the great sweetnesse and infinit gaines that arose thereby both himselfe in person bestowed his whole time therein and also he emploied all his subjects and citizens indifferently without respect of any person to digge and delve to carrie to purge and clense the said golde oare not suffering them to follow any other trade or exercise any occupation else in the world upon which unmeasurable and incessant toile many died and all were wery and grumbled thereat insomuch as at last their wives came with olive branches like humble suppliants to the gate of this lady his wife for to moove pittie and beseech her for redresse and succour in this case she having heard their supplication sent them away home to their houses with verie good gracious words willing them not to distrust and be discomforted meane while she sent secretly for gold siners goldsmithes and other worke-men in gold such as she reposed most confidence in shut them up close within a certeine place willing them to make loaves pies tarts cakes pastrie-works and junkets of all sorts sweet meats fruits all manner of meats and viands such as she knew her husband Pythes loved best all of cleane gold afterwards when all were made and he returned home to his house for as then he was abroad in a forren country so soone as he called for supper his wife set before him a table furnished with all kinds of counterfeit viands made of gold without any thing at all either good to be eaten or drunken but all gold and nothing but gold great pleasure at the first tooke Pythes for to see so rich a sight and so glorious a banquet wherein arte had so lively expressed nature but after he had fed his eies sufficiently with beholding these goodly golden works he called unto her in good earnest for somewhat to eate but she still whatsoever his minde stood to brought it him in gold so that in the end he waxed angrie and cried out that he was ready to famish Why sir quoth she are not your selfe the cause of all this for you have given us foison and store of this mettall but caused extreame want and scarcitie of meat and all things else for all other trades occupations arts and mysteries are decaied and their use cleane gone neither is there anie man that followeth husbandry and tilleth the ground but laying aside and casting behind us all thing that should be sowen and planted upon the earth for the food and sustentation of man we doe nothing else but digge and search for such things as will not serve to feed and nourish us spending and wearing out both our selves and our citizens These words mooved Pythes verie much howbeit for all this he gave not over quite the mines and mettall works but enjoining the fifth part of his subjects to travell therein by turnes one after another he gave the rest leave to husband their lands and plie their other crafts and misteries But when Xerxes came downe with that puissant armie for to make warre upon the Greeks this Pythes shewed his magnificence in the enterteinment of him with sumptuous furniture costlie gifts and presents which he gave unto the king and all his traine for which he craved this onely grace and favour at his hands againe that of many children which he had he would dispence with him for one of them that he might not goe to the warres to the end that the said sonne might remaine with him at home in his house for to tend and looke unto him carefullie in his old age whereat Xerxes was so wroth that he commaunded that one sonne whom he requested to be killed presently and his dead body to be cloven through in the mids and divided into two parts and so dislodged and caused his armie to march betweene them both the rest of his sonneshe led with him to the warres who died all in the field whereupon Pythes being discomforted and his heart cleane cast downe did that which those ordinarilie doe who want courage and wit for he feared death and hated life willing he was not to live and yet hee had not the power to make an end of his life what did he then There was within the citie a great banke or mount of earth under which there ranne a river which they called Pythopolites within this mount he caused his tombe to be made turned aside the course of the said river in such sort that as it passed the streame might glide upon this monument of his which being prepared and done accordingly hee went downe quicke and alive into the same sepulchre having resigned over unto his wives hands the citie and the whole seignorie thereof injoyning her thus much that she should not approch herselfe unto this tombe or monument but onely every daie once send unto him his supper in a little punt or boat downe the riveret and to continue this so long untill she saw that the said punt went beyond the monument having in it all his victuals whole and untouched for then she should not need to send him any more but take this for an assured signe that he was dead Thus lived Pythes the rest of his daies but his wife governed and managed the State prudently and wrought a great change and alteration in the toilsome life of her people A CONSOLATORIE ORATION SENT UNTO APOLONIUS UPON THE DEATH OF HIS SONNE The Summarie HOwsoever Plutarch in this treatise hath displaied his eloquence and all the skill and helps that he had by the meanes of Philosophie yet we see that the same is not sufficient to set the minde and spirit of man in true repose and that such consolations are as they say but palliative cures no better wherein also is discovered the want and default of light in the reason and wisdome of man yet notwithstanding take this withall that such discourses doe recommend and shew unto us so much the better the excellencie of celestiall wisedome which furnisheth us with
and the woorse sort of people are given thereto more than the better also if you goe thorow all barbarous nations you shall not finde those who are most haughtie-minded and magnanimous or cary any generositie of spirit in them such as be the Almans or Gaules addicted hereunto but Aegyptians Syrians Lydians and such other for some of these by report use to go downe into hollow caves within the ground and there hide themselves for many daies together and not so much as see the light of the sunne because forsooth the dead partie whom they mourne for is deprived thereof In which regard Ion the Tragicall Poet having as it should seeme heard of such fooleries bringeth in upon the stage a woman speaking in this wise Come forth am I now at the last Your nourse and childrens governesse Out of deepe caves where some daies past I kept in balefull heavinesse Others there be also of these Barbarians who cut away some parts and dismember themselves slit their owne noses crop their eares misuse disfigure the rest of their bodies thinking to gratifie the dead in doing thus if they seeme to exceed all measure that moderation which is according to nature There are besides who reply upon us and say That they thinke we ought not to waile and lament for every kind of death but onely in regard of those that die before their time for that they have not as yet tasted of those things which are esteemed blessings in this life to wit the joies of marriage the benefit of literature and learning the perfection of yeeres the management of common weale honors and dignities for these be the points that they stand upon and grieve most who lose their friends or children by untimely death for that they be disappointed and frustrate of their hopes before the time ignorant altogether that this hastie and overspeedie death in regard of humane nature differeth nothing at all from others for like as in the returne to our common native countrey which is necessarily imposed upon al and from which no man is exempted some march before others follow after and all at length meet at one and the same place even so in traveling this journey of fatall destinie those that arrive late thither gaine no more advantage than they who are thither come betime now if any untimely or hastie death were naught simply that of little babes and infants that sucke the brest and cannot speake or rather such as be newly borne were woorst and yet their death we beare verie well and patiently whereas we take their departure more heavily and to the heart who are growen to some good yeeres and all through the vanitie of our foolish hopes whereby we imagine and promise to our selves assuredly that those who have proceeded thus farre be past the woorst and are like to continue thus in a good and certaine estate If then the prefixed terme of mans life were the end of twentie yeeres certes him that came to be sifteene yeeres old we would not judge unripe for death but thinke that he had attained to a competent age and as for him who had accomplished the full time of twentie yeeres or approched neere thereto we would account him absolute happy as having performed a most blessed and perfect life but if the course of our life reached out to two hundred yeeres he who chanced to die at one hundred yeeres end would be thought by us to have died too soone and no doubt his untimely death we would bewaile and lament By these reasons therefore and those which heeretofore we have alledged it is apparent that even the death which we call untimely soone admitteth consolation and a man may beare it patiently for this is certaine that Troilus would have wept lesse yea even Priamus himselfe shed fewer teares in case he had died sooner at what time as the kingdome of Troy flourished or whiles himselfe was in that wealthy estate for which he lamented so much which a man may evidently gather by the words which he gave to his sonne Hector when he admonished and exhorted him to retire from the combat which he had with Achilles in these verses Returne my sonne within these wals that thou from death maist save The Trojan men and women both let not Achilles have Of thee that honour as thy life so sweet to take away By victorie in single fight and hast thy dying day Have pittie yet my sonne of me thy wofull aged sire Ere that my wits and senses faile whom Jupiter inire Will else one day at th' end of this my old and wretched yeeres Consume with miserable death out-worne and spent with teeres As having many objects seene of sorrow and hearts griefe My sonnes cut short by edge of sword who should be my reliefe My daughters trail'd by haire of head and ravisht in my sight My pallace rac'd their chambers sackt wherein I tooke delight And sucking babes from mothers brests pluckt and their braines dasht out Against the stones of pav'ment hard lie sprawling all about When enemie with sword in hand in heat of bloudy heart Shall havocke make and then my selfe at last must play my part Whom when some one by dint of sword or launce of dart from farre Hath quite bereft of vitall breath the hungry dogs shall arre About my corps and at my gates hale it and drag along Gnawing the flesh of hoarie head and grisled chin among Mangling besides the privie parts of me a man so old Unkindly slaine a spectacle most piteous to behold Thus spake the aged father tho and pluckt from head above His haires milke-white but all these words did Hector nothing move Seeing then so many examples of this matter presented unto your eies you are to thinke and consider with your selfe that death doth deliver and preserve many men from great greevous calamities into which without all doubt they should have fallen if they had lived longer But for to avoid prolixitie I will omit the rest my selfe with those that are related already as being sufficient to proove shew that we ought not to breake out beside nature and beyond measure into vaine sorrowes and needlesse lamentations which bewray nothing else but base and seeble minds Crantor the philosopher was wont to say That to suffer adversitie causelesse was no small easement to all sinister accidents of fortune but I would rather say That innocencie is the greatest and most soveraigne medicine to take away the sense of all dolour in adversitie moreover the love and affection that we beare unto one who is departed consisteth not in afflicting and punishing our selves but in doing good unto him so beloved of us now the profit and pleasure that we are able to performe for them who are gone out of this world is the honour that we give unto them by celebrating their good memorials for no good man deserveth to be mourned and bewailed but rather to be celebrated with praise and
indeed the most auncient of all others called even Bacchus himselfe Eubulus as if they had no need at all of Mercurie and in regard also of him they attributed unto night the name of Euphrone THE TENTH QUESTION Whether they did well who sat in consultation at the table WHen Glaucias had spoken these words we all thought that these turbulent and litigious debates had beene well appeased and laid asleepe but to the end that they might so much the rather die and be buried in oblivion Nicostratus provided another question and said At the first quoth he I made no great matter of this custome nor regarded it much taking it to be a meere Persian fashion but now seeing it is discovered to be an order also among the Greeks requisite and necessarie it is to render some reason thereof for to defend it against an evident absurditie which at the first sight presenteth it selfe for that the discourse of reason in manner of the eie is hardly to be governed by us and untoward for to be brought to performe her worke in a great quantitie of moisture and the same as yet stirring and waving and besides all odious griefes which on every side appeere and come foorth to wine like as snakes lizards and such like serpents are brought to light and shew themselves to the sunne cause the minde to be wavering inconstant and irresolute as therefore a bed or pallet is better than a chaire for them that are disposed to drinke and make merry for that it conteineth the body at full and exempteth it from all maner of motion even so the best way is to keepe the soule quiet and in repose altogether and if that may not be to do by it as men doe by children that can rest and stand on no ground but be evermore stirring namely to give unto it not a sword or a javelin but a rattle or a ball like as Bacchus putteth into the hands of drunken folke the ferula stalke a most light weapon and instrument either to offend or defend withall to the end that as they be readiest to strike so they might be least able for to hurt for the faults that bee committed in drunkennesse ought to passe lightly in mirth and go away with a laughter and not to bee lamentable tragicall and bringing with them great calamities Moreover that which is the chiefe and principall thing in consultation of great affaires to wit that hee who for want of wit and knowledge in the world should follow the opinion of those who are of great conceit deepe judgement and long experience this meanes wine bereaveth us of insomuch as it seemeth heereupon to have taken the name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Greeke because as Plato saith it causeth them drinke it freely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say to have a good conceit and weening of themselves as if they were very witty and wise for how ever they take themselves to be eloquent faire or rich as ordinarily they doe all of them yet they esteeme better of their owne wit and wisedome than of any thing else and this is the reason that wine is talkative and full of words it filleth us with lavish speech and the same unseasonable yea it maketh us to have a marvellous good opinion of our selves in ech respect as if we were woorthy to commaund and prescribe unto others more meet to be heard than to heare and fitter to leade and goe before than to follow come after But quoth Glantias then an easie matter it is for any man to collect and alledge much tending unto this point considering how evident and plaine the thing is it were good therefore to heare a discourse to the contrary if haply any person yoong or old will stand up in defence of wine Then our brother full cunningly and sliely like a crafty sophister Why quoth he thinke you that any man is able so presently and upon a sudden to devise and speake unto the question in hand all that may be said probably thereto And why quoth Nicostratus should not I so thinke considering so many learned men in place and those who love wine well enough at which word the other smiled and said Are you in deed sufficient even in your owne conceit to discourse upon this point before us and yet indisposed and altogether unable to consider upon State matters and affaires of government because you have taken your wine well and is not this all one as to thinke that he who hath drunke freely seeth well enough with his eies and howsoever he heareth not perfectly with his eares those whom hee speaketh and talketh with yet for all that he hath the perfect hearing of those who either sing or play upon the flute for as it is likely and standeth to great reason that good and profitable things should affect and draw the outward sences more unto them than those which are gaudie onely and fine even so no doubt such matters make the minde also more intentive and if a man for that he hath plied his drinking overmuch cannot haply comprehend well the difficult subtilties of some high points in philosophie I nothing marvell thereat but if the question be of matters and affaires of State great likelihood there is that if he be called away thereto he should gather his wits more close together and be more vigorous like as Philip king of Macedonia who having plaied the foole and made himselfe ridiculous at Chaeronea after the battell there both in word and deed upon his liberall drinking presently assoone as hee fell to treatie of peace and articles of agreement hee composed his countenance to gravitie knit his browes and cast behinde him all vaine fooleries wanton gestures and unseemly behaviour and so gave unto the Athenians a sober discreet and well advised answere And verily one thing it is to drinke well and another thing to be starke drunke such as be so farre gone and overseene with drinke that they know not what they do or say ought as we thinke to take their beds and sleepe as for those who have taken their wine in deed too much and be scarse sober howbeit otherwise men of wit and understanding we shall never need to feare that they will faile in judgement yea and forget their experience considering that wee daily see these dancers singers and minstrels performe their parts no worse at feasts for all their liberall drinking than in the publicke theaters for the skill and knowledge whereof they have gotten the habit is evermore so present and readie with them that it maketh their bodies active and nimble able to performe those parts and functions directly yea and to answere the motions of the minde accordingly with confidence Many there be also in whose heads and hearts wine so worketh that it putteth into them an assured boldnesse and resolution which helpeth them much to the performance of any great actions and the same is nothing insolent
naturall bodie composed of many organs or instruments and with all having life But the Sectaries of ANAXAGORAS have given out that it is of an airie substance and a very body The STOICKS would have the Soule to be an hot spirit or breath DEMOCRITUS holdeth it to be a certeine fierie composition of things perceptible by reason and the same having their formes sphaericall and round and the puissance of fire and withall to be a body EPICURUS saith it is a mixtion or temperature of foure things to wit of a certeine fire of I wot not what aire of an odde windie substance and of another fourth matter I cannot tel what to name it and which to him was sensible HERACLITUS affirmeth the Soule of the world to be an evaporation of humors within it as for the Soule of living creatures it proceedeth quoth he as well from an evaporation of humors without as an exhalation within it selfe and of the same kinde CHAP. IIII. The parts of the Soule PYTHAGORAS and PLATO according to a more generall and remote division hold that the Soule hath two parts that is to say the Reasonable the unreasonable but to goe more necre and exactly to worke they say it hath three for they subdivided the unreasonable part into Concupissible and Irascible The STOICKS be of opinion that composed it is of eight parts whereof five be the senses naturall to wit sight hearing smelling tasting and feeling the sixt is the voice the seventh generative or spermaticall and the eight understanding which guideth and commaundeth all the rest by certeine proper organs and instruments like as the Polype fish by her cleies and hairy branches DEMOCRITUS and EPICURUS set downe two parts of the Soule the Reasonable seated in the brest and the Unreasonable spred and dispersed over all the structure of the body besides As for DEMOCRITUS he affirmeth that all things whatsoever have a certeine kinde of Soule even the very dead bodies for that alwaies they doe manifestly participate a kinde of heat and sensitive facultie notwithstanding the most part there of be breathed foorth and yeelded up CHAP. V. Which is the Mistresse and commanding part of the Soule and wherein it is PLATO and DEMOCRITUS place it in the head throughout STRATO betweene the two eie browes ERASISTRATUS in the membrane or kell that enfoldeth the braine and it he calleth Epicranis HEROPHILUS within the ventricle or concavitie of the braine which also is the basis or foundation of it PARMENIDES over all the brest and with him accordeth EPICURUS the STOICKS all with one voice hold it in the whole heart or else in the spirit about the heart DIOGENES in the cavitie of the great arterie of the heart which is full of vitall spirit EMPEDOCLES in the consistence or masse of bloud others in the verie necke of the heart some in the tunickle that lappeth the heart and others againe in the midriffe some of our moderne philosophers hold that it taketh up occupieth all the space from the head downward to the Diaphragma or midriffe above said PYTHAGORAS supposeth that the vitall part of the Soule is about the heart but the reason and the intellectuall or spirituall part about the head CHAP. VI. The motion of the Soule PLATO is of opinion that the soule mooveth continually but the intelligence or understanding is immooveable in regard of locall motion from place to place ARISTOTLE saith that the soule it selfe moveth not although it be the author that rules directeth all motion howbeit that by an accident it is not devoid of motion according as divers sorts of bodies do move CHAP. VII Of the Soules immortalitie PYTHAGORAS and PLATO affirme the Soule to be immortall for in departing out of the bodie it 〈◊〉 to the Soule of the universall world even to the nature which is of the same kinde The STOICKS hold that the Soule going from the bodie if it be seeble and weake as that is of ignorant persons setleth downward with the grosse consistence of the bodie but if it be more firme and puissant as that is of wise and learned men it continueth even unto the conflagration of all DEMOCRITUS and EPICURUS say that it is corruptible and perisheth together with the bodie PYTAGORAS and PLATO are of opinion that the reasonable part of the Soule is immortall and incorruptible for that the Soule if it be not God yet the worke it is of eternall God as for the unreasonable part it is mortall and subject to corruption CHAP. VIII Of the Senses and sensible objects THe STOICKS thus define Sense Sense say they is the apprehension of the sensitive organ But Sense is taken many waies for we understand by it either an habitude or facultie naturall or a sensible action or els an imagination apprehensive which all are performed by the meanes of an instrument sensitive yea and the very eighth part of the Soule abovenamed even that which is principall to wit the discourse of reason by which all the rest doe consist Againe the spirits intellectuall are called sensitive instruments which from the said principall understanding reach unto all the organs The Sense quoth EPICURUS is that parcell of the soule which is the sensitive power it selfe and the effect which proceedeth from it so that he taketh Sense in two sort for the power and effect PLATO defineth Sense to bee the societie of the body and soule as touching externall objects for the facultie and power of Sense is proper to the soule the instrument belongeth to the body but both the one and the other apprehendeth externall things by the meanes of the imaginative facultie or the phantasie LEUCIPPUS and DEMOCRITUS doesay that both Sense and intelligence are actuated by the meanes of certeine images represented from without unto us for that neither the one nor the other can be performed without the occurrence of some such image CHAP. IX Whether Senses and Fansies be true or no THe STOICKS hold that the Senses be true but of Imaginations as some be true so others are false EPICURUS supposeth that all Senses and Imaginations be true mary of opinions some be true others false and as for the Sense it is deceived one way only to wit in things intelligible but Imagination after two sorts for that there is an Imagination as well of sensible things as of intelligible EMPEDOCLES and HERACLIDES say that particular Senses are effected according to the proportion of their pores and passages namely as the proper object of each Sense is well disposed and fitted CHAP. X. How many Senses there be THe STOICKS hold that there be five proper Senses Sight Hearing Smelling Tast and Feeling ARISTOTLE saith not that there is a sixt howbeit he putteth downe one common Sense which judgeth as touching the compound kinds whereunto all the other particular and single Senses bring and present their proper imaginations wherein the transition of the one to the other as of a figure or motion doth shew
certaine power which causeth it to swell as it were and have an appetite to engender For other cause there can 〈◊〉 none rendred why rocks clifts and mountaines be barren and drie but this that they have either no fire at all or else participate 〈◊〉 little the nature thereof in summe so farre off is water from being of it selfe sufficient for the owne preservation or generation of other things that without the aide of fire it is the cause of the owne ruine and destruction For heat it is that keepeth water in good estate and preserveth it in her nature and proper substance like as it doth all things besides and looke where fire is away or wanteth there water doth corrupt and putrifie in such sort as the ruine and destruction of water is the default of heat as we may evidently see in pools marishes and standing waters or wheresoever water is kept within pits and holes without issue for such waters in the end become putrified and stinke againe because they have no motion which having this propertie to 〈◊〉 up the naturall heat which is in everie thing keepeth those waters better which have a current and runne apace in that this motion preserveth that kind heat which they have And hereupon it is that To live in Greeke is expressed by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sigfieth to boile How then can it otherwise be that of two things it should not be more profitable which giveth being and essence to the other like as fire doth unto water Furthermore that thing the utter departure whereof is the cause that a creature dieth is the more profitable for this is certaine and manifest that the same without which a thing cannot bee hath given the cause of being unto the same when it was with it For we do see that in dead things there is a moisture neither are they dried up altogether for otherwise moist bodies would not putrifie considering that putrefaction is the turning of that which is drie to be moist or rather the corruption of humours in the flesh and death is nothing else but an utter defect and extinction of heat and therefore dead things be extreme cold insomuch as if a man should set unto them the very edge of rasours they are enough to dull the same through excessive cold And we may see plainely that in the verie bodies of living creatures those parts which participate least of the nature of fire are more senselesse than any other as bones and haire and such as be farthest remooved from the heart and in manner all the difference that is betweene great and small creatures proceedeth from the presence of fire more or lesse for humiditie simply it is not that bringeth forth plants and fruits but warme humiditie is it that doth the deed whereas cold waters be either barren altogether or not verie fruitful and fertill and yet if water were of the owne nature fructuous it must needs follow that it selfe alone and at all times should be able to produce fruit whereas we see it is cleane contrarie namely that it is rather hurtfull to fruits And now to reason from another head and go another way to worke to make use of fire as it is fire need wee have not of water nay it 〈◊〉 rather for it quencheth and 〈◊〉 it out cleane on the other side many 〈◊〉 be who cannot tell what to doe with water without fire for being made hot it is more profitable and otherwise in the owne kinde hurtfull Of two things therefore that which can do good of it selfe without need of the others helpe is better and more profitable Moreover water yeeldeth commodity but after one sort onely to wit by touching as when we feele it or wash and bathe with it whereas fire serveth all the five senses doth them good for it is felt both neere at hand and also seene afarre of so that among other meanes that it hath of profiting no man may account the multiplicity of the uses that it affoordeth for that a man should be at any time without fire it is impossible nay he cannot have his first generation without it and yet there is a difference in this kinde as in all other things The very sea it selfe is made more 〈◊〉 by heat so as it doth heat more by the agitation and current that it hath than any other waters for of it selfe otherwise it differeth not Also for such as have no need of outward fire we may not say that they stand in need of none at all but the reason is because they have plenty and store of naturall heat within them so that in this very point the commodity of fire ought to be esteemed the more And as for water it is never in that good state but some need it hath of helpe without whereas the exellencie of fire is such as it is content with it selfe and requireth not the aid of the other Like as therefore that captaine is to be reputed more excellent who knowes to order and furnish a citie so as it hath no need of forren allies so we are to thinke that among elements that is the woorthier which may often times consist without the succour and aide of another And even as much may be said of living creatures which have least need of others helpe And yet haply it may be replied contrariwise that the thing is more profitable which we use alone by it selfe namely when by discourse of reason we are able to chuse the better For what is more commodious and profitable to men than reason and yet there is none at all in brute beasts And what followeth heereupon Shall we inferre therefore that it is lesse profitable as invented by the providence of a better nature which is god But since we are fallen into this argument What is more profitable to mans life than arts but there is no art which fire devised not or at least wise doth not maintaine And heereupon it is that we make 〈◊〉 the prince and master of all arts Furthermore whereas the time and space of life is very short that is given unto man as short as it is yet sleepe as Ariston saith like unto a false baily or publicane taketh the halfe thereof for it selfe True it is that a man may lie awake and not sleepe all night long but I may aswell say that his waking would serve him in small stead were it not that fire presented unto him the commodities of the day and put a difference betweene the darkenesse of the night and the light of the day If then there be nothing more profitable unto man than life why should we not judge fire to be the best thing in the world since it doth augment and multiply our life Over and besides that of which the five senses participate most is more profitable but evident it is that there is not one of the said senses maketh use of the nature of water
regard wisely sayd the Poët Euripides When as the ground is not well laid at first for our natiuity With parents fault men will upbraid both us and our posterity A goodly treasure then have they who are well and honestly borne when in the confidence and assurance thereof they may be bold to beare their heads aloft and speake their minds frankly wheresoever they come and verily they of all others are to make the greatest account of this blessing who wish to have faire issue of their bodies lawfully begotten Certes a thing it is that ordinarily daunteth and casteth downe the heart of a man when he is privie to the basenesse of his birth and knoweth some defect blemish and imperfection by his parents Most truly therefore and to the purpose right fitly spake the same Poët The privitie to fathers vice or mothers fault reprochable Will him debase who otherwise is hautie stout and commendable Whereas contrariwise they that are knowen to be the children of noble and worthy parents beare themselves highly and are full of stomacke and generositie In which conceit and loftie spirit it is reported that Diaphantus the sonne of Themistocles was woont to say and that in the hearing of many That whatsoeuer pleased him the same also the people of Athens thought well of for that which I would have done quoth he my mother likewise sayth Yea unto it what my mothers minde stands to Themistocles my father will not gainsay it and looke what likes Themistocles the Athenians all are well contented therewith Where by the way the magnanimitie and brave mind of the Lacedaemoninas is highly to be praised who condemned their king Archidamus in a great fine of money for that he could finde in his heart to espouse a wife of little stature alledging therewith a good reason Because say they his meaning is to get not a breed of Kings but Kinglins or divers Kings to reigne over us Well upon this first advertisement concerning children there dependeth another which they who wrote before us of the like argument forgat not to set downe and what is that namely That they who for procreation of children will come neere unto women ought to meddle with them either upon empty stomacks and before they have drunke any wine at all or at leastwise after they have taken their wine in measure and soberly for such will proove commonly wine-bibbers and drunkards who were engendred when their fathers were drunken according to that which Diogenes sayd upon a time unto a youth whom he saw beside himselfe and farre overseene with drinke My ladde quoth he thy father gat thee when he was drunke And thus much may suffice for the generation of children As touching their nourture and education whereof now I am to discourse That which we are woont generally to say of all Arts and Sciences the same we may be bolde to pronounce of vertue to wit that to the accomplishment thereof and to make a man perfectly vertuous three things ought to concurre Nature Reason and Vsage By reason I understand doctrine and precepts by usage exercise and practise The first beginnings we have from nature progresse and proceeding come by teaching and instruction exercise and practise is performed by diligence And all three together bring foorth the height of perfection If any one of these faile it cannot otherwise be but that vertue also should have her defect and be maimed For nature without learning is blind Doctrine wanting the gift of nature is defectuous and exercise void of the other twaine imperfect And verily it fareth in this case much like as in Husbandrie and tillage of the earth For first and formest requisite it is that the ground be good Secondly that the Husbandman be skilfull and in the third place that the seed be cleane and well chosen Semblaby Nature resembleth the soile the Master who teacheth representeth the labouring Husbandman and last of all the rules precepts admonitions and examples are compared to the seede All these good meanes I dare with confidence avouch met together and inspired their power into the mindes of these woorthy personages who throughout the world are so renowmed Pythagor as I meane Socrates Plato and all the rest who have attained to a memorable name and immortall glorie Blessed then is that man and entirely beloved of the gods whose hap it is by their favor and grace to be furnished with all three Now if any one be of this opinion that those who are not endued with the gift of naturall wit and yet have the helpes of true instruction and diligent exercise to the attaining of vertue cannot by this meanes recover and repaire the foresaid defect Know he that he is much deceived and to say more truely quite out of the way for as idlenesse and negligence doth marre and corrupt the goodnesse of nature so the industrie and diligence of good erudition supplieth the defect and correcteth the default thereof Idle and slothfull persons we see are not able to compasse the things that be easie whereas contrariwise by studie and travell the greatest difficulties are atchieved Moreover of what efficacie and execution diligence and labour is a man may easily know by sundrie effects that are daily observed For we do evidently perceive that drops of water falling upon the hard rocke doe eate the same hollow yron and brasse we see to weare and consume onely by continuall handling The fellies in chariot wheeles which by labour are bended and curbed will not returne and be reduced againe do what you can to their former streightnesse Like as it is impossible by any device to set streight the crooked staves that Stage-players goe withall And evident it is that whatsoever against nature is by force and labour chaunged and redressed becometh much better and more sure than those things that continue in their ownekinde But are these the things onely wherein appeareth the power of studie and diligence No verily For there are an infinite number of other experiments which proove the same most cleerely Is there a peece of ground naturally good Let it lie neglected it becommeth wilde and barrain Yea and the more rich and fertill that it is of it selfe the more waste and fruitlesse it prooveth for want of tillage and husbandry Contrariwise you shall see another plot hard rough and more stonie than it should be which by good ordering and the carefull hand of the husbandman soone bringeth foorth faire and goodly fruit Againe what trees are there which will not twine grow crooked and proove fruitlesse if good heed be not taken unto them Whereas if due regard be had and that carefulnes employed about them which becommeth they beare fruit and yeeld the same ripe in due season Is there any body so sound and able but by neglect riot delicacie and an evill habit or custome it will grow dull feeble and unlostie yea and fall into a misliking and consumption On the other side what complexion is there so
in him somewhat better and somewhat worse And verily by that meanes he that hath the worse part obedient to the better hath powre over himselfe yea and better than himselfe whereas he that suffreth the brutish and unreasonable part of his soule to command and go before so as the better and more noble part doth follow and is serviceable unto it he no doubt is worse than himselfe he is I say incontinent or rather impotent and hath no power over himselfe but disposed contrary to nature For according to the course and ordinance of nature meet and fit it is that reason being divine and heavenly should command and rule that which is sensuall and voide of reason which as it doth arise and spring out of the very bodie so it resembleth it as participating the properties and passions thereof yea and naturally is full of them as being deepely concorporate and throughly mixed therewith As it may appeere by all the motions which it hath tending to no other things but those that be materiall and corporall as receiving their augmentations and diminutions from thence or to say more properly being stretched out and let slacke more or lesse according to the mutations of the body Which is the cause that young persons are quicke prompt and audacious rash also for that they be full of bloud and the same hot their lusts and appetites are likewise firy violent and furious whereas contrariwise in old folke because the source of concupiscence seated about the liver is after a sort quenched yea and become weake and feeble reason is more vigorous and predominant in them as much as the sensuall and passionate part doth languish and decay together with the body And verily this is that which doth frame and dispose the nature of wilde beasts to divers passions For it is not long of any opinions good or bad which arise in them that some of them are strong venterous and fearelesse yea and ready to withstand any perils presented before them others againe be so surprised with feare and fright that they dare not stirre or do any thing but the force and power which lieth in the bloud in the spirits and in the whole bodie is that which causeth this diversitie of passions by reason that the passible part growing out of the flesh as from a roote doeth bud soorth and bring with it a qualitie and pronenesse semblable But in man that there is a sympathie and fellow mooving of the body together with the motions of the passions may be prooved by the pale colour the red flushing of the face the trembling of the joints and panting and leaping of the heart in feare and anger And againe on the contrary side by the dilations of the arteries heart and colour in hope and expectation of some pleasures But when as the divine spirit and understanding of man doeth moove of it selfe alone without any passion then the body is at repose and remaineth quiet not communicating nor participating any whit with the operation of the minde and intendement no more than it being disposed to studie upon any Mathematicall proposition or other science speculative it calleth for the helpe and assistance of the unreasonable part By which it is manifest that there be two distinct parts in us different in facultie and power one from another In summe Go through the universall world althings as they themselves affirme and evident experience doth convince are governed and ordred some by a certeine habitude others by nature some by sensuall and unreasonable soule others by that which hath reason and understanding Of all which man hath his part at once yea and was borne naturally with these differences above said For conteined he is by an habitude nourished by nature reason understanding he useth he hath his portion likewise of that which is unreasonable and inbred there is together with him the source and primitive cause of passions as a thing necessarie for him neither doth it enter into him from without in which regard it ought not to be extirped utterly but hath neede onely of ordering and government whereupon Reason dealeth not after the Thracian maner nor like king Lycurgus who commanded all vines without exception to be cut downe because wine caused drunkennes it rooteth not out I say all affections indifferently one with another the profitable as well as the hurtfull but like unto the good gods 〈◊〉 and Hemorides who teach us to order plants that they may fructifie and to make them gentle which were savage to cut away that which groweth wilde and ranke to save all the rest and so to order and manage the same that it may serve for good use For neither do they shed and spill their wine upon the floure who are afraid to be drunke but delay the same with water nor those who feare the violence of a passion do take it quite away but rather temper and qualifie the same like as folke use to breake horses and oxen from their flinging out with their heeles their stiffenes curstnes of the head stubburnes in receiving the bridle or the yoke but do not restreine them of other motions in going about their worke and doing their deed And even so verily reason maketh good use of these passions when they be well tamed and brought as it were to hand without over weakning or rooting out cleane that part of the soule which is made for to second reason and do it good service For as Pindarus saith The horse doth serve in chariot at the thill The oxe at plough doth labour hardin field Who list in chase the wild Bore for to kill The hardy hound he must provide with skill And I assure you the entertainment of these passions and their breed serve in farre better stead when they doe assist reason and give an edge as it were and vigour unto vertues than the beasts above named in their kind Thus moderate ire doth second valour and fortitude hatred of wicked persons helpeth the execution of Iustice and indignation is just and due unto those who without any merit or desert enjoie the felicitie of this life who also for that their heart is puffed up with foolish arrogancie and enflamed with disdainfull pride and insolence in regard of their prosperitie have need to be taken downe and cooled Neither is a man able by any meanes would he never so faine to separate from true friendship naturall indulgence and kind affection nor from humanitie commiseration and pitie ne yet from perfect benevolence and good will the fellowiship in joy and sorrow Now if it be true as it is indeed that they do grossely erre who would abolish all love because of foolish and wanton love surely they do amisse who for covertousnes sake and greedines of money do blame and condemne quite all other appetites and desires They do I say asmuch as those who would sorbid running altogether because a man may stumble and catch a fall as he runneth
another but whether they be equall in wel doing or come behinde they take all in good part and never grieve at the matter But the flatterer bearing wel in minde that he in everie place is to play the second part yeeldeth alwaies in his imitation the equalitie from himselfe and doth affect to counterfeit another so as he will be the inferiour giving the superioritie unto the other in all things but those which are naught for therein he chalengeth to himselfe the victorie over his friend If he be somewhat mal-content and hard to be pleased then will the flatterer professe himselfe to be starke melancholike if his friend be somewhat too religious or superstitious then will he make semblance as though he were rapt and transported altogether with the feare of the gods If the other be amorous he wil be in love furious when the other saith I laughed a good but I will he say againe laughed untill I was well neere dead But in good things it is cleane contrarie for when he speaketh of good footmanship he wil say I runne swiftly indeed but you fly away Againe I sit a horse and rid reasonable wel but what is that to this Hippo-Centaure here for good horsemanship Also I have a pretie gift in Poetrie I must needs say and am not the worst versifier in the world but To thunder verses I have no skill To Iupiter there leave that I will in these and such like speeches two things at once he doth for first he seemeth to approove the enterprise of the other as singular good because he doth imitate him and secondly he sheweth that his sufficiencie therein is incomparable and not to be matched in that he confesseth himselfe to come short of him And thus much of the different marks betweene a flatterer and a friend as touching their resemblances Now forasmuch as there is a communitie of delectation and pleasure in them both as I have said before for that an honest man taketh no lesse joy and comfort in his friends than a lewd person in flatterers let us consider likewise the distinction betweene them in this behalfe The onely way to distinguish them a sunder in this point is to marke the drift and end of the delectation both in the one and the other which a man may see more cleerely by this example There is in a sweete ointment an odoriferous smell so is therealso in an Antidote or medicine but herrein lieth the difference for that in the ointment abovesaid theire is a reference to pleasure onely and to nothing else but in the Antidote beside the delectation that the odor yeeldeth there is a respect also of some medicinable vertue namely either to purge and clense the bodie or to heate and chafe it or else to incamate and make new flesh to come Againe Painters do grinde and mixe fresh colours and lively tinctures so the Apothecarie hath drugs and medicines of a beautifull and pleasant colour to the eie that it would do a man good to look upon them But wherein is the difference Is there any man so grosse that conceiveth not readily that the ods lieth in the use or end for which both the one and the other be ordained Semblably the mutuall offices and kindnesses that passe from friend to friend beside the honestie and profite that they have bring with them also that which is pleasing and delectable as if some deinty and lively flowers grew thereupon For sometime friends use plaies and pastimes one with another they invite one another they eate and drinke together yea and otherwhiles beleeve me you shall have them make themselves mery and laugh hartily jesting gauding and disporting one with another all which serve as pleasant sauces to season their other serious and honest affaires of great weight and consequence And to this purpose serve wel these verses With pleasant discourses from one to another They made themselves mery being met together Also And nothing else disjoined our amity Nor partedour pleasures and mutuall jolity But the whole worke of a flatterer and the onely marke that he shooteth at is alwaies to devise prepare and confect as it were some play or sport some action and speech with pleasure and to do pleasure And to knit up all briefly in one word he is of opinion that he ought to do all for to be pleasant whereas the true friend doing alwaies that which his dutie requireth many times pleaseth and as often againe he is displeasant not that his intention is to displease at any time howbeit if he see it expedient and better so to do he will not sticke to be a little harsh and unpleasant For like as a Physician when neede requireth putteth in some Saffron or Spiknard into his medicine yea and otherwhile permitreth his patient a delicate bath or liberall and deinty diet to his ful contenment but sometimes for it againe leaving out all sweet odors casteth in Castorem Or Polium which strong sent doth yeeld And stinkes most of all herbes in field or else he bruseth and stampeth some Ellebore and forceth his patient to drinke of that potion not proposing either in the former medicine pleasure nor in the latter displeasure for the end but both by the one and the other training the sicke person under his hand to one the same effect of his cure to wit his good and the health of his body even so it is with a true friend one while with praises and gracious words he extolleth and cheereth up his friend inciting him thereby alwaies to that which is good and honest as he in Homer Deere heart Sir Teucer worthie sonne of Telamon that Knight Come Prince and floure of valiant knights Shoot thus your arrowes flight And another How can I ever put out of minde Heavenly Vlysses a Prince so kinde Contrariwise anotherwhile where there is need of chastisement and correction he will not spare but use sharpe and biting words yea and that free speech which carrieth with it an affection carefull to do good and such as in deed beseemeth a tutor and governour much after this manner What Menelaus how ever that from Iupiter you discend You play the foole for folly such I cannot you commend It falleth out so likewise that sometime he addeth deeds to words And thus Menedemus shut the doore against the sonne of Asclepiades his friend and would not deigne once to salute him because he was a riotous youth and lived dissolutely and out of all order by which meanes he was reclaimed from loose life and became an honest man Arcesilaus in like maner excluded Battus out of his schoole and would not suffer him to enter because in a Comedie that he composed he had made one verse against Cleanthes but afterwards Battus repenting of that he had done and making satisfaction unto Cleanthes was pardoned and received againe into his favor For a man may offend his friend with intention to doe him good but he must
him and in this maner began to perswade Above all things my good childe quoth he studie and endevour to imitate the humanitie and sociable nature of your noble father unlesse haply you have me in jealousie and suspition as if I went about to compasse your death The youth was abashed to heare him say so and went with him well supper was no sooner ended but they made an end of the yoong gentleman also and strangled him outright so that it is no ridiculous and foolish advertisement as some let not to say but a wise and sage advise of Hesiodus when he saith Thy friend and lover to supper do invite Thy foe leave out for he will thee requite Be not in any wise bashfull and ashamed to refuse his offer whom thou knowest to hate thee but never leave out and reject him once who seemeth to put his trust and confidence in thee for if thou do invite thou shalt be invited againe and if thou be bidden to a supper and go thou canst not choose but bid againe if thou abandon once thy distrust and diffidence which is the guard of thy safty and so marre that good tincture and temperature by a foolish shame that thou hast when thou darest not refuse Seeing then that this infirmitie and maladie of the minde is the cause of many inconveniences assay we must to chase it away with all the might we have by exercise beginning at the first like as men do in other exercises with things that are not very difficult nor such as a man may boldly have the face to denie as for example if at a dinner one chance to drinke unto thee when thou hast drunke sufficiently already be not abashed to refuse for to pledge him neither force thy selfe but take the cup at his hand and set it downe againe on the boord againe there is another perchance that amids his cups chalengeth thee to hazzard or to play at dice be not ashamed to say him nay neither feare thou although thou receive a flout and scoffe at his hands for deniall but rather do as xenophanes did when one Lasus the sonne of Hermiones called him coward because he would not play at dice with him I confesse quoth he I am a very dastard in those things that be lewd and naught and I dare do nothing at all moreover say thou fall into the hands of a pratling talkative busie bodie who catcheth hold on thee hangeth upon thee and will not let thee go be not sheepish and bashfull but interrupt and cut his tale short shake him off I say but go thou forward and make an end of thy businesse whereabout thou wentest for such refusals such repulses shifts and evasions in small matters for which men cannot greatly complaine of us exercising us not to blush and be ashamed when there is no cause do inure and frame us well before-hand unto other occasions of greater importance And heere in this place it were not amisse to call unto remembrance a speech of Demosthenes for when the Athenians being sollicited and mooved to send aid unto Harpalus were so forward in the action that they had put themselves in armes against king Alexander all on a sodaine they discovered upon their owne coasts Philoxenus the lieutenant generall of the kings forces and chiefe admirall of his Armada at sea now when the people were so astonied upon this unexpected occurrent that they had not a word to say for very feare What wil these men do quoth Demosthenes when they shall see the sunne who are so afraid that they dare not looke against a little lampe even so I say to thee that art given much to blush and be abashed What wilt thou be able to do in weightie affaires namely when thou shalt be encountred by a king or if the bodie of some people or state be earnest with thee to obtaine ought at thy hand that is unreasonable when thou hast not the heart to refuse for to pledge a familiar friend if he chance to drinke unto thee offer thee a cup of wine or if thou canst not find meanes to escape and wind thy selfe out of the company of a babling busie bodie that hath fastened and taken hold of thee but suffer such a vaine prating fellow as this to walke and leade thee at his pleasure up and downe having not so much power as to say thus unto him I will see you againe hereafter at some other time now I have no leasure to talke with you Over and besides the exercise and use of breaking your selves of this bashfulnesse in praising others for small and light matters will not be unprofitable unto you as for example Say that when you are at a feast of your friends the harper or minstrell do either play or sing out of tune or haply an actour of a Comedie dearely hired for a good piece of money by his ill grace in acting marre the play and disgrace the authour himselfe Menander and yet neverthelesse the vulgar sort doe applaud clap their hands and highly commend and admire him for his deed in mine advice it would be no great paine or difficulty for thee to give him the hearing with patience and silence without praising him after a servile and flattering maner otherwise than you thinke it meet and reason for if in such things as these you be not master of your selfe how will you be able to hold when some deare friend of yours shall reade unto you either some foolish rime or bad poësie that himselfe hath composed if he shal shew unto you some oration of his owne foolish and ridiculous penning you will fall a praising of him will you you will keepe a clapping of your hands with other flattering jacks I would not els And if you doe so how can you reprove him when he shall commit some grosse fault in greater matters how shall you be able to admonish him if he chance to forget himselfe in the administration of some magistracie or in his carriage in wedlocke or in politike government And verily for mine owne part I do not greatly allow and like of that answere of Pericles who being requested by a friend to beare false witnesse in his behalfe and to binde the same with an oath whereby he should be forsworne I am your friend quoth he as far as the altar as if he should have said Saving my conscience and duety to the gods for surely he was come too neere already unto him But he who hath accustomed himselfe long before neither to praise against his owne minde one who hath made an oration nor to applaud unto him who hath sung nor to laugh heartily at him who came out with some stale or poore jest which had no grace hee will I trow never suffer his friend and familiar to proceed so farre as to demand such a request of him or once be so bolde as to move him who before had refused in smaller trifles to satisfie his desire in
for that without friends societie and fellowship we are not able to live solitarie and alone as most savage beasts neither will our nature endure it and therefore in Menander he saith very well and wisely By jolly cheere and bankets day by day Thinke we to finde ô father trustie friends To whom our selves and life commit we may No speciall thing for cost to make amends I found he hath who by that meanes hath met With shade of friends for such I count no bet For to say a truth most of our friendships be but shadowes semblances and images of that first amitie which nature hath imprinted and engraffed in children toward their parents in brethren toward their brethren and he who doth not reverence nor honor it how can he perswade and make strangers beleeve that he beareth sound and faithfull good will unto strangers Or what man is he who in his familiar greetings and salutations or in his letters will call his friend and companion Brother and can not find in his heart so much as to go with his brother in the same way For as it were a point of great folly and madnesse to adorne the statue of a brother and in the meane time to beat and maime his bodie even so to reverence and honor the name of a brother in others and withall to shun hate and disdaine a brother indeed were the case of one that were out of his wits and who never conceived in his heart and minde that Nature is the most sacred and holy thing in the world And heere in this place I can not choose but call to minde how at Rome upon a time I tooke upon me to bee umpier betweene two brethren of whom the one seemed to make profession of Philosophie but he was as after it appeered not onely untruely entituled by the name of a Brother but also as falsely called a Philosopher for when I requested of him that he should carrie himselfe as a Philosopher toward his brother and such a brother as altogether was unlettered and ignorant In that you say ignorant quoth he I hold well with you and I avow it a trueth but as for Brother I take it for no such great and venerable matter to have sprung from the same loines or to have come foorth of one wombe Well said I againe It appeeres that you make no great account to issue out of the same natural members but all men else besides you if they doe not thinke and imagine so in their hearts yet I am sure they doe both sing and say that Nature first and then Law which doth preserve and maintaine Nature have given the chiefe place of reverence and honor next after the gods unto father and mother neither can men performe any service more acceptable unto the gods than to pay willingly readily and affectionately unto parents who begat and brought them foorth unto nourses and fosters that reared them up the interest and usurie for the old thankes besides the new which are due unto them And on the other side again there is not a more certaine signe marke of a verie Atheist than either to neglect parents or to be any waies ungracious or defective in duty unto them and therfore wheras we are forbidden in expresse termes by the law to doe wrong or hurt unto other men if one doe not behave himselfe to father and mother both in word and deed so as they may have I do not say no discontentment and displeasure but joy and comfort thereby men esteeme him to be profane godlesse and irreligious Tell me now what action what grace what disposition of children towards their parents can be more agreeable and yeeld them greater contentment than to see good will kinde affection fast and assured love betweene brethren the which a man may easily gather by the contrarie in other smaller matters For seeing that fathers and mothers be displeased otherwhiles with their sonnes if they misuse or hardly intreat some home-borne slave whom they set much store by if I say they be vexed and angrie when they see them to make no reckoning care of their woods and grounds wherein they tooke some joy and delight considering also that the good kind-harted old folke of a gentle and loving affection that they have be offended if some hound or dog bred up within house or an horse be not well tended and looked unto last of all if they grieve when they perceive their children to mocke find fault with or despise the lectures narrations sports sights wrestlers and others that exercise feats of activitie which themselves sometime highly esteemed Is there any likelihood that they in any measure can indure to see their children hate one another to entertaine braules and quarrels continually to be ever snarling railing and reviling one another and in all enterprises and actions alwaies crossing thwarting and supplanting one another I suppose there is no man will so say Then on the contrarie side if brethren love together and be ready one to do for another if they draw in one line and carrie the like affection with them follow the same studies and take the same courses and how much nature hath divided and separated them in bodie so much to joine for it againe in minde lending one another their helping hands in all their negotiations and affaires following the same exercises repairing to the same disputations and frequenting the same plaies games and pastimes so as they agree and communicate in all things certainely this great love and amitie among brethren must needs yeeld sweet joy and happie comfort to their father and mother in their old age and therefore parents take nothing so much pleasure when their children proove eloquent orators wealthy men or advanced to promotions and high places of dignities as loving and kind one to another like as a man shall never see a father so desirous of eloquence of riches or of honor as he is loving to his owne children It is reported of Queene Apollonis the Cyzicen mother to King Eumenes and to three other Princes to wit Atalus Philetaerus and Athenaeus that shee reputed and reported her selfe to bee right happy and rendered thankes unto the immortall gods not for her riches nor roiall port and majestie but that it was her good fortune to see those three yoonger sonnes of hers serving as Pensioners and Esquiers of the bodie to Eumenes their elder brother and himselfe living fearlesse and in as securitie in the mids of them standing about his person with their pollaxes halbards and partisanes in their hands and girded with swords by their sides On the other side King Xerxes perceiving that his sonne Ochus set an ambush and laid traines to murder his brethren died for verie sorrow and anguish of heart Terrible and grievous are the warres said Euripides betweene brethren but unto their parents above all others most grievous for that whosoever hateth his owne brother and may not vouchsafe him a good eie
follow that famous Physician Hippocrates who both openly confessed and also put downe in writing that he was ignorant in the Anatomie of a mans head and namely as touching the seames or situres thereof and this account will he make that it were an unworthy indignitie if when such a man as Hippocrates thought not much to publish his owne errour and ignorance for feare that others might fall into the like hee who is willing to save himselfe from perdition can not endure to be reproved nor acknowledge his owne ignorance and follie As for those rules and precepts which are delivered by Pyrrho and Bion in this case are not in my conceit the signes of amendment and progresse so much as of some other more perfect and absolute habit rather of the minde for Bion willed and required his scholars and familiars that conversed with him to thinke then and never before that they had procecded and profited in Philosophie when they could with as good a will abide to heare men revile and raile at them as if they spake unto them in this maner Good sir you seeme no person leawd nor foolish sot iwis All haile Faire chieve you and adieu God send you alwaies blis And Pyrrho as it is reported being upon a time at sea and in danger to be cast away in a tempest shewed unto the rest of his fellow passengers a porket feeding hard upon barley cast before him on ship boord Loe my masters quoth he we ought by reason and exercise in Philosophie to frame our selves to this passe and to attaine unto such an impassibilitie as to be moved and troubled with the accidents of fortune no more than this pig But consider furthermore what was the conceit and opinion of Zeno in this point for hee was of mind that every man might and ought to know whether he profited or no in the schoole of vertue even by his very dreames namely if hee tooke no pleasure to see in his sleepe any filthy or dishonest thing nor delighted to imagine that he either intended did or approved any leawd unjust or outragious action but rather did beholde as in a setled calme without winde weather and wave in the cleere bottome of the water both the imaginative and also the passive facultie of the soule wholly overspread and lightened with the bright beames of reason which Plato before him is it should seeme knowing well enough hath prefigured and represented unto us what fantasticall motions they be that proceed in sleepe from the imaginative sensual part of the soule given by nature to tyrannize overrule the guidance of reason namely if a man dreame that he seeketh to have carnall company with his owne mother or that he hath a great minde and appetite to eate all strange unlawfull and forbidden meats as if then the said tyrant gave himselfe wholy to all those sensualities concupiscences as being let loose at such a time which by day the law either by feare or shame doth represse keepe downe Like as therefore beasts which serve for draught or saddle if they be well taught and trained albeit their governors and rulers let the reines loose and give them the head fling not out nor goe aside from the right way but either draw or make pace forward stil as they were wont ordinarily keepe the same traine and hold on in one course and order even so they whose sensuall part of the soule is made trainable and obedient tame and well schooled by the discipline of reason will neither in dreames nor sicknesses easily suffer the lusts and concupiscences of the flesh to rage or breake out unto any enormities punishable by law but will observe and keepe still in memorie that good discipline and custome which doth ingenerate a certeine power and efficacie unto diligence whereby they shall and will take heed unto themselves for if the mind hath bene used by exercise to resist passions and temptations to hold the bodie and all the members thereof as it were with bit bridle under subjection in such sort that it hath at cōmand the eies not to shed teares for pitty the heart like wise not to leape pant in seare the naturall parts not to rise not stirre but to be still quiet without any trouble at all upon the sight of any faire and beautifull person man or woman how can it otherwise be but that there should be more likelihood that exercise having seized upon the sensuall part of the soule and tamed it should polish lay even reforme and bring unto good order all the imaginations and motions thereof even as farre as to the very dreames and fantasies in sleepe as it is reported of Stilpo the philosopher who dreamed that he saw Neptune expostulating with him in anger because he had not killed a beefe to sacrifice unto him as the manner was of other priests to doe and that himselfe nothing astonied or dismaid at the said vision should answer thus againe What is that thou saist ô Neptune commest thou to complaine indeed like a child who pules and cries for not having a peece big enough that I take not up some money at interest and put my selfe in debt to fill the whole citie with the sent and savor of rost and burnt but have sacrificed unto thee such as I had at home according to my abilitie and in a meane whereupon Neptune as hee thought should merrily smile and reach foorth unto him his right hand promising that for his sake and for the love of him he would that yeere send the Megarians great store of raine and good foison of sea-loaches or fishes called Aphyrae by that meanes comming unto them by whole sculles Such then as while they lie asleepe have no illusions arising in their braines to trouble them but those dreames or visions onely as be joious pleasant plaine and evident not painfull not terrible nothing rough maligne tortuous and crooked may boldly say that these fantasies and apparitions be no other than the reflexions and raies of that light which rebound from the good proceedings in philosophie whereas contrariwise the furious pricks of lust timorous frights unmanly and base flights childish and excessive joies dolorous sorrowes and dolefull mones by reason of some piteous illusions strange and absurd visions appeering in dreames may be well compared unto the broken waves and billowes of the sea beating upon the rocks and craggie banks of the shore for that the soule having not as yet that setled perfection in it selfe which should keepe it in good order but holdeth on a course still according to good lawes onely and sage opinions from which when it is farthest sequestred and most remote to wit in sleepe it suffereth it selfe to returne againe to the old wont and to be let loose and abandoned to her passions But whether these things may be ascribed unto that profit and amendement whereof we treat or rather to some other habitude having now gathered more
strength and firme constancie not subject by meanes of reasons and good instruction to shaking I leave that to your owne consideration and mine together But now forasmuch as this total impassibilitie if I may so speake of the mind to wit a state so perfect that it is void of all affections is a great and divine thing and seeing that this profit and proceeding whereof we write consisteth in a kind of remission and mildnesse of the said passions we ought both to consider ech of them apart and also compare them one with another thereby to examine and judge the difference conferre we shall every passion by it selfe by observing whether our lusts and desires be more calme and lesse violent than in former time by marking likewise our fits of feare and anger whether they be now abated in comparison of those before or whether when they be up and enflarned we can quickly with the helpe of reason remoove or quench that which was wont to set them on worke or a fire compare we shall them together in case we examine our selves whether we have now a greater portion of grace and shame in us than of feare whether we finde in our selves emulation and not envie whether we covet honor rather than worldly goods and in one word whether after the manner of musicians we offend rather in the extremitie and excesse of harmonie called Dorion which is grave solemne and devout than the Lydian which is light and galliard-like that is to say inclining rather in the whole maner of our life to hardnes and severitie than to effeminate softnesse whether in the enterprise of any actions we shew timiditie and slacknesse rather than temeritie and rashnesse and last of all whether we offend rather in admiring too highly the sayings of men and the persons themselves than in despising and debasing them too low for like as we say in physicke it is a good signe of health when diseases are not diverted and translated into the noble members principal parts of the body even so it seemeth that when the vices of such as are in the way of reformation and amendement of life chaunge into passions that are more milde and moderate it is a good beginning of ridding them away cleane by little little The Lacedaemonian Ephori which were the high countrollers of that whole State demanded of the Musician phrynis when he had set up two strings more to his seven stringed instrument whether he would have them to cut in sunder the trebles or the bases the highest or the lowest but as for us we had need to have our affections cut both above and beneath if we desire to reduce our actions to a meane and mediocritie And surely this progresse or proceeding of ours to perfection professeth rather to let downe the lightest first to cut off the extremitie of passions in excesse and to abate the acrimonie of affections before we doe any thing else in which as saith Sophocles Folke foolish and incontinent Most furtous be and violent As for this one point namely that we ought to transferre our judgement to action and not to suffer our words to remaine bare and naked words still in the aire but reduce them to effect we have alreadie said that is the chiefe propertie belonging to our progresse and going forward now the principall arguments and signes thereof be these if we have a zeale and fervent affection to imitate those things which we praise if we be forward and readie to execute that which we so much admire and contrariwise will not admit nor abide to heare of such things as we in our opinion dispraise and condemne Probable it is and standeth with great likelihood that the Atheniansal in general praised and highly esteemed the valour and prowesse of Miltiades but when Themistocles said that the victorie and Trophee of Miltiades would not give him leave to sleepe but awakened him in the night plaine it is and evident that he not onely praised and admired but had a desire also to imitate him and do asmuch himselfe semblably we are to make this reckoning that our progresse and proceeding in vertue is but small when it reacheth no farther than to praise onely and have in admiration that which good men have woorthily done without any motion and inclination of our will to imitate the same and effect the like For neither is the carnall love of the bodie effectuall unlesse some little jealousie be mixed withall not the praise of vertue fervent and active which doth not touch the quicke and pricke the heart with an ardent zeale in stead of envie unto good and commendable things and the same desirous to performe and accomplish the same fully For it is not sufficient that the heart should be turned upside downe onely as Alcibiades was woont to say by the words and precepts of the Philosopher reading outof his chaire even untill the teares gush out of the eies but he that truly doth profit go forward ought by comparing himselfe with the works actions of good men and those that be perfectly vertuous to feele withall in his owne heart aswell a displeasure with himselfe and a griefe in conscience for that wherein he is short and defective as also a joy and contentment in his spirit upon a hope and desire to be equall unto them as being full of an affection and motion that never resteth and lieth still but resembleth for all the world according to the similitude of Simonides The sucking foale that keeps just pace And runs with dam in everie place affecting and desiring nothing more than to be wholy united and concorporate with a good man by imitation For surely this is the passion peculiar and proper unto him that truely taketh profit by the studie of Philosophie To love and cherrish tenderly the disposition conditions of him whose deeds he doth imitate and desire to expresse with a certaine good will to render alwaies in words due honor unto them for their vertue and to assay how to fashion and conforme himselfe like unto them But in whomsoever there is instilled or infused I wot not what contentious humor envie and contestation against such as be his betters let him know that all this proceedeth from an heart exulcerated with jealousie for some authoritie might and reputation and not upon any love honor or admiration of their vertues Now when as we begin to love good men in such sort that as Plato saith we esteeme not only the man himselfe happie who is temperate or those blessed who be the ordinarie hearers of such excellent discourses which daily come out of his mouth but also that we do affect and admire his countenance his port his gate the cast and regard of his eie his smile and maner of laughter insomuch as we are willing as one would say to be joined sodered and glued unto him then we may be assured certainely that we profit in vertue yea and so much the rather
same doth shew in every street All signes of griefe with plaints and groanes among he looketh with a pale face under his chaplet of flowers upon his head he sacrificeth yet quaketh for feare he maketh his praiers with a trembling voice he putteth incense into the fire and his hand shaketh withall to be short he maketh the speech or sentence of Pythagoras to be vaine and foolish who was wont to say That we are then in best case when we approch unto the gods and worship them For verily even then it is when superstitious people are most wretched miserable to wit whē they enter into the temples sanctuaries of the gods as if they went into the dennes of beares holes of serpents and dragons or caves of whales such monsters of the sea I marvel much therfore at them who call the miscreance sinne of atheists Impiety give not that name rather to superstition And yet Anaxagoras was accused of impietie for that he held and said that the Sun was a stone wheras never man yet called the Cimmerians impious or godlesse because they suppose beleeve there is no Sunne at all What say you then shall he who thinketh that there be no gods at all be taken for a profane person and excommunicate and shall not he who beleeveth them to be such as superstitious folke imagine them be thought infected with more impious and wicked opinions For mine owne part I would be better pleased and content if men should say of me thus There neither is nor ever was in the world a man named Plutarch than to give out of me and say Plutarch is an unconstant man variable cholericke full of revenge for the least occasion that is or displeased and given to grieve for a small matter who if when you invite others to supper he be left out and not bidden or if upon some businesse you be let and hindered so that you come not to his doore for to visit him or otherwise do not salute and speake unto him friendly will be ready to eat your heart with salt to set upon you with his fangs and bite you will not sticke to catch up one of your little babes and worry him or will keepe some mischievous wild beast of purpose to put into your corne-fields your vineyard or orchards for to devoure and spoile all your fruits When Timotheus the musician one day in an open Theater at Athens chanted the praises of Diana giving unto her in his song the attributes of Thyas Phoebus Moenas and Lyssas that is to say Furious Possessed Enraged and Starke mad as Poets are wont to doe Cinesias another minstrell or musician rose up from out of the whole audience and said thus aloud unto him Would God thou haddest a daughter of those quallities And yet these superstitious folke thinke the same of Diana yea and worse to neither have they a better opinion of Apollo Iuno and Venus for all of them they feare and tremble at And yet what blasphemie uttered Niobe against Latona like unto that which superstition hath perswaded foolish people to beleeve of that goddesse to wit that she being displeased with the reprochfull words that Niobe gave her killed with her arrowes all the children of that silly woman Even daughters sixe and sonnes as many just Ofripe yeeres all no helpe but die they must so insatiable was she of the calamities of another so implacable was her anger For grant it were so that this goddesse was full of gall and choler say that she tooke an hatred to leawd and wicked persons or grieved could not endure to heare herselfe reproched or to laugh at humane follie and ignorance certes she should have bene offended and angry yea and discharged her arrowes upon these who untruely impute and ascribe unto her that bitternesse and exceeding crueltie and sticke not both to deliver in words and also to set downe in writing such things of her Wee charge Heccuba with beastly and barbarous immanitie for saying thus in the last booke of Homers Iliads O that I could his liver get Amid his corps to bite and eat As for the Syrian goddesse superstitious folke are perswaded that if any one do eate Enthoises or such little fish as Aphyae she will likewise gnaw their legs fill their bodies with ulcers and putrifie or rot their liver To conclude therefore is it impiously done to blaspheme the gods and speake badly of them and is it not as impious to thinke and imagine the same considering that it is the opinion and conceit of the blasphemer and foule mouthed profane person which maketh his speech to be reputed naught and wicked For even we our selves detest and abhorre foule language for nothing so much as because it is a signe of a malicious minde and those we take for to be our enemies who give out bad words of us in this respect that we suppose thē to be faithlesse and not to be trusted but rather ill affected unto us and thinking badly of us Thus you see what judgement superstitious folke have of the gods when they imagine them to be dull and blockish treachetous and disloiall variable and fickle minded full of revenge cruell melancholike and apt to fret at every little matter whereupon it must needs follow that the superstitious man doth both hate and also dread the gods for how can it otherwise be considering that he is perswaded that all the grearest calamities which either he hath endured in times past or is like to suffer heereafter proceed from them now whosoever hateth and feareth the gods he is no doubt their enemie neither is it to be woondred at for all this that although he stand in dread of them yet he adoreth and worshippeth them he praieth and sacrificeth unto them frequenteth duly and devoutly their temples and is not willingly out of them for do we not see it ordinarily that reverence is done unto tyrants that men make court unto them and crie God save your grace yea and erect golden statues to the honour of them howbeit as great devotion and divine honour as they doe unto them in outward apparence they hate and abhorre them secretly to the heart Hermolaus courted Alexander and was serviceable about him Pausanias was one of the squires of the bodie to king Philip and so was Chaereas to Caligula the Emperour but there was not of these but even when he served them said thus in his heart Certes in case it did now lie in mee Of thee thou tyrant revenged would I be Thus you see the Atheist thinketh there be no gods but the superstitious person wisheth that there were none yet he beleeveth even against his will that there be nay he dare not otherwise doe for feare of death Now if he could like as Tantalus desired to goe from under the stone that hung over his head be discharged of this feare which no lesse doth presse him downe surely he would embrace yea and thinke the
him in cure but if peradventure he tumble and tosse in his bedde fling and cast off his clothes by reason that his bodie is tormented with some grievous hot fit no sooner stirreth he never so little but one or other that standeth or sitteth by to tend him is ready to say gently unto him Poore soule be quiet feare none ill Deare heart in bed see thou lie still he staieth and keepeth him downe that he shall not start and leape out of his bed but contrariwise those that be surprised with the passions of the soule at such a time be most busie then they be least in repose and quiet for their violent motions be the causes moving their actions and their passions are the vehement fits of such motions this is the cause that they will not let the soule to be at rest but even then when as a man hath most need of patience silence and quiet retrait they draw him most of all abroad into the open aire then are discovered soonest his cholerike passions his opinionative and contentious humors his wanton love and his grievous sorrowes enforcing him to commit many enormities against the lawes and to speake many words unseasonably and not befitting the time Like as therefore much more perillous is the tempest at sea which impeacheth and putteth backe a ship that it can not come into the harbour to ride at anchor than that which will not suffer it to get out of the haven and make saile in open sea even so those tempestuous passions of the soule are more dangerous which will not permit to be at rest nor to settle his discourse of reason once troubled but overturneth it upside downe as being disfurnished of pilots and cables not well balllaised in the storme wandring to and fro without a guide and steeresmen carried mauger into rash and dangerous courses so long untill in the end it falleth into some shipwracke and where it overthroweth the whole life in such sort that in regard of these reasons and others semblable I conclude that woorse it is to be soule-sicke than diseased in bodie for the bodies being sicke suffer onely but the soules if they be sicke both suffer and doe also amisse To proove this what neede we further to particularize and alledge for examples many other passions considering that the occasion of this present time is sufficient to admonish us thereof and to refresh our memorie See you not this great multitude and preasse of people thrusting and thronging here about the Tribunall and common place of the citie they are not all assembled hither to sacrifice unto the Tutelar gods Protectors of their native countrey nor to participate in common the same religion and sacred ceremonies of divine service they are not all met heere together for to offer an oblation unto Jupiter Astraeus out of the first fruits of Lydia and to celebrate and solemnize in the honor of Bacchus during these holy nights his festivall revils with daunses masks and mummeries accustomed but like as by yeerly accesse and anniversarie revolutions the forcible vigor of the pestilence returneth for to irritate and provoke all Asia so they resort hither to entertaine their suits and processes in law to follow their pleas and a world here is of affaires like to many brookes and riverers which run all at once into one channell and maine streame so they are met in the same place which is pestered and filled with an infinite multitude of people to hurt themselves and others From what fevers or colde ague-fits proceed these effects from what tensions or remissions augmentations or diminutions from what distemperature of heat or overspreading of cold humours comes all this If you aske of everie severall cause here in suite as if they were men and able to answere you from whence it arose how it grew and whereupon it came and first began you shall finde that one matter was engendred by some wilfull and proud anger another proceeded from a troublesome and litigious spirit and a third was caused by some unjust desire and unlawfull lust THE PRECEPTS OF WEDLOCKE The Summarie WE have heere a mixture and medley of rules for married folke who in the persons of Pollianus and Eurydice are taught their mutuall duety upon which argument needlesse it is to discourse at large considering that the whole matter is set out particularly and tendeth to this point That both at the beginning in the sequell also and continuation of mariage man and wife ought to assist support and love one another with a single heart and affection farre remooved from disdainfull pride violence vanitie and fill hinesse the which is specified and comprised in 45. articles howbeit in such sort that there be some of those precepts which savour of the corruption of those times bewraying the insufficiency of humane wisedome unlesse it be lightened with Gods truth We see also in this Treatise more particular advertisements appropriate to both parties touching their devoir as well at home as abroad and all enriched with notable similitudes and excellent examples In summe if these precepts following be well weighed and practised they are able to make mans life much more easie and commodious than it is But Plutarch sheweth sufficiently by the thirtieth rule how hard a matter it is to reteine each one in their severall dutie and that in manner all doe regard and looke upon things with another eie than they ought How ever it be those persons whom vertue hath linked and joined together in matrimonie may finde here whereby to profit and so much the more for that they have one lesson which naturall equitie and conscience putteth them in minde of everie day if they will enter never so little into themselves which being joined with the commandements of the heavenly wisedome it can not be but husband and wife shall live in contentment and blessed estate THE PRECEPTS OF WEDLOCKE PLUTARCH to POLLIANUS and EURYDICE sendeth greeting AFter the accustomed ceremoniall linke of marriage in this countrie which the Priestresse of Ceres hath put upon you in coupling you both together in one bed-chamber I suppose that this discourse of mine comming as it doth to favorize and second this bond and conjunction of yours in furnishing you with good lessons and wise nuptiall advertisements will not be unprofitable but sound verie fitting and comformable to the customarie wedding song observed in these parts The musicians among other tunes that they had with the haut-boies used one kind of note which they called Hippotharos which is asmuch to say as Leape-mare having this opinion that it stirred and provoked stallions to cover mares But of many beautifull and good discourses which philosophie affoordeth unto us one there is which deserveth no lesse to be esteemed than any other by which shee seeming to enchant and charme those who are come together to live all the daies of their life in mutuall societie maketh them to be more buxome kinde tractable and pliable one to
might not presume to goe withall into any one whatsoever Considering therefore that the tribunall and judiciall seat of justice is the temple of Jupiter surnamed the Counsellor and Patron of cities of Themis also and Dice that is to say equitie and justice before ever thou set foote to mount up into it presently rid and cleere thy soule of all avarice and covetousnesse of monie as if it were iron and a very maladie full of rust and throw it farre from thee into the merchants hall into the shops of tradesmen occupiers banquers and usurers As for thy selfe flie from such pelfe shun it I say as far off as you can make this reckoning that whosoever enricheth himselfe by the managing of the common-weale is a church-robber committing sacrilege in the highest degree robbing temples stealing out of the sepulchers of the dead picking the coffers of his friends making himselfe rich by treachery treason false-witnes thinke him to be an untrusty and faithlesse counseller a perjured judge a corrupt magistrate and full of briberie in one word polluted and defiled with all wickednesse and not cleere of any sinne whatsoever that may be committed and therefore I shall not neede to speake more of this point As for ambition although it carrie with it a fairer shewe than avarice yet neverthelesse it bringeth after it a traine of mischiefes and plagues no lesse dangerous and pernitious unto the government of a common-wealth for accompanied it is ordinarily with audatious rashnesse more than it inasmuch as it useth not to breed in base mindes or in natures feeble and idle but principally in valiant active and vigorous spirits and the voice of the people who by their praises lift it up many times and drive it forward maketh the violence thereof more hard to be restrained managed and ruled Like as therefore Plato writeth that we ought to accustom yong boies even from their verie infancie to have this sentence resounding in their eares That it is not lawfull for them neither to carrie gold about their bodies as an outward ornament nor so much as to have it in their purses for that they have other golde as a proper coffer of their owne and the same incorporate in their hearts giving us to understand by these aenigmaticall and covert speeches as I take it the vertue derived from their auncestors by descent and continuation of their race even so wee may in some sort cure and remedie this desire of glorie by making remonstrance unto ambitious spirits that they have in themselves gold that cannot corrupt bee wasted or contaminated by envie no nor by Momus himselfe the reproover of the gods to wit Honour the which we alwaies encrease and augment the more we discourse consider meditate and thinke upon those things which have beene performed accomplished by us in the government of the common-weale and therefore they have no need of those other honours which are either cast in moldes by founders or cut and graven in brasse by mans hand considering that all such glorie commeth from without foorth and is rather in others than in them for whom they were made For the statue of a trumpeter which Polycletus made as also that other of an halbarder are commended in regard of the maker and not of those whom they do represent and for whose sake they were made Certes Cato at what time as the citie of Rome began to be well replenished with images and statues would not suffer any one to be made for himselfe saying That he had rather men would aske why there was no image set up for him than why it was For surely such things bring envie and the common people thinke themselves indebted stil beholden unto those upon whom they have not bestowed such vanities and contrariwise such as receive them at their hands are odious troublesom unto them as if they had sought to have the publike affaires of the State in their hands in hope to receive such a reward and salarie from them againe Like as therefore he that hath sailed without danger along the gulfe Syrtis if afterwards hee chaunce to bee cast away and drowned in the mouth of the haven hath done no such doughty deed nor performed any speciall matter of praise in his voyage and navigation even so hee that hath escaped the comon Treasurie and done well enough and saved himselfe from the publike revenewes customes and commodities of the State that is to say hath not defiled his hands either with robbing the citie-money or dealt underhand with the farmers and undertakers of the cities hands revenewes c. and then shall suffer himselfe to be overtaken and surprised with a desire to be a president and sit highest or to be the head man and chiefe in counsell of a citie is runne in deed upon an high rocke that reacheth up a loft but drenched hee is over the eares and as like to sinke as the rest neverthelesse In best case he is therefore who neither seeketh nor desireth any of these honours but rejecteth and refuseth them altogether Howbeit if peradventure it bee no easie matter to put backe a grace and favour or some token of love that the people otherwhiles desire to shew unto them who are entred into combat as it were in the field of government not in a game and maisterie for a silver prize or rich presents but in the game in deed which is holy and sacred yea and woorthie to be crowned it may suffice and content a man to have some honourable inscription or title in a tablet some publike act or decree some branch of lawrell or the olive like as Epymenides who received one branch of the sacred olive growing in the castle of Athens because he had cleansed and purified the citie and Anaxagoras refusing all other honours which the people would have ordained for him demaunded onely that upon the day of his death the children might have leave to play and not go to schoole all that day long The seven gallant Gentlemen of Persia who killed the Tyrants called Magi were honoured onely with this priviledge that both they and their posteritie might weare the Persian pointed Cap or Turbant bending forward on their heads for this was the signall which they were agreed upon among themselves when they went to execute the said enterprise Likewise the honor which Pittacus received did shew some modesty civilitie for when his citizens had permitted granted unto him to have and enjoy of those lands which he had conque red from the enemie as much as he would himselfe he stood contented with so much no more as lay within one fling or shot of the javelin which he launced himselfe And Cocles the Roman tooke so much ground onely as he in his owne person could eare with a plow in one day being as he was a lame and maimed man For a civill honour ought not to be in the nature of a salarie for a vertuous act
Romans thinking thereby to recover his state and among the rest in the end wrought so effectually with Porsena king of the Tuskanes that he perswaded him to laie siege to the citie of Rome and to beleaguer it with a puissant power Now over and besides this hostilitie the Romans within were afflicted also and sore pressed with famine but hearing that the said Porsena was not onely a valiant captaine in armes but withall a good and righteous prince they were willing to make him the indifferent umpire and judge betweene them and Tarquin but Tarquin standing stiffe in his owne opinion and highly conceited of himselfe giving out also that Porsena if he continued not a fast and constant ally he would not afterwards be a just equal judge whereupon Porsena forsaking him and leaving his alliance capitulated and promised to depart in good tearmes of amitie peace with the Romans upon condition to recover of them all those lands which they had occupied in Tuskane to have away with him those prisoners whom they had taken in those wars now for the better assurance of this composition so concluded there were delivered into his hands as hostages ten boies and as many yoong maidens among whom Valeria the daughter of Poplicola the consull was one which done presently he brake up his campe and dislodged yea and gave over preparation of farther warre notwithstanding that all the articles of the said capitulation were not yet accomplished These yong virgins before said being in his campe went down as it were to bath and wash themselves unto the river side which ran a good way from the campe and by the motion and instigation of one among the rest named Cloelia after they had wrapped and wreathed their clothes fast about their heads they tooke the river which ran with a very strong streame and swift current and by swimming crosse over it helping one another what they could amid the deepe channell and surging whirlpoles thereof untill with much travell they hardly recovered the banke on the other side Some report that this damosell Cloclia made meanes to get an horse mounted his backe and gently by little and little passed overthwart the river shewing the way unto the rest of hir fellowes encouraging yea and supporting them as they swomme on each side and round about her but what the reason is of this their conjecture I will shew anon when the Romans saw that they were gotten over in safetie they woondered at their boldnesse and rare vertue howbeit they were nothing well pleased with their returne neither could they endure to be chalenged and reproched that in fidelitie and troth they all should be inferior to one man and therefore gave commandement that these virgins should returne from whence they came and sent with them a guard to conduct them but when they were passed over the river Tybris againe they escaped very hardly of being surprized by an ambush that Tarquin had laid for them by the way as for Valeria the consull Poplicolaes daughter she fled at first with three servants into the campe of Porsena and the rest Arnus the sonne of king Porsena who ran presently to the rescue recovered out of the hands of the enemies now when they were all presented and brought before the king he demaunded which of them it was who had encouraged her companions to swim over the river and given them counsell so to doe all the rest fearing lest the king would doe Cloelia some harme would not speake a word but she her selfe confessed all Porsena highly esteeming her valour and vertue caused one of the fairest horses to be fetched out of his stable richly trapped and set out with costly furniture which he bestowed upon her yea and that which more is for her sake and to grace her curteously and kindly dismissed all her fellowes and sent them home This is the gesse I say by which some thinke that Cloelia passed over the river on horse-back but others say no who deliver the storie thus That the king marvelling at this valour and extraordinarie hardinesse above the proportion of that sex thought her woorthy of a present which is woont to be given unto a valiant man at armes and a brave warrior but how ever it was for a memoriall of this act there is to be seene her statue at this daie to wit a maiden sitting on horse-backe and it standeth in the street called Via sacra which some say representeth Cloelia others Valeria MICCA and MEGISTO ARistotimus having usurped tyranny and violent dominion over the Elians bare himselfe much upon the favor and countenance of king Antigonus established the same but so cruelly and excessively he abused this power and authoritie under him that in nothing he was tolerable for over and besides that he was a man by nature given to violence by reason that he stood in some servile feare and was glad to please the guard that he had about him of mixt Barbarians whom he had gotten together from divers parts for the defence of his state and person he suffered them also to commit many insolent parts and cruell outrages upon his subjects and among the rest that unhappie indignitie which befell to Philodemnus who had a faire damosell to his daughter named Micca unto whom one of the captaines of the said tyrant named Lucius seemed to make court not for any true love and heartie affection that he bare unto her but upon a wanton lust to abuse and dishonour her bodie so he sent for this maiden to come and speake with him her parents seeing that whether they would or no constrained they should be to let her goe gave her leave but the damosell her selfe of a generous spirit and magnanimous heart clasped them about and hung upon them fell downe at their feet and humbly besought them all that ever she could rather to kill her out of hand than to suffer her thus shamefully to be betraied and villanously to be despoiled of her maidenhead but for that she staied longer than was to the good liking of the foresaid Lucius who burned all this whiles in lust and had withall taken his wine liberally he rose from the table in great choler and went himselfe toward her when he came to the house he found Micca with her head upon her fathers knees and her he commanded to follow him which she refused to do whereupon he rent her clothes from her bodie and whipped her starke naked and she without giving one word againe endured for her part with patience and silence all the smart and paine but her father and mother seeing that with all their piteous praiers and tender teares they could not prevaile nor boot anie thing with this wretch turned to call and implore the helpe both of God and man crying with a loud voice Out upon such injurious indignity and intolerable villany whereupon this barbarous villaine growen now to be furious and enraged partly with choler and in part with
your anguish mitigate your pensivenesse and stay your needlesse mourning and bootlesse lamentation for why If minde be sicke what physicke then But reasons fit for ech disease A wise man knowes the season when To use those meanes the heart to ease And according as the wise Poet Euripides saith Ech griefe of minde ech maladie Doth crave a severall remedie If restlesse sorow the heart torment Kind words of friends worke much content Where folly swaies in every action Great need there is of sharpe correction For verily among so many passions and infirmities incident to the soule of man dolor and heavinesse be most irkesome and goe neerest into it By occasion of anguish many a one they say hath run mad and fallen into maladies incurable yea and for thought and hearts-griefe some have bene driven to make away themselves Now to sorow and be touched to the quicke for the losse of a sonne is a passion that ariseth from a naturall cause and it is not in our power to avoid which being so I cannot for my part holde with them who so highly praise and extoll I wot not what brutish hard and blockish indolence and stupiditie which if it were possible for a man to enterteine is not any way commodious and available Certes the same would bereave vs of that mutuall benevolence and sweet comfort which we finde in the reciprocall interchange of loving others and being loved againe which of all earthly blessings we had most need to preserve and mainteine Yet do I not allow that a man should suffer himselfe to be transported and caried away beyond all compasse measure making no end of sorow for even that also is likewise unnaturall and proceedeth from a corrupt and erronious opinion that we have and therefore as we ought to abandon this excesse as simply naught hurtfull and not beseeming vertuous and honest minded men so in no wise must we disallow that meane and moderation in our passions following in this point sage Crantor the Academick Philosopher I could wish quoth he that we might be never sicke howbeit if we chance to fall into some disease God send us yet some sense and feeling in case any part of our bodie be either cut plucked away or dismembred in the cure And I assure you that senselesse impassibilitie is never incident unto a man without some great mischiefe and inconvenience ensuing for lightly it falleth out that when the bodie is in this case without feeling the soule soone after will become as insensible reason would therefore that wise men in these and such like crosses cary themselves neither void of affections altogether nor yet out of measure passionate for as the one bewraieth a fell and hard heart resembling a cruell beast so the other discovereth a soft and effeminate nature beseeming a tender woman but best advised is he who knoweth to keepe a meane and being guided by the rule of reason hath the gift to beare wisely and indifferently aswell the flattering favours as the scowling srownes of fortune which are so ordinarily occurrent in this life having this forecast with himselfe That like as in a free State and popular government of a common wealth where the election of sovereigne magistrates passeth by lots the one whose hap is to be chosen must be a ruler and commander but the other who misseth ought patiently to take his fortune and beare the repulse even so in the disposition and course of all our wordly affaires we are to be content with our portion allotted unto us and without grudging and complaint gently to yeeld our selves obedient for surely they that can not so doe would never be able with wisedome and moderation to weld any great prosperitie for of many wise speeches and well said sawes this sentence may go for one How ever fortune smile and looke full faire Be thou not proud nor beare a loftie mind Ne yet cast downe and plung'd in deepe ae spaire If that she frowne or shew herselfe unkind But alwaies one and same let men thee find Constant and firme reteine thy nature still As gold in fire which alter never will For this is the propertie of a wise man and wel brought up both for any apparent shew of prosperitie to be no changling but to beare himselfe alwaies in one sort also in adversitie with a generous and noble mind to mainteine that which is decent beseeming his own person for the office of true wisdome considerate discretion is either to prevent avoid a mischiefe cōming or to correct and reduce it to the least narrowest compasse when it is once come or els to be prepared and ready to beare the same manfully and with all magnanimitie For prudence as touching that which we call good is seene and emploied foure maner of waies to wit in getting in keeping in augmenting or in well and right using the same these be the rules as well of prudence as of other vertues which we are to make use and benefit of in both fortunes as well the one as the other for according to the old proverb No man there is on earth alive In every thing who ay doth thrive And verily By course of nature unneth it wrought may be That ought should check fatall necessitie And as it falleth out in trees and other plants that some yeeres they beare their burden and yeeld great store of frute whereas in others they bring foorth none at all also living creatures one whiles be frutefull and breed many yoong otherwhiles againe they be as barren for it and in the sea it is now tempest and then calme semblably in this life there happen many circumstances and accidents which winde and turne us into the chaunces of contrarie fortunes in regard of which varietie a man may by good right and reason say thus O Agamemnon thy father Atreus hee Alwaies to prosper hath not begotten thee For in this life thou must have one day joy Another griefe and wealth mixt with annoy And why thou art by mort all nature fraile Thy will against this course cannot prevaile For so it is the pleasure of the gods To make this change and worke in man such ods As also that which to the same effect the poet Menander wrote in this wise Sir Trophimus if you the onely wight Of women borne were brought into this light With priviledge to have the world at will To taste no woe but prosper alwaies still Or if some god had made you such behest To live in joy in solace and in rest You had just cause to fare thus as you doe And chafe for that he from his word doth goe And hath done what he can not justifie But if so be as truth will testifie Under one law this publike vitall aire You draw with us your breath for to repaire I say to you gravely in tragick stile You ought to be more patient the while To take all this in better woorth I say Let
to begin againe to learne True it is that long since I was discontented in my heart to heare Euripides speake in this wise He putteth off from day to day Gods nature is thus to delay For it were not meet and decent that God should be slow in any action whatsoever and least of all in punishing sinners who are themselves nothing slothfull nor make delaie in perpetrating wicked deeds but are caried most speedily and with exceeding violence of their passions pricked forward to do wrong and mischiefe And verily when punishment ensueth hard after injury and violence committed there is nothing as Thucydides saith that so soone stoppeth up the passage against those who are most prone and ready to runne into all kinde of wickednesse for there is no delay of paiment that so much enfeebleth the hope and breaketh the heart of a man wronged and offended nor causeth him to be so insolent and audacious who is disposed to mischiefe as the deferring of justice and punishment whereas contrariwise the corrections chastisements that follow immediately upon leud acts and meet with the malefactours betimes are a meanes both to represse all future outrage in offenders and also to comfort and pacifie the heart of those who are wronged For mine owne part the saying of Bias troubleth me many times as often as I thinke upon it for thus he spake unto a notorious wicked man I doubt not but thou shalt one day smart for this geere and pay for thy leudnesse but I feare I shall never live to see it For what good unto the Messenians being slaine before did the punishment of Aristocrates who having betraied them in the battell of Cypres was not detected and discovered for his treason in twentie yeeres after during which time he was alwaies king of Arcadia and being at the last convicted for the said treacherie suffred punishment for his deserts meane while those whom he had caused to be massacred were not in the world to see it Or what comfort and consolation received the Orchomenians who lost their children kinsfolke and friends through the treason of Lyciscus by the maladie which long after seized upon him eating consuming al his bodie who ever as he dipped and bathed his feet in the river water kept a swearing and cursing that he thus rotted and was eaten away for the treachery which most wickedly he had committed And at Athens the childrens children of those poore wretches who were killed within the privileged place of sanctuarie could never see the vengeance of the gods which afterwards fell upon those bloudie and sacrilegious caitifes whose dead bodies and bones being excommunicate were banished and cast out beyond the confines of their native countrey And therefore me thinkes Euripides is very absurd when to divert men from wickednesse he useth such words as these Justice feare not will not thee overtake To pierce thy heart or deepe wound ever make In liver thine nor any mortall wight Besides though leud he be and doe no right But slow she goes and silent to impeach And chastise such if ever them she reach For I assure you it is not like that wicked ungracious persons use any other perswasions but even the very same to incite move and encourage themselves to enterprise any leud and wicked acts as making this account and reckoning that injustice will quickly yeeld her frute ripe in due time and the same evermore certaine whereas punishment commeth late and long after the pleasure and fruition of the said wickednesse When Patrocleas had discoursed in this wise Olympiacus tooke the matter in hand and said unto him Marke moreover ô Patrocleas what inconvenience and absurditie followeth upon this slownesse of divine justice and prolonging the punishment of malefactors for it causeth unbeliefe in men and namely that they are not perswaded that it is by the providence of God that such be punished the calamitie that cōmeth upon wicked ones not presently upon every sinful act that they have committed but long time after is reputed by them infelicitie and they call it their fortune and not their punishment whereupon it commeth to passe that they have no benefit thereby nor be any whit better for howsoever they grieve and be discontented at the accidents which befall unto them yet they never repent for the leud acts they have before commitred And like as in punishment among us a little pinch stripe or lash given unto one for a fault or error presently upon the dooing thereof doth correct the partie and reduce him to his dutie whereas the wrings scourgings knocks and sounding thumps which come a good while after seeme to be given upon some occasion beside and for another cause rather than to teach and therefore well may they put him to paine and griefe but instruction they yeeld none even so naughtinesse rebuked and repressed by some present chastisement every time that it trespasseth and transgresseth howsoever it be painfull at first yet in the end it bethinketh it selfe learneth to be humbled and to feare God as a severe justicier who hath an eie upon the deeds and passions of men for to punish them incontinently and without delay whereas this justice and revenge which commeth so slowly and with a soft pace as Euripides saith upon the wicked and ungodly persons by reason of the long intermission the inconstant and wandring incertitude and the confused disorder resembleth chance and adventure more than the desseigne of any providence insomuch as I cannot conceive or see what profit can be in these grindstones as they call them of the gods which are so long a grinding especially seeing that the judgement and punishment of sinners is thereby obscured and the feare of sinne made slight and of no reckoning upon the deliverie of these words I began to studie and muse with my selfe then Timon Would you quoth he that I should cleere this doubt once for all and so make an end of this disputation or permit him first to dispute and reason against these oppositions And what need is there answered I to come in with a third wave for to overflow and drowne at once our speech and discourse if he be not able to refute the former objections nor to escape and avoid the chalenges alreadie made First and formost therefore to begin at the head and as the manner is to say at the goddesse Vesta for the reverent regard and religious feare that the Academick philosophers professe to have unto God as an heavenly father we utterly disclaime and refuse to speake of the Deitie as if we knew for certaintie what it is for it were a greater presumption in us who are but mortall men to enterprise any set speech or discourse as touching gods or demi-gods than for one who is altogether ignorant in song to dispute of musick or for them who never were in campe nor saw so much as a battell fought to put themselves forward to discourse of armes and warfare taking upon
kind of life all maner of delcacie and costly curiositie useth to follow Like as the sucking foale alway Runnes with the damme and doth not stay What supper then is not to be counted sumptuous for which there is evermore killed some living creature or other for doe we thinke little of the dispense of a soule and suppose we that the losse of life is not costly I do not now say that it was peradventure the soule of a mother a father some friend or a sonne as Empedocles gave it out but surely a soule endued with sense with seeing hearing apprehension understanding witte and discretion such as nature hath given to each living creature sufficient to seeke and get that which is good for it and likewise to avoid and shun whatsoever is hurtfull and contrary unto it Consider now a little whether those philosophers that teach and will us to eat our children our friends our fathers and wives when they are dead doe make us more gentle and fuller of humanitie than Pythagoras and Empedocles who accustome and acquaint us to be kind and just even to other creatures Well you mock and laugh at him that maketh conscience to eat of a mutton and shall not we say they laugh a good and make sport when we see one cutting and chopping pieces of his father or mother being dead and sending away some thereof to his friends who are absent and inviting such as be present and neere at hand to come and make merrie with the rest causing such joints and pieces of flesh to be served up to the table without any spare at all But it may be that we offend now and commit some fault in handling these books having not before-hand clensed our hands mundified our eies purified our feet and purged our eares unlesse perhaps this be their clensing and expiation to devise discourse of such things with sweet pleasant words which as Plato saith wash away all falt brackish hearing but if a man should set these books arguments in parallell opposition or comparison one with another he would judge that some of them were the Philosophie of the Scythians Tartarians Sagidians and Melanchlaenians of whom when Herodotus writeth he is taken for a liar and as for the sentences and opinions of Pythagoras and Empedocles they were the very lawes ordinances statutes and judgements of the auncient Greeks according to which they framed their lives to wit That there were betweene us and brute beasts certeine common rights who were they then that afterwards otherwise ordeined Even they who first of iron and steele mischievous swords did sorge And of poore labouring ox at plough began to cut the gorge For even thus also began tyrants to commit murders like as at the first in old time they killed at Athens one notorious and most wicked sycophant named Epitedeius so they did by a second and likewise a third now the Athenians being thus acquainted to see men put to death saw afterwards Niceratus the sonne of Nicias murdred Theramenes also the great commander and captaine generall yea and Polemarchus the philosopher Semblably men began at first to eat the flesh of some savage and hurtfull beast then some fowles and fish were snared and caught with nets and consequently crueltie being fleshed as it were exercised and inured in these and such like slaughters proceeded even to the poore labouring ox to the silly sheepe that doth clad and trimme our bodies yea and to the house-cocke and thus men by little and little augmenting their insatiable greedinesse never staied untill they came to manslaughter to murder yea and to bloudie battels But if a man can not proove nor make demonstration by sound reasons that soules in their resurrections and new nativities meet with common bodies so as that which now is reasonable becommeth afterwards reasonlesse and likewise that which at this present is wild and savage commeth to be by another birth and regeneration tame and gentle againe and that nature transmuteth and translateth all bodies dislodging and replacing the soule of one in another And cladding them with robes unknowen Of other flesh as with their owne Are not these reasons yet at leastwise sufficient to reclaime and divert men from this unbrideled intemperance of murdring dumb beasts namely that it breedeth maladies crudities heavinesse and indigestion in the bodie that it marreth and corrupteth the soule which naturally is given to the contemplation of high and heavenly things to wit when we have taken up a woont and custome not to feast a friend or stranger who commeth to visit us unlesse we shed bloud and cannot celebrate a marriage dinner or make merrie with our neighbours and friends without committing murder And albeit the said proofe and argument of the transmigration of soules into sundrie bodies be not sufficiently declared so as it may deserve to be credited and beleeved yet surely the conceit and opinion thereof ought to work some scruple and feare in our harts and in some sort hold us in stay our hands For like as when two armies encounter one another in a night battell if one chaunce to light upon a man fallen upon the ground whose bodie is all covered and hidden with armour and present his sword to cut his throat or runne him through and therewith heare another crying unto him that he knoweth not certeinly but thinketh and supposeth that the partie lying along is his brother his sonne his father or tent-fellow whether were it better that he giving eare and credit to this conjecture and suspicion false though it be should spare and forbeare an enemie for a friend or rejecting that which had no sure and evident proofe kill one of his friends in stead of an enemie I suppose there is not one of you all but will say that the later of these were a most grosse and leud part Behold moreover Merope in the tragedy when she lifteth up her ax for to strike her own sonne taking him to be the murderer of her sonne and saying withall Have at thy head for now I trow I shall thee give a deadly blow what a stirre and trouble she maketh over all the theater how she causeth the haire to stand upright upon the heads of the spectators for feare lest she should prevent the old man who was about to take hold of her arme and so wound the guiltlesse yoong man her sonne But if peradventure in this case there should have stood another aged man fast by crying unto her strike hardly for it is your enemie and a third contrariwise saying Strike not in any wise it is your owne sonne whether had beene the greater and more grievous sinne to let goe the revengement of her enemie for doubt that he was her sonne or to commit silicide and murder her sonne indeed for the anger she bare unto her enemie When as therefore there is neither hatred nor anger that driveth us to doe a murder when neither revenge nor feare of our
meats upon the boord set are Be merie man and make no spare No sooner are these words let flie But all at once they hout and crie The pots then walke one filles out wine Another bring a garland fine Of flowers full fresh his head to crowne And decks the cup whiles wine goes downe And then the minstrell Phoebus knight With faire greene branch of Laurell dight Sets out his rude and rustie throte And sings a filthie tunelesse note With that one thrusts the pipe him fro And sounds his wench and bed fello Do not thinke you the letters of Metrodorus resemble these vanities which he wrote unto his brother in these tearmes There is no need at all Timocrates neither ought a man to expose himselfe into danger for the safetie of Greece or to straine and busie his head to winne a coronet among them in testimonie of his wisedome but he is to eat and drinke wine merily so as the bodie may enjoy all pleasure and susteine no harme And againe in another place of the same letters he hath these words Oh how joifull was I and glad at heart ôh what contentment of spirit found I when I had learned once of Epicurus to make much of my bellie and to gratifie it as I ought For to say a trueth to you ô Timocrates that art a Naturalist The sovereigne good of a man lieth about the bellie In summe these men doe limit set out and circumscribe the greatnesse of humane pleasure within the compasse of the bellie as it were within center and circumserence but surely impossible it is that they should ever have their part of any great roial and magnificall joy such as indeed causeth magnanimitie and hautinesse of courage bringeth glorious honour abroad or tranquillitie of spirit at home who have made choise of a close and private life within doores never shewing themselves in the world nor medling with the publicke affaires of common weale a life I say sequestred from all offices of humanitie farre removed from any instinct of honour or desire to gratifie others thereby to deserve thanks or winne favour for the soule I may tell you is no base and small thing it is not vile and illiberall extending her desires onely to that which is good to bee eaten as doe these poulps or pourcuttle fishes which stretch their cleies as farre as to their meat and no farther for such appetites as these are most quickly cut off with satietie and filled in a moment but when the motions and desires of the minde tending to vertue and honestie to honour also and contentment of conscience upon vertuous deeds and well doing are once growen to their vigor and perfection they have not for their limit the length and tearme onely of mans life but surely the desire of honor and the affection to profit the societie of men comprehending all aeternitie striveth still to goe forward in such actions and beneficiall deeds as yeeld infinit pleasures that cannot be expressed which joies great personages and men of woorth can not shake off and avoid though they would for flie they from them what they can yet they environ them about on every side they are readie to meet them whersoever they goe when as by their beneficence and good deeds they have once refreshed and cheered many other for of such persons may well this verse be verified To towne when that he comes or there doth walk Men him behold as God and so doe talk For when a man hath so affected and disposed others that they are glad and leape for joy to see him that they have a longing desire to touch salute speak unto him who seeth not though otherwise he were blinde that he findeth great joies in himselfe and enjoieth most sweet contentiment this is the cause that such men are never wearie of well dooing nor thinke it a trouble to be emploied to the good of others for we shall evermore heare from their mouths these and such like speeches Thy father thee begat and brought to light That thou one day might'st profit many a wight Againe Let us not cease but shew a minde Of doing good to all manking What need I to speake heere of those that bee excellent men and good in the highest degree for if to any one of those who are not extremely wicked at the very point and instant of death he in whose hands lieth his life be he a god or some king should graunt one howres respit and permit him to employ himselfe at his owne choise either to execute some memorable act or else to take his pleasure for the while so that immediately after that howre past he should goe to his death How many thinke you would chuse rather during this small time to lie with that courtisane and famous strumpet Lais or drink liberally of good Ariusian wine than to kill the tyrant Archias for to deliver the citie of Thebes from tyrannicall servitude for mine owne part verily I suppose that there is not one for this I observe in those sword-fencers who fight at sharpe a combat to the uttrance such I meane as are not altogether brutish and savage but of the Greekish nation when they are to enter in place for to performe their devoir notwithstanding there be presented unto them many deintie dishes and costly cates chuse rather at this very time to recommend unto their friends their wives and children to manumise and enfranchise their slaves than to serve their bellies and content their sensuall appetites But admit that these bodily pleasures be great matters and highly to be accounted of the same are common also even to those that leade an active life and manage affaires of State For as the Poet saith Wine muscadell they drinke and likewise eat Fine manchet bread made of the whitest wheat They banket also and feast with their friends yea and much more merily in my conceit after they be returned from bloudie battels or other great exploits and important services like as Alexander Agesilaus Phocion also and Epaminondas were woont to do than these who are annointed against the fire or carried easily in their litters and yet such as they mocke and scorne those who indeed have the fruition of other greater and more deintie pleasures for what should a man speake of Epaminondas who being invited to a supper unto his friends house when he saw that the provision was greater and more sumptuous than his state might well beare would not stay and suppe with him but said thus unto his friend I thought you would have sacrificed un-the gods and not have beene a wastefull and prodigall spender and no marvell for king Alexander the Great refused to entertaine the exquisit cooks of Ada Queene of Caria saying That he had better about him of his owne to dresse his meat to wit for his dinner or breakfast early rising and travelling before day-light and for his supper a light and hungry dinner As for Philoxenus who wrot
truth that whatsoever is more frutefull and apter for generation is also more hot certeine it is that yoong maidens be ripe betimes readier for marriage yea and their flesh pricketh sooner to the act of generation than boies of their age neither is this a small and feeble argument of their heat but for a greater and more pregnant proofe thereof marke how they endure very well any chilling cold and the injurie of winter season for the most part of them lesse quake for cold than men doe and generally need not so many clothes to weare Heereat Florus began to argue against him and said In my conceit these very arguments will serve well to confute the said opinion for to beginne with the last first the reason why they withstand cold better than men is because every thing is lesse offended with the like besides their seed is not apt for generation in regard of their coldnesse but serveth in stead of matter onely and yeeldeth nourishment unto the naturall seed of man Moreover women sooner give over to conceive and cease child-bearing than men to beget children and as for the burning of their dead bodies they catch fire sooner I confesse but that is by reason that commonly they be fatter than men and who knoweth not that fatte and grease is the coldest part of the bodie which is the cause that yoongmen and those that use much bodily exercise are least fatte of all others neither is their monthly sicknesse voidance of bloud a signe of the great quantity and abundance but rather of the corrupt qualitie and badnesse thereof for the crude and unconcocted part of their bloud being superfluous and finding no place to settle and rest nor to gather consistence within the bodie by reason of weaknesse passeth away as being heavy and troubled altogether for default and imbecillitie of heat to overcome it and this appeereth manisestly by this that ordinarily when their monthly sicknesse is upon them they are very chill shake for cold for that the bloud which then is stirred and in motion ready to be discharged out of the bodie is so raw and cold To come now unto the smoothnesse of their skinne and that it is not hairie who would ever say that this were an effect of heat considering that we see the hottest parts of mans bodie to be covered with haire for surely all superfluities and excrements are sent out by heat which also maketh way boring as it were holes through the skinne and opening the passages in the superficies thereof But contrariwise wee may reason that the sliecknesse of womens skinne is occasioned by coldnesse whilch doth constipate and close the pores thereof Now that womens skinne is more fast and close than mens you may learne and understand by them friend Athryilatus who use to lie in bedde with women that annoint their bodies with sweet oiles or odoriferous compositions for even with sleeping in the same bed with them although they came not so neere as to touch the women they finde themselves all perfumed by reason that their owne bodies which be hot rare and open doe draw the said ointments or oiles into them Well by this meanes quoth he this question as touching women hath beene debated pro contrà by opposit arguments right manfully THE FIFTH QUESTION Whether wine be naturally cold of operation But I would now gladly know quoth Florus still whereupon your conjecture and suspicion should arise that wine is cold of nature why And doe you thinke quoth I that this in an opinion of mine Whose then quoth the other I remember quoth I that not of late but long agoe I light upon a discourse of Aristotle as touching this probleme and Epicurus himselfe in his Symposium or banquet hath discussed the question at large the summe of which disputation as I take it is thus much For he saith that wine is not simplie of it selfe hot but that it conteineth in it certeine atomies or indivisible motes causing heat and others likewise that engender cold of which some it casteth off and loseth when it is entred into the bodie others it taketh unto it from the very bodie it selfe wherein it is according as the same petie bodies be of nature and temperature fitted and agreeable unto us in such sort as some when they be drunke with wine are well heat others againe contrariwise be as cold These reasons replied Florus directly bring us by Protagoras into the campe of Pyrrho where we shall meet with nothing but incertitude and be still to seeke and as wise as we were before for plaine it is that in speaking of oile milke honie and likewise of all other things we shall never grow to any particular resolution of them what nature they bee of but still have some evasion or other saying That they become such according as ech of them is mixed and tempered one with another But what be the arguments that your selfe alledge to prove that wine is cold Thus I see well quoth I that there be two of you at once who presse and urge mee to deliver my mind extempore and of a sudden the first reason then that commeth into my head is this which I see ordinarily practised by physicians upon those who have weake stomacks for when they are to corroborate and sortifie that part they perscribe not any thing that is hot but if they give them wine they have present ease and helpe thereby semblablie they represse fluxes of the belly yea and when the bodie runneth all to diaphoreticall sweats which they effect by the meanes of wine no lesse nay much more than by applying snow confirming and strengthening thereby the habit of the bodie which otherwise was ready to melt away and resolve now if it had a nature and facultie to heat it were all one to applie unto the region of the heart as fire unto snow furthermore most physicians do hold that sleepe is procured by cooling and the most part of soporiferous medicines which provoke sleepe be cold as for example Mandragoras and poppie Juice but these I must needs confesse with great force and violence doe compresse and as it were congeale the braine to worke that effect whereas wine cooling the same gently with ease and pleasure represeth and staieth the motion thereof so that the difference onely betweene it and the other is but in degree according to more and lesse Over and besides whatsoever is hot is also generative and apt to ingender seed for howsoever humiditie giveth it an aptitude to run and flow it is spirit by the meanes of heat that endueth it with vigor strength yea and an appetite to generation now they that drinke much wine especially if it be pure of it selfe and not delaied are more dull and slow to the act of generation and the seed which they sow is not effectuall nor of any force and vigor to ingender their medling also and conjunction with women is vaine and doth no
to withstand the appetite and to represse the same when it doth exceed is not so hard and difficult a matter but to stirre up to provoke corrobrate the same when it is lost decaied before due time or to give an edge unto it being dull and faint is a mastrie indeed and a piece of worke my friend I may say unto you not so easily done whereby it appeares that the nouriture of divers viands is better than the simple food and that which by reason is alwaies of one sort doth soone satisfie and give one enough by how much more easie it is to stay nature when she is too speedie and hastie than to set her forward being weary and drawing behinde and whereas some haply there bee who say that repletion and fulnesse is more to be feared and avoided than inanition and emptinesse that is not true but rather the contrary in deed if repletion and surfet grow to corruption or to some maladie it is hurtfull but emptinesse if it bring and breed none other harme els is of it selfe adverse and contrary to nature Let these reasons therefore be opposed as it were dissonant and sounding of a contrary string against those which you Philinus have phylosophically discoursed as for others of you heere that for saving money and to spare cost sticke to salt and cumin you are ignorant for want of experience that varietie is more pleasant and the more delectable that a thing is the more agreeable it is to the appetite provided alwaies that you shunne excesse and gourmandise for surely it cleaveth quickly to the body which is desirous of it going as one would say before and ready to meet it halfe-way for to receive it having the eie-sight to prepare the way whereas contrariwise that which is lothsome or not pleasing to the appetite floteth and wandereth up and downe in the bodie and findeth no enterteinment in such sort as either nature rejecteth it quite or if she receive it the same goes against her heart she doth it for pure need and want of other sustenance now when I speake of diversitie variety of viands note thus much and remember that I meane not these curious works of pa stry these exquisit sawces tarts and cakes which go under the name of Aburtacae Canduli Carycae which are but superfluous toies and vanities for otherwise Plato himselfe alloweth varietie of meats at the table to these generous and noble-gentlemen his citizens whom he describeth in his common-wealth when hee setteth before them bulbs scalions olives salade herbes cheese and al manner of deinties that woorth would affoord and over above al these he would not defraud nor cut feasts short of their junckets banquetting dishes at the end of al. THE SEGOND QUESTION What is the reason of this opinion so generally received that Mushromes be engendred of thunder and that those who lie asleepe are not thought to be smitten with lightning AT a certeine supper where we were in the city Elis Agemachus set before us Mushromes of an exceeding bignesse whereat when the companie seemed to woonder one who was there present smiled and said Certes these may beseeme well the great thunders that we have lately had within this few daies by which words he seemed pleasantly to scoffe at this vulgar opinion That Mushromes should breed of thunder Now some were there who said That thunder caused the earth to chinke and open using the meanes of the aire as it were a wedge to cleave it and withall that they who seeke for Mushromes by those crevices guesse where they are to be found whereupon arose this common opinion That they were engendred of thunder and not shewed thereby as if a man should imagine that a showre of raine breedeth snailes and not rather cause them to creepe foorth and be seene abroad But Agemachus seemed then in good earnest to confirme the said received opinion by experience praying the company not to conclude by by that a thing was incredible because it was strange and wonderfull For quoth hee there be many other effects of thunder lightning and other meteores or celestial impressions right admirable whereof it were very hard if not altogether impossible to comprehend the causes and the reasons For this ridiculous round root called the Bulb which maketh us so good sport and is growen into a by-word little though it be escapeth not by that meanes from thunder but because it hath a propertie cleane contrary unto it like as the figge tree also and the skin of the seale or sea-calfe and of the beast Hyena with whose skinnes mariners and sailers are wont to clothe the ends of their crosse-saile yards whereupon they hang their sailes gardeners also and good husbandmen call those showres that fall with thunder 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say good to water their grounds and so they thinke them to be In summe it were great simplicity and meere folly to woonder heereat considering that we doe see before our eies things more admirable than this and indeed of all other most incredible namely out of moist clouds fire to flash and from the same soft as they be so great cracks and horrible claps of thunder Well I am quoth he in these matters somewhat talkative and full of words because I would sollicit and move you to be more willing to search into the cause for that I meane not to deale hardly otherwise with you and seeme to presse you every one to lay downe your part toward the paiment for these my great Mushromes Why quoth I Agemachus himselfe seemeth in some sort to have pointed with his very finger to the reason hereof for I assure you at this present I can not thinke of any one more probable than this namely that together with thunder there falleth downe many times a certeine genitall water apt to ingender and the cause thereof is heat mingled among for that pure light piercing substance of the fire being now converted into lightning is gone and passed away but the more weightie grosse and flatilent part remaining behinde enwrapped within the cloud altereth and taketh quite the coldnesse away and drinketh up the moisture making it more flateous and windie in such sort as by this meanes especially these raines gently and mildly enter pierce into plants trees and herbs upon which they fall causing them within a while to thrive in bignesse and infusing within them a particular temperature and a peculiar difference of juice As we may observe otherwise that the dew maketh the grasse to be better seasoned as it were and fitter to content the appetite of sheepe and other cattell yea and those clouds upon which that reflexion is made which we call the rain-bow fill those trees and wood upon which they fall with a passing sweet and pleasant odor wherof the priests of our countrey be not ignorant but acnowledge as much calling the same Irisiseepta as if the rain-bow
what is that namely to carie the leaves firme and fast so as they never fall off for we do not see that either the lawrell or olive tree nor the myrtle nor any other trees which are said to shed no leafe keepe alwaies the same leaves still but as the first fall others put foorth and by this meanes they continue alwaies fresh and greene living evermore as cities and great townes doe whereas the date tree never loseth any of those leaves which once came foorth but continueth still clad with the same leaves and this is that vigour as I take it which men dedicate and appropriat especially to the force or strength of victorie When Sospis had made an end of this speech Protogenes the Grammarian calling by name unto Praxitelis the discourser and historian Shall wee suffer these oratours and rhetoricians quoth he after their usuall maner and profession to argue thus by conjectures and likely probabilities and can we alledge nothing out of histories pertinent directly unto this matter and verily for mine owne part if my memorie faile me not I have not read long since in the Attique annales that Theseus who first set out games of prize in the isle Delos brake plucked from the sacred date tree a branch which thereupon was called Spadis and Praxitelis said as much But some men quoth he might aske of Theseus himselfe what reason induced him when he proposed the prize of victorie to pull a branch from the date tree rather than from the laurell or olive tree and what will you say if this be a Pythicke prize for that the Amphyctiones honored first at Delphos the victours with a branch of date tree and laurell in honour of Pythius Apollo considering that the maner was not to consecrate unto that God the laurell or olive onely but also the date tree like as Nictas did when in the name of the Athenians he defraied the charges of games in Delos and the Athenians at Delphi and before them Cypselus the Corinthian for otherwise this God of ours hath evermore loved those games of prize yea and was desirous to win the victorie having strove personally himselfe in playing upon the harpe in singing and flinging the coit of brasse yea and as some some say at hurl-bats and fist-fight favouring men also and taking their part at such combats as Homer seemeth to testifie when he bringeth in Achilles speaking in this wise Two chumpions now who simply are of all the armie best My pleasure is shall forth advance and looke who is so blest And favoured at buffet-fight by god Apolloes grace As for to win the victorie and honour in that place Also when he speaketh of archers he saith expresly that one of them who invocated upon Apollo and praied unto him for helpe had good successe and carried away the best prize but the other who was so proud and would not call upon the god for his aid missed the marke scope whereat he shot Neither is it likely or credible that the Athenians dedicated their publicke place of exercise unto Apollo for nothing and without good cause but surely thus they thought that the same God unto whom we are beholden for our health giveth us also the force and strong disposition of bodie to performe such games and feats of activitie But whereas some combats there be sleight and easie others hard and grievous we finde in writing that the Delphians sacrificed unto Apollo by the name of Pyctes that is to say the champion at firstfight but the Candians and Lacedaemonians offered sacrifice unto the same God surnamed the Runner And seeing as we do that the maner is to present in his temple within the citie of Delphos the primices or dedications of the spoiles and bootie gained from the enemies in war as also to consecrate unto him the Trophees is not this a great argument and testimonie that in this God it lieth most to give the victorie and conquest And as he went forward and was minded to say more Cephisus the sonne of Theon interrupted his speech saying These allegations beleeve me savour not of histories nor of Cosmographicall books but being fetched immediatly out of the minds of those Peripateticall discourses are handled and argued probably to the purpose and besides whiles you take up the fabricke or engine after the maner of tragedian plaiers you intend as it should seeme to afright by intimating the name of Apollo those that contradict and gainsay your opinions and yet as well beseemeth his goodnesse and bountie he is indifferent and alike affected unto all in clemencie and benignitie but we following the tracts steps of Sospis who hath led us the way very well keepe our selves to the date tree which afoordeth us sufficient matter to discourse thereof againe for the Babylonians doe chaunt and sing the praises of this tree namely that it bringeth unto them three hundred and threescore sorts of sundrie commodities but we that are Greeks have little or no profit thereby howbeit good philosophie may be drawen out of it for the better instruction of champions and such as are to performe combats of prize in that it beareth no fruit with us for being a right goodly faire and very great tree by reason of the good habit and disposition thereof yet is it not here among us fruitfull but by this strong constitution that it hath it imploieth and spendeth all nouriture to feed and fortifie the bodie after the maner of champions by their exercise so as there remaineth but a little behinde and the same not effectuall for seed over and above all this one qualitie it hath proper and peculiar to it selfe alone and that which agreeth not to any other tree the which I intend to shew unto you For the woodie substance of this date tree aloft if a man seeme to weigh and presse downe with any heavie burden it yeeldeth not nor stoupeth under the poise but curbeth upward archwise as withstanding that wherwith it is charged and pressed and even so it is with those combatants in sacred games for such as through feeblenesse of bodie or faintnesse of heart seeme to yeeld those the said exercises doe bend and keepe under but as many as stoutly abide not onely with their strong bodies but also with magnanimous courage these be they that are raised up on high and mount unto honour THE FIFTH QUESTION What is the cause that they who saile upon the river Nilus draw up water for their use before day-light ONe there was who demanded upon a time the reason why the water-men who saile and row upon the river Nilus provided themselves of that water which they drinke in the night and not by day Some said it was because they feared the sunne which by enchafing and heating the water maketh it more subject to corruption and putrifaction for whatsoever is warmed or made hot the same is alwaies more ready and disposed to mutation and doth soone alter by relaxation
those places where the aire toucheth them the bones of water and earth within and of these fower medled and contempered together sweat and teares proceed CHAP. XXIII When and how doth man begin to come to his perfection HERACLITUS and the STOICKS suppose that men doe enter into their perfection about the second septimane of their age at what time as their naturall seed doth moove and runne for even the very trees begin then to grow unto their perfection namely when as they begin to engender their 〈◊〉 for before then unperfect they are namely so long as they be unripe and fruitlesse and therefore a man likewise about that time is perfect and at this septenarie of yeeres he beginneth to conceive and understand what is good and evill yea and to learne the same Some thinke that a man is consummate at the end of the third septimane of yeeres what time as he maketh use of his full strength CHAP. XXIIII In what manner Sleepe is occasioned or death ALCMEON is of this mind that Sleepe is caused by the returne of blood into the confluent veines and Waking is the diffusion and spreading of the said blood abroad but Death the utter departure thereof EMPEDOCLES holdeth that Sleepe is occasioned by a moderate cooling of the naturall heat of blood within us and Death by an extreme coldnesse of the said blood DIOGENES is of opinion that if blood being diffused and spred throughout fill the veines and withall drive backe the aire setled 〈◊〉 into the breast and the interior belly under it then ensueth Sleepe and the breast with the precordiall parts are 〈◊〉 thereby but if that aereous substance in the 〈◊〉 exspire altogether and exhale forth presently 〈◊〉 Death PLATO and the 〈◊〉 affirme that the 〈◊〉 of Sleep is the 〈◊〉 of the spirit sensitive not by way of 〈◊〉 and to the earth 〈◊〉 by elevation aloft namely when it is carried to the 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 between the 〈◊〉 the very 〈◊〉 of reason but when there is an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the 〈◊〉 sensitive 〈◊〉 of 〈◊〉 Death doth ensue CHAP. XXV Whether of the twaine it is that 〈◊〉 or dieth the Soule or the Bodie ARISTOTLE vorely 〈◊〉 that Sleepe is common to Bodie and Soule both and the cause thereof is a certaine humiditie which doth steeme and arise in manner of a vapour out of the stomack and the food therein up into the region of the head and the naturall heat about the heart cooled thereby But death he deemeth to be an entire and totall refrigeration and the same of the Bodie onely and in no wise of the Soule for it is immortall ANAXAGORAS saith that Sleepe belongeth to corporall action as being a passion of the Bodie and not of the Soule also that there is 〈◊〉 wife a certaine death of the Bodie to wit the separation of it and the Bodie 〈◊〉 LEUCIPPUS is of opinion that Sleepe pertaineth to the Bodie onely by concretion of that which was of subtile parts but the excessive excretion of the animall heat is Death which both saith he be passions of the Bodie and not of the Soule EMPEDOCLES saith that Death is a separation of those elements whereof mans Bodie is compounded according to which position Death is common to Soule and Bodie and Sleep a certaine dissipation of that which is of the nature of fire CHAP. XXVI How Plants come to grow and whether they be animate PLATO and EMPEDOCLES hold that Plants have life yea and be animall creatures which appeareth say they by this that they wag to and fro and stretch forth their boughs like armes also that when they be violently strained and bent they yeeld but if they be let loose they returne againe yea in their growth are able to overcome waight laid upon them ARISTOTLE granteth that they be living creatures but not animall for that animal creatures have motions and appetites are sensitive and endued with reason The STOICKS and the EPIGUREANS hold that they have no soule or life at all for of animallcreatures some have the appetitive concupsicible soule others the reasonable but Plants grow after a sort casually of their owne accord and not by the meanes of any soule EMPEDOCLES saith that Trees sprang and grew out of the ground before animall creatures to wit ere the Sunne desplaied his beames and before that day and night were distinct Also that according to the proportion of temperature one came to be named Male another Female that they 〈◊〉 up and grow by the power of heat within the earth in such sort as they be parts of the earth like as unborne fruits in the wombe be parts of the matrice As for the fruits of trees they are the superfluous excrements of water and fire but such as have defect of that humiditie when it is dried up by the heat of the Summer lose their leaves whereas they that have plentie thereof keepe their leaves on still as for example the Laurell Olive and Date tree Now as touching the difference of their juices and sapors it proceedeth from the diversitie of that which nourisheth them as appeareth in Vines for the difference of Vine trees maketh not the goodnesse of Vines for to be drunke but the nutriment that the territorie and soile doth affoord CHAP. XXVII Of 〈◊〉 and Growth EMPEDOCLES is of opinion that animall creatures are nourished by the substance of that which is proper and familiar unto them that they grow by the presence of naturall heat that they diminish 〈◊〉 and perish through the default both of the one and the other And as for men now a daies living in comparison of their auncestos they be but babes new borne CHAP. XXVIII How 〈◊〉 creatures came to have appetite and pleasure EMPEDOCLES supposeth that Lust and Appetites are incident to animall creatures through the defect of those elements which went unto the framing of ech one that pleasures arise from humiditie as for the motions of perils and such like as also troubles and hinderances c. **** CHAP. XXIX After what sort a Fever is engendred and whether it is an accessary to another malady ERASISTRATUS defineth a Fever thus A Fever quoth he is the motion of bloud which is entred into the veines or vessels proper unto the spirits to wit the arteries and that against the will of the patient for like as the sea when nothing troubleth it lieth still and quiet but if a boisterous and violent winde be up and bloweth upon it contrary unto nature it surgeth and riseth up into billowes even from the very bottom so in the body of man when the bloud is mooved it invadeth the vitall and spirituall vessels and being set on fire it enchafeth the whole body And according to the same physicians opinion a Fever is an accessary or consequent comming upon another disease But DIOCLES affirmeth that Symptones apparent without foorth doe shew that which lieth hidden within Now we see that an Ague followeth upon those accidents
life with which words Porsena was so affrighted that he made peace with the Romans according as Aristides the Milesian writeth in the third booke of his storie 3 The Argives and the Lacedaemonians being at war one with another about the possession of the countrey Thyreatis the Amphictyones gave sentence that they should put it to a battell and looke whether side wan the field to them should the land in question appertaine The Lacedaemonians therefore chose for their captaine Othryades and the Argives Thersander when the battell was done there remained two onely alive of the Argives to wit Agenor and Chromius who caried tidings to the citie of victorie Meane while when all was quiet Othryades not fully dead but having some little life remaining in him bearing himselfe and leaning upon the trunchions of broken lances caught up the targets and shields of the dead and gathered them together and having erected a trophee he wrote thereupon with his owne blood To Jupiter Victor and guardian of Trophees Now when as both those parties maintained still the controversie about the land the Amphictyones went in person to the place to be eie-judges of the thing and adjudged the victorie on the Lacedaemonians side this writeth Chrysermus in the third booke of the Peloponnesiack historie The Romans levying warre against the Samnites chose for their chiefe commander Posthumius Albinus who being surprised by an ambush within a streight betweene two mountains called Furcae Caudinae a verie narrow passe lost three of his Legions and being himselfe deadly wounded fell and lay for dead howbeit about midnight taking breath was quick againe and somewhat revived he arose tooke the targets from his enemies bodies that lay dead in the place and erected a trophee and drenching his hand in their blood wrote in this manner The Romans to Jupiter Victor guardian of Trophees against the Samnites but Marius surnamed Gurges that is to say the glutton being sent thither as generall captaine and viewing upon the verie place the said trophee so erected I take this gladly quoth he for a signe and presage of good fortune and thereupon gave battell unto his enemies and won the victorie tooke their king prisoner and sent him to Rome according as Aristides writeth in his third booke of the Italian historie 4 The Persians entred Greece with a puissant armie of 500000. men against whom Leonidas was sent by the Lacedaemonians with a band of three hundred to guard the streights of Thermophylae and impeach his passage in which place as they were merie at their meat and taking their refection the whole maine power of the Barbarians came upon them Leonidas seeing his enemies advancing forward spake unto his owne men and said Sit still sirs and make an end of your dinner hardly so as you may take your suppers in another world so he charged upon the Barbarians and notwithstanding he had many a dart sticking in his bodie yet he made a lane through the presse of the enemies untill he came to the verie person of Xerxes from whom he tooke the diademe that was upon his head and so died in the place The Barbarians king caused his bodie to be opened when he was dead and his heart to be taken forth which was found to be all over-growne with haire as writeth Aristides in the first booke of the Persian historie The Romans warring against the Cathaginians sent a companie of three hundred men under the leading of a captaine named Fabius Maximus who bad his enemies battell and lost all his men himselfe being wounded to death charged upon Anniball with such violence that he tooke from him the regali diademe or frontall that he had about his head and so died upon it as writeth Aristides the Milesian 5 In the citie of Celaenae in Phrygia the earth opened and clave a sunder so as there remained a mightie chinke with a huge quantitie of water issuing thereout which caried away and drew into the bottomlesse pit thereof a number of houses with all the persons great and small within them Now Midas the king was advertised by an oracle that if he cast within the said pit the most precious thing that he had both sides would close up againe and the earth meet and be firme ground So he caused to be throwen into it a great quantitie of gold and silver but all would do no good Then Anchurus his son thinking with himselfe that there was nothing so pretious as the life soule of man after he had lovingly embraced his father and bid him farwel and with all taken his leave of his wife Timothea mounted on horseback and cast himselfe horse and all into the said chinke And behold the earth immediatly closed up whereupon Midas made a golden altar of Jupiter Idaeus touching it only with his hand This altar about that time when as the said breach or chink of earth was became a stone but after a certaine prefixed time passed it is seene all gold this writeth Callisthenes in his second booke of Transformations The river Tybris running through the mids of the market place at Rome for the anger of Jupiter Tarsius caused an exceeding great chinke within the ground which swallowed up many dwelling houses Now the oracle rendred this answere unto the Romans that this stould cease in case they flang into the breach some costly and precious thing and when they had cast into it both gold and silver but all in vaine Curtius a right noble young gentleman of the citie pondering well the words of the oracle and considering with himselfe that the life of man was more pretious than gold cast himselfe on horseback into the said chinke and so delivered his citizens and countrimen from their calamitie this hath Aristides recorded in fortieth booke of Italian histories 6 Amphtaraus was one of the princes and leaders that accompanied Pollynices and when one day they were feasting merily together an eagle soaring over his head chanced to catch up his javelin and carrie it up aloft in the aire which afterwards when she had let fall againe stucke fast in the ground and became a lawrell The morrow after as they joined battell in that verie place 〈◊〉 with his chariot was swallowed up within the earth and there standeth now the citie Harma so called of the chariot as Trismachus reporteth in the third booke of his Foundations During the warres which the Romans waged against Pyrrhus king of the Epirotes Paulus Acmylius was promised by the oracle that he should have the victorie if he would set up an altar in that verie place where he should see one gentleman of qualitie and good marke to be swallowed up alive in the earth together with his chariot Three daies after Valerius Conatus when in a dreame he thoght that he saw himselfe adorned with his priestly vestments for skilfull he was in the art of divination led forth the armie and after he had slaine many of his enemies was devouted quick
in pursuit after him for which victorie all other Romanes made great joy only his owne sister Horatia shewed herselfe nothing well pleased herewith for that to one of the other side she was betrothed in marriage for which he made no more ado but stabbed his sister to the heart this is reported by Aristides the Milesian in his Annales of Italy 17 In the citie Ilium when the fire had taken the temple of Minerva one of the inhabitants named Ilus ranne thither and caught the little image of Minerva named Palladium which was supposed to have fallen from heaven and therewith lost his sight because it was not lawfull that the said image should be seene by any man howbeit afterwards when he had appeased the wrath of the said goddesse he recovered his eie sight againe as writeth Dercyllus in the first book of Foundations Metellus a noble man of Rome as he went toward a certaine house of pleasure that hee had neere unto the citie was slaied in the way by certaine ravens that slapped and beat him with their wings at which ominous accident being astonied and presaging some evill to be toward him he returned to Rome and seeing the temple of the goddesse Vesta on fire he ran thither and tooke away the petie image of Pallas named Palladium and so likewise suddenly sell blind howbeit afterwards being reconciled unto her he got this sight againe this is the report of Aristides in his Chronicles 18 The Thracians warring against the Athenians were directed by an oracle which promised them victorie in case they saved the person of Codrus king of Athens but he disguising himselfe in the habit of a poore labourer and carrying a bill in his hand went into the campe of the enemies and killed one where likewise he was killed by another and so the Athenians obtained victorie as Socrates writeth in the second booke of Thracian affaires Publius Decius a Romane making warre against the Albanes dreamed in the night and saw a vision which promised him that if himselfe died he should adde much to the puissance of the Romans whereupon he charged upon his enemies where they were thickest arranged and when he had killed a number of them was himselfe slaine Decius also his sonne in the warre against the Gaules by that meanes saved the Romans as saith Aristides the Milesian 19 Cyanttpus a Siracusian borne sacrificed upon a time unto all other gods but unto Bacchus whereat the god being offended haunted him with drunckennesse so as in a darke corner he deflowred forcibly his owne daughter named Cyane but in the time that he dealt with her she tooke away the ring off his finger and gave it unto her nourse to keepe for to testifie another day who it was that thus abused her Afterwards the pestilence raigned fore in those parts and Apollo gave answere by oracle that they were to offer in sacrifice unto the gods that turned away calamities a godlesse and incestuous person all others wist not whom the oracle meant but Cyane knowing full well the will of Apollo tooke her father by the haire and drew him perforce to the altar and when she had caused himto be killed sacrificed her selfe after upon him as writeth Dositheus in the third booke of the Chronicles of Cicily Whiles the feast of Bacchus called Bacchanalia was celebrated at Rome there was one Aruntius who never in all his life had drunke wine but water onely and alwaies despised the power of god Bacchus who to be revenged of him caused him one time be so drunke that he forced his owne daughter Medullina abused her bodie carnally who having knowledge by his ring who it was that did the deed and taking to her a greater heart than one of her age made her father one day drunke and after she had adorned his head with garlands chaplets of flowers led him to aplace called the altar of Thunder where with many teares she sacrificed him who had surprised her takē away her virginity as writeth Aristides the Milesian in his third booke of Italian Chronicles 20 Erechiheus warring upon Eumolpus was advertised that he should win the victorie if before he went into the field he sacrificed his owne daughter unto the gods who when he had imparted this mater unto his wife Praxithea he offered his daughter in sacrifice before the battell hereof Euripides maketh mention in his tragoedie Erechtheus Marius maintaining warre against the Cimbrians and finding himselfe too weake saw a vision in his sleepe that promised him victory if before he went to battell he did sacrifice his daughter named Calpurnis who setting the good of the weale publicke and the regard of his countrimen before the naturall affection to his owne blood did accordingly and wan the field and even at this day two altars there be in Germanie which at the verie time and hower that this sacrifice was offered yeeld the sound of trumpets as Dorotheus reporteth in the third booke of the Annales of Italy 21 Cyanippus a Thessalian borne used ordinarily to go on hunting his wife a young gentle woman intertained this fancie of jealousie in her head that the reason why he went forth so often and staied so long in the forrest was because he had the companie of some other woman whom beloved whereupon she determined with her selfe to lie in espiall one day therefore she followed and traced Cyanippus and at length lay close within a certaine thicket of the forrest waiting and expecting what would fall out and come of it It chanced that the leaves and branches of the shrubs about her stirred the hounds imagining that there was some wild beast within seised upon her and so tare in pieces this young dame that loved her husband so well as if she had beene a savage beast Cyanippus then seeing before his eies that which he never would have imagined or thought in his mind for verie griefe of heart killed himselfe as Parthenius the Poet hath left in writing In Sybaris a citie of Italy there was sometime a young gentleman named Aemilius who being a beautifull person and one who loved passing well the game of hunting his wife who was young also thought him to be enamoured of another ladie and therefore got her selfe close within a thicket and chanced to stirre the boughes of the shrubs and bushes about her The hounds thereupon that ranged and hunted thereabout light upon her and tare her body in pieces which when her husband saw he killed himselfe upon her as Clytonimus reporteth in his second booke of the Sybaritick historie 22 Smyrna the daughter of Cinyras having displeased and angred Venus became enamored of her owne father and declared the vehement heat of her love unto her nourse She therefore by a wily device went to worke with her master and bare him in hand that there was a faire damosell a neighbours daughter that was in love with him but abashed and ashamed to come unto him openly or to be
ought of wittie spirit thou hast and what is excellent For meet it is that thou should'st bring some little Lysias foorth To blaze his fathers name abroad for vertuous deeds of woorth Who now transform'd and having caught a bodie strange to see In other worlds for Sapience should now immortall bee My loving heart to friend now dead likewise to notifie And to delare his vertuous life unto posteritie He composed likewise an oration for Iphicrates which he pronounced against Harmodius as also another wherein he accused Timotheus of treason and both the one and the other he overthrew but afterwards when Iphicrates tooke upon him againe to enquire into the dooings of Timotheus calling him to account for the revenues of the State which he had mannaged and set in hand againe with this accusation of treason hee was brought into question judicially and made answere in his owne defence by an oration that Lysias penned for him And as for himselfe he was acquit of the crime and absolved but Timotheus was condemned and fined to pay a great summe of money Moreover he rehearsed in the great assembly and solemnity at the Olympick games a long oration wherein he perswaded the Greekes that they should be reconciled one to another and joine together for to put downe the tyrant Dionysius ISOCRATES IIII. ISocrates was the sonne of one Theodorus an Erechthian a man reckoned in the number of meane citizens one who kept a sort of servants under him who made flutes and hautboies by whose workmanship he became so rich that he was able to bring up and set out his children in worshipfull manner For other sonnes he had besides to wit Telesippus and Diomnestus and also a little daughter unto them Hereupon it is that he was twitted and flouted by the comicall poets Aristophanes and Stratis in regard of those flutes He lived about the 86. Olympias elder than Lysimachus the Myrrhinusian by two and twentie yeeres and before Plato some seven yeeres During his childhood he had as good bringing up as any Athenian whatsoever as being the disciple scholar of Prodicus the Chian of Gorgias the Leontine of Tysias the Syracusian Theramenes the prosessed Rhetorician who being at the point to be apprehended taken by the 30. tyrants flying for refuge to the altar of Minerva the Counseller when all other friends were affrighted and amazed onely Isocrates arose and shewed himselfe for to assist and succor him and at the first continued a long time silent But Theramenes himselfe began and prayed him to desist saying that it would be more dolorous and grievous unto him than his owne calamitie in case he should see any of his friends to be troubled and endangered for the love of him And it is said that he helped him to compile certaine Institutions of Rhetoricke at what time as he was maliciously and falsely slandered before the judges in open court which Institutions are gon under the name and title of Boton When he was growen to mans estate he forbare to meddle in State matters and in the affaires of common-weale as well for that he had by nature a small and feeble voice as because naturally he was fearfull and timorous and besides his state was much impaired by reason that he lost his patrimonie in the warre against the Lacedaemonians It appeareh that to other men he had beene assistant in counsell and giving testimonie for them in places of judgement but it is not knewen that he pronounceed above one onely oration to wit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say concerning counterchange of goods And having set up a publicke schoole he gave himselfe to the studie of philosophie and to write where he composed his Panegyrique oration and certaine others of the Deliberative kind and those that he wrote himselfe some he read some he penned for others thinking thereby to exhort and stirre up the Greekes to devise and performe such duties as beseemed them to doe But seeing that he missed of his purpose and intention hee gave over that course and betooke himselfe to keepe a schoole first as some say in Chios having nine scholars that came unto him where when he saw that his scholars paid him downe in money his Minervals for their schooling hee wept and said I see well now that I am sold unto these youthes He would conferre willingly with those that came to devise and talke with him being the first that put difference betweene wrangling pleas or contentious orations and serious politike discourses of common-weale in which he rather employed himselfe He ordained magistrates in Chios erecting the same forme of government there which was in his owne countrey He gathered more silver together by teaching schoole than ever any professor in Rhetoricke or schoole-master was knowen to have done so that he was well able to defray the charges of a galley at sea Of scholars he had to the number of one hundred and among many others Timotheus the sonne of Conon with whom he travelled abroad and visited many cities he penned all those letters which Timotheus sent unto the Athenians in regard whereof he bestowed upon him a talent of silver the remainder of that money due by composition from Samos There were besides of his scholars Theopompus the Chian and Ephorus of Cumes Asclepiades also who composed tragical matters and arguments and Theodectes who afterwards wrote tragoedies whose tombe or sepulcher is as men go toward Cyamite even in the sacred way or street that leadeth to Eleusis now altogether ruinate and demolished in which place he caused to be erected and set up the statues of famous poets together with him of all whom there remaineth none at this day but Homer alone also Leodamus the Athenian Lacritus the law-giver unto the Athenians and as some say Hyperides and Isaeus And it is said that Demosthenes also came unto him whiles he yet taught a Rhetoricke schoole with an earnest purpose to learne of him using this speech that he was not able to pay him a thousand drachms of silver which was the onely price that he made and demaunded of everie scholar but meanes he would make to give him two hundred drachms so he might learne of him but the fift part of his skill which was a proportionable rate for the whole unto whom Isocrates made this answere We use not Demosthenes to do our businesse by piece-meale but like as men are woont to sell faire fishes all whole even so will I if you purpose to be my scholar teach and deliver you mine art full and entier and not by halfes or parcels He departed this life the verie yeere that Chaeronides was Provost of Athens even when the newes came of the discomfiture at Chaeronea which he heard being in the place of Hippocrates publicke exercises and voluntarily he procured his owne death in abstaining from all food and sustenance the space of foure daies having pronounced before this abstinence of his these three first verses
substances flow and runne partly by yeelding and sending foorth somewhat out of themselves and in part by receiving other things from without and that by reason of the number and multitude of that which comes in or goes out things continue not one and the same but become altered and divers by the foresaid additions and detractation so as their substance receiveth a change Also that contrary to all right and reason custome hath so farre prevailed that such mutations be called augmentations and diminutions whereas rather they ought to be termed generations and corruptions for that they force an alteration of one present state and being into another but to grow and diminish are passions and accidents of a body and subject that is permanent Which reasons and assertions being after a sort thus delivered in their schooles what is it that these defenders of Perspicuity and Evidence these canonicall reformers I say of common notions would have namely that every one of us should be double like twinnes or of a two-fold nature not as the poets feigned the Molionides to be in some parts 〈◊〉 and united and in other severed and disjoined but two bodies having the same colour the same shape the same weight and place a thing that no man ever saw before mary these Philosophers onely have perceived this duplicity this composition and 〈◊〉 whereby every one of us are two subjects the one being substance the other ** the one of them runneth and floweth continually and yet without augmentation and diminution or remaining in the same state such as it is the other continueth still and yet groweth and decreaseth and yet suffreth all things quite contrary to the other wherewith it is concorporate united and knit leaving to the exteriour sense no shew of distinct difference And yet verily it is said of that 〈◊〉 how in old time hee had so quicke and piereing an eie-sight that he was able to see through stocks and stones And one there was by report who fitting in Sicily could from a watch-tower sensibly discerne the shippes sailing out of the haven of Carthage which was distant a day a nights failing with a good forewind And as for Callicrates and Myrmecides they have the name to have made chariots so smal as that the wings of a fly might cover them yea in a millet graine or sesam seed to have engraven Homers verses But surely this perpetuall fluxion diversity in us there was never any yet that could divide distinguish neither could we our selves ever find that we were double that partly we ranne out continually and in part againe remained alwaies one and the same even from our nativity to our end But I am about to deale with them more simply and plainly for whereas they devise in every one of us foure subjects or to speake more directly make ech of us to be foure it shall suffice to take but two for to shew their absurditie When we doe heare Pentheus in a tragedy saying that he seeth two Sunnes and two cities of Thebes we deeme of him that he seeth not two but that his eies doe dazzell and looke amisse having his discourse troubled and understanding cleane transported And even these persons who suppose and set downe not one city alone but all men all beasts all trees plants tooles vessels utensils and garments to be double and composed of two natures reject wee not and bid farewell as men who would force us not to understand any thing aright but to take every thing wrong Howbeit haply heerein they might be pardoned and winked at for feining and devising other natures of subjects because they have no meanes else for all the paines they take to mainteine and preserve their augmentations But in the soule what they should aile what their meaning might be and upon what grounds and suppositions they devised to frame other different sorts and formes of bodies and those in maner innumerable who is able to say or what may be the cause unlesse they ment to displace or rather to abolish and destroy altogether the common and familiar conceptions inbred in us for to bring in and set up new fangles and other strange and forren novelties For this is woonderfull extravagant and absurd for to make bodies of vertues and vices and besides of sciences arts memories fansies apprehensions passions inclinations and assents and to affirme that these neither lie nor have any place subsisting in any subject but to leave them one little hole like a pricke within the heart wherein they range and draw in the principall part of the soule and the discourse of reason being choked up as it were with such a number of bodies that even they are not able to count a great sort of them who seeme to know best how to distinguish and discerne one from another But to make these not onely bodies but also living creatures and those endued with reason to make I say a swarme of them the same not gentle mild tame but a turbulent sort rable by their malicious shrewdnesse opposit repugnant to al evidence usual custome what wanteth this of absurdity in the highest degree And these men verily do hold that not onely vertues vices be animall and living creatures nor passions alone as anger wrath envy griefe sorrow malice nor apprehensions onely fantasies imaginations and ignorances nor arts and mysteries as the shoomakers smithscraft but also over and besides al these things they make the very operations and actions themselves to be bodies yea and living creatures they would have walking to be an animall dancing likewise shoping saluting and reprochfull railing and so consequently they make laughing weeping to be animall And in granting these they admit also coughing sneesing and groaning yea and withall spitting reaching snitting and snuffing of the nose and such like actions which are as evident as the rest And let them not thinke much and take it grievously if they be driven to this point by way of particular reasonning calling to minde Chrysippus who in his third booke of Naturall questions saith thus What say you of the night is it not a body evening morning midnight are they not bodies Is not the day a body The new moone is it not a bodie the tenth the fifteenth the thirtieth day of the moone the moneth it selfe Summer Autumne and the whole yeere be they not bodies Certes all these things by me named they hold with tooth and naile even against common prenotions But as for these hereafter they maintaine contrary to their owne proper conceptions when as they would produce the hottest thing that is by refrigeration and that which is most subtile by inspissation For the soule is a substance most hot and consisting of most subtill parts which they would make by the refrigeration and condensation of the body which as it were by a certaine perfusion and tincture it hardeneth altereth the spirit from being vegetative to be
in case every souldier of himselfe knew his ranke his place his time and opportunity which he ought to take keepe and observe Neither would there be any use of gardiners carpenters or masons if water were of it selfe taught naturally to go where as it is needfull and to runne and overflow a place which requireth watering and if bricks timber-logs and stones by their owne inclinations and naturall motions were to range and couch themselves orderly in their due places Now if this reason and argument of theirs doth directly abolish all providence if order belong unto God together with the distinction of all things in the world why should any man wonder that nature hath beene so disposed and ordeined by him as that fire should be here and the starres there and againe that the earth should be seated here below the Moone placed there above lodged in a more sure strong prison devised by reason than that which was first ordeined by nature For were it so that absolutely and of necessitie all things should follow their naturall instinct and move according to that motion which naturally is given them neither would the Sunne runne his course any more circularly nor Venus nor any other planet whatsoever for that such light substances and standing much upon fire mount directly upward Now if it be so that nature reciveth such an alteration and change in regard of the place as that our fire here being moved and stirred riseth plumbe upward but after it is gotten once up to heaven together with the revolution thereof turneth round what marvell is it if semblably heavie and terrestriall bodies being out of their naturall places be forced overcome by the circumstant aire to take unto another kind of motion For it can not be said with any reason that heaven hath this power to take from light substances the propertie to mount aloft and can not likewise have the puissance to vanquish heavie things such as naturally move downward but one while it maketh use of that power of her owne another while of the proper nature of things alwaies tending to the better But to let passe these habitudes and opinions whereto we are servilly addicted and to speake frankly and without feare what our minde is I am verily perswaded that there is no part of the universall world that hath by itselfe any peculiar order seat or motion which a man simply may say to be naturall unto it but when ech part exhibiteth and yeeldeth profitably that wherefore it is made and whereto it is appointed moving it selfe doing or suffering or being disposed as it is meet and expedient for it either for safetie beautie or puissance then seemeth it to have place motion and disposition proper and convenient to the owne nature For man who is disposed if any thing els in the whole world according to nature hath in the upper parts of the bodie and especially about his head those things that be ponderous and earthly but in the mids thereof such as be hote and of a firy nature his teeth some grow above others beneath and yet neither the one range of them nor the other is against nature Neither is that fire which shineth above in his eies according to nature and that which is in the bellie and heart contrary to nature but in ech place is it properly seated and commodiously Now if you consider the nature of shell-fishes you shall finde that as Empedocles saith The 〈◊〉 murets of the sea and shell-fish everyone With massie coat the tortoise eke with crust as hard as stone And vaulted backe which archwise he aloft doth hollow reare Shew all that heavie earth they do above their bodies beare And yet this hard coat and heavie crust like unto a stone being placed over their bodies doth not presse or crush them neither doth their naturall heat in regard of lightnesse slie up and vanish away but mingled and composed they are one with the other according to the nature of every one And even so it standeth to good reason that the world in case it be animall hath in many places of the body thereof earth and in as many fire and water not driven thither perforce but so placed disposed by reason for the eie was not by the strength of lightnesse forced to that part of the body wherein it is neither was the hart depressed downe by the weight that it had into the brest but because it was better and more expedient for the one and the other to be seated where they are Semblably we ought not to thinke that of the parts of the world either the earth setled where it is because it fell downe thither by reason of ponderositie or the Sunne in regard of lightnesse was caried upward like unto a bottle bladder full of winde which being in the bottome of the water presently riseth up as Metrodorus of Chios was perswaded or other stars as if they were put in a ballance inclined this way or that as their weight more or lesse required and so mounted higher or lower to those places where now they are seated but rather by the powerfull direction of reason in the first constitution of the world some of the starres like unto bright and glittering eies have beene set fast in the firmament as one would say aloft in the very forhead thereof and the Sunne representing the power and vigor of the heart sendeth and distributeth in maner of bloud and spirits his heat and light thorowout all The earth and sea are to the world proportionable to the paunch and bladder in the body of a living creature the moone situate betweene the Sunne and the earth as betweene the heart and the bellie resembling the liver or some such soft bowell transmitteth into the inferiour parts here beneath the heat of those superior bodies and draweth to herselfe those vapors that arise from hence and those doth she 〈◊〉 refine by way of concoction and purification and so send and distribute them round about her Now whether that solid and terrestriall portion in it hath some other propertie serving for a profitable use or no it is unknowen to us but surely it is evermore the best and surest way in all things to go by that which is necessarie for what probabilitie or likelihood can we draw from that which they deliver They affirme that of the aire the most subtile and lightsome part by reason of the raritie thereof became heaven but that which was thickened and closely driven together went to the making of starres of which the Moone being the heaviest of all the rest was concret and compact of the most grosse and muddy matter thereof and yet a man may perceive how she is not separate nor divided from the aire but mooveth and performeth her revolution through that which is about her even the region of the winds and where comets or blasing starres be engendered and hold on their course Thus these bodies have not
of law unlesse some urgent necessitie enforced them thereto And otherwise it were very meet and expedient for the comminaltie of Thebes that there should be some not culpable of this massacre but innocent and cleare of all that then shall be committed for so these men will be lesse suspected of the people and be thought to counsell and exhort them for the best We thought very well of this advice of his and so he repaired againe to Simmias and we went downe to the place of publicke exercises where we met with our friends and there we dealt one with another apart as we wrestled together questioning about one thing or another and telling this or that every one preparing himselfe to the execution of the dessigne and there we might see Archias and Philippus all anointed and oiled going toward the feast For Phyllidas fearing that they would make haste and put Amphitheus to death so soone as ever hee had accompanied Lysanoridas and sent him away tooke Archias with him feeding him with hope to enjoy the lady whom he desired and promising that she should be at the feast whereby he perswaded him to minde no other thing but to solace himselfe and make merry with those who were woont to roist and riot with him By this time it drew toward night the weather grew to be colde and the winde rose high which caused every man with more speed to retire and take house I for my part meeting with Damoclidas Pelopidas and Theopompus enterteined them and others did the like to the rest For after that these banished persons were passed over the mountaine Cythaera they parted themselves and the coldnesse of the weather gave them good occasion without all suspition to cover their faces and so to passe along the city undiscovered And some of them there were who as they entred the gates of the city perceived it to lighten on their right hand without thunder which they tooke for a good presage of safetie and glorie in their proceedings as if this signe betokened that the execution of their designment should be lightsome and honourable but without any danger at all Now when we were all entred in and safe within house to the number of eight and fortie as Theocritus was sacrificing apart in a little oratorie or chappell by himselfe he heard a great rapping and bouncing at the doore and anon there was one came and brought him word that two halberds of Archias guard knocked at the outward gate as being sent in great haste to Charon commanding to open them the doore as greatly offended that they had staied so long Whereat Charon being troubled in minde commanded that they should be let in presently who meeting them within the court with a coronet upon his head as having newly sacrificed unto the gods and made good cheere demanded of these halberds what they would Archias and Philippus say they have sent us willing and charging you with all speed to repaire unto them Why what is the matter quoth Charon that they should send for me in such haste at this time of the night and what great newes is there We know not said these sergeants but what word would you have us to carry backe unto them Mary tell them quoth he that I will cast off my chaplet and put on another robe and presently follow after for if I should goe with you it might be an occasion of trouble and moove some to supect that you lead me away to prison You say wel answered the officers againe do even so for we must goeanother way to those souldiers that watch and ward without the city and deliver unto them a commandement from the head magistrates and rulers Thus departed they With that Charon returned to us and made relation of these newes which strucke us into our dumps and put us in a great affright supposing for certeine that we were betraied and our plot detected most of the company suspected Hipposthenidas for that he went about to impeach the returne of the exiled persons by the meanes of Chlidon whom he meant to send unto them who seeing that he missed of his purpose by all likelihood upon a fearefull and timorous heart might reveale our conspiracie now when it was come to the very point of execution for come hee was not with others into the house where we were all assembled and to be short there was not one of us all that judged better of him than of a wicked and trecherous traitor howbeit we agreed all in this that Charon should go thither as he was commanded and in any wise obey the magistrates who had sent for him Then he commanding ô Archidamus his owne sonne to be present a stripling about fifteene yeeres of age and the fairest youth in all the city of Thebes very laborious and affectionate to bodily exercises and for stature and strength surpassing all his fellowes and companions of that age made this speech unto us My masters and friends this is my sonne and onely child whom I love entirely as you may well thinke him I deliver into your hands beseeching you in the name of the gods and all saints in heaven that if you finde any perfidious treacherie by me against you to doe him to death and not spare him And now I humbly pray you most valiant and hardy knights prepare your selves resolutely against the last feast that ever these tyrants shall make abandon not for want of courage your bodies to be villanously outraged and spoiled by these most leud and wicked persons but be revenged of them and now shew your invincible hearts in the behalfe of your countrey When Charon had delivered these words there was not one of us all but highly commended his magnanimitie and loialtie but we were angry with him in that he doubted of us that we had him in suspition and distrust and therefore willed him to have away his sonne with him And more than that me thinks quoth Pelopidas you have not done well and wisely for us in that you sent him not before to some other house for what reason or necessitie is there that he should either perish or come into perill being found with us and yet it is time enough to convey him away that in case it fall out with us otherwise than well he may grow up after his kinde for to be revenged of these tyrants another day It shall not be so quoth Charon he shall even stay here and take such part of fortune as we shall do and besides it were no part of honesty or honour to leave him in danger of our enemies And therefore my good sonne quoth he take a good heart and a resolute even above these yeeres of thine enter in Gods name into these hazzards and trials that be thus necessarie together with many valiant and hardy citizens for the maintenance of liberty and vertue And even yet great hope we have that good successe will follow and that some blessed angell will
were so fierce and untractable used those robes and habillimonts which were proper usuall and familiar to them and all to gaine their hearts by little and little mollifying by that meanes the fiercenesse of their courage pacifying their displeasure and dulcing their grimnesse and austeritie would any man blame or reproove and not rather honour and admire his politicke wisdome in that with a little change and altering of his garments he had the dexteritie and skill to gaine all Asia and lead it as he would making himselfe thus by his armour master and lord of their bodies and by his apparell alluring and winning their hearts And yet these men commend Aristippus the Philosopher and disciple of Socrates for that one while wearing a poore thinne and thred-bare cloke and another while putting on a rich mantell of tissew wrought and died at Miletus he knew how to keepe decorum and decently to behave himselfe as well in the one garment as the other meane while they blame and condemne Alexander in that as he honored the habit of his owne countrey so he disdained not the apparell of another which he had conquered by armes intending therby to lay the ground-worke foundation of greater matters for his desseigne and purpose was not to over-runne and waste Asia as a captaine and ring-leader of a rable of theeves and robbers would doe nor to sacke and racke harry and worrie it as the praie and booty of unexpected and unhoped for felicity like as afterwards Anniball did by Italy and before time the Trierians delt by Ionia and the Scythians by Asia who made havocke and waste as they went but as one who meant to range all the nations upon earth under the obedience of one and the same reason and to reduce all men to the same policie as citizens under government of a common-weale therefore thus he composed and transformed himselfe in his raiment and habit And if that great God who sent the soule of Alexander from heaven to earth below had not so suddenly called it away againe unto himselfe peradventure there had beene but one law to rule and overlooke all men living the whole world haply had beene governed by one and the same justice as a common light to illustrate all places whereas now those parts of the earth which never had a sight of Alexander remaine in the shadow of darknesse as destitute of the very light of the sunne and therefore the very first project of his expedition and voiage sheweth that he caried the minde of a true Philosopher indeed who aimed not at the gaining for himselfe daintie delights and costly pleasures but intended to procure and compasse an universall peace concord unitie and societie of all men living one with another In the second place consider we his words and sentences for that in other kings and potentates also their maners and intentions of their minde are principally bewraied by their speeches Antigonus the elder when a certeine Sophister upon a time presented and pronounced unto him certeine commentaries and treatises which he had composed as touching justice Good fellow quoth he thou art a foole to come and preach unto one of justice when thou seest me bending mine ordinance against the cities of other princes and battering their wals as I do Denys also the tyrant was wont to say that we should deceive children with dies and cockal bones but beguile men with othes And upon the tombe of Sardanapalus was engraven this epitaph What I did eat and drinke I have the sports also remaine Which lady Venus did vouchsave all else I count but vaine Who can denie but that by the last of those speeches and apophthegmes sensuall lust and voluptuousnesse was authorized by the second Atheisme and impietie and by the first injustice and avarice Now if you take away from the sayings of Alexander his roiall crowne and diademe the addition of Jupiter Amnion whose sonne he was stiled to be and the nobility of his birth certes you would say they were the sage sentences of Socrates Plato or Pythagoras For we must not stand upon the brave titles and proud inscriptions which Poets have devised to be imprinted or engraven upon his pictures images and statues having an eie and regard not to shew the modestie but to magnifie the puissance of Alexander as for example This image here that stands in brasse so bright Of Alexander is the portraict right Up toward heaven he both his eies doth cast And unto Jove seemes thus to speake at last Mine is the earth by conquest I it hold Thou Jupiter in heaven mayst be bold And another Of Jupiter that heavenly God of might The sonne am I Great Alexander hight These were the glorious titles which glavering Poets I say in flattery of his fortune fathered upon him But if a man would recount the true apophthegmes indeed of Alexander he may do well to beginne first at those which he delivered in his childhood for being in footmanship the swftest of all other yoong lads of his age when his familiar play-feeres and mates were in hand with him very earnestly to runne a course at the Olympian games for a prise he demanded of them againe whether he should meet with kings there for his concurrents in the race and when they answered No Then were the match quoth he not equally nor indifferently made wherin if I have the woorse a king shall be foiled and if I gaine the victorie I shall but conquer private persons When his father Philip chanced in a battell against the Triballians to be runne thorow the thigh with a launce and albeit that he escaped danger of death yet was much grieved and dismaied to limpe and halt thereupon as he did Be of good cheere good father quoth he and go abroad hardly in the sight of the whole world that at every step you tread and set forward you may be put in minde of your valour and vertue How say you now proceed not these answeres from a Philosophicall minde and shew they not an heart which being ravished with a divine instinct and ardent love of good and honest things careth not for the defects of the bodie for how greatly thinke you joyed and gloried he in the wounds that he received in his owne person who in every one of them bare the testimony and memoriall of some nation subdued some battell won of some cities forced by assaile or of some kings that yeelded to his mercie Certes he never tooke care to cover and hide his scarres but caried them about him and shewed them where ever he went as so many marks and tokens engraved to testifie his vertue and prowesse And if at any time there grew some comparison either by way of serious disputation in points of learning or in table talke as touching the verses of Homer which of them were best when some seemed to commend this verse others that he would evermore preferre this above all other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A
and with his dagger gave him such a stabbe as he laied him along and killed him out of hand but see the malice of Fortune there runnes me forth out of a milihouse or backhouse thereby another villaine with a pestle and comming behinde him gave him such a souse upon the very necke bone that he was astonished therewith and there lay along in a swoone having lost his sight and other senses for a time But vertue it was that assisted him which gave both unto himselfe a good heart and also unto his friends strength resolution and diligence to succour him for Limnaeus Ptolemeus and Leonnatus with as many besides as either had clambred over the walles or broken thorow came in and put themselves betweene him and his enemies they with their valour were to him in stead of a wall and rampier they for meere affection and love unto their king exposed their bodies their forces and their lives before him unto all dangers whatsoever For it is not by fortune that there be men who voluntarily present themselves to present death but it is for the love of vertue like as bees having drunke as it were the amatorious potion of naturall love and affection are alwaies about their king and sticke close unto him Now say there had beene one there without the danger of shot to have seene this sight at his pleasure would not he have said that he had beheld a notable combat of fortune against vertue wherein the Barbarians by the helpe of fortune prevailed above their desert and the Greeks by meanes of vertue resisted above their power and if the former get the better hand it would be thought the worke of fortune and of some maligne and envious spirit but if these become superior vertue fortitude faith and friendship should cary away the honour of victory for nothing els accompanied Alexander in this place As for the rest of his forces and provisions his armies his horses and his fleets fortune set the wall of this vile towne betweene him and them Well the Macedonians in the end defaited these Barbarians beat the place downe over their heads and rased it quite and buried them in the ruins and fall thereof But what good did all this to Alexander in this case Caried he might well be and that speedily away out of their hands with the arrow sticking still in his bosome but the war was yet close within his ribbes the arrow was set fast as a spike or great naile to binde as it were the cuirace to his bodie for whosoever went about to plucke it out of the wound as from the root the head would not follow withall considering it was driven so sure into that solid brest bone which is over the heart neither durst any saw off that part of the steile that was without for feare of shaking cleaving cracking the said bone by that means so much the more and by that means cause exceeding and intolerable paines besides the effusion of much bloud out of the bottome of the wound himselfe seeing his people about him a long time uncerteine what to doe set in hand to hacke the shaft a two with his dagger close to the superficies of his cuirace aforesaid and so to cut it off cleane but his hand failed him and had not strength sufficient for to do the deed for it grew heavie and benummed with the inflammation of the wound whereupon he commanded his chirurgians to set to their hands boldly and to feare nought incouraging thus hurt as he was those that were sound and unwounded chiding and rebuking some that kept a weeping about him and bemoned him others he called traitours who durst not helpe him in this distresse he cried also to his minions and familiars Let no man be timorous and cowardly for me no not though my life lie on it I shall never be thought and beleeved not to feare dying if you be affraied of my death ***************** OF ISIS AND OSIRIS The Summarie THe wisdome and learning of the Aegyptians hath bene much recommended unto us by ancient writers and not without good cause considering that Aegypt hath bene the source and fountaine from whence have flowed into the world arts and liberall sciences as a man may gather by the testimony of the first Poets and philosophers that ever were But time which consumeth all things hath bereft us of the knowledge of such wisdome or if there remaine still with us any thing at all it is but in fragments and peeces scattered heere and there whereof many times we must divine or guesse and that is all But in recompence thereof Plutarch a man carefull to preserve all goodly and great things hath by the meanes of this discourse touching Isis and Osiris maintained and kept entier a good part of the Aegyptians doctrine which he is not content to set down literally there an end but hath adjoined thereto also an interpretation thereof according to the mystical sense of the Isiake priests discovering in few words an in finit number of secrets hidden under ridiculous monstrous fables in such sort as we may cal this treatise a cōmentary of the Aegyptians Theologie and Philosophy As for the contents thereof a man may reduce it into three principall parts In the first which may serve insted of a preface he yeeldeth a reason of his enterprise upon the consideration of the rasture vesture continence and ab stinence of Isis priests there is an entrie made to the rehearsall of the fable concerning Isis Osiris But before he toucheth it he sheweth the reason why the Aegyptians have thus darkly enfolded their divinity Which done he commeth to descipher in particular the said fable relating it according to the bare letter which is the second part of this booke In the third he expoundeth the fable it selfe and first discovereth the principles of the said Aegyptian Philosophy by a sort of temples sepulchers and sacrifices Afterwards having refuted certaine contrary opinions he speaketh of Daemons ranging Isis Osiris and Typhon in the number of them After this Theologicall exposition he considereth the fable according to naturall Philosophy meaning by Osiris the river Nilus and all other power of moisture whatsoever by Typhon Drinesse and by Isis that nature which preserveth and governeth the world Where he maketh a comparison betweene Bacchus of Greece and Osiris of Aegypt applying all unto naturall causes Then expoundeth he the fable more exactly and in particular maner conferring this interpretation thereof with that of the Stoicks wherupon he doth accommodate and fit all to the course of the Moone as she groweth and decreaseth to the rising also and inundation of Nilus making of all the former opinions a certaine mixture from whence he draweth the explication of the fable By occasion hereof he entreth into a disputation as touching the principles and beginnings of all things setting downe twaine and alledging for the proofe and confirmation of his speech the testimony of