all agast But the disposition and staied minde of a prudent man over and besides that it bringeth the body into a quiet and calme estate by dissipating and dispatching for the most part the occasions and preparatives of diseases and that by continent life sober diet moderate exercises and travels in measure if haply there chance some little beginning or indisposition to a passion upon which the minde is ready to runne it selfe as a ship upon some blinde rocke under the water it can quickly turne about his nimble and light crosse-saile yard as Asclepiades was woont to say and so avoid the danger But say there come upon us some great and extraordinary accident such as neither we looked for nor be able by all the power we have either to overcome or endure the haven is neere at hand we may swim safely thither out of the body as it were out of a vessell that leaketh and taketh water and will no longer holde a passenger as for foolish 〈◊〉 it is the feare of death and not the love of life that causeth them to cling and sticke so close to the body hanging and clasping thereunto no otherwise than Ulysses to the wilde figge tree why hee feared with great horror the gulfe Charybdes roaring under him Whereas the winds would not permit to stay Nor suffer him to rowe or saile away displeased infinitely in the one and dreading fearefully the other But he that some measure be it never so little knoweth the nature of the soule and casteth this with himselfe That by death there is a passage out of this life either to a better state or at least-wise not a woorse certes he is furnished with no meane way-faring provision to bring him to the securit of mind in this life I meane the fearelesse contempt of death for he that may so long as vertue 〈◊〉 the better part of the soule which indeed is proper unto man is predominant live pleasantly 〈◊〉 when the contrary passions which are enemies to nature doeprevaile depart resolutely 〈◊〉 without feare saying thus unto himselfe God will me suffer to be gone When that I will my selfe anon What can we imagine to happen unto a man of this resolution that should encumber trouble or terrifie him for whosoever he was that said I have prevented thee ô Fortune I have stopped up all thy avenewes I have intercepted and choked all the waies of accesse and entry surely he fortified himselfe not with barres and barricadoes not with locks and keies ne yet with mures and walles but with Philosophicall and sage lessons with sententious sawes and with discourses of reason whereof all men that are willing be capable Neither ought a man to discredit the trueth of these and such like things which are committed in writing and give no beleefe unto them but rather to admire and with an affectionate ravishment of spirit embrace and imitate them yea and withall to make a triall and experiment of himselfe first in smaller matters proceeding afterwards to greater untill he reach unto the highest and in no wise to shake off such medirations nor to shift off and seeke to avoid the exercise of the minde in this kinde and in so doing he shall haply finde no such difficultie as he thinketh For as the effeminate delicacy and nicenesse of our mind amused alwaies and loving to be occupied in the most easie objects and retiring eft-soones from the cogitation of those things that fall out crosse unto such as tend unto greatest pleasure causeth it to be soft and tender and imprinteth a certaine daintinesse not able to abide any exercise so if the same minde would by custome learne and exercise it selfe in apprehending the imagination of a maladie of paine travell and of banishment and enforce it selfe by reason to withstand and strive against ech of these accidents it will be found and seene by experience that such things which through an erronious opinion were thought painefull grievous hard and terrible are for the most part but vaine in deed deceitfull and contemptible like as reason will shew the same if a man would consider them each one in particular Howbeit the most part mightily feare and have in horror that verse of Menander No man alive can safely say This case shall never me assay as not knowing how materiall it is to the exempting and freeing of a man from all griefe and sorrow to meditate before-hand and to be able to looke open-eied full against fortune and not to make those apprehensions and imaginations in himselfe soft and effeminate as if hee were fostered and nourished in the shadow under many foolish hopes which ever yeeld to the contrarie and bee not able to resist so much as any one But to come againe unto Menander we have to answer unto him in this maner True it is indeed there is no man living able to say This or this shal never happen unto me howbeit thus much may a man that is alive say and affirme So long as I live I will not do this to wit I will not lie I will never be a cousiner nor circumvent any man I will not defraud any one of his owne neither will I fore-lay and surprise any man by a wile This lieth in our power to promise and performe and this is no small matter but a great meanes to procure tranquillitie and contentment of minde Whereas contrariwise the remorse of conscience when as a man is privie to himselfe and must needs confesse and say These and these wicked parts I have committed festereth in the soule like an ulcer and fore in the flesh and leaveth behind it repentance in the soule which fretteth galleth gnaweth and setteth it a bleeding fresh continually For whereas all other sorrowes griefes and anguishes reason doth take away repentance onely it doth breed and engender which together with shame biteth and punisheth it selfe for like as they who quiver and shake in the feavers called Epioli or contrariwise burne by occasion of other agues are more afflicted and more at ease than those who suffer the same accidents by exterior causes to wit winters cold or summers heat even so all mischances and casuall calamities bring with them lighter dolors and paines as comming from without But when a man is forced thus to confesse My seife I may well thanke for this None els for it blame woorthy is which is an ordinary speech of them who lamentably bewaile their sinnes from the bottome of their hearts it causeth griefe and sorrow to be so much more heavy and it is joyned with shame and infamie whereupon it commeth to passe that neither house richly and sinely furnished nor heapes of gold and silver no parentage or nobilitie of birth no dignitie of estate and authoritie how high soever no grace in speech no force and power of eloquence can yeeld unto a mans life such a calme as it were and peaceable tranquillitie as a soule and conscience cleere from wicked deeds sinfull cogitations
pores be open for that the spirit hath forsaken and abandoned them which is the cause likewise that voices odors and savours passe through them unheard and unsmelled for why that which should resist and in resistance suffer and take impression meeteth not with those objects that are presented unto it and least of all when they pierce with such swiftnesse and subtilitie as the fire of lightning doth for that which of it selfe is lesse firme strong for to resist offensive things nature doth desend fortifie and furnish with remedies against that which offendeth by putting before them hard and solide munitions but looke what things bee of incomparable force and invincible they lesse offend and hurt that which yeeldeth than that which maketh head and resistance adde moreover heereunto that they who lie a sleepe are lesse affraid affrighted or astonied by occasion whereof and of nothing else many have died onely I say for feare of death without any harme at all done unto them and this is the very cause that shepheards teach their sheepe to runne and gather round together into a troupe when it thundreth for that they which are dispersed and scattered a sunder for very feare take harme and cast their yoong ones in time of thunder yea and an infinit number have beene knowen to lie dead on the ground by reason of thunder without any marke or stroke wound scorch or burne seene upon them whose life and soule for very feare hath flowen out of their bodies like a birde out of a cage for according as Euripides saith The very blast of some great thunder-clap Hath many a one strucke stone-dead with a flap And forasmuch as otherwise the sense of hearing is of all others most subject to suffer violent passions and the fearefull frights occasioned by sounds and noises worke greatest troubles in the minde against it the privation of sense is a sure bulwarke and rampar to a man that lieth asleepe where as they who are awake be many times killed with feare of the thing before it commeth for a fright to say a trueth knitting closing and compressing the body fast giveth more strength a great deale to the stroake when it comes for that it findeth more resistance THE THIRD QUESTION Why at a wedding or bride-supper men use to invite more guests than at other times AT the wedding of my sonne Autobulus ô Sossius Senecio one who came frō Chaeronea was with us to solemnize the feast a great nūber there were besides of other honorable personages which gave unto him occasion for to demand this question What the cause might be that ordinarily we invite more guests to such a marriage supper than to any other feast considering that even those law-givers who impugned most the superfluitie and riot of feasts have precisely expresly set downe the number of those persons whom they would have to be bidden guests to a wedding For of the ancient philosophers quoth he the man that treated of this argument and the cause thereof to wit Hecataeus of Abdera hath written nothing in my judgement worth ought not to the purpose for thus he saith That they who marry wives bid many persons to their wedding to the end that many may take knowledge and beare witnesse that being free borne and of free condition they take wives likewise of like free birth and condition For the comicall poets cleane contrary mocke and laugh at those who make proud and sumptuous feasts at their marriage setting out the same with great pompe and magnificence as if that were no sure bond nor linke to be trusted unto wherewith they would seeme to knit wedlocke like as Menander said to one who willed the bridegrome to make a strong rempar all about of pots pannes and platters When that is done on every side What is all this to your new bride But lest we might not seeme to finde fault with others at our pleasure for that we have nothing of our owne to say which is the easiest matter in the world I shewed first and formost that there was no occasion of feasting so publike nor so much divulged and celebrated as marriage for say that we sacrifice unto the gods or feast a friend for his farewell when he is to goe a long voiage or enterteine a traveller and stranger that passeth by our house or commeth of purpose to visit us we may do all without the privitie of kinsefolke friends but a nuptiall feast where the wedding-song and caroll of 〈◊〉 is chanted aloud where the torches are to be seene lightburning where the hautboies and pipes play merrily and resound where as Homer saith the very women and maidens stand woondering at their doores to see and heare is notoriously knowen and proclaimed to the whole world in regard whereof because there is none ignorant of these espousals and festivall solemnities men being ashamed to leave out any invite generally all their kinsefolke familiar friends and acquaintance as whom in some sort it doth concerne and who have an interest in the thing When we all had approoved this Theon taking in hand the question Surely all this quoth he may goe for currant for it carrieth great probabilitie therewith but you may adde moreover if you please thus much That these marriage feasts are not onely for friends but also for kinsefolke and allies for that a whole kindred race and generation come to have another new alliance to be incorporated into them and that which more is when two houses in this wise be joined together both he who receiveth the woman thinketh that hee ought to enterteine and feast the kindred and friends of him that giveth her and he who giveth her likewise taketh himselfe bound to doe as much reciprocally by the knisefolke and friends of the receiver whereby the feast and number of them who are bidden groweth double Now forasmuch as many marriage complements and to say a trueth the most part in maner all are performed at weddings by women surely where the goodwives be great reason there is that of necessitie their husbands also should be welcome for their sakes and so thereby the companie still doth increase THE FOURTH QUESTION Whether the viands which the sea affoordeth be more delicate than those of the land GAlepsus a town in Euboea where there be baths naturally of hot waters is a proper seat and place fitted by nature for sundry honest pleasures beautified with many faire houses and lodgings in such sort as it is reputed the publike hostelrie of all Greece and albeit there be great game there of hunting and hawking and woonderfull plentie aswell of fowle as other venison yet is the market no lesse served from the sea nor their tables lesse furnished 〈◊〉 daintie fish for that indeed along the coast the sea is very deepe and the water faire nourishing an infinit number of excellent fishes This towne flourisheth more in the mids of Spring than at any other season of the yeere for much concourse
this day Iolaus because they take him to have beene Hercules his derling in so much as upon his tombe the manner is of lovers to take a corporall oth and assurance of reciprocall Love Moreover it is reported of Apollo that being skilfull in Physicke he saved the life of Alcestis being desperatly sicke for to gratifie Admetus who as he loved her intirely being his wife so he was as tenderly beloved of him For the Poets doe fable that Apollo being inamoured for pure Love Did serve Admetus one whole yeere As one that his hir'd servant were And here it falleth out in some sort well that we have made mention of Alcestis for albeit women have ordinarily much dealing with Mars yet the ravishment and furious fits of Love driveth them otherwhiles to enterprise somewhat against their owne nature even to voluntarie death and if the 〈◊〉 fables are of any credit and may goe currant for trueth it is evident by such reports as goe of Alcestis of Protesilaus and Euridice the wife of Orpheus that Pluto obeieth no other god but onely Love nor doth what they command And verily howsoever in regard of all other gods as Sophocles saith He cannot skill of equity of favour and of grace But onely with him Iustice straight and rigour taketh place Yet he hath good respect and reverence to lovers and to them alone he is not implacable nor inflixible And therefore a good thing it is my friend I confesse to be received into the religious confraternity of the Eleusinian mysteries but I see that the votaries professed in Love are in the other world in better condition accepted with Pluto And this I say as one who neither am too forward in beleeving such fables of Poets nor yet so backward as to distrust and discredit them all for I assure you they speake well and by a certaine divine fortune and good hap they hit upon the trueth saying as they do that 〈◊〉 but lovers returne from hell unto this light againe but what way and how they wot not as wandring indeed and missing of the right path which plato of all men first by the meanes of philosophy found out and knew And yet among the Aegyptians fables there be certaine small slender and obscure shadowes of the truth dispersed here an there Howbeit they had need of an expert and well experienced hunter who by small tracts knoweth how to trace and finde out great matters And therefore let us passe them over And now that I have discoursed of the force and puissance of Love being so great as it appeareth I come now to examine and consider the bountie and liberality thereof to mankinde not whether it conferre many benefits upon them who are acquainted with it and make use thereof for notable they be and well knowen to all men but whether it bringeth more and greater commodity to those that are studious of it and be amorous For Euripides howsoever he were a great favourit of Love yet so it is that he promised and admired that in it which of all others is least namely when he said Love teacheth Musicke marke when you will Though one before thereof had no skill For he might as well have said that it maketh a man prudent and witty who before was dull and foolish yea valiant as hath 〈◊〉 said who before was a coward like as they that by putting into fire burning peeces of wood make them firme and straight where as they were before weake and tender Semblably every amorous person becommeth liberall and magnificent although he had beene aforetime a pinching snudge For this base avarice and micherie waxeth soft and melteth by love like as iron in the fire in such sort as men take more pleasure to give away and bestow upon those whom they love than they doe to take and receive of others For yee all know well how Anytus the sonne of Anthenion was inamoured upon Alcebiades and when he had invited certaine friends and guests of his unto a sumptuous and stately feast in his house Alcibiades came thither in a maske to make pastime and after he had taken with him one halfe of the silver cups that stood upon the boord before them went his waies which when the guests tooke not well but said that the youth had behaved himselfe vere proudly and malipertly toward him Not so quoth Anytus for he hath dealt very courteously with me in that when he might have gone away withall he left thus much behinde for me Zeuxippus taking ioy hereat O Hercules quoth he you want but a little of ridding quite out of my heart that hereditary hatred derived and received from our ancestors which I have taken against Anytus in the behalfe of Socrates and Philosophie in case he were so kinde and courteous in his love Be it so quoth my father but let us proceed Love is of this nature that it maketh men otherwise melancholicke austere and hard to be pleased or conversed withall to become more sociable gentle and pleasant for as ye know well enough More stately is that house in sight Wherein the fire burnes cleere and bright and even so a man is more lightsome and jocund when he is well warmed with the heat of love But the vulgar sort of men are in this point somewhat perversly affected and beside all reason for if they see a flashing celestiall light in an house by night they take it to be some divine apparition and woonder thereat but when they see a base vile abject mind suddenly replenished with courage libertie magnificence desire of honour with grace favour and liberality they are not forced to say as Telemachus did in Homer Certes some god I know full well Is now within and here doth dwell And is not this also quoth Daphnaeus tell me I pray you for the love of all the Graces an effect of some divine cause that a lover who regardeth not but despiseth in a maner all other things I say not his familiar friends onely his fellowes and domesticall acquaintance but the lawes also and magistrates kings and princes who is afraid of nothing admireth esteemeth and observeth nothing and is besides so hardy as to present himselfe before the flashing shot of piercing lightning so soone as ever he espieth his faire love Like to some cocke of cravain 〈◊〉 le ts fall Or hangs the wing and daunted is withall He droups I say his courage is cooled his heart is done and all his animositie quailed quite And heere it were not impertinent to the purpose to make mention of Sappho among the Muses The Romans write in their history that Cacus the sonne of Vulcane breathed and flashed flames of fire from his mouth And in trueth the words that Sappho uttereth be mixed with fire and by her verses testifieth the ardent and flaming heat of her heart Seeking for love some cure and remedy By pleasant sound of Muses melodie as Philoxenus writeth But Daphnaeus unlesse peradventure the
a proper worke also in them whereby a man may discerne whether they be wise or foolish For Dolon promiseth in this maner The campe of Greeks Ienter will and passe on still outright Vntill to Agamemnons ship I come there for to fight Contrariwise Diomedes promiseth nothing of himselfe onely this he saith That he should feare the lesse if he were sent with some other to beare him companie Whereby you may see that Prudence Discretion and Forecast be civile vertues beseeming the Greeks but audacious rashnes is naught and fit for Barbarians The one therefore we must embrace and imitate the other reject and cast behinde us Moreover it were a speculation not unprofitable to marke the affections that befell unto the Trojans and to Hector at what time as he was ready to enter into combat and single fight with Ajax Aeschylus being upon a time in place to behold the combats at the Isthmian games it fell out so that one of the champions was hurt and wounded in the very face whereupon the people that looked on set up a great crie and shouted aloud See quoth he what use and exercise is the Beholders crie out but the man himselfe that is hurt saith never a word In like maner when Homer the Poet saith that Ajax was no sooner seene in his bright compleat harnish and armed at all pieces but the Greekes rejoiced whereas The Trojans all for feare did quake and tremble every joint Hector himselfe did feele his heart to beate even at this point who would not woonder to see this difference Thepartie himselfe who was in danger felt his hart onely to leape as if he had beene I assure you to wrestle for the best game or to run a race for the prize but they that saw him trembled and shaked all their bodie over for feare of the perill wherein their prince was and for kind affection that they bare unto him It is woorth the noting also what ods and difference there is betweene the most resolnte or valiant Captaine and the greatest coward For it is said of Ther sites that Achilles of all that were in the Host And also Vlysses he hated most whereas Ajax as he alwaies loved Achilles so he giveth an honorable testimonie thereof when he speaketh unto Hector in this wise In single fight with me alone what woorthy knight we haue In Grecian host thou maist not see besides Achilles brave Achilles he the Paragon of Prowesse whom we count Whose Lions hart undaunted yet all other doth surmount This is a singular commendation of Achilles particularly but that which followeth afterwards is aptly spoken to the praise of all in generall Wot well that many of us there be in Campe that dare and can Make head and maint aine fight with thee in combat man to man Marke how he praiseth not himselfe to be the man alone or the most valourous of all other but is content to be raunged with many more as sufficient men to make their part good against him Thus much may serve as touching the diversitie of persons unlesse we will adde this moreover That of Trojans we read there were many taken prisoners alive by their enimies but of the Greeks not one as also that divers of them became humble suppliants to their enimies and fell downe at their feete namely Adrastus the sonnes of Antimachus and Lycaon yea and Hector himselfe besought Achtlles to vouchsafe him buriall whereas there was not one of them that did the like As if thus much were implied thereby that it is the maner of Barbarians in fight to make supplication to submit to kneele and lie prostrate before the enimie but of Grecians either to win the victorie by maine fight or to die for it Moreover like as in pasturage and feeding the Bee setleth upon flowres the goate seartheth after greene leaves and brouseth yoong buds the Swine searcheth for roots and other beasts for the seed fruit Even so in reading Poems one gathereth the flowre of the History another cleaveth to the elegancie of phrase and furniture of words as Aristophanes was wont to say of Euripides His toong so round doth please my mind In stile so smooth content I finde Others there be who affect morall sentences aptly fitted to the reformation of maners Those therefore with whom now we have to deale and to whom we direct our speech we are to admonish that it were a shame and unwoorthy thing if either he who setteth his minde upon fables should marke well the witty narrations and singular fine inventions therein or he that delighteth in eloquence should note diligently the pure and elegant phrase the artificiall rhetorick also as he readeth whiles he that would seeme to affect honor to studie honestie and to take Poets in hand not for delight pleasure and pastime but for the insight of learning and for the treasure of knowledge readeth and heareth carelessely and without fruits those sentences which are penned and delivered by them to the recommendation of fortitude temperance and justice For as concerning valor and vertue you shall finde these verses What is befall'n sir Diomede that we forget to fight How is it that our harts be done where is our Martiall might Come neere stand close unto my side great shame it were for us If Hector now should boord our ships and force our navie thus For to see a most wise and prudent capitaine who was in daunger to perish and to be overthrowen together with the whole armie not to be affraid of death but to feare reproch and shamefull disgrace the same no doubt will cause a yoong man to be woonderfully affectionate to vertue and prowesse For wisedome and justice these verses serve Minerva then tooke great delight To see the man wise and upright Such a sentence as this will give occasion to a yoong scholler thus to reason and discourse The Poët here hath devised that the goddesse joyed not in a rich man in one that was faire well favoured and personable or mighty in bodily strength but in him that was prudent and just withall And in another place where the same goddesse saith that she will not neglect nor forsake Vlisses and leave him destitute For toong he hath and 〈◊〉 at will He is both wise and full of skill The Poët sheweth plainely That there is nothing in us but vertue onely that is divine and beloved of the gods if this be true that Like will to like and Naturally everie thing delighteth in the Semblable Now forasmuch as it seemeth to be a great matter and rare perfections as in truth it is no lesse to be able to master and bridle anger certes a greater vertue it is and a gift more singular to prevent and wisely to forecast that we fall not into choler nor suffer our selves to be surprised therewith And therefore the readers of Poëts ought to be advertised in these points not coldly but in good earnest as namely how Achilles a man by
so faire and smooth And in another Sir Hector in the prime of age With lovely lookes and faire visage For by these termes and epithits he sheweth covertly that a man deserveth blame and reproch who is endued with no better grace and gift than beautie we may well and fitly apply this reprehension to such like things namely to plucke downe their peacocks plumes who vaunt and glorifie themselves for matters of no moment and value teaching yoong men thereby that such praises as these be no better than contumelies and reproches As for example when a man is saluted in this manner O most excellent for riches for keeping a bountifull table for many servitours right excellent for singulat good teames of draught oxen caples and mules for stables of steeds and greathorses yea or thus moreover to the rest O surpassing orator and of woonderfull eloquence for to speake a truth a man is to aime at excellencie and preferrence before others in good and honest things that in the chiefe and principall he may be the highest and formost as also in great matters the greatest for the reputation that groweth from smal and base things is dishonorable illiberall vile of no worth And verily this example last alleaged putteth us straightwaies in minde to consider better the reprehensions and praises which offer themselves especially in the Poemes of Homer For certes they give us expresly to understand one notable instruction to wit Not highly to esteeme the gifts either of body or of fortune For first and formest in those titles which they give one to another in reciprocall greetings when they meet and shake hands the maner is not to salute by the name of Beautifull Rich or Strong but they use such commendations as these Vlysses ô most noble knight from Iupiter first descended Laertes sonne for wisedome and much wit yet most commended Also O Hector sonne of Priamus king Equall to Iove in wisedome and cunning Likewise Achilles ô of Peleus the most redoubted sonne Chiefe glory of the worthy Greekes their light and shining sunne And againe Patroclus ô sonne of Menaetius Most lovely in my hart and gracious Semblably when they are disposed to revile and taunt they twit not one another with any defects and imperfections of the bodie but touch them expresly with the vices of the mind after this maner Thou drunken sot as shamelesse as the dogs that use to barke Thou coward base as hartlesse as the stags that run in parke And thus Thou wrangling Ajax of Barrotters chiefe Divising nought but evill and mischiefe Semblably Idomeneus in frappling prompt What meen'st thou thus to prate This babling little thee becomes such clattering men do hate As also O Ajax fie for shame how farre out of theway Speake you so bold and malapart you brag too much I say To conclude Vlysses revileth not Thersites with these termes Thou halting and lame squire thou bald pate thou coptank thou that art camell backt or crump shouldred but rather reprocheth him with his vaine babling and undiscreet language But rather on the contrarie side the mother of Vulcane when she speaketh unto her sonne lovingly and in great kindnesse of hart beginneth first with his lamenesse in this maner Come hither my sonne come to me come sweet hart My poore 〈◊〉 creeple come crokelegd as thou art By this it may appeare plainly that Homer devideth those who thinke it a shame to be halt blind or otherwise impotent He is of opinion that nothing is blame worthy which is not dishonest nor any thing dishonest and shamefull which came not by our owne selves but proceeded from fortune And therefore these two great and singular commodities they are sure to finde who be exercised in reading and hearing of Poets the one tending to moderation and modestie in that they learne to reproch no man odiously bitterly and foolishly with his fortune the other unto magnanimitie for that they be taught themselves to make use of their owne fortune not to be cast downe and troubled for any adverse calamitie that may happen but meekly and patiently to abide the frumpes scoffes reprochfull termes that are given them yea and the laughters that arise thereupon And verily evermore this sentence of Philemon ought to be ready at hand and resound in their eares Nothing there is more pleasant and musicall Then him to abide who doth thee mis-call Howbeit if any of these mockers deserve to be rebuked and taunted againe vantage would be taken of the vices and imperfections of their minde and those are to be objected against them for so Adrastus in a tragedie when Alcmaeon provoked with these words Alc. A sister thou hast I tell thee true who in husbands bloud her hands did embrue Adr. But thou thyselfe I must tell plaine thy mother that bare thee hast cruelly slaine For like as they who whip and scourge garments touch not the bodie at all even so they that upbraid a man with infortunitie or reproch him for some default or blemish in his parentage doe like vaine fooles beat those things that are without but never come neere the quicke nor touch the soule ne yet any thing which truly deserveth correction blame or biting Over and beside as wee shewed and taught before how to impeach and derogate the credite of those leaud sentences and dangerous speeches which otherwhiles wee meet with in Poeticall books namely by opposing against the same the good and grave sawes of worthy persons renowmed as well for their learning as politicke government even so if we finde any civill honest and profitable matter in Poetrie we ought as it were to nourish confirme and strengthen the same by demonstrations and testimonies Philosophicall and evermore to remember that we ascribe the first invention of such sentences to sage Philosophers For a just requisite and commodious thing it is that their credite should be in that maner fortified and authorized namely when the Poems which are pronounced upon the Stage in a Theatre or sung to the harp or taught unto children in schooles do accord with the sententious counsels of Pythagoras the instructions of Plato and the precepts of Chilon when I say the rules of Bias shall tend to the same end and effect as do those lessons that children are to read and learne And therefore we are to teach and instruct them thus much not slightly and by the way but earnestly and of purpose that these places of Poets Faire daughter mine thou wert not borne To manage wars and armes to dred Minde thou love sports and thinke no scorne To joine yoong folke in marriage bed Likewise For Iupiter displeased is with thee If that in fight thou unmatched bee nothing at all differ from this notable sentence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. Know thy selfe but carie the verie same sense and meaning Also these verses Like fooles they do not know iwis That halfe than whole much better is Likewise Evill counsels hurt no man so much As him
and whose displeasure he incur as who for no good in the world would he hired to hold his 〈◊〉 nor willingly forbeare to speake plainly the truth who with his good will would never speake or do any thing to sooth up and please another Then will he make semblance as though he neither saw nor tooke knowledge of any great and grosse sinnes indeed but if peradventure there be some light and small outward faults he will make foule a doo thereat he will keepe a woondring and crying out upon them then shall you have him in good earnest exclaime and reproove the delinquent with a loud and sounding voice As for example if hee chance to espie the implements or any thing else about the house lie out of order if a man be not well and neately lodged if his beard be not of the rightcut or his haire grow out of fashion if a garment sit not handsomly about him or if a horse or hound be not so carefully tended as they should be But say that a man set nought by his parents neglect his owne children misuse his wife disdaine and despise his kinred spend and consume his goods none of all these enormities touch and moove him Heere he is mute and hath not a word to say he dared not reprove these abuses much like as if a Master of the wrestling schoole who suffreth a wrestler that is under his hand to be a drunkard and a whooremonger should chide and rebuke him sharpely about an oile cruse or curry-combe or as if a Grammarian should finde fault with his scholar and chide him for his writing tables or his pen letting him goe away cleere with solaecismes incongruities and barbarismes as if he heard them not Also I can liken flatterer to him who will not blame an ill authour or ridiculous Rhetorician in any thing as touching his oration it selfe but rather reprooveth him for his utterance and sharpely taketh him up for that by drinking of cold water he hath hurt his winde-pipe and so marred his voice or to one who being bidden to reade over and peruse a poore seely Epigram or other writing that is nothing woorth taketh on and fareth against the paper wherein it is written for being thicke course or rugged or against the writer for negligent slovenly or impure otherwise Thus the claw-backs and flatterers about king Ptolomaeus who would seeme to love good letters and to be desirous of learning used ordinarily to draw out their disputations and conferences at length even to midnight debating about some glosse or signification of a word about a verse or touching some historie but all the while there was not one among so many of them that would tell him of his crueltie of his wrongs and oppressions ne yet of his 〈◊〉 tabouring and other enormious indignities under the colour of religion and seeke to reforme him Certes a foolish fellow were he who comming to a man diseased with tumors swellings impostumes or hollow ulcers called Fistulaes should with a Chirurgians launcet or Barbers rasor fall to cut his haires or pare his nailes even so it fareth with these flatterers who applie their libertie of speech to such things as neither are in paine nor yet do any hurt Moreover some others there bee of them who being more cunning and craftie then their fellowes and use this plainnesse of language and reprehension of theirs for to please and make sport withall Thus Agis the Argive seeing how Alexander the great gave very great rewards and gifts to a certaine pleasant and odde fellow that was a jester cried out for verie envie and dolour of heart O great abuse and monstrous absurditie The King hearing it turned about unto him in great displeasure and indignation demaunding of him what he had to say I confesse quoth he indeed that I am grieved and I thinke it a great indignitie when I see all you that are descended from Iupiter and his sonnes to take pleasure in flatterers and jesters about you for to make you merrie For even so Hercules tooke a delight to have in his company certeine ridiculous Cecropes and Bacchus had ever in his traine the Silenes In your court likewise a man may see such to be in credite and highly esteemed When Tiberius Caesar the Emperor upon a certeine day was come into the Senate house of Rome one of the Senators who knew how to flatter arose and stood up and with a good loud voice Meete it is quoth he ô Caesar that men free borne should likewise have the libertie of speech and speake their minds frankly without dissimuling or concealing any thing which they know to be good and profitable with this speech of his he stirred up the attention of the whole house so as they gaue good eare unto him and Tyberius himselfe listened what he would say Now when all was still and in great silence Hearken quoth he ô Caesar what it is that we all accuse and blame you for but no man dare be so bolde as to speake it out You neglect your selfe and have no regard of your owne person you consume and spoile your body with continuall cares and travels for our sake taking no rest nor repose either day or night Now when he had drawen out a long traine of words to this purpose Cassius Severus a Rhetorician stood up and by report said thus Such libertie of speech as this will be the utter undoing of this man But these flatteries are of the lighter sort and doe lesse hurt there be other more dangerous which worke the mischiefe and corruption of those who are not wise and take no heed unto them namely when flatterers set in hand to reproove them whom they flatter for the contrary vices to those that be in them Thus Himerius the flatterer reproched a certaine rich man of Athens the veriest pinching miser and the most covetous withall that was in the whole city with the imputations of prodigality and negligence about his owne profit and gaine charging him that one day he would smart for it and both he and his children be hunger-sterved for want wherwith to susteine themselves if he looked no better to his thrift or when they object miserable niggardise and beggerie unto those that are knowen to be prodigall spenders and consume all After which maner Titus Petronius reprooved Nero. Againe if they come to princes and great lords who deale cruelly and hardly with their subjects and tenants saying unto them That they must lay away this overmuch lenity and foolish pitty of theirs which neither is seemely for their persons nor yet profitable for their state And very like to these is he who maketh semblance to him who is a very senselesse for and foolish foole that he stands in great feare and doubt of him lest hee should be circumvented by him as if he were some cautelous crafty and cunning person He also that doth rebuke another who is an ordinary slanderer who taketh pleasure upon spight
he had in flouting and reviling others and even the verie comicall Poëts in old time exhibited and represented to the Theaters many grave austere and serious remonstrances and those pertaining to policy goverment of State but there be scurrile speeches intermingled among for to moove laughter which as one unsavorie dish of meate among many other good viands marre all their libertie of speech and the benefit thereof so as it is vaine and doth no good at all And even so the Authors and Actors of such broad jests get nothing thereby but an opinion and imputation of a malicious disposition and impure scurrilitie and to the hearers there accreweth no good nor profit at all At other times and in other places I hold well with it and grant that to jest with friends and moove laughter is tolerable enough but surely the libertie of speech then ought to be serious and modest shewing a good intention without any purpose to gall or sting And if it do concerne weightie affaires indeed let the words be so set and couched the affection so appeere the countenance be so composed and the gesture so ordred and the voice so tuned that all concurring together may win credite to the speech and be effectuall to moove But as in all things els fit opportunity overslipt and neglected doth much hurt so especially it is the occasion that the fruit of free speech is utterly lost in case it be omitted and forgotten Moreover this is evident that we must take heed how we speake broad at a table where friends be met together to drinke wine liberally and to make good cheere for he that amid pleasant discourses and mery talke mooveth a speech that causeth bending and knitting of browes or others maketh men to frowne and be frowning he doth as much as overcast faire weather with a blacke and darke cloud opposing himselfe unto that God Lyaeus who by good right hath that name as Pindarus the Poet saith For that the cord he doth untie Of cares that breed anxietie Besides this neglect of opportunitie bringeth with it great danger for that our minds and spirits kindled once with wine are easie enflamed with cholar yea and oftentimes it falleth out that a man after he hath taken his drinke well when he thinketh but to use his freedome of tongue for to give some wholesome advertisement and admonition ministreth occasion of great enmitie And to say all in few words it is not the part of a generous confident and resolute heart but rather of a craven kind and unmanly to forbeare plaine speech when men are sober and to keepe a barking at the boord like unto those cowardly cur dogs who never snarle but about a bone under the table And now of this point needlesse it is to discourse any longer But forasmuch as many men neither will nor dare controll and reforme their friends when they do amisse so long as they be in prosperitie as being of opinion that such admonition can not have accesse nor reach into a fortunate state that standeth upright and yet the same persous when men are falling are ready to lay them along and being once downe to make a foot-ball of them or tread them under feet or else keepe them so when they be once under the hatches giving their libertie of speech full scope to run over them all at once as a brooke-water which having beene kept up perforce against the nature and course thereof is now let go and the floud-gates drawen up rejoicing at his change and infortunitie of theirs in regard as well of their pride and arrogancie who before disdained and despised them as also of themselves who are but in meane and lowestate it were not impertinent to this place for to discourse a little of this matter and to answere that verse of Euripides When fortune doth upon men smile What need have they of friends the while Namely that even then when as they seeme to have fortune at commaund they stand in most necessitie and ought to have their friends about them to plucke downe their plumes and bring under their haughtinesse of heart occasioned by prosperitie for few there be who with their outward felicitie continue wise and sober in mind breaking not foorth into insolence yea many there are who have need of wit discretion and reason to be put into them from without to abate and depresse them being set a gog and puffed up with the favors of fortune But say that the Divine power do change and turne about and overthrow their state or clip their wings and diminish their greatnesse and authoritie then these calamities of themselves are scourges sufficient putting them in minde of their errors and working repentance and then in such distresse there is no use at all either of friendsto speake unto them frankly or of pinching and biting speeches to molest and trouble them but to say a truth in these mutations It greatly doth content our minds To see the face of pleasant friends who may yeeld consolation comfort and strength to a distressed heart like as Xenophon doth write that in battailes and the greatest extremities of danger the amiable visage and cheerefull countenance of Clearchus being once seene of the souldiors encouraged them much more to play the men and fight lustily whereas he that useth unto a man distressed such plaine speech as may gall and bite him more doth as much as one who unto a troubled and inflamed eie applieth some quicke eie-salve or sharpe drug that is proper for to cleere the sight by which meane he cureth not the infirmitie before said neither doth he mitigate or alay the paine but unto sorrow and griefe of minde already addeth anger moreover and doth exasperate a wounded heart And verily so long as a man is in the latitude of health he is not so testie froward and impatient but that he will in some sort give eare unto his friend and thinke him neither rough nor altogether rude and uncivill in case he tell him of his loosenesse of life how he is given too much either unto women or wine or if he finde fault with his idlenesse and sitting still or contrariwise his excessive exercise if he reproove him for haunting so often the baines or hot-houses and never lying out of them or blame him for gourmandise and belly cheere or eating at undue houres But if he be once sicke then it is a death unto him and a griefe insupportable which doth aggravate his maladie to have one at his bedside sounding ever in his eares See what comes of your drunkennesse your idlenesse your surfetting and gluttony your wenching and leacherie these are the causes of your disease But what will the sicke man say againe Away good sir with these unseasonable words of yours you trouble me much and do me no good iwis I am about making my last will and testament my Physicians are busie preparing and tempering a potion of Scammonie or a drinke
serve to heare out the tale But bids say on and tell us more And close he holds his eare therefore So that this sentence How sooner much are ill newes understood And heard by men alas than tidings good is well and truely verified of these curious Polypragmons For like as cupping glasses boxes and ventoses draw the woorst matter out of the flesh even so the eares of curious and busie folke are willing to receive and admit the most lewd and haughtiest speeches that are or rather to speake more properly as townes and cities have certaine cursed and unluckie gates at which they send out malefactors to execution carrie and throw foorth their dung ordure filthines and cleansings whatsoever but never commeth in or goeth out that way any thing that pure is and holy semblably the eares of these curious intermedlers be of the same nature for there entreth and passeth into them nothing that is honest civill and lovely but the bruit and rumours of cruell murders have accesse unto them and there make aboad bringing there with wicked abominable profane and cursed reports and as one said The onely bird that in my house doth ever sing Both night and day is dolefull moane much sorrow and wailing So this is the Muse Syrene Mere-maid alone that Busie folke have neither is there any thing that they hearken to more willingly for Curiositie is an itching desire to heare secrets and hidden matters and well you wot that no man will lightly conceale any good thing that he hath considering that manie times we make semblance of good parts that be not in us And therefore the busie intermedler who is so desirous to know and heare of evils is subject to that which the Greekes call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a vice coosen germaine or sister rather to envie and eie-biting Forasmuch as envie is nothing else but the griefe for another mans good and the foresaide 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the joy for his harme and verily both these infirmities proceed from an untoward roote even another untamed vice and savage disposition to wit malignitie or malice And this we know well that so irkesome and odious it is to everie man for to bewray and reveale the secrets evils and vices which he hath that many men have chosen to die rather than to discover and open unto Physicians any of their hidden maladies which they carrie about them Now suppose that Heraclitus or Erosistratus the physicians nay AEsculapius himselfe whiles he was a mortall men should come to an house furnished with drugs medicines and instruments requisite for the cure of diseases and aske whether any man their had a Fistula in Ano that is an hollow and hidden ulcer within his fundament Or if she be a woman whether she have a cankerous sore within her matrice albeit in this art such inquisitive curiositie is a speciall meanes making for the good and the health of the sicke each one I suppose would be readie to hunt and chase away from the house such a Physician who unsent for and before any neede required came upon his owne accord and motion in a braverie to enquire and learne other folks maladies What shall we say then to these busie medlers who enquire of another the selfe same infirmities and worse too Not of any minde at all to cure and heale the same but onely to detect and set them abroad In which respect they are by good right the most odious persons in the world For we hardly can abide Publicanes Customers and Tol-gatherers but are mightily offended with them not when they exact of us and cause us to pay toll for any commodities or wares that are openly brought in but when they keepe a firetting and searching for such things as be hidden and meddle with the wares and carriages of other men notwithstanding that law granteth and publike authoritie alloweth them so to do yea and if they doe it not they sustaine losse and dammage themselves But contrariwise these curious fellowes let their owne businesse alone and passe not which ende go forward caring not to hinder themselves whiles they be intentive to the affaires of other men Seldome go they into the countrie for that they cannot endure the quietnes and still silence of the wilde and solitarie fields But if haply after long time they make a cast thither they cast an eie to their neighbours vines rather than to their owne they enquire how many beeves or oxen of his died or what quantity of wine sowred under his hand and no sooner are they full of these newes but into the citie they trudge and make haste againe As for the good farmer and painefull husbandman indeed he is not verie willing to give eare unto those newes which without his hearkning after come from the citie of the owne accord and are brought unto him for his saying is My ditcher will anon both tell and talke upon what points concluded was the peace For now the knave about such newes doth walke And busie he to listen doth not cease But in trueth these busie-bodies avoiding countrey life and husbandrie as a vaine trade and foolish occupation a cold maner of living which bringeth forth no great and tragicall matter intrude and thrust themselves into the high courts of Justice the tribunal seats the market place and publike pulpits where speeches be made unto the people great assemblies and the most frequented quarter of the haven where the ships ride at ankor what No newes saith one of them How now Were you not this morning at the market or in the common place What then How thinke you is not the citie mightily changed and transformed within these three houres Now if it chaunce that some one or other make a overture and have something to say as touching those points downe he alights on foot from his horse he embraceth the man kisseth him and there stands attending and giving care unto him But say that the partie whom he thus encountreth and meeteth upon the way tell him that he hath no newes to report what saist thou will he infer againe and that in displeasure and discontentment Wert not thou in the market place of late Didst not thou passe by the Princes court Hadst thou no talke or conference at all with those that came out of Italie In regard of such therefore as these I hold well with the Magistrates of the citie Locri and commend a law of theirs That if any citizen had beene abroad in the countrey and upon his returne home demaunded what newes he should have a fine set on his head For like as Cookes pray for nothing but good store of fatlings to kill for the the kitchin and Fishmongers plentie of fishes even so curious and busie people wish for a world of troubles and a number of affaires great newes alterations and changes of State to the ende that they might evermore be provided of gaine to chase and hunt after yea and to kill Well
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
dead whereas if he could have held his tongue a little while longer and mastered himselfe when the king afterwards had better fortune and recovered his greatnesse and puissance he should in my conceit have gotten more thanks at his hands and beene better rewarded for keeping silence than for all the courtesie and hospitalitie that he shewed And yet this fellow had in some sort a colourable excuse for this intemperate tongue of his to wit his owne hopes and the good will that he bare unto the king but the most part of these pratlers vndo themselves without any cause or pretense at all of reason like as it befell unto Denys the tyrants barbar for when upon a time there were some talking in his shop as touching his tyrannicall government and estate how assured it was and as hard to be ruined or overthrowen as it is to breake the Diamond the said barbar laughing thereat I marvell quoth he that you should say so of Denys who is so often under my hands and at whose throat in a maner every day I holde my rasor these words were soone carried to the tyrant Denys who faire crucified this barbar and hanged him for his foolish words And to say a trueth all the sort of these barbars be commonly busie fellowes with their tongue and no marvell for lightly the greatest praters and idlest persons in a countrey frequent the barbars shop and sit in his chaire where they keepe such chat that it can not be but by hearing them prate so customably his tongue also must walke with them And therefore king Archelaus answered very pleasantly unto a barbar of his that was a man of no few words who when he had cast his linnen cloth about his shoulders said unto him Sir may it please your Highnesse to tell me how I shall cut or shave you Mary quoth he holding thy tongue and saying not a word A barbar it was who first reported in the city of Athens the newes of that great discomsiture and overthrow which the Athenians received in Sicily for keeping his shop as he did in that end of the suburbs called Pyraeum he had no sooner heard the said unlucky newes of a certaine slave who fled from thence out of the field when it was lost but leaving shop and all at sixe and seven ran directly into the city and never rested to bring the said tidings and whiles they were fresh and fire-new For feare some els might all the honour win And he teo late or second should come in Now upon the broching of these unwelcome tidings a man may well thinke and not without good cause that there was a great stirre within the city insomuch as the people assembled together into the Market place or Common hall and search was made for the authour of this rumour hereupon the said barbar was haled and brought before the bodie of the people and examined who knew not so much as the name of the partie of whom hee heard this newes But well assured I am quoth he that one said so mary who it was or what his name might be I can not tell Thus it was taken for an headlesse tale and the whole Theatre or Assembly was so moved to anger that they cried out with one voice Away with the villaine have the varlet to the racke set the knave upon the wheele he it is onely that hath made all on his owne singers ends this hath he and none but he devised for who els hath heard it or who besides him hath beleeved it Well the wheele was brought and upon it was the barbar stretched meane while and even as the poore wretch was hoised thereupon beholde there arrived and came to the citie those who brought certaine newes in deed of the said defeature even they who made a shift to escape out of that infortunate field then brake up the assembly and every man departed and retired home to his owne house for to bewaile his owne private losse and calamity leaving the silly barbar lying along bound to the wheele and racked out to the length and there remained he untill it was very late in the evening at what time he was let loose and no sooner was he at liberty but he must needs enquire newes of the executioner namely what they heard abroad of the Generall himselfe Nicias and in what sort he was slaine So inexpugnable and incorrigible a vice is this gotten by custome of much talke that a man can not leave it though he were going to the gallowes nor keepe in those tidings which no man is willing to heare for certes like as they who have drunke bitter potions or unsavory medicines can not away with the very cups where in they were even so they that bring evill and heavie tidings are ordinarily hated and detested of those unto whom they report the same And therefore Sophocles the Poet hath verie finely distinguished upon this point in these verses MESSENGER Is it your heart or els your eare That this offends which you do heare CREON. And why do'st thou search my disease To know what griefe doth me displease MESSENGER His deeds I see offend your heart But my words cause your eares to smart Well then those who tell us any wofull newes be as odious as they who worke our wo and yet for all that there is no restreint and brideling of an untemperate tongue that is given to walke and overreach It fortuned one day at Lacedaemon that the temple of Iuno called there Chalciaecos was robbed and within it was found a certeine emptie flagon or stone bottle for wine great running there was and concourse of the people thither and men could not tell what to make of that flagon at last one of them that stood by My masters quoth he if you will give me leave I shall tell you what my conceit is of that flagon for my minde gives me saith he that these church-robbers who projected to execute so perilous an enterprise had first drunke the juice of hemlocke before they entred into the action and afterwards brought wine with them in this bottle to the end that if they were not surprised nor taken in the maner they might save their lives by drinking each of them a good draught of meere wine the nature and vertue whereof as you know well enough is to quench as it were and dissolve the vigour and strength of that poison and so goe their waies safe enough but if it chance that they were taken in the deed doing then they might by meanes of that hemlocke which they had drunke die an easie death and without any great paine and torment before that they were put to torture by the magistrate He had no sooner delivered this speech but the whole companie who heard his words thought verily that such a contrived devise and so deepe a reach as this never came from one that suspected such a matter but rather knew that it was so indeed whereupon they
if we have in admiration good and vertuous men not onely in their prosperitie but also like as amorous folke are well enough pleased with the lisping or stammering tongue yea and do like the pale colour of these whom for the flower of their youth and beautie they love and thinke it beseemeth them as we reade of Ladie Panthea who by her teares and sad silence all heavie afflicted and blubbered as she was for the dolor and sorrow that she tooke for the death of her husband seized Araspes so as hee was enamoured upon her in their adversitie so as we neither start backe for feare nor dread the banishment of Aristides the imprisonment of Anaxagoras the povertie of Socrates or the condemnation of Phocion but repute their vertue desireable lovely and amiable even with all these calamities and runne directly toward her for to kisse and embrace her by our imitation having alwaies in our mouth at everie one of these crosse accidents this notable speech of Euripides Oh how each thing doth well become Such generous hearts both all and some For we are never to feare or doubt that any good or honest thing shall ever be able to avert from vertue this heavenly inspiration and divine instinct of affection which not onely is not grieved and troubled at those things which seeme unto men most full of miserie and calamitie but also admireth desireth to imitate thē Hereupon also it followeth by good consequence that they who have once received so deepe an impression in their hearts take this course with themselves That when they begin any enterprise or enter into the admininstration of government or when any sinister accident is presented unto thē they set before their eies the examples of those who either presentlyl are or hereto fore have bene worthy persons discoursing in this maner What is it that Plato would have done in this cafe what would have Epaminondas said to this how would Lycurgus or Agesilaus have behaved themselves herein After this sort I say will they labour to frame compose reforme and adorne their manners as it were before a mirrour or looking-glasse to wit in correcting any unseemly speech that they have let fall or repressing any passion that hath risen in them They that have learned the names of the demi-gods called Idaei Dactyly know how to use them as counter-charmes or preservatives against sudden frights pronouncing the same one after another readily and ceremoniously but the remembrance and thinking upon great and worthy men represented suddenly unto those who are in the way of perfection and taking holde of them in all passions and perplexions which shall encounter them holdeth them up and keepeth them upright that they can not fall and therefore this also may go for one argument and token of proceeding in vertue Over and besides not to be so much troubled with any occurrent nor to blush exceedingly for shame as before-time nor to seeke to hide or otherwise to alter our countenance or any thing els about us upon the sudden comming in place of a great or sage personage unexpected but to persist resolute to go directly toward him with bare and open face are tokens that a man feeleth his conscience setled and assured Thus Alexander the great seeing a messenger running toward him apace with a pleasant and smiling countenance and stretching foorth his hand afarre off to him How now good fellow quoth hee what good newes canst thou bring me more unlesse it be tidings that Homer is risen againe esteeming in trueth that his woorthy acts and noble deedes already atchieved wanted nothing els nor could be made greater than they were but onely by being consecrated unto immortalitie by the writings of some noble spirit even so a yoong man that groweth better and better every day and hath reformed his maners loving nothing more than to make himselfe knowen what he is unto men of worth and honour to shew unto them his whole house and the order thereof his table his wife and children his studies and intents to acquaint them with his sayings and writings insomuch as other-whiles he is grieved in his heart to thinke and remember either that his father naturall that begat him or his master that taught him are departed out of this life for that they be not alive to see in what good estate he is in and to joy thereat neither would he wish or pray to the gods for any thing so much as that they might revive and come againe above ground for to be spectators and eie-witnesses of his life and all his actions Contrariwise those that have neglected themselves and not endevoured to do wel but are corrupt in their maners can not without feare and trembling abide to see those that belong unto them no nor so much as to dreame of them Adde moreover if you please unto that which hath beene already said thus much also for a good token of progresse in vertue When a man thinketh no sinne or trespasse small but is very carefull and wary to avoid and shunne them all For like as they who despaire ever to be rich make no account at all of saving a little expense for thus they thinke That the sparing of a small matter can adde no great thing unto their stocke to heape it up but contrariwise hope when a man sees that he wanteth but a little of the marke which he shooteth at causeth that the neerer he commeth thereto his covetousnesse is the more even so it is in those matters that perteine to vertue he who giveth not place much nor proceedeth to these speeches Well and what shall we have after this Be it so now It will be better againe for it another time and such like but alwaies taketh heed to himselfe in every thing and whensoever vice insinuating it selfe into the least sinne and fault that is seemeth to pretend and suggest some colourable excuses for to crave pardon is much discontented and displeased he I say giveth hereby good evidence and proofe that he hath a house within cleane and neat and that he would not endure the least impuritie and ordure in the world to defile the same For as Aeschylus saith an opinion conceived once that nothing that we have is great and to be esteemed and reckoned of causeth us to be carelesse and negligent in small matters They that make a palaisado a rampier or rough mud wall care not much to put into their worke any wood that commeth next hand neither is it greatly materiall to take thereto any rubbish or stone that they can meet with or first commeth into their eie yea and if it were a pillar fallen from a monument or sepulchre semblably doe wicked and leawd folke who gather thrumble heape up together all sorts of gaine all actions that be in their way it makes no matter what but such as profit in vertue who are alredy planted and whose golden foundation of a good life is laid as it
to be afraid much more to do ill than to receive and sustaine harme for asmuch as the one is the cause of the other And this is a civill and generous feare proper and peculiar to a good prince namely to be afraid lest his subjects should ere he be aware take wrong or be hurt any way Much like as dogs that be of gentle kinde Who watchfully about the folds attend In case they once by subtill hearing finde A savage beast approch and thit her tend feare not for themselves but in regard of the cattell which they keepe In like maner Epaminondas when the Thebanes fell dissolutely to drinke and make good cheere at a certeine festivall time himselfe went all alone to survey the armour and wals of the citie saying That he would fast and watch that all the rest might quaffe the while and sleepe with more securitie Cato likewise at Utica proclaimed by sound of trumpet to send away by sea all those who escaped alive upon the overthrow which there hapned and when he had embarqued them all and made his praiers unto the gods to vouchsafe them a bon voiage he returned into his owne lodging and killed himselfe shewing by this example what a prince or commander ought to feare and what he should contemne and despise Contrariwise Clearchus the tyrant of Pontus shutting himselfe within a chest slept there as a serpent within her hole and Aristodemus the tyrant of Argos went up into a hanging chamber aloft which had a trap dore whereupon he caused a little bed or pallet to be set and there he slept and lay with his concubine and harlot which hee kept and when he was gotten up thither the mother of the said concubine came ordinarily to take downe the ladder and brought it thither againe every morning How thinke you did this tyrant tremble for feare when he was in a frequent theater in the palace in the counsell house and court of justice or at a feast considering that he made a prison of his bed chamber To say a verie truth good princes are afraid for their subjects sake but tyrants feare their subjects and therefore as they augment their puissance so doe they encrease their owne feare for the more persons that they commaund and rule over the greater number they stand in dread of for it is neither probable nor seemely as some philosophers affirme That God is invisibly subsistent and mixed within the first and principall matter which suffreth all things receiveth a thousand constreints and adventures yea and is subject to innumerable changes and alterations but hee sitteth in regard of us above and there is resiant continually in a nature alwaies one and ever in the same estate feated upon holy foundations as Plato saith where he infuseth his power and goeth through all working and finishing that which is right according to nature and like as the sunne in heaven the most goodly and beautifull image of him is to be seene by the reflexion of a mirror by those who otherwise can not endure to behold himselfe as he is even so God ordeineth in cities and societies of men another image of his and that is the light of justice and reason accompanying the same which wise and blessed men describe and depaint out of sentences philosophicall conforming and framing themselves to that which is the fairest and most beautifull thing in the world and nothing is there that doth imprint in the soules and spirits of men such a disposition as reason drawne and learned out of philosophie to the end that the same should not befall unto us which king Alexander the great did who having seene in Corinth Diogenes how generous he was esteemed highly and admired the haughtie courage magnanimitie of the man insomuch as he brake foorth into these words Were I not Alexander surely I would be Diogenes which was al one in maner as if he should have said That he was troubled encombred with his wealth riches glory and puissance as impeachments and hinderances of vertue and bare an envious and jealous eie to the homely course cloke of the philosopher to his bagge and wallet as if by them alone Diogenes was invincible and impregnable and not as himselfe by the meanes of armes harnish horses speares and pikes for surely he might with governing himselfe by true philosophicall reason have beene of the disposition and affection of Diogenes and yet continue neverthelesse in the state and fortune of Alexander and so much the rather be Diogenes because he was Alexander as having need against great fortune like a tempest raised with boisterous winds and full of surging waves of a stronger cable and anchor of a greater helme also and a better pilot for in meane persons who are of low estate and whose puissance is small such as private men be follie is harmelesse and sottish though such be yet they doe no great hurt because their might is not answerable thereto like as it falleth out in foolish and vaine dreames there is a certeine griefe I wot not what which troubleth and disordereth the mind being not able to compasse bring about the execution of her desires lusts but where might malice are met together their power addeth folly unto passion affections most true is that speech of Denys the tyrant who was wont to say That the greatest pleasure contentment which he enjoied by his tyranny was this that whatsoever he would was quickly done presently executed according to that verse in Homer No sooner out of mouth the word was gone But presently withall the thing was done A dangerous matter it is for a man to will and desire that which he ought not being not able to performe that which hee willeth and desireth whereas malicious mischiefe making a swife course through the race of puissance and might driveth and thrusteth forward every violent passion to the extremitie making choler and anger to turne to murder love to proove adultery and avarice to growe into confiscation of goods for no sooner is the word spoken but the partie once in suspition is undone for ever and presently upon the least surmise and imputation ensueth death But as the naturall philosophers do hold that the lightning is shot out of the cloud after the clap of thunder like as bloud issueth after the wound is given and incision made and yet the said lightning is seene before for that the eare receiveth the sound or cracke by degrees whereas the eie meeteth at once with the flash even so in these great rulers and commanders punishments oftentimes go before accusations and sentences of condemnation before evident proofes For wrath in such may not long time endure No more than flouke of anchor can assure A ship in storme which taketh slender hold On sand by shore whereof none may be bold unlesse the weight of reason doe represse and keepe downe licentious power whiles a Prince or great Lord doth after the manner of
powreth not she downe with great violence stormes of haile-stones out of the clouds upon the fertile corne-fields was it not vice and malice that stirred up Melitus Anytus and Callixenus to be sycophants and false accusers is it not she that bereaveth folke of their goods empeacheth and disableth men for being commanders and leaders of armies and all to make them unhappie nay she it is that maketh them rich and plentifull she heapeth upon them heritages and possessions she accompanieth them at sea she is alwaies close unto them and neer at hand she causeth them to consume and pine with lusts and desires she enflameth and setteth them on fire with choler and anger she troubleth their minds with vaine superstitions and draweth them away after the lusts of their eies HOW A MAN MAY PRAISE HIMSELFE WITHOUT INCURRING ENVIE AND BLAME The Summarie IMpossible it is during the time that we sojorne in this life that our spirit which knoweth not how to be still and at rest should not stirre and moove the tongue to speakeof the actions either of other men or of our owne whereby we cannot choose but incurre marvellous daungers of flatterie slander or els of selfe-praise insomuch as not without good cause that man hath beene called perfect who knoweth well to moderate this little member which is at it were the bit and bridle of the whole bodie of man and the verie helme and sterne of that ship or vessell in which we row and hull to and fro in the sea of this world Requisite it is therefore that morall philosophie should speake to the end that it may teach us for to speake We have seene before in many discourses the dutie of everie one towards his neighbours as well in words as in deeds but in this treatise Plutarch sheweth the cariage of a man towards himselfe and above all in that may which is most slipperie to wit in the question of our owne praises then after hee hath laide this for a ground and foundation That it is an unseemely thing for a man to make himselfe seeme great by vaine babble and alledged the reasons wherefore he setteth downe one generall exception to wit that a vertuous man may praise himselfe in certeine cases annd occurrences the which after he hath taxed the ambition of those who set up a note of their owne praises to be chaunted aloud by others he particularizeth upon these points to wit if he be driven to answer unto some false slaunderer if a man be in any distresse and adversitie or if he be blamed for the best deeds that he hath done After this he enterlaceth certeine advertisements or corrections to wit that a man ought to mingle his owne praises with those of other men that he ascribe not the whole honor of a woorthy deed to his own selfe that he utter only those things which be chiefe and principall and stand upon that which is most commendable and that he give a certeine luster thereto by the foile of confessing his owne imperfections which done he proceedeth to declare what kinde of men they ought to bee who are allowed to praise themselves to what this praise ought to be referred and have respect and wherefore they should enter into it moreover at what time and for what occasion he ought to make head unto a third who would do sufficiently and for a finall conclusion he proposeth an excellent meanes to avoid the troubles and inconveniences that might arise from importunate praise willing that the partie who speaketh of his owne good parts should flie all ambition not please himselfe in rehearsing and recitall of his owne exploits take heed how in selfe-praising hee feigne praises and neverthelesse in blaming his neighbour to be content for to be praised of another without putting himselfe betweene and speaking in his owne behalfe In summe since there is nothing so odious as to see and heare a man speake exceeding much of himselfe he concludeth that in no wise a man ought so to do unlesse there accrew therby great profit and commoditie to the hearers HOW A MAN MAY PRAISE himselfe without incurring envie and blame TO speake much of ones selfe in praise either what he is in person or of what valour and power among others there is no man friend Herculanus but by word of mouth will professe it is most odious and unbeseeming a person well borne and of good bringing up but in very deed few there be who can take heed and beware of falling into the inconvenience and enormitie thereof no not even those who otherwise do blame and condemne the same as for Euripides when he saith If words were costly men among for to be bought and sold No man to praise and magnifie himselfe would be so bold But now since that each one may take out of the aire so large As much as will his minde suffice without his cost and charge Well pleas'd are all men of themselves to speake what comes in thought As well untruth as what is true for speech them 〈◊〉 nought doth use a most odious and importune vanterie especially in this that he would seeme to interlace amongst the passionate accidents and affaires of Tragicall matters the speech of a mans selfe which is not befitting nor pertinent unto the subject argument semblably Pindarus having said in one place To brag and vaunt unseasonably Sound 's much of 〈◊〉 and vain-folly ceaseth not neverthelesse to magnifie his owne sufficiencie in the gift of poetrie as being in trueth worthy of right great praise as no man can denie But those who are crowned with garlands in those sacred plaies and games are declared victours and conquerours by the voice of others who thereby ease them of that odious displeasure that selfe-praise carrieth with it And in very deed our heart riseth against that vaine glory of Timotheus in that he wrote himselfe as touching the victorie which he atchieved against Phrynis Oh happy man thou Timotheus at what time as the herald proclamed with a loud voice these words Timotheus the Milesian hath conquered Ionocamptes that sonne of Carbo for surely this carrieth with it no grace at all but is a meere absurditie and against all good fashion for a man to be the trumpeter of his owne victorie for true it is according to Xenophon That the most pleasant voice that a man can heare is his owne praise delivered by another but the most odious thing unto others is a man commending himselfe for first and formost we esteeme them to be impudent who praise themselves considering that they ought rather to blush and be ashamed even when others fall to praise them in their presence secondly we repute them unjust herein for that they give and attribute that to themselves which they should receive at the hands of others thirdly either if we keepe silence when we heare one to praise himselfe it seemeth we are discontented or do beare envie unto him or if we feare that compelled we are
and custome deserveth to be opposed partly against the solitarie life and beggerly niggardise of base misers covetous penni-fathers and such like enemies of humaine societie and in part against the excessive pompe unmeasurable sumptuo sitie dissoluter riots and fookish vanitie and gourmandise of those that love nothing but their paunch and know no other god to worship but their bellie as also against the fond laughters bragging vanteries impudent facings seurrile mockertes and dogged backbitings that senslesse lots and 〈◊〉 persons are gven unto and finally against the enormities violences and outrages of such as are wholy abandoned and given over to sinne and wickednes Moreover to come more particularly to this booke folowing Plutarch bringeth in one named Diocles who recoūteth unto Nicarchus all that was said and done at Corinth in a certeine banquet at which were these persons namely Periander the sovereigne lord of that citie and the host who bad all the guests to wit Solon Bias Thales Cleobulus Pittacus and Chilon named in those daies The seven Sages or wise men of Greece Item Anacharsis Aesope Niloxenus Cleodemus and certeine others But before that he entreth into any speech of that which passed during the banquet and afterwards he rehearseth the communication held betweene Thales and those of his company upon the way of Corinth where they talke of matters handled more at large afterwards then consequently hee treateth of that which a guest ought to do who is invited to a banquet and describeth what hapned among some of the guests proceeding a little forward he declareth what was the maner of the entrance the slint and end of the banquet to wit modest and seasoned with pleasant speeches and those most honest and civill of the host and his familie which done he entreth into the recitall of the talke that was held after the supper or banquet of which the beginning grew from the musicke of flutes and by a certeine comparison devised with a good grace he causeth audience to be given unto Niloxenus a stranger by occasion whereof Bias doth expound the riddle or darke question sent by a king of Aethiopia unto the king of Aegypt which in the same traine inferreth an excellent occasion to speake of the duetie and office of kings of which argument all the foresaid 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their minds summarily together with the proper riddles and aenigmaticall questions from the king of Aegypt to the king of Aethiopia Now after the desciphering and assoiling of the said riddles the former Sages fall into a discourse as touching the gouernment popular and oeconomicall upon which point they doe opine and speake their mindes in order comming afterwards to conference together of certeine particularities of house-keeping to wit of drinking and other pleasures of the quantitie of goods that may suffice a man of the frugalitie thrift and sobrietie of men in olde time of the necessitie and delight of drinking and eating and finally of the discommodities inconveniences and miseries incident to mans life in this behalfe And for a conclusion bringeth in one Gorgias who being arrived unlooked for and comming suddenly in place relateth the strange accident of Arion saved by the meanes of a dolphin which report draweth on the companie to other like narrations and tales at the end whereof after grace said and thanks giving according to the accustomed maner of that people the guests retire themselves and depart THE BANQUET OF THE seven Sages DIOCLES CErtes the long processe and continuance of time my good friend Nicarchus can not chuse but breed and bring much darknesse obscuritie and incertitude of mens actions and affaires when as now in matters so fresh so new and so lately passed you have met with certeine false reports which notwithstanding are beleeved and received for true for there were not onely those seven guests at the table in this feast as you have heard and are borne in hand but more than twise so many of whom my selfe made one being familiar and inward with Periander by reason of mine art and profession and the host besides to Thales for by the commandement of Periander he lodged in mine house neither hath he whosoever he was that related the thing unto you borne well in minde and remembred what the speeches and discourses were which they held which maketh me verily to thinke that he was not himselfe one of them who were at the banquet But seeing we are now at good leasure and for that olde age is no suretie sufficient to give good warrantise for to defer and put off this report unto a farther time and because you are so desirous to know the trueth I will rehearse unto you all in order even from the very beginning First and formost the feast was prepared by Periander not within the citie but about the port or haven Lechaeon in a faire great hall or dining chamber neere to the Temple of Venus unto whom there was also a sacrifice offered for since the infortunate love of his mother who voluntarily made herselfe away having not sacrificed unto Venus this was the first time that he was moved thereto as being incited by certaine dreames of Melissa to worship and adore the said goddesse Now to every one of the guests invited to this banquet there was a coatch brought richly appointed and set out accordingly for to convey and conduct them to the place appointed for that it was the Summer season and all the port-way from the citie as farre as to the sea-side was full of dust and resounded with great noise by reason of a number of chariots and a world of people going to and fro betweene As for Thales seeing at my gates a coatch standing and ready to carie him he fel a smiling and laughing and so sent it backe againe he and I then put our selves in our way and went faire and softly together on foot over the fields and a third there was who bare us companie to wit Niloxenus of Naucratia a man of good woorth and one who had beene familiarly acquainted with Solon and Thales before-time in Aegypt and as then was he sent the second time unto Bias but wherefore himselfe knew not unlesse as hee suspected it were to bring unto him a second question inclosed and sealed within a packet for this charge and commandement he had That if Bias refused and would not take upon him to assoile and expound the same he should shew it to the wisest Sages of the Greeks Then began Niloxenus An happy feast quoth he is this to me my masters and unexpected wherein I shall finde you all together for I carie with me thither a packet as you see and with that he shewed it unto us Then quoth Thales smiling if you have therein any hard and untoward question to bee dissolved cary it againe to Pyrene for Bias will declare the meaning thereof like as hee assoiled the former What former question was that quoth I Mary quoth he againe hee sent unto him a sheepe
in Afrike first and afterwards in Galatia by Sylla by whose meanes hee had performed much good service and in the end would not use him at all but cast him off for that in trueth hee was vexed at the heart to see him growe up as hee did and to winne so great reputation under him howsoever hee would have seemed to colour the matter and make the signet in the colet of his ring which he sealed withall the pretense and cloake thereof For Sylla being treasurer in Africke vnder Marius the lord General was sent by him unto king Bocchus and brought with him Jugurtha prisoner and being a yoong gentleman as he was and beginning to taste the sweetenesse of glorie he could not carrie himselfe modestly in this good fortune of his but must needs weare vpon his finger a faire seale ring wherein he caused to be engrauen the historie of this exploit and namely how Bocchus delivered into his hands Jugurtha prisoner heereat Sylla tooke exceptions laid this to his charge and made it a colourable occasion of rejecting and putting him out of his place but he joining himselfe with Catulus and Metellus good men both and adversaries of Marius soone after chased Marius and turned him out of all in a civill war which was well neere the ruine and overthrow of the Romaine empire Sylla dealt not so with Pompeius for he evermore advaunced graced him from his very youth he would arise out of his chaire and vaile bonet vnto him when hee came in place semblably hee caried himselfe toward other yong gentlemen and gallants of Rome imparting unto some the meanes of doing the exploits of captaines and commanders yea quickning and putting others forward who were unwilling of themselves and in so doing he filled all his armies with zeale emulation and desire of honor striving who should doe better and by this meanes became himselfe superior evermore and ruled all at length desirous to be not the onely man but the first and the greatest among many that were likewise great These be the men therefore with whom a yoong States man ought to joine to these he ought to cleave in them as it were to be incorporate not as that cockatrice or Basilisk in Aesops fables who being carried aloft on the shoulders of the eagle no sooner came neere to the sunne beames but suddenly tooke his flight and came to the place before the eagle and after that maner to rob them of their honour and secretly to catch their glorie from them but contrariwise to receiue it of them with their consent and good favour and to give them to understand that they had never knowne how to rule unlesse they had learned first of them to obey well as Plato saith Next after this followeth the election and choise that they ought to make of their friends In which point they are not to take example either by Themistocles or Cleon As for Cleon when he knew that he was to undertake the government upon him assembled all his friends together and declared unto them that he renounced all their amitie saying That friendship was oftentimes a cause that disabled men and withdrew them from their right intention in affaires of State but it had beene farre better done of him to have exiled and chased out of his minde all avarice and contentious humors to have clensed his heart from envie and malice for the government of cities hath not need of those who are friendlesse and destitute of familiar companions but of such as be wise and honest but when he had banished and put away his friends he entertained round about him a sort of flatterers who daily stroked and licked him as the comicall poets use to say He became rough and severe to good and civill men but in stead thereof he debased himselfe to court flatter and please the multitude doing and saying all things to content them and taking rewards at every mans hand combining and sorting himselfe with the woorst and most leaud people in the whole citie by their meanes to make head and set against the best and most honorable persons Themistocles yet tooke another course who when one said unto him You shall do the part of a good ruler and magistrate in case you make your selfe equall unto every one alike answered thus I pray God I may never sit in such a throne or seate wherein my friends may not prevaile more with me than they that are not my friends But herein he did not well no more than the other thus to promise any part and authoritie of his government unto those with whom he had amitie and to submit the publicke affaires unto his private and particular affections howbeit for all this he answered very well unto Simonides requesting somewhat at his hand that was not just Neither were he a good musician or poet quoth he who should sing against measures nor the magistrate righteous who in favour of any person doth ought against the lawes For in truth a shamefull thing it were and a great indignitie that in a ship the master or owner thereof should giue order to be provided of a good pilot and steresman that the pilot also should chuse good bote-swaines and other mariners Who can the helme rule in the sterne below And hoise up saile above when windes do blow Also that an architect or master builder knoweth how to chuse those workemen and laborers under him who will in no case hurt his worke but set it forward and take paines with him for his best behoofe and a States-man or governour who as Pindarus saith well Of justice is the architect And policy ought to direct not know at the very first to chuse friends of the same zeale and affection that he is himselfe to second and assist him in his enterprises and to be as it were the spirits to inspire him with a desire of well doing but to suffer himselfe to be bent and made pliable unjustly and violentlie now to gratifie the will of one and anon to serve the turne and appetite of another For such a man resembleth properly a carpenter or mason who by error ignorance and want of experience useth his squires his plumbs levels and rules so that they make his worke to rise crooked and out of square in the end For certeinly frends be the very lively tooles and sensible instruments of governors and in case they doe amisse and worke without the right line the rulers themselves are not to slip and go awry with them for companie but to have a carefull eie unto this that unwitting to them they doe not erre and commit a fault For this it was that wrought Solon dishonor and caused him to be reproched and accused by his owne citizens for that having an intention to ease mens greevous debts and to bring in that which at Athens they called Sisachthia as if one would say an aleviation of some heavie burden which was a pleasing and plausible name
have builded theaters and shew-places given them largesses congraires and other doles or exhibited combats of Sword-fensers at the sharpe these wrong entituled honors do resemble the glosing flatteries of harlots and strumpets who smile upon their lovers so long onely as they give them any thing or gratifie them in any pleasure and such a glorie as this lasteth not long but after a day or two passeth away and is gone He whosoever he was that said first That he who began to give money by way of largesse unto the people taught the verie high way to overthrow a popular state knew verie well that the people lose their authoritie when they make themselves subject and inferiour by taking such gifts and even they also who are the givers must know thus much That they overthrow themselves in buying their reputation so costly at so high a price by that means they make the multitude more haughtie and arrogant because thereby the people do presume that it is in their power to give or take away so great a thing I write not this as though I would have a man of estate in his lawfull expenses and allowable liberalities to shew himselfe too neere and mechanicall especially when his State will beare and maintaine the same for that in truth the people carrie a greater hatred to a rich man who will not part with any of his goods among them than a poore man who robbeth the common chest for they suppose the one to proceed from pride and contempt of them and the other from meere need and necessitie I would wish therefore that first and principally these largesses should come by way of gratuitie and for nothing for that in such a sort they make the authors thereof better esteemed and admired and besides they binde and oblige the receivers so much the more Secondly I would that they were done upon a good honest and laudable occasion as namely for the honour of some god a thing that draweth on the people more and more to devotion and religion because withall it imprinteth in the hearts of the people a vehement opinion and strong apprehension that the majestie of the gods must needs be a great and venerable thing when they see those who honor them and whom they repute for so woorthie and noble personages so affectionate unto them as for their service and worship to be at such cost and spend so liberally Like as therefore Plato forbad yoong men who went to the Musicke schoole that they should not learne either the Lydian Phrygian harmony for that the one stirred up in our hearts all lamentable dolefull and dumpish affections the other increased the inclination to pleasure riot and voluptuous sensualitie even so as touching these largesses and publike expenses banish and chase out of your citie as much as you can those which provoke in our hearts beastly barbarous and bloody affections or such as feed loosenesse and scurrilie or if you be not able to rid them out cleane yet do your endevour at least wise to hold off and contest against the people to your uttermost power who cal upon you for such spectacles order the matter so alwaies that the subject matter of your dispense may be honest and chast the end and intention good and necessarie or at least wise that the pleasure and mirth be without wrong and hurt to any person But if peradventure your State be but meane and that the center circumference of your goods containe and comprehend no more than to serve and supply necessities know well this that it argueth neither a base mind nor an illiberall ungentlemanlike heart to be knowen of your poverty and so to give place unto other who have wherewith to defray such ambitious expenses liberalities and in by endebting engaging your selfe in the usurers books to be a spectacle both to be pittied laughed at for such publike ministeries forasmuch as they whosoever they be that so do cannot go to worke so secretly but it will be thought and knowen how they enterprize above their abilitie be driven to trouble and make bolde with their friends in borrowing of them or els to statter and court usurers to take up money at interest in such sort as that they shall win no honour and credit but rather shame and contempt by such expenses in which regard good it were in these cases to set alwaies before your eies the examples of Lamachus and Phocion For Phocion one day when the Athenians at a solemne sacrifice called instantly upon him to contribute some money toward the charges I would be ashamed quoth he to give you any thing and in the meane while not be able to keepe my credit and paie that I owe to this man heere and withall he pointed unto Callicles the userer unto whom he was then indebted As for Lamachus in his accounts of charges whiles he was lord generall of an armie under the Athenians in any expedition put in alwaies Thus much for a paire of shoes or pantofles for himselfe Item so much for a garment The Thessalians ordeined and allowed unto Hermon who refused to be their captaine generall because he was poore a flagon or little runlet of wine monethly and a measure or bushell and halfe of meale every fower daies whereby you see it is no shame for a man to confesse his povertie neither have poore men lesse meanes to winne credit and authoritie in the government of cities than they who lay out and spend much in making feasts or exhibiting publike shewes and spectacles for to gaine the good will and favour of the people provided alwaies that by their vertue they have gotten reputation and libertie to speake their mindes frankly and freely unto them And therefore a good governour ought wisely to master and rule himselfe in these cases he must not I say enter into the plaine and champion ground on foote for to encounter with horsemen nor being poore to be seene in the race and shew-place for to set out games or upon the scaffold theater to represent plaies or in great hals full set with tables to make feasts and all to contend with rich men about glorie and magnificence but he is to studie how to manage the people by vertue by gentlenesse by wit and understanding joyned alwaies with wise words wherein there is not onely honestie and a venerable port but also a kinde of grace more amiable attractive and desireable Than Craesus coine of silver and gold Or all the money that can be told For to a good man it is not necessarie to have a surly coy and presumptuous looke neither is it required that a wise and sober person should carie a sterne and rigorous countenance Who as he walks along the streets in citie or in towne Doth cast a sharpe and hideous eie and on his neighbours frowne But contrariwise a good man is first and formost affable and lightsome of language of easie accesse
and readie to be spoken withall whosoever comes having his house open alwaies as it were an haven or harbour of refuge to as many as have occasion to use him Neither is this debonairity and care of his seene onely in the businesse and affaires of such as employ him but also in this that he will as well rejoice with them who have had any fortunate and happie successe as condole greeve with those unto whom there is befallen any calamitie or misfortune never will he be knowen to be troublesome and looke for double diligence of a number of servitors and verlets to waite upon him to the baines or stouphes nor to keepe a stir for taking up and keeping of places for him and his traine at the theaters where plaies and pastimes are to bee seene ne yet desire to be conspicuous and of great marke above others in any outward signes of excessive delights and sumptuous superfluities but shew himselfe to be equall like and sutable to others in apparell in his fare and furniture at the table in the education and nouriture of his children in the keeping of his wife for her state and array and in one word be willing to carrie and demeane himselfe in all things as an ordinary and plaine citizen bearing no greater port and shew than others of the common multitude moreover at hand to give advise and counsell friendly to every man in his affaires ready to enterteine defend follow their causes as an advocate freely and without taking fee or any consideration whatsoever to reconcile man and wife when they be at ods to make love-daies and peace betweene friends not spending one little peece of the day for a shew at the tribunall seat or in the hall of audience for the common-wealth and then afterwards all the day the rest of his life drawing unto himselfe al dealings all negotiations and affaires from everie side for his owne particular behoofe and profit like unto the north-east winde Caecias which evermore gathereth the clouds unto it but continually bending his minde and occupying his head in carefull studie for the weale publike and in effect making it appeere unto the world that the life of a State-man and a governor is not as the common sort thinke it easie and idle but a continuall action and publike function by which fashions and semblable courses that he taketh he gaineth and winneth unto him the hearts of the people who in the end come to know that all the flattering devises and entisements of others be nothing else but false baits and bastard allurements in comparison of his prudence and carefull diligence The flatterers about Demetrius vouchsafed not to call any other princes and potentates of his time Kings but would have Seleucus to be named the Commander of the elephants Lysimachus the keeper of the treasurie Ptolomeus the admirall of the sea and Agathocles the governour of the islands But the people although peradventure at the first they reject a good wise and sage person among them yet in the end after they have seene his truth and knowen his disposition and kinde nature they will repute him onely to bee popular politike and woorthie to be a magistrate indeed and as for the rest they wil both repute and call one the warden and setter out of the plaies another the great feaster and a third the president of games combats and publike exercises Moreover like as at the feasts and bankets that Callias or Alcibiades were at the cost to make none but Socrates was heard to speake and all mens eies were cast upon Socrates even so in cities and States governed aright well may Ismenias deale largesses Lichas make feasts and Niceratus defray the charges of plaies but Epaminondas Aristides Lysander and such as they are those which beare the magistracie they governe at home they command and conduct armies abroad Which being well and duly considered there is no cause why you should be discouraged or dismaid at the reputation and credit that they win among the people who have for them builded theaters and erected shew-places founded halles of great receit and purchased for them common places of sepulture for to burie their dead all which glorie lasteth but a while neither hath it any great matter or venerable substance in it but vanisheth away like smoke and is gone even assoone as either the plaies in such theaters or games in shew-places are done and ended They that have skill and experience of keeping and feeding bees doe hold opinion and saie that those hives wherein the bees yeeld the biggest sound make most humming and greatest stir within like best are most sound healthfull and yeeld most store of home but he upon whom God hath laid the charge and care of the reasonable swarme as I may say and civill societie of men will judge the happinesse and blessed state thereof most of all by the quietnesse and peace therein and in all other things he will approove the ordinances and statutes of Solon endevoring to follow and observe the same to his full power but doubt hee will and marvell what hee should meane by this when he writeth that he who in a civill sedition would not range himselfe to a side and take part with one or other faction was to bee noted with infamie for in a naturall bodie that is sicke the beginning of change toward the recoverie of health commeth not from the diseased parts but rather when the temperature of the sound and healthie members is so puissant that it chaseth and expelleth that which in the rest of the bodie was unkind contrary to nature even so in a citie or State where the people are up in a tumult sedition so it be not dangerous and mortall but such as is like to be appeased and ended there had need to be a farre greater part of those who are sound and not infected for to remaine and cohabit still for to it there commeth and hath recourse that which is natural and familiar from the wise and discreet within and the same entreth into the other infected part and cureth it but such cities as be in an universall uprore and hurly-burly utterly perish and come to confusion if they have not some constreint from without and a chastisement which may force them to be wise and agree among themselves Neither is my meaning that I would have you a politike person and States-man in such a sedition and civill discord to sit still insensible and without any passion or feeling of the publike calamitie to sing and chaunt your owne repose and tranquillitie of blessed and happie life and whiles others be together by the eares rejoice at their follie for at such a time especially you are to put on the buskin of Theramenes which served as well the one legge as the other then are you to parley and common with both parties without joyning your selfe to one more than to the other by which meanes neither you
conceive and imagine in our selves what great pleasures vertues do yeeld unto those who effect any commendable action tending to the good of their countrey turning to the profit of the common-weale they tickle not they itch not neither do they after a stroking manner give contentment as do these sweete motions and gentle prickes of the flesh for such bring with them a certaine impatient itch an unconstant tickling mingled with a furious hear and inflammation but those pleasures which come from notable and praise-woorthie deeds such as they be whereof the ordinarie workman and author is he who governeth a common-weale aright and as it appertaineth unto him for to doe lift up and raise the soule to a greatnesse and haughtinesse of courage accompained with joy not with gilded plumes as Euripides saith but with celestiall wings as Plato was woont to say And that the truth hereof may the better appeere call to remembrance your selfe that which oftentimes you have heard concerning Epaminondas who being asked upon a time what was the greatest pleasure that ever he felt in all his life answered thus Marie even this quoth he that it was my fortune to win the field at the battell of Leuctres my father and mother both being yet living And Sylla the first time that he came to Rome after he had cleered Italy from civill and domesticall warres could not sleepe one winke nor lay his eies together a whole night for exceeding great joy and contentment wherewith his spirit was ravished as if it had beene with a mightie and violent wind and thus much he wrote of himselfe in his owne Commentaries I can therefore hold well with Xenophon in that hee saith That there is no sound or speech more delectable to a mans eare than the hearing of his owne praises and even so it must bee confessed That there is no spectacle no sight no report and memoriall no cogitation nor thought in the world that bringeth so great pleasure delectation to the mind as doth the contemplation and beholding of those good and laudable deeds which a man hath performed whiles he was employed in the administration of State and in bearing offices as being conspicuous eminent and publike places to be seene afarre off True it is moreover that the amiable grace and favour thereby gotten accompanying alwaies vertuous acts and bearing witnesse therto the commendation also of the people who strive a vie and contend who can give out greatest praise and speake most good the verie guide which leadeth the way of just and due benevolence doth adde a glosse and lustre as it were unto the joy proceeding from vertue for to polish and beautifie the same Neither ought a man by negligence to suffer for to fade and wither in old age the glorie of his good deeds like unto a cornet or garland of greene leaves which was woon at some games of prize but evermore to bring foorth some fresh and new demerites to stir up and awaken as a man would say the grace of the old deeds precedent and thereby to make the same both greater and also more permanent and durable For like as the carpenters and shipwrights who had the charge to maintaine the ship called the Gallion of Delos evermore made supply of new pieces of timber as anie of the olde began to decaie keeping it in continuall reparation by putting in one ribbe and planke for another and so preserved it alwaies entire and whole as it was the verie first daie when it was built even so a man is to doe by his reputation and credit And no harder matter is it for to maintaine glorie once up and on foote than to keepe a fire continually flaming which is once kindled by putting eftsoones fresh fewell under bee it never so little for to feede the same but if they bee once out and throughly quenched indeede then it is no small matter to set either the one or the other a burning againe And like as Lampas the rich merchant and shipmaster being demaunded how he got his goods Marie quoth he my greatest wealth I gained soone and with ease but my smaller estate with exceeding much paine and slowly even so it is no easie matter at the beginning to acquire reputation or to win credit and authoritie in the managing of civill affaires but to augment it after the foundation is laid or to preserve and uphold the same when it is once come to greatnes is not so hard for every litle thing the smallest meanes wil do it And so we see that a friend when he is onece had requireth not many great pleasures offices of kindnesse friendship for to be kept and continued a friend stil but petie tokens smal signes of curtesie passing continually from time to time betweene are sufficient to preserve mutuall love and amity Semblablie the good will and affection of the people their trust confidence which they have conceived towards a man although he be not able evermore to give largesses among them although he doe not alwaies defend and mainteine their causes nor sit continually in place of magistracie and office yet neverthelesse it holdeth still if he doe but shew himselfe onely to carie a good heart unto them not to cease for to take paines care for the common good nor refuse any service in that behalfe for even the very expeditions and voiages in warre have not alwaies battailes araunged nor fields fought and bloudie skirmishes ne yet besieging and beleaguing of cities but they afford betweene whiles festivall sacrifices parlies enterviewes some leasure also and time of rest to follow games disports and pastimes How then commeth it that an old man should be afraid to meddle in State affaires as if it were a charge unsupportable full of infinite and innumerable travels without any comfort and consolation at all considering that there be allowed at times varietie of plaies and games goodly sights and shewes solemne precessions and stately pompes publike doles and largesses daunces musicke and seasts and ever and anon the honorable service and worship of one god or other which are able to unknit the frownes and unbend the browes to dispatch and dissipate the cloudy cares and austeritie of the judges in court hall and of senatours also in counsell chamber yeelding unto them much more pleasure contentment in proportion to their travels and paines belonging to their place As for the greatest mischief which is most to be feared in such administrations of the common-weale to wit envy it setleth taketh least hold upon old age of any other for like as Heraclitus was wont to say That dogs do baie barke at those whom they know not even so envie assaileth him who beginneth to governe just at the dore as it were and the entrie of the tribunall and throne of estate seeking to impeach his accesse and passage thither but after it is accustomed and acquainted once with the glorie of a man and
of flowers upon my head up into the Capitoll to sacrifice and give those unto Jupiter for my victorie meane while whosoever will give his voice either for or against me let him doe as he thinketh good and having thus said he went out of the court and all the people followed after him leaving his accusers to plead there their fill to the bare wals T. QUINTIUS immediately upon his comming to the management of State affaires grew to such reputation and renowme that before he had beene Aedile Praetour or Tribune of the common-weale he was chosen Consull of Rome who being sent as captaine and lieutenant generall for the people of Rome to warre against Philip king of Macedonia was counselled and perswaded to a parle and personall conference first with him Philip for the better securitie of his owne person demaunded of him hostages Because quoth he the Romanes have heere many captaines besides you but the Macedonians have none but my selfe No 〈◊〉 indeed quoth Quintius that you are heere by your selfe alone for you have done to death all your kinsfolk and friends After that he had vanquished in battell king Philip he caused proclamation to be made in the solemnitie of the Isthmian games That he restored all the Greeks to their auncient liberties and full freedome to live from that day forward according to their owne lawes and thereupon the Greeks caused all the Romanes to be sought out throughout all Greece who had beene sold thither for slaves during the warres with Annibal and having redeemed bought them againe out of their masters hands for 500. drams a poll they presented them unto him as a free gift these followed him in his triumph with caps upon their heads as the custome was of such slaves as were newly affranchised endued with liberty The Acheans were minded and fully purposed to enterprise the conquest of the isle Zacinthus But he admonished them not to goe forth of Peloponnesus unlesse they would put themselves into evident danger like unto the Tortoises when they stretch soorth their heads out of their shels When the brute was blowen over all Greece that king Antiochus came with a mightie power insomuch as all men wondered were affraid to heare what numbers there were of soldiors and fighting men and what diversitie of armors they brought with them he made such a speech as this in the generall counsell of the Acheans It was my chance quoth he upon a time to be lodged in the house of an old host and friends of mine within the citie of Chalcies and as I sat with him at supper I marvelled how possiblie he could come by so many sorts of venison which I saw served up to the boord before me at last mine host answered that all was but swines flesh and the same altered by sundry kinds of sauces and varietie of dressing Semblably quoth he be you not dismaid and troubled at this great armie of king Antiochus whom you heare named his men at armes and horsemen armed at all pieces his light horse his petronels and archers on horsebacke and his footemen for all these be no more but poore Syrians men borne to servitude and slaverie and no better differing one from another onely in diversitie of harneis and weapons Philopaemon was at that time captaine generall of the Acheans who had a number sufficient both of horse and foot but he wanted money for their pay whereat Quintius merily scoffing Philopaemon quoth he hath hands and feet enough but he wants a bellie which jest was indeed the more pleasant for that Philopaemons body was in truth naturally so shapen and made so flat as if he had no belly at all C. DOMITIUS he whom Scipio the great left in his place next after his brother L. Scipio in the warre against king Antiochus when he had viewed the armie of his enemies standing in battel-array the Romane captaines who were about him counselled him with all expedition to give them battell but hee answered them thus That they had not day enough to massacre and hew in peeces so many millions of men to spoile also and make pillage of their tents and baggage and then to returne when all was done into the campe for to refresh and looke to themselves so the morrow after he charged upon them and slue fiftie thousand enemies P. LICINIUS a Consull of Rome in one battell of horsemen was vanquished by king Perseus and lost about two thousand and eight hundred men partly slaine and partly taken prisoners in the field after which victorie Perseus sent unto the said Consull embassadours to treat of peace and attonement in which treatie the condition which the vanquished proposed to the Conquerour was That he should submit himselfe wholy and his whole estate unto the Romans for to doe with them according to their will and discretion PAVLUS AEMILIUS making sute for his second Consulship was rejected and tooke repulse but afterwards when it was seene that the warre against King Perseus was drawen out in length and like to hold long through the ignorance sloth and idlenesse of those captaines which were sent with the armie the Romaines chose him consull for the second time but he said unto thē I con you no thank at al now for that you have not elected me for to gratifie my selfe because I sought for no office at this time but in regard that your selves stand in need of a captaine Being returned from the common-place into his owne house hee found a little daughter that he had named Tertia weeping and all blubbered with teares What is the matter quoth he that my pretie girle crieth and weepeth thus with that the childe O father quoth she our Perseus is dead now a little puppie she had of that name In good houre be it spoken my sweet daughter quoth he I take it for a good osse and presage of happie fortune When he was arrived and come into the campe hee found much bibble-babble there and vaunting braverie on everie hand of those souldiors who would busily intermeddle in the affaires properly pertaining to the captaine and in more matters than concerned them hee willed them to be quiet and still not to be dealing in such things but onely to looke well to their swords whether they were sharpe edged and wel pointed As for the rest quoth he I will provide therefore Those that kept the night sentinels he commanded neither to beare launce nor weare sword to the end that knowing they had no meanes to fight in case they should be surprised by the enemie they should be the more vigilant and carefull to withstand sleepe After that he had passed over the mountaines in Macedonie and was newly entred into the campe hee found his enemies readie ranged in battell-array before him whereupon Scipio Nasica advised him to charge out of hand If I were quoth he as yoong as you I should be of the same mind that you are but now long experience
citie should rebell against their masters and come to him for that he would make them all free and give them libertie to espouse and marie their mistresses even the wives of their former masters The dames conceived hereof so great choler and indignation in their harts together with the slaves themselves who were provoked likewise to anger as well as they and readie to assist their mistresses that they tooke heart to mount upon the walles of the citie and to carrie thither stones darts and all manner of shot beseeching their husbands to fight lustily and with good courage eftsoones admonishing and encouraging them to quit themselves like men and do their devoir which they did so effectually both in word and deed that in the end they repulsed the enemie and constrained Philip to raise his siege from before the citie without effecting his purpose and there was not so much as one slave that revolted from his master unto him THE WOMEN OF ARGOS THe exploit of the Argive dames against Cleomenes king of Lacedaemon in defence of the citie Argos which they enterprised under the conduct and by the perswasion of Telesilla the poëtresse is not lesse glorious and renowmed than any action that ever was atchieved by a crew of women This dame Telesilla as the fame goeth was descended of a noble and famous house howbeit in body she was very weake and sickly by occasion wherof she sent out to the oracle for to know how she might recover her health answer was made that she shoulde serve honour and worship the Muses she yeelding obedience to this revelation of the god and giving herselfe to learne poesie and likewise vocall musicke and skill in song in short time was delivered from her maladie and became most renowmed and highly esteemed among women for hir poeticall veine and musicall knowledge in this kind in processe of time it fortuned that Cleomenes the king of the Spartans having in a battell slaine a great number indeed of Argives but not as some fabulous writers have precisely set downe seven thousand seven hundred seventie and seven advaunced directly to the citie of Argos hoping to finde and surprize the same void of inhabitants but the women as many as were of age sufficient as it were by some heavenly and divine instinct put on a resolute minde and an extraordinary courage to doe their best for to beate backe their enemies that they should not enter the citie and in very truth under the leading of Telesilla they put on armes tooke weapon in hand and mounting up the wals stood round about the battlements thereof and environed them on every side defending the citie right manfully to the great wonder admiration of the enemies thus they gave Cleomenes the repulse with the losse and carvage of a great number of his men Yea and they chased Democrates another king of Lacedaemon out of their citie as Socrates saith who had made entrance before and seised that quarter which is called Pamphyliacum when the citie was thus saved by the prowesse of these women ordeined it was that as many of them as chaunced in this service to be slaine should be honorably enterred upon the great causey or high-way called Argeia and unto them who remained alive graunted it was for a perpetuall monument and memoriall of their prowesse to dedicate and consecrate one statue unto Mars This combat and fight as some have written was the seventh day or as other say the first of that moneth which at Argos in old time they called Tetartos but now Hermeus on which day the Argives do celebrate even in this age a solemne sacrifice and feast which they call Hybristica as one would say reprochfull and infamous wherein the custome is that women went clad in soldiers coates and mantels but men were arraied and attired in womens peticoates frocks and veiles Now to replenish and repeople the citie againe for default of men who died in the wars they did not as Herodotus writeth use this pollicie to marrie their slaves to their widdowes but they granted free burgeosie of their citie unto the better sort of men who were their neighbors and borderers and granted unto them for to affiance and espouse the said widowes but it should seeme that these wives disdained despised in some sort these husbands of theirs as not comparable to their former for they made a law that these wives should have counterfeit beards set to their chins whensoever they slept and lay with their husbands THE PERSIAN WOMEN CYrus having caused the Persians to rebel against king Astyages the Medes hapned to be discomfited vanquished together with the Persians now when the Persians fled amaine toward the city and their enemies followed hard at their heeles ready to enter pel-mell with thē the women issued out of the gates met them even before the citie and plucking up their clothes before from beneath to their waste cried unto them Whither away and whither doe you flie the most beastly cowards that ever were for run as fast as you wil there is no reentrance here for you into that place out of which you came first into the world the Persians being ashamed as well to see such a sight as to heare those words blamed and rebuked themselves whereupon they turned againe and made head at their enemies sought freshly and put them to flight from which time forward there was a law established That whensoever the king returneth from some farre voiage and entreth into the citie everie woman should receive of him a piece of gold and that by the ordinance of king Cyrus who first enacted it But it is reported that king Ochus one of his successors who being bad enough otherwise was the most covetous prince that ever raigned over them turned alwaies out of the way passed besides the citie and never would come into it after such a journey whereby the women alwaies were disappointed of that gratuitie and gift which they ought to have had but king Alexander contrariwise entred the citie twice and gave to every woman with childe double so much that is to say two such pieces of gold THE WOMEN OF GAULE BEfore that the Gaules passed over the mountaines called Alpes and held that part of Italy which now they doe inhabit there arose a great discord and dangerous sedition among them which grew in the end to a civill warre but when both armies stood embattailed and arranged ready to fight their wives put themselves in the very mids betweene the armed troupes tooke the matter of difference and controversie into their hands brought them to accord and unitie and judged the quarrell with such indifferent equitie and so to the contentment of both parts that there ensued a woonderfull amitie and reciprocall good will not onely from citie to citie but also betweene house and house insomuch that ever after they continued this custome in all their consultations aswell of warre as peace to take the counsell
altogether in his presence to runne upon him from everie side to teare him in pieces and make an end of him this plot was not projected so closely but it came to Mithridates eares who caused them al to be apprehended and sent to chop off al their heads one after another but immediately after he called to remembrance that there was one yoong gentleman among the rest for the flower of his yeeres for beautie also and feature of bodie the goodliest person that he had set eie on in his daies whom he tooke pitie of and repented that he had condemned him to die with his fellowes shewing evidently in his countenance that he was mightily greeved and disquieted in his minde as thinking verily that he was executed already with the first howbeit at a very venture he sent in all haste a countermaund that if he were yet alive he should be spared and let goe this yoong mans name was Bepolitanus and verily his fortune was most strange and woonderfull for had away hee was to the place of execution in that habit wherein he was attached and the same was a very faire and rich sute of apparell which because the butcherly executioner desired to reserve cleane and unsprent with bloud he was somewhat long about the stripping of him out of it whiles he was so doing he might perceive the kings men come running apace toward him and with a loud voice naming Bepolitanus See how covetousnesse which hath beene the death of many a thousand was the meanes beyond all expectation to save the life of this yoong gentleman as for Toredorix after he was cruelly mangled with many a chop and hacke his bodie was cast foorth unburied to the dogs neither durst any of his friends come neere for to enterre it one woman onely of Pergamus whom this Galatian in his life time had knowen in regard of her fresh youth and beautie was so hardie as to hazard the taking of his dead corps away and to burie it which when the warders and watchmen perceived they attached her and brought her to the king and it is reported that Mithridates at the very first sight of her had compassion for that she seemed to be a yoong thing a simple harmelesse wench every way but when he understood withal that love was the very cause thereof his heart melted so much the rather whereupon he gave her leave to take up the bodie and commit it to the earth allowing her for that purpose funerall clothes and furnishing her at his owne charges wish all other things meet for comly and decent buriall TIMOCLIA 〈◊〉 the Theban carried the like minde and purpose for the defence of his countrey and the common-wealth as sometimes Epaminondas Pelopidas and the bravest men in the world had done but his fortune was to fall in that common ruine of Greece when as the Greeks lost that unfortunate battell before Chaeronea and yet for his owne part he was a victour and followed them in chase whom he had disarraied and put to flight for he it was who when one of them that fled cried out unto him How farre wilt thou pursue and follow us answered Even as farre as into Macedonia but when he was dead a sister of his who survived him gave good testimony that in regard as well of his auncestors vertue as his owne naturall disposition he had beene a worthy personage and worthy to be reckoned and renowmed amongst the most valiant knights in his daies for some fruit received and reaped vertue which helped her to beare and endure patiently as much of the common miseries of her country as touched her for after that Alexander the Great had woon the citie of Thebes by assault the soldiers ran to and fro into al parts of the towne pilling and ransacking whatsoever they could come by it chanced that one seised upon the house of Timoclia a man who knew not what belonged to honour honestie or common curtesie and civilitie but was altogether violent furious and out of reason a captaine he was of a coronet of Thraciā light horsemen and caried the name of king Alexander his lord and master but nothing like he was unto him in conditions for having filled himselfe with wine after supper and good cheere without any respect unto the race and linage of this noble dame without regard of her estate and calling he was in hand with her to be his bedsellow all that night neither was this all for he would needs search and know of her where she had laid up and hourded any gold or silver one while threatning to kill her unlesse she would bring him to it another while bearing her in hand that he would make her his wife if she would yeeld unto him she taking vantage of this occasion which himselfe offred and presented unto her It might have pleased the gods quoth she that I had died before this night rather than remaine alive for though I had lost all besides yet my bodie had beene undefiled saved from all violence and villanie but since it is my fortune that heere after I must repute you for my lord my master and my husband and seeing it is gods will to give you this puissance and soveraigntie over me I will not deprive and disapoint you of that which is yours and as for my selfe I see well that my condition from hencefoorth must be such as you will I was woont indeed to have about me costly jewels and ornaments for my bodie I had silver in plate yea and some gold in good coine and other ready money but when I saw that the citie was lost I willed my women and maid-servants about me to get altogether and so I cast it away or rather indeed to say a truth I bestowed it and reserved it in safetie within a dry pit wherein no water is an odde blinde corner I may say to you that few or none doe know for that there is a great stone lieth over the mouth of it and a many of trees grow round about to shade and cover the same as for you this treasure will make you a man yea and a rich man for ever when you have it once in your possession and for my part it may serve for a good testimony and sufficient proofe to shew how noble and wealthy our house was before-time When the Macedonian heard these words his teeth so watred after this treasure that he could not stay untill the morrow and attend the day light but would needs out of hand be conducted by Timoclia and her maidens to the place but he commanded her in any wise to shut fast and locke the fore-yard gate after them that no man might see and know and so he went downe in his shirt into the foresaid pit but cursed and hideous Clotho was his mistresse and guide who would punish and be revenged of his notorious wickednesse by the hands of Timoclia who standing above for when she perceiued by his
two sonnes Paralus and Xantippus had both changed this life behaved himselfe in this manner as Protagoras reporteth of him in these words When his two sonnes quoth he both yoong and beautifull died within eight daies one after the other he never shewed any sad countenance or heavie cheere but tooke their death most patiently for in truth he was a man at all times furnished with tranquillitie of spirit whereby he daily received great frute and commoditie not onely in respect of this happinesse that he never tasted of hearts griefe but also in that he was better reputed among the people for every man seeing him thus stoutly to take this losse and other the like crosses esteemed him valiant magnanimous and of better courage than himselfe the one being privie to his owne heart how he was woont to be troubled and afflicted in such accidents As for Pericles I say immediately after the report of both his sons departure out of this world he ware a chaplet of floures neverthelesse upon his head after the maner of his country put on a white robe made a solemne oration to the people propounded good and sage counsels to the Athenians incited them to war Semblaby Xenophon one of the followers familiars of Socrates when he offred sacrifice one day unto the gods being advertised by certaine messengers returned from the battel that his sonne Gryllus was slaine in fight presently put off the garland which was upon his head and demaunded of them the manner of his death and when they related unto him that he bare himselfe valiantly in the field and fighting manfully lost his life after he had the killing of many enemies he tooke no longer pause for to represse the passion of his mind by the discourse of reason but after a little while set the coronet of flowers againe upon his head and performed the solemnitie of sacrifice saying unto those who had brought those tidings I never praied unto the gods that my sonne should be either immortall or long lived for who knoweth whether this might be expedient or no but this rather was my praier that they would vouchsafe him the grace to be a good man and to love and serve his countrey well the which is now come to passe accordingly Dion likewise the Syracusian when he was set one day in consultation and devising with his friends hearing a great noise within his house and a loud outcry demaunded what it was and when he heard the mischaunce that hapned to wit that a sonne of his was fallen from the top of the house and dead with the fall without anie shew or signe at all of astonishment or trouble of mind he commanded that the breathlesse corps should be delivered unto women for to be interred according to the maner of the countrey and as for himselfe he held on and continued the speech that hee had begun unto his friends Demosthenes also the oratour is reported to have folowed his steps after he had buried his onely and entirely beloved daughter concerning whom Aeschines thinking in reprochfull wise to chalenger her father said thus This man within a seven-night after his daughter was depauted before that he had mourned or performed the due obsequies according to the accustomed manner being crowned with a chaplet of flowers and putting on white robes sacrificed an oxe unto the gods and thus unnaturally he made no reckoning of her that was dead his onely daughter and she that first called him father wicked wretch that he is this Rhetorician thus intending to accuse and reproch Demosthenes used this manner of speech never thinking that in blaming him after this manner he praised him namely in that hee rejected and cast behind him all mourning and shewed that he regarded the love unto his native countrey more than the naturall affection and compassion to those of his owne bloud As for king Antigonus when he heard of the death of his sonne Alcyoneus who was slaine in a battell he beheld the messengers of these wofull tidings with a constant and undaunted countenaunce but after he had mufed a while with silence and held downe his head he uttered these words O Alcyoneus thou hast lost thy life later than I looked for ventring thy selfe so resolutely as thou hast done among thine enemies without any care of thine owne safetie or respect of my admonitions These noble personages there is no man but doth admire and highly regard for their constance magnanimitie but when it commeth to the point and triall indeed they cannot imitate them through the weakenesse and imbecillitie of mind which proceedeth of ignorance and want of good instructions howbeit there be many examples of those who have right nobly and vertuously caried themselves in the death and losse of their friends and neere kinsmen which we may reade in histories as well Greeke as Latin but those that I have rehearsed already may suffice I suppose to moove you for to lay away this most irksome mourning and vaine sorrow that you take which booteth not nor can serve to any good for that yoong men of excellent vertue who die in their youth are in the grace and favour of the gods for being taken away in their best time I have already shewed heeretofore and now also will I addresse my selfe in this place as briefly as possibly I can to discourse giving testimonie of the truth to this notable wise sentence of Menander To whom the gods vouchsafe their love and grace He lives not long but soone hath runne his race But peradventure my most loving and right deere friend you may reply in this maner upon me Namely that yoong Apollonius your sonne enjoied the world at will and had all things to his hearts desire yea and more befitting it was that you should have departed out of this life and beene enterred by him who was now in the flower of his age which had beene more answerable to our nature and according to the course of humanitie True it is I confesse but haply not agreeable to that heavenly providence and government of this universall world and verily in regard of him who is now in a blessed estate it was not naturall for him to remaine in this life longer than the terme prefixed and limited unto him but after he had honestly performed the course of his time it was 〈◊〉 and requisit for him to take the way for to returne unto his destinie that called for him to come unto her but you will say that he died an untimely death true and so much the happier he is in that he hath felt no more miseries of this life for as Euripides said very well That which by name of life we call Indeed is travell continuall Certes this sonne of yours I must needs say is soone gone and in the very best of his yeeres and flower of his age a yoong man in all points entire and perfect a fresh bacheler affected esteemed and well reputed of all those
us unskilfull as we are and void of art a fantasticall knowledge grounded onely upon some light opinion and conjecture of our owne as if we were right cunning workemen and artisanes for it is not his part who is not studied in the arte of Physick to gesse at the reason and consideration that the physician or chirurgian had why he made incision no sooner in his patient but staied long ere he proceeded thereto or wherfore he bathed him not yesterday but to day semblably it is neither easie nor safe for a mortall man to speake otherwise of the gods than of those who knew well enough the due time and opportunitie to minister a meet and convenient medicine unto vice and sinne and exhibit punishment to every trespasse as an appropriate drouge or confection to cure and heale ech maladie notwithstanding that the same measure and quantitie be not common to all delinquents nor one onely time and the same is alwaies meet therefore Now that the physicke or medicine of the soule which is called Right and Justice is one of the greatest sciences that are Pindarus himselfe besides an infinit number of others beareth witnesse when he calleth the Lord and governour of the world to wit God a most excellent and perfect artificer as being the author and creatour of justice unto whom it appertaineth to define and determine when in what manner and how far foorth it is meet and reasonable to chastice and punish each offender Plato likewise saith That Minos the sonne of Jupiter was in this science the disciple of his father giving us heereby to understand that it is not possible for one to carie himselfe well in the execution of justice nor to judge a right of him that doth as he ought unlesse he have before learned that science and be throughly skilfull therein Furthermore the positive lawes which men have established seeme not alwaies to be grounded upon reason or to sound and accord in all respects with absolute equitie and justice but some of their ordinances be such as in outward appearance may be thought ridiculous and woorthy of mockerie as for example At Lacedaemon the high controllers called Ephori so soone as they be enstalled in their magistracie cause proclamation to be published by sound of trumpet that no man should weare mustaches or nourish the haire on their upper lips also that willingly every man should obey the lawes to the end that they might not be hard or grievous unto them The Romans also when they affranchise any slave and make him free cast upon their bodies a little small rodde or wande likewise when they draw their last wils or testaments institute some for their heires whom it pleaseth them but to others they leave their goods to sell a thing that carieth no sense nor reason with it But yet more absurd and unreasonable is that statute of Solons making wherein it was provided That what citizen soever in a civill sedition ranged not himselfe to a side nor tooke part with one or other faction should be noted with infamie and disabled for being capable of any honorable dignitie In one word a man may alledge an infinit number of absurdities besides contained in the civill lawes who neither knoweth the reason of the lawgiver that wrot them nor the cause why they were set downe If then it be so difficult to conceive and understand the reasons which have mooved men thus to doe is it any marvell that we are ignorant of the cause why God chastiseth one man sooner and another later howbeit this that I have said is not for any pretence of starting backe and running away but rather for to crave leave and pardon to the end that our speech having an eie thereto as unto an haven and place of refuge might be the more hardie with boldnesse to raunge foorth still in probabilities to the matter in doubt and question But I would have you to consider first that according to the saying of Plato God having set himselfe before the eies of the whole world as a perfect pattern and example of all goodnesse doth unto as many as can follow and imitate his divinitie infuse humane vertue which is in some sort conformable and like unto him for the generall nature of this universall world being at the first a confused and disordered Chaos obtained this principle and element for to change to the better and by some conformitie and participation of the Idea of divine vertue to become this beautifull frame of the world And even the verie same man saith moreover That nature hath raised our eie-sight on high and lightned the same that by the view and admiration of those celestiall bodies which moove in heaven our soule might learne to embrace and be accustomed to love that which is beautifull and in good order as also to be an enemie unto irregular and inordinate passions yea and to avoid doing of things rashly and at adventure which in truth is the very source of all vice and sinne for there is nothing in the world wherein a man may have a greater fruition of God than by the example and imitation of his good and decent qualities to become honest and vertuous wherefore if we perceive him to proceed slowly and in tract of time to lay his heavie hand upon the wicked and to punish them it is not for any doubt or feare that he should doe amisse or repent afterward if he chasticed them sooner but by waining us from all beastly violence hastinesse in our punishments to teach us not immediately to flie upon those who have offended us at what time as our bloud is most up and our choler set on a light fire When furious yre in hart so leapes and boiles That wit and reason beare no sway the whiles making haste as it were to satisfie some great hunger or quench exceeding thirst but by imitating his clemencie and his maner of prolonging and making delay to endevor for to execute justice in all order at good leisure and with most carefull regard taking to counsell Time which seldome or never is accompanied with repentance for as Socrates was wont to say Lesse harme and danger there is if a man meet with troubled and muddie water and intemperately take and drinke thereof than whiles his reason is confounded corrupt and full of choler and furious rage to be set altogether upon revenge and runne hastily vpon the punishment of another bodie even one who is of his owne kinde and nature before the same reason be setled againe clensed and fully purified For it is nothing so as Thucydides writeth That vengeance the neerer it is unto the offence the more it is in the owne kind but cleane contrary the farther off it is and longer delaied the better it apprehendeth and judgeth of that which is fit and decent For according as Melanthius saith When anger once dislodged hath the wit Foule worke it makes and outrage doth commit even so reason performeth
vehement force of action which is in them remaine idle so lively and subtile it is but they wave to and fro continually as if they were tossed by tempest and winde upon the sea untill such time as they come to be setled in a constant firme and permanent habitude of maners like as therefore he who is altogether unskilfull of husbandrie and tillage maketh no reckoning at all of a ground which he seeth full of rough bushes and thickets beset with savage trees and overspred with ranke weeds wherein also there be many wilde beasts many rivers and by consequence great store of mudde and mire but contrariwise an expert husband and one who hath good judgement and can discerne the difference of things knoweth these and all such signes to betoken a fertile and plentifull soile even so great wits and hautie spirits doe produce and put foorth at the first many strange absurd and leud pranks which we not able to endure thinke that the roughnesse offensive pricks thereof ought immediately to be cropt off and cut away but he who can judge better considering what proceedeth from thence good and generous attendeth and expecteth with patience the age and season which is cooperative with vertue and reason against which time the strong nature in such is for to bring foorth and yeeld her proper and peculiar frute And thus much may suffice of this matter But to proceed forward Thinke you not that some of the Greeks have done well and wisely to make a transcript of a law in Egypt which commaundeth that in case a woman who is attaint and convicted of a capital crime for which in justice she ought to die be with childe she should be kept in prison untill she were delivered Yes verily they all answered Well then quoth I Set case there be some one who hath no children conceived in his wombe to bring foorth but breedeth some good counsell in his head or conceiveth a great enterprise in his minde which he is to bring to light and effect in time either by discovering an hidden mischiefe or setting abroad an expedient and profitable counsell or inventing some matter of necessarie consequence Thinke you not that he did better who deferred the execution of such an ones punishment stay untill the utilitie that might grow by him were seene than he who inconsiderately in all haste proceedeth to take revenge prevent the opportunitie of such a benefit Certes for mine owne part I am fully of that minde and even we no lesse answered Patrocleas Well then quoth I it must needs be so for marke thus much If Dionysius had beene punished for his usurped rule in the beginning of his tyrannie there should not one Grecian have remained inhabitant in 〈◊〉 for the Carthaiginans would have held the same and driven them al out like as it must needs have befallen to the citie Apollonia to Anactorium and the Chersonese ordemie island Leucadia if 〈◊〉 had suffered punishment at first and not a long time after as he did And I suppose verily that the punishment and revenge of Cassander was put off and prolonged of purpose untill by that meanes the citie of Thebes was fully reedified and peopled againe And many of those mercenary soldiers and strangers who seized and held this temple wherein we are during the time of the sacred warre passed under the conduct of Timoleon into Sicilie who after they had defaited in battell the Carthaginians and withall suppressed abolished sundrie tyrannies they came to a wretched end wicked wretches as they were For God in great wisedome and providence otherwhiles maketh use of some wicked persons as of butchers and common excutioners to torment and punish others as wicked as they or woorse whom afterwards he destroieth and thus in mine opinion he dealeth with most part of tyrants For like as the gall of the wild beast Hyaena and the rendles or rennet of the Sea-calfe as also other parts of venemous beasts and serpents have one medicinable propertie or other good to heale sundry maladies of men even so God seeing some people to have need of bitte and bridle and to be chastised for their enormities sendeth unto them some inhumane tyrant or a rigorous and inexorable lord to whip and scourge them and never giveth over to afflict and vexe them untill he have purged and cleered them of that maladie wherewith they were infected Thus was Phalaris the tyrant a medicine to the Agrigentines thus Marius was sent as a remedie to cure the Romanes as for the Sicyonians even god himselfe Apollo foretold them by oracle That their citie had need of certaine officers to whippe and scourge them at what time as they would perforce take from the Cleoneans a certain yong boy named Teletias who was crowned in the solemnitie of the Pythian games pretending that he was their citizen and borne among them whom they haled and pulled in such sort as they dismembred him But these Sicyonians met afterwards with Orthagoras that tyrannized over them and when he was gone they were plagued also with Myron and Clisthenes and their favorites who held them in so short that they kept them from all outrages and staied their insolent follies whereas the Cleoneans who had not the like purgative medicine to cure them were subverted and through their misdemeanor come to nothing Marke well therefore that which Homer in one place saith His sonne he was and in all kind of valour did surmount His father farre who was to say a truth of base account And yet this sonne of Copreus never performed in all his life any memorable act beseeming a man of woorth and honour whereas the ofspring of Sisyphus the race of Antolycus and the posteritie of Phlegyas flourished in glorie and all maner of vertue among great kings and princes At Athens likewise Pericles descended from an house excommunicate and accursed And so at Rome Pompeius surnamed Magnus that is the Great had for his father one Strabo a man whom the people of Rome so hated that when he was dead they threw his corps out of the biere wherein it was caried foorth to buriall and trampled it under their feet What absurditie then were it if as the husbandman never cutteth up or stocketh the thorne or bush before he hath gathered the render sprouts and buds thereof nor they of Libya burne the boughes of the plant Ledrom untill they have gotten the aromaticall gumme or liquor out of it called Ladanum even so God never plucketh up by the root the race of any noble and roiall familie wicked and wretched though they be before it hath yeelded some good and profitable frute for it had bene farre better and more expedient for the men of Phocis that ten thousand beefs and as many horses of Iphitus had died that the Delphians likewise had lost much more gold and silver by farre than that either Ulysses or Aesculapius should not have bene borne or others in like case whose
parents being wicked and vicious were themselves honest and very profitable to the common-wealth Are we not then to thinke that it were far better to punish in due time and maner convenient than to proceed unto revenge hastily and out of hand like as that was of Callippus the Athenian who making semblance or friendship unto Dion stabbed him at once with his dagger and was himselfe afterwards killed with the same by his friends as also that other of Mitius the Argive who was murdered in a certeine commotion and civill broile for it hapned so that in a frequent assembly of the people gathered together in the market place for to beholde a solemne shew a statue of brasse fell upon the murderer of Mitius and killed him outright And you have heard I am sure ô Patrocleas have you not what befell unto Bessus the Poeonian and Ariston the Oeteian two colonels of mercenarie and forren souldiers No verily quoth he but I would gladly know This Ariston quoth I having stollen and caried away out of this temple certeine jewels and costly furniture of queene Eriphyle which of long time had there bene kept safe by the grant and permission of the tyrants who ruled this citie carried them as a present to his wife but his sonne being on a time upon some occasion displeased and angrie with his mother set fire on the house and burnt it with all that was within it As for Bessus who had murdered his owne father he continued a good while not detected until such time as being one day at supper with certeine of his friends that were strangers with the head of his speare he pierced and cast downe a swallowes neast and so killed the yong birds within it and when those that stood by seemed as good reason there was to say unto him How commeth this to passe goood sir and what aile you that you have committed so leud and horrible an act Why quoth he againe doe these birds crie aloud and beare false witnesse against me testifying that I have murdered mine owne father hee had no sooner let fall this word but those who were present tooke holde thereof and wondering much thereat went directly to the king and gave information of him who made so diligent inquisition that the thing upon examination was discovered and Bessus for his part punished accordingly for a parricide Thus much I say have we related that it may be held as a confessed trueth and supposition that wicked men otherwhiles have some delay of their punishment as for the rest you are to thinke that you ought to hearken unto Hesiodus the Poet who saith not as Plato did that the punishment of sinne doth follow sinne hard at the heeles but is of the same time and age as borne and bred in one place with it and springing out of the very same root and stocke for these be his words in one place Bad counsell who deviseth first Unto himselfe shall finde it worst And in another Who doth for others mischiefe frame To his owne heart contrives the same The venimous flies Cantharides are said to conteine in themselves a certeine remedie made and compounded by a cōtrarietie or antipathie in nature which serveth for their owne counterpoison but wickednesse ingendering within it selfe I wot not what displeasure and punishment not after a sinfull act is committed but even at the very instant of committing it beginneth to suffer the paine due to the offence neither is there a malefactour but when he seeth others like himselfe punished in their bodies beareth forth his owne crosse whereas mischievous wickednesse frameth of her selfe the engines of her owne torment as being a wonderfull artisan of a miserable life which together with shame and reproch hath in it lamentable calamities many terrible frights fearefull perturbations and passions of the spirit remorse of conscience desperate repentance and continuall troubles and unquietnesse But some men there be who for all the world resemble little children that beholding many times in the theater leaud and naughtie persons arraied in cloth of golde rich mantles and robes of purple adorned also with crownes upon their heads when they either dance or play their parts upon the stage have them in great admiration as reputing them right happie untill such time as they see them how they be either pricked and pierced with goads or sending flames of fire out of those gorgeous costly and sumptuous vestments For to say a trueth many wicked persons who dwel in stately houses are descended from noble parentage sit in high places of authoritie beare great dignities and glorious titles are not knowen for the most part what plagues and punishments they susteine before they be seene to have their throats cut or their necks broken by being cast downe headlong from on high which a man is not to tearme punishments simply but rather the finall end and complishment of thereof For like as Herodicus of Selymbria being fallen into an incurable phthisicke or consumption by the ulcer of his lungs was the first man as Plato saith who in the cure of the said disease joined with other Physicke bodily exercise and in so doing drew out and prolonged death both to himselfe and to all others who were likewise infected with that maladie even so may we say that wicked persons as many as seeme to have escaped a present plague and the stroke of punishment out of hand suffer in truth the paine due for their sinfull acts not in the end onely and a great time after but susteine the same a longer time so that the vengeance taken for their sinfull life is nothing slower but much more produced and drawen out to the length neither be they punished at the last in their olde age but they waxe olde rather in punishment which they have endured all their life Now when I speake of long time I meane it in regard of our selves for in respect of the gods the whole race of mans life how long soever it be thought is a matter of nothing or no more than the very moment and point of the instant For say that a malefactour our should suffer the space of thirtie yeres for some hainous fact that he hath committed it is all one as if a man should stretch him upon the racke or hang him upon a jibbet in the evening toward night and not in the morning betimes especially seeing that such an one all the while that he liveth remaineth close and fast shut up as it were in a strong prison or cage out of which he hath no meanes to make an escape and get away Now if in the meane while they make many feasts manage sundry matters and enterprise divers things if they give presents and largesses abroad and say they give themselves to their disports and pleasures it is even as much and all one as when malefactours during the time they be in prison should play at dice or cockall game having continually over head the rope
Philosophie But I pray you my very good friend quoth I unto him forbeare this vehement and accusatorie humour of yours and be not angry if haply you see that some because they be borne of leud and wicked parents are punished or else doe not rejoice so much nor be ready to praise in case you see nobilitie also of birth to be so highly honored for if we stand upon this point and dare avow that recompence of vertue ought by right and reason to continue in the line and posteritie we are by good consequence to make this account that punishment likewise should not stay and cease together with misdeeds committed but reciprocally fall upon those that are descended of misdoers and malefactors for he who willingly seeth the progenie of Cimon honoured at Athens and contrariwise is offended and displeased in his heart to see the race of Lachares or Ariston banished driven out of the citie he I say seemeth to be too soft tender and passing effeminate or rather to speake more properly over-contentious and quarrelsome even against the gods complaining and murmuring of the one side if the children childrens children of an impious wicked person do prosper in the world and contrariwise is no lesse given to blame and find fault if he doe see the posterity of wicked and ungracious men to be held under plagued or altogether destroied from the face of the earth accusing the gods if the children of a naughtie man be afflicted even as much as if they had honest persons to their parents But as for these reasons alledged make you this reckoning that they be bulwarks and rampars for you opposed against such bitter sharpe accusers as these be But now taking in hand again the end as it were of a clew of thread or a bottom of yearne to direct us as in a darke place and where there be many cranks turnings and windings to and fro I meane the matter of gods secret judgements let us conduct and guide our selves gently and warily according to that which is most likely probable considering that even of those things which we daily manage and doe our selves we are not able to set downe an undoubted certaintie as for example who can yeeld a sound reason wherefore we cause and bid the children of those parents who died either of the phthisick and consumption of the lungs or of the dropsie to sit with their feet drenched in water until the dead corps be fully burned in the funeral fire For an opiniō there is that by this meanes the said maladies shall not passe unto them as hereditarie nor take hold of their bodies as also what the cause should be that if a goat hold in her mouth the herbe called Eryngites that is to say Sea-holly the whole flocke will stand still untill such time as the goat-herd come and take the said herbe out of her mouth Other hidden properties there be which by secret influences and passages from one to another worke strange effects and incredible as well speedily as in longer tract of time and in very truth we woonder more at the intermission and stay of time betweene than we doe of the distance of place and yet there is greater occasion to marvell thereat as namely that a pestilent maladie which began in Aethiopia should raigne in the citie of Athens and fill every street and corner thereof in such sort as Pericles died and Thucydides was sicke thereof than that when the Phocaeans and Sybarits had committed some hainous sins the punishment therefore should fall upon their children go through their posteritie For surely these powers and hidden properties have certaine relations and correspondences from the last to the first the cause whereof although it be unknowen to us yet it ceaseth not secretly to bring foorth her proper effects But there seemeth to be verie apparent reason of justice that publicke vengeance from above should fall upon cities many a yeere after for that a citie is one entire thing and a continued body as it were like unto a living creature which goeth not beside or out of it selfe for any mutations of ages nor in tract and continuance of time changing first into one and then into another by succession but is alwaies uniforme and like it selfe receiving evermore and taking upon it all the thanke for well doing or the blame for misdeeds of whatsoever it doth or hath done in common so long as the societie that linketh holdeth it together maintaineth her unitie for to make many yea innumerable cities of one by dividing it according to space of time were as much as to go about to make of one man many because he is now become old who before was a yong youth in times past also a very stripling or springall or else to speake more properly this resembleth the devises of Epicharmus wherupon was invented that maner of Sophisters arguing which they cal the Croissant argument for thus they reason He that long since borrowed or tooke up mony now oweth it not because he is no more himselfe but become another he that yesterday was invited to a feast cōmeth this day as an unbidden guest cōsidering that he is now another man And verily divers ages make greater difference in ech one of us than they do commonly in cities and States for he that had seene the citie of Athens thirtie yeeres agoe and came to visit it at this day would know it to be altogether the very same that then it was insomuch as the maners customes motions games pastimes serious affaires favours of the people their pleasures displeasures and anger at this present resemble wholly those in ancient time whereas if a man be any long time out of sight hardly his very familiar friend shall be able to know him his countenance will be so much changed and as touching his maners and behaviour which alter and change so soone upon every occasion by reason of all sorts of labour travell accidents and lawes there is such varietie and so great alteration that even he who is ordinarily acquainted and conversant with him would marvell to see the strangenesse and noveltie thereof and yet the man is held and reputed still the same from his nativitie unto his dying day and in like case a citie remaineth alwaies one and the selfe same in which respect we deeme it great reason that it should participate aswell the blame and reproch of ancestours as enjoy their glorie and puissance unlesse we make no care to cast all things in the river of Heraclitus into which by report no one thing entreth twise for that it hath a propertie to alter all things and change their nature Now if it be so that a citie is an united and continued thing in it selfe we are to thinke no lesse of a race and progenie which dependeth upon one and the same stocke producing and bringing foorth a certeine power and communication of qualities and the same doth
himselfe had begotten a sonne and I heare say that these letters remaine there to be seene even at this day Now if it chaunce that a dunghill cocke tread another cocke when there is no henne at hand he is burnt quicke for that some wizard soothsaier or interpreter of such straunge prodigies will pronounce that it is omenous and presageth some evill lucke Thus you see how men themselves are forced to confesse that beasts are more continent than they that to satisfie fulfil their lusts they never violate nor abuse nature whereas in you it is otherwise for nature albeit she have the helpe and aide of the law is not able to keepe your intemperance within the limits and bounds of reason but like unto a violent streame which runneth forcibly often times and in many places it worketh much outrage causing great disorder scandall and confusion against nature in this point of carnall love and fleshly lust for there have bene men who attempted to meddle and deale with shee goats with sowes and mares as also women who have bene as wood and raging mad after certeine beasts of the male kinde and verily of such copulations as these are come your Minotaures and Aegipanes yea and as I verily thinke those Sphinxes and Centaures in time past have bene bred by the same meanes True it is I confesse that otherwhiles upon necessity and extreame famine a dogge hath bene knowen to have devoured a man or a woman yea and some fowle hath tasted of their flesh and begun to eat it but there was never found yet any brute beast to have lusted after man or woman to engender with them whereas men both in this lust and in many other pleasures have often times perpetrated outrage upon beasts Now if they be so unbridled so disordinate and incontinent in these appetites much more dissolute they are knowen to be than beasts in other desires and lusts that be necessarie to wit in meats and drinks whereof we never take pleasure but it is with some profit but you seeking after the tickling pleasure and delight in drinking and eating rather than the needfull nourishment to content and satisfie nature are afterwards well punished for it by many grievous and long maladies which proceed all from one source to wit surfeit and repleation namely when you stuffe and fill your bodies with all sorts of flatulent humors ventosities which hardly are purged excluded forth for first formost ech sort of beasts hath a severall food and peculiar kinde of nourishment some feed upon grasse others upon roots and some there be againe which live by fruits as for those that devoure flesh they never touch any other kinde of pasture neither come they to take from the weaker and more feeble kind their proper nouriture but suffer them to grase feed quietly Thus we see that the lion permitteth the stag and hinde to grase and the wolfe likewise the sheepe according to natures ordinance and appointment but man being through his disordinate appetite of pleasures and by his gluttonie provoked to all things tasting and assaying whatsoever he can meet with or heare of as knowing indeed no proper and naturall food of his owne is of all creatures living he alone that enteth and devoureth all things for first he feedeth upon flesh without any need or necessitie enforcing him thereto considering that he may alwaies gather presse cut and reape from plants vines and seeds all sort of fruits one after another in due and convenient seasons untill he be weary againe for the great quantity thereof and yet for to content his delicate tooth and upon a lothsome fulnesse of necessarie sustenance he secketh after other victuals neither needfull nor meet for him ne yet pure and cleane in killing living creatures much more cruelly than those savage beasts that live of ravin for bloud and carnage of murdered carcases is the proper and familiar food for a kite a wolfe or a dragon but unto man it serveth in stead of his daintie dish and more than so man in the use of all sorts of beasts doth not like other creatures that live of prey which absteine from the most part and warre with some small nūber even for very necessity of food for there is neither fowle flying in the aire nor in maner any fish swimming in the sea nor to speake inone word any beast feeding upon the face of the earth that can escape those tables of yours which you call gentle kinde and hospitall But you will say that all this standeth in stead of sauce to season your food be it so why then doe you kill the same for that purpose and for to furnish those your milde and courteous tables But the wisedome of beasts farre different for it giveth place to no arte whatsoever that is vaine and needlesse and as for those that be necessarie it enterteineth them not as comming from others nor as taught by mercenarie masters for hire and money neither is it required that it should have any exercise to glue as it were and joine after a slender maner ech rule principle and proposition one to another but all at once of it selfe it yeeldeth them all as native and inbred therewith We heare say that all the Aegyptians be Physicians but surely every beast hath in it selfe not onely the art and skill to cure and heale it selfe when it is sicke but also is sufficiently instructed how to feed and nourish it selfe how to use her owne strength how to fight how to hunt how to stand at defence yea and in very musicke they are skilfull ech one in that measure as is requisit and befitting the owne nature for of whom have we learned finding our selves ill at ease to goe into the rivers for to seeke for crabbes and craifishes who hath taught the tortoises when they have eaten a viper to seeke out the herbe Organ for to feed upon who hath shewed unto the goats of Candie when they be shot into the bodie with arrowes to finde out the herbe Dictamnus for to feed on it and thereby to cause the arrow head to come forth and fall from them For if you say as the trueth is that nature is the schoole-mistresse teaching them all this you referre and reduce the wisedome and intelligence of dumbe beasts unto the sagest and most perfect cause or principle that is which if you thinke you may not call reason nor prudence ye ought then to seeke out some other name for it that is better and more honourable and to say a trueth by effects shee sheweth her puissance to be greater and more admirable as being neither ignorant nor ill taught but having learned rather of it self not by imbecilitie and feeblenesse of nature but contrariwise through the force and perfection of naturall vertue letting go and nothing at all esteeming that beggerly prudence which is gotten from other by way of apprentissage Neverthelesse all those things which men either for
than those dumbe beasts who enterteine no evill suspicions or surmises of the gods nor any opinions to torment them as touching that which shall befall unto them after death for they neither beleeve and know not so much as once think of any harme at all in such things Furthermore if in the opinion that they holde of the gods they had reserved and left a place for divine providence beleeving that thereby the world was governed they might have beene thought wise men as they are to have gone beyond brute beasts for the atteinting of a pleasant and joifull life in regard of their good hopes but seeing all their doctrine as touching the gods tendeth to this end namely to feare no god and otherwise to be fearelesse and carelesse altogether I am perswaded verily that this is more firmely setled in those having no sense and knowledge at all of God than in these who say they know God but have not learned to acknowledge him for a punishing God and one that can punish and doe harme for those are not delivered from superstition and why they never fell into it neither have they laied away that fearefull conceit and opinion of the gods and no marvell for they never had any such the same may be said as touching hell and the infernall spirits for neither the one nor the other have any hope to receive good from thence marie suspect feare and doubt what shall betide them after death those must needs lesse who have no fore-conceit at all of death than they in whom this perswasion is imprinted beforehand that death concerneth us not and yet thus farre forth it toucheth them in that they discourse dispute and consider thereupon whereas brute beasts are altogether freed from the thought and care of such things as doe nothing perteine unto them true it is that they shunne stroaks wounds and slaughter and thus much I say of death they feare which also even to these men is dreadfull and terrible Thus you see what good things wisdome by their owne saying hath furnished them withall but let us now take a sight and survey of those which they exclude themselves sro and are deprived of As touching those diffusions of the soule when it dilateth and spreadeth it selfe over the flesh and for the pleasure that the flesh feeleth if the same be small or meane there is no great matter therein nor that which is of any consequence to speake of but if they passe mediocritie then besides that they be vaine deceitfull and uncerteine they are found to be combersome and odious such as a man ought rather to tearme not spiritual joies and delights of the soule but rather sensuall and grosse pleasures of the bodie fawning flattering and smiling upon the soule to draw and entice her to the participation of such vanities as for such contentments of the minde which deserve indeed and are woorthy to be called joies and delights they be purified cleane from the contrarie they have no mixture at all of troublesome motions no sting that pricketh them nor repentance that followeth them but their pleasure is spirituall proper and naturall to the soule neither is the good therein borowed abroad and brought in from without nor absurd and void of reason but most agreeable and sorting thereto proceeding from that part of the mind which is given unto contemplation of the trueth and desirous of knowledge or at leastwise from that which applieth it selfe to doe and execute great and honourable things now the delights and joies aswell of the one as the other hee that went about to number and would straine and force himselfe to discourse how great and excellent they be he were never able to make an end but in briefe and few words to helpe our memorie a little as touching this point Histories minister an infinit number of goodly and notable examples which yeeld unto us a singular delight and recreation to passe the time away never breeding in us a tedious satietie but leaving alwaies the appetite that our soule hath to the trueth insatiable and desirous still of more pleasure and contentment in regard whereof untrueths and very lies therein delivered are not without their grace for even in fables and sictions poeticall although we give no credit unto them there is some effectuall force to delight and perswade for thinke I pray you with your selfe with what heat of delight and affection we reade the booke of Plato entituled Atlanticus or the last books of Homers Ilias consider also with what griefe of heart wee misse and want the residue of the tale behinde as if we were kept out of some beautifull temples or faire theaters shut fast against us for surely the knowledge of trueth in all things is so lovely and amiable that it seemeth our life and very being dependeth most upon knowledge and learning whereas the most unpleasant odious and horrible things in death be oblivion ignorance and darknesse which is the reason I assure you that all men in a maner sight and warre against those who would bereave the dead of all sense giving us thereby to understand that they do measure the whole life the being also and joy of man by the sense onely and knowledge of his minde in such sort that even those very things that are odious and offensive otherwise we heare other whiles with pleasure and often times it falleth out that though men be troubled with the thing they heare so as the water standeth in their eies and they be readie to weepe and crie out for griefe yet they desire those that relate the same to say on and speake all as for example Oedipus in Sophocles THE MESSENGER Alas my lord I see that now I shall Relate the thing which is the worst of all OEDIPUS Woe is me likewise to heare it I am prest There is no helpe say on and tell the rest But peradventure this may be a current and streame of intemperat pleasure and delight proceeding from a curiositie of the minde and will too forward to heare and know all things yea and to offer violence unto the judgement and discourse of reason howbeit when as a narration or historie conteining in it no hurtfull and offensive matter besides the subject argument which consisteth of brave adventures and worthy exploits is penned and couched in a sweet stile with a grace and powerfull force of eloquence such as is the historie of Herodotus as touching the Greeke affaires or of Xenophon concerning the Persian acts as also that which Homer with an heavenly spirit hath endited and delivered in his verses or Eudoxus in his peregrinations and description of the world or Aristotle in his treatise of the founding of cities and governments of State or Aristoxenus who hath left in writing the lives of famous and renowmed persons in such I say there is not onely much delight and contentment but also there ensueth thereupon no displeasure nor repentance And what man is he who
unto him concerning two most faire and beautiful boies to this effect whether he should buy them for to send unto him or no he had like to have lost the place of government under him for his labour and yet to say a trueth who might have better done it than Alexander But like as of two paines griefs as Hippocrates saith the lesse is dulled and dimmed as it were by the greater even so the pleasures proceeding from vertuous and honourable actions do darken and extinguish by reason of the minds joies and in regard of their exceeding greatnesse those delights which arise from the bodie And if it be so as these Epicureans say that the remembrance of former pleasures and good things be materiall and make much for a joifull life which of us all will beleeve Epicurus himselfe that dying as he did in most grievous paines and dolorous maladies he eased his torments or asswaged his anguish by calling to minde those delights which beforetime he had enjoied For surely it were an easier matter to beholde the resemblance of ones face in the bottome of a troubled water or amid the waves during a tempest than to conceive and apprehend the smiling and laughing remembrance of a pleasure past in so great a disquietnesse and bitter vexation of the body whereas the memorie of vertuous and praise-worthy actions a man can not would he never so faine chase and drive out of his minde For how is it possible that Alexander the Great should ever forget the battell at Arbela or Pelopidas the defaiture of the tyrant Leontiades or Themistocles the noble field fought before Salamis for as touching the victorie at Marathon the memoriall thereof the Athenians doe solemnize with feasts even to this day like as the Thebans celebrate the remembrance of the famous fight at Leuctres and wee verily as you know well enough make feasts for the victorie of Daiphantus before the citie Hyampolis and not onely we keepe yeerely holiday then but also the whole country of Phocis upon that anniversarie day is full of sacrifices and due honours neither is there one of us that taketh so great contentment of all that hee eateth or drinketh such a festivall time as he doth in regard of the remembrance of those noble acts which those brave men performed we may well gesse and consider therefore what joy what mirth what gladnesse and solace of heart accompanied them all their life time after who executed these noble feats of armes considering that after five hundred yeeres and above the memorie of them is fresh and the same attended with so great cheere and rejoicing And yet Epicurus himselfe doth acknowledge that of glorie there doe arise certeine joies and pleasures for how could he doe lesse seeing that himselfe is so desirous thereof that he is even mad withall and fareth after a furious maner to atteine thereto insomuch as not onely he disavoweth his owne masters and teachers contesteth against Democrates whose opinions and doctrines he stealeth word for word upon certeine syllables and nice points mainteining that there never was any wise man nor learned clearke setting himselfe and his disciples aside but also which more is he hath bene so impudent as to say and write that Colotes adored him as a god touching his knees full devoutly when he heard him discourse of naturall causes and that his brother Neocles affirmed and gave out even from his infancie that Epicurus had never his like or fellow for wisdome and knowledge as also that his mother was happie and blessed for bearing in her womb such a number of Atomes that is to say indivisible small bodies who concurring all together framed and formed so skilfull a personage Is not this all one with that which Callicratides sometime said of Conon That he committed adulterie with the sea even so a man may say that Epicurus secretly by stealth and shamefully made love unto Glory and went about to solicit yea force her by violence not being able to win and enjoy her openly whereupon he became passionate and love-sicke for like as a mans bodie in time of famine for that it hath no food and nourishment otherwise is constreined even against nature to feed upon the owne substance even so ambition and thirst after glorie doth the like hurt unto the soules of ambitious persons for being readie to die for thirst of glorie and seeing they can not have it otherwise enforced they are to praise themselves But they that be thus passionatly affected with desire of praise and honour confesse not they manifestly that they reject forgo and neglect great pleasures and delights when through their feeble lazie and base minds they flie from publicke offices of State forbeare the management of affaires and regard not the favours of kings and following of great persons from whence Democritus saith there accrue unto man many ornaments to grace and commend this life For Epicurus shall never be able to make the world beleeve that esteeming so much as he did and making so great account of Neocles his brothers testimonie or the adoration of Colotes he would not have bene ready to have leapt out of his skin and gone besides himselfe for joy if he had beene received by the Greeks at the solemnitie of the Olympian games with joious acclamations and clapping of hands nay hee would no doubt have shewed that gladnesse and contentment of heart with open mouth hee would have bene aloft and flowen abroad as the Poet Sophocles saith Like to the Downe which being light and soft From thistle olde the winde doth mount aloft And if it be a gracious and acceptable thing for a man to brute that he hath a good name it followeth consequently that grievous it is to be in an ill name and what is more infamous and odious than to be friendlesse to want emploiment to be infected with Atheisme and impietie to live loosely and abandoned to lusts and pleasures finally to be neglected and contemned and verily setting themselves aside there is no man living but he thinketh al these qualities and attributes to agree fitly unto this sect of theirs True will some man say but they have the greater wrong Well the question now is not what is the trueth but what is the common opinion that the world hath of them and to this purpose I meane not to cite the publicke decrees and acts of Citres nor to alledge the defamatorie books written against them for that were too odious but if the oracles if divination if the praescience and providence of the gods if the naturall love and affectionate kindnesse of parents to their children if the managing of politike affaires if the conduct of armies if magistracie and rule in common-wealth be matters honourable and glorious then it must needs be that they who affirme That no travell ought to be made for the safetie of Greece but that we are to eat and drinke so as the bellie may be pleased and receive no harme
suppose quoth Agias for to eat and drinke simply that we invite one another but for to eat and drinke together for companie and good-fellowship whereas this parting and division of flesh and other viands into portions doth abolish all communication societie making indeed many severall suppers and many men to sit at supper apart but not one supping with another or fellow-guest in one messe when every man takes as it were from the butchers stall his own joint of meat or a piece of flesh by just waight or at a certeine size so sets his part before him For is not all one I pray you and what difference is there I would faine know to allow ech one of the guests at table his owne cup by himselfe to fill every man his Congious or gallon of wine yea and to allow him his table apart from others like as by report the linage of Demophon sometime served Orestes and so to bid them drinke without any regard or heed of others what diversitie I say is in this and the manner of these our daies namely to set before every man his lofe of bread and piece of flesh for to feed by himselfe as it were at his owne manger Surely all the oddes is that we have no commaundement to keepe silence and say never a word when we are at our meat as those had who interteined and feasted Orestes and verilie even this haply ought to provoke and bring us that are met to the communion participation of al things at a feast or banquet namely that we talke there one to another that we be partakers together of one song of a minstrell wenches musicke delighting us all and one as well as another with her playing upon a psalterie or pipe singing thereto Moreover that standing cup of amitie and good-felowship which is set in the very middes of the company for to drinke out of it one to another and that without any limitation or restreint to certeine bounds standeth as it were a source and lively fountaine of love and good will and hath no other stint and measure but the thirst and disposition of every one to drinke at his pleasure not like to this most unjust distribution of bread and flesh to every one which masketh it selfe with a false colour of equality among those who are unequall for even that as even and equall as it seemeth and in manner all one is too much for him that needs but a little and too little for him who hath need of much Like as therefore my good friend he is a ridiculous and foolish leech who to many and sundrie patients sicke of diverse and different diseases exhibiteth and giveth medicines just of one weight and exactly of the same measure even so were the master of a feast woorthy to be laughed at who having invited to his table sundry persons who are not hungry or thirsty alike would enterteine and serve them all indifferently after one order measuring the equalitie of his distribution by proportion arithmeticall and not geometricall True it is I confesse that we go or send al of us to the taverne for to buy our wine by one the same measure just which is allowed and set downe by the publicke State but to the table every man brings his owne stomacke the which is filled not with an equall quantitie of meat or drinke to all others but with that which sufficeth ech one As touching those banquets that Homer speaketh of wherein every man had his part cut out to what purpose should we bring them hither from military discipline and the custome of a campe to the manner and fashion of these daies but more reason it is that we resolve and propose unto our selves for to imitate heerein the humanity courtesie of those in old time who highly honored not only those who lodged ordinarily and made their abode with them under one roufe but also such as drunke of the same cuppe eat of the same meat and fedde out of one dish with them insomuch as they enterteined and reverenced their societie in all things Away therefore I pray you with those short meales and slender pittances of Homer which in my conceit are somewhat too scantand pinching and as a man would say over hungry and thirstie as having kings and princes for the masters and makers of them who be more sparing of their purses and looking more neerely to their expences than those good hoasts and keepers of ordinaries in Italy as who being in armes and arranged in batell raie and ready to joine in conflict with the enemie could remember precisely how many times ech one of their guests who dined or supped with them tooke the cuppe and dranke Yet commend me to those banquets and feasts which Pindarus writeth of for surely they are much better in which as he saith Full oft a prince and person honorable Among them all sat at some stately table For why such feasts had the communication of all things together and verily this was the felowship and knot indeed of true friends whereas the other was a distraction and separation of persons who made semblance to be the greatest friends and yet could not agree and communicate together so much as in the feeding of one dish of meat Agias had good audience given him and was well commended for the reasons which he alledged and then we set one of the company to come upon him in this manner saying That Agias thought it very strange and was offended that he should have an equall portion which others allowed him carying as he did before him such a grand-paunch and in truth a great eater he was and given exceeding much to belly cheere For a common fish as Democritus was wont to say hath no bone And yet this is that quoth I which especially and above all induceth us to the use of these portions and not without good reason considering that we acknowledge fatall necessitie by the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for according as the old lady Jocasta said in Euripides That which uniteth cities and great States And knits in league confederates is nothing els but equalitie and nothing in the world hath so much need thereof as the societie and communion at the table which is grounded upon nature and law of necessitie nothing so much the usage whereof is not newly taken up nor drawen in as needful by opinion of others but right necessarie in it selfe For at an ordinary or common repast where folke feed together of one dish if one eat more than his fellowes certes he that can not plie his teeth so fast and commeth short of him doth maligne and repine at him for it like as that galley which maketh way and skuddeth before others is spighted by those that come dragging behinde For mee thinks it is not an auspicate beginning of a feast nor agreeable to amitie and good fellowship to snatch or lurch one from another
reason to induce us thereunto for men are wont to attribute a kinde of divinty unto things which are passing common and the commoditie whereof reacheth farre as for example to water light the seasons of the yeere as for the earth her above the rest they repute not onely divine but also to be a goddesse there is none of all these things rehearsed that salt giveth place unto one jot in regard of use and profit being as it is a fortification to our meats within the bodie and that which commendeth them unto our appetite but yet consider moreover if this be not a divine propertie that it hath namely to preserve and keepe dead bodies free from putrifaction a long while and by that meanes to resist death in some sort for that it suffereth not a mortall bodie wholly to perish and come to nothing but like as the soule being the most divine part of us is that which mainteineth all the rest alive and suffereth not the masse and substance of the bodie to be dissolved and suffer colliquation even so the nature of salt taking hold of dead bodies and imitating heerein the action of the soule preserveth the same holding and staying them that they runne not headlong to corruption giving unto all the parts an amitie accord agreement one with the other and therefore it was elegantly said by some of the Stoicks That the flesh of an hogge was even from the beginning no better than a dead carion but that life being diffused within it as if salt were strewed throughout kept it sweet and so preserved it for to last long Moreover you see that wee esteeme lightning or the fire that commeth by thunder celestiall and divine for that those bodies which have beene smitten therewith are observed by us to continue a great while unputrified and without corruption What marvell is it then if our auncients have esteemed salt divine having the same vertue and nature that this divine and celestiall fire hath Heere I staied my speech and kept silence With that Philinus followed on and pursued the same argument And what thinke you quoth he is not that to be held divine which is generative and hath power to ingender considering that God is thought to be the originall authour creatour and father of all things I avowed no lesse and said it was so And it is quoth he an opinion generally received that salt availeth not a little in the matter of generation as you your selfe touched ere-while speaking of Aegyptian priests they also who keepe and nourish dogs for the race when they see them dull to performe that act and to doe their kinde do excite and awaken their lust and vertue generative that lieth as it were asleepe by giving them aswell as other hot meats salt flesh and fish both that have lien in bring pickle also those ships vessels at sea which ordinarily are fraight with salt breed commonly an infinit number of mice and rats for that as some hold the females or does of that kinde by licking of salt onely will conceive and be bagged without the company of the males or bucks but more probable it is that saltnesse doth procure a certeine itching in the naturall parts of living creatures and by that means provokeht males females both to couple together and peradventure this may be the reason that the beauty of a woman which is not dull and unlovely but full of favor attractive and able to move concupiscence men use to name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say saltish or well seasoned And I suppose that the poets have fained Venus to have beene engendred of the sea not without some reason and that this tale that she should come of salt was devised for the nonce to signifie and make knowen under those covert tearmes that there is in salt a generative power certes this is an ordinarie and generall thing among those poets to make all the sea-gods fathers of many children and very full of issue To conclude you shall not finde any land creature finde any land-creature or flying fowle for fruitfulnesse comparable to any kinde of fishes bred in the sea which no doubt this verse of Empedocles had respect unto Leading a troupe which senselesse were and rude Even of sea-fish a breeding multitude THE SIXTH BOOKE OF SYMPOSIAQUES OR BANQUET-QUESTIONS The Summarie 1 WHat is the reason that men fasting be more at hirst than hungrie 2 Whether it be want of food that causeth hunger and thirst or the transformation and change of the pores and conduit of the bodie be the cause thereof 3 How commeth it that they who be hungrie if they drinke are eased of their hunger but contrariwise those who are thir stie if they eat be more thirstic 4 What is the reason that pit-water when it is drawen if it be left all night within the same aire of the pit becommeth more cold 5 What is the cause that little stones and plates or pellets of lead if they be cast into water cause it to be the colder 6 Why snowe is preserved by covering it with straw chaffe or garments 7 Whether wine is to run throw a strainer 8 What is the cause of extraordinarie hunger or appetites to meat 9 Why the poet Homer when he spcaketh of other liquors useth proper epithits onely oile he calleth moist 10 What is the cause that the flesh of beasts flaine for sacrifiece if they be hanged upon a fig-tree quickly become tender THE SIXTH BOOKE OF Symposiaques or banquet-questions The Proeme PLato being minded to draw Timotheus the sonne of Canon ô Sossius Senecio from sumptuous feasts and superfluous banquets which great captaines commonly make invited him one day to a supper in the Academie which was philosophicall indeed and frugall where the table was not furnished with those viands which might distemper the bodie with feaverous heats and inflamations as Iōn the poet was wont to say but such a supper I say upon which ordinarily there follow kinde and quiet sleeps such fansies also and imaginations as ingender few dreames and those short and in one word where the sleeps do testifie a great calmnesse and tranquillitie of the bodie The morrow after Timotheus perceiving the difference betweene these suppers and the other said That they who supped with Plato over-night found the pleasure and comfort therof the next day and to say a trueth a great helpe and ready meanes to a pleasant and blessed life is the good temperature of the body not drenched in wine nor loaden with viands but light nimble and ready without any feare or distrust to performe all actions and functions of the day-time But there was another commodity no lesse than this which they had who supped with Plato namely the discussing and handling of good and learned questions which were held at the table in supper time for the remembrance of the pleasures in eating and drinking is illiberall and unbeseeming men of worth
sacrifice invited to the feast and after we had performed all ceremonies and complements therto belonging and were set at the table some question there was moved first as touching the vocable it selfe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what it should signifie and afterwards of the words uttered unto the slave when he is driven out but most of all of that maladie so called and of the accidents and circumstances thereof As for the tearme Bulimos every man in maner was of opinion that it betokened a great and publike famine but especially we Greeks of Aeolia who in our dialect use the letter π for β for we commonly do not say Bulimos but Pulimos as if it were Polylimos or Polilimos that is to say a great famine or a generall famine thorowout the citie and it seemed unto us that 〈◊〉 was another thing different from it and namely by a sound argument which we had from the Chronicles penned by Metrodorus as touching the acts of Ionia wherein thus much he writeth That the Smyrneans who in old time were Aeolians use to sacrifice unto Bubrostis a blackebull as an holocaust or burnt offering which they cut into pieces with the hide and so burne it all together But forasmuch as all maner of hunger resembleth a maladie and principally this called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which commeth upon a man when his bodie is affected with some unkind and unnaturall indisposition it seemeth that by great reason as they oppose wealth to povertie so they set health against sicknesse like as the heaving and overturning of the stomacke a disease when as men are said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tooke that name first upon occasion of those who are in a ship when they saile or row fal to be stomack sicke and are apt to cast but afterwards by custome of speech whosoever feele the like passion of the stomacke and a disposition to vomit are said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to saie to be sea sicke even so the verbe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the noune 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 taking the beginning as is before said there is come unto us and signifieth a dogs-appetite or extraordinary hunger And to this purpose wee all spake and made a contribution as it were of all our reasons to make out a common supper or collation but when we came to touch the cause of this disease the first doubt that arose among us was this that they should most be surprized with this maladie who travell in great snowes like as Brutus did of late daies who when he marched with his army from Dyrrhachium to Apollonia was in danger of his life by occasion of this infirmitie it was a time when the snowe lay very deepe in which march he went such a pace that none of those who had the carriage of victuals overtooke him or came neere unto him now when as he fainted so for feeblenesse of stomacke that he now swooned and was ready to give up the ghost the souldiers were forced to runne in haste unto the walles of the city and to call for a loafe of bread unto their very enemies warding and keeping the watch upon the walles which when they had presently gotten therewith they recovered Brutus whereupon afterwards when he was master of the towne hee grievously intreated all the inhabitants for the courtesie which he had received from thence This disease hapneth likewise to horses and asses especially when they have either figges or apples a load but that which of all the rest is most woonderfull there is no manner of food or sustenance in the world that in such a case so soone recovereth the strength not of men onely but of labouring beasts also as to give them bread so that if they eat a morsell thereof bee it never so little they will presently finde their feet and be able to walke Hereupon ensued silence for a while and then I knowing well enough how much the arguments of ancient writers are able to content and satisfie such as are but dull and slow of conceit but contrary wise unto those that be studious ripe of wit and diligent the same make an overture and give courage and heart to search and inquire further into the truth called to minde and delivered before them all a sentence out of Aristotle who affirmeth That the stronger the cold is without the more is the heat within our bodies and so consequently causeth the greater colliquation of the humours in the interior parts Now if these humours thus resolved take a course unto the legges they cause lassitudes and heavinesse if the rheume fall upon the principall fountaines and organs of motion and respiration it bringeth faintings and feeblenesse I had no sooner said but as it is wont in such cases to fall out some tooke in hand to oppugne these reasons and others againe to defend and mainteine the same and Soclarus for his part The words quoth he in the beginning of your speech were very well placed and the ground surely laid for in truth the bodies of those who walke in snow are evidently cold without and exceedingly closed fast and knit together but that the inward heat occasioned thereby should make such a colliquation of humors and that the same should possesse and seize upon the principall parts and instruments of respiration is a bold and rash conceit and I cannot see how it should stand Yet rather would I thinke that the heat being thus kept in and united together and so by that meanes fortified consumeth all the nourishment which being spent it cannot chuse but the said heat also must needs languish even as a fire without fewell and heereupon it is that such have an exceeding hunger upon them and when they have eaten never so little they come presently to themselves againe for that food is the maintenance of naturall heat Then Cleomenes the physician This word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say hunger quoth hee in the compound 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifieth nothing else but is crept into the composition of it I know not how without any reason at all like as in the verbe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which betokeneth to devoure or swallow downe solid meat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say to drinke hath no sense or congruitie at all no more than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say to bend downward or fall groveling hath any thing to doe in the verbe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that signifieth to rise aloft or to hold up the head as birds doe in drinking for surely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seemeth not unto me to be any hunger as many have taken it but it is a passion of the stomacke which concurring indeed with hunger engendreth a fainting of the heart and an aptnesse to swoone and even as odors and smels doe fetch againe and helpe those that be in a swoone so bread doth remedie and recover those
and outragious but milde and gracious And thus we reade of Aeschylus the poet that he endited and wrote his tragedies when he was thorowly set in an heat with wine in such sort as that they all were conceived by the influence of Bacchus and not as Gorgias saith that one of them and namely the greatest intituled The seven princes before Thebes was begotten as it were by Mars For wine being of power to enchafe the bodie and minde both according as Plato saith causeth the bodie to be perspirable quicke and active opening all the pores and passages thereof giving way unto the fantasies and imaginations easily to runne forth drawing out together with them the assurance of reason and boldnesse of speech for you shall have men whose invention naturally is good enough in whom when they be sober and fasting the same is colde timorous and in maner frozen let them once be well plied with wine cup after cup you shall see them evaporate and smoake out like as frankincense doth by the heat of fire Furthermore the nature of wine chaseth away all feare which is as contrarie unto those who sit in consultation as any thing in the world it quencheth also many other base and vile passions such as malice and rancour it openeth the double plates and folds of the minde displaying and discovering the whole disposition and nature of a man by his very words yea it hath a vertue to give franke and liberall speech and consequently audacitie to utter the trueth without which neither experience nor quickenesse of wit availeth ought for many there be who putting in practise and making use of that which commeth quickely into their heads speed better and have greater successe than those who warily cautelously and with much subtiltie seeme to conceale and keepe in that which presenteth it selfe unto them and be very lateward in delivering their opinion we are not therefore to feare wine in this regard that it stirreth up the passions of the minde for inciteth not the worst unlesse it be in the wickeddest men whose counsell is at no time sober but as Theophrastus was woont to call barbars shoppes drie bankets without wine even so there is a kind of winelesse drunkennesse and the same sowre and unpleasant dwelling continually within the mindes of men that be vicious and without good bringing up troubled and vexed alwaies with some anger with grudge malice envie emulation contention or illiberal basenesse of which vices wine abating the edge of a great part rather than sharpning them maketh men not sottish fooles and blockish dolts but ready and apt and yet circumspect cautelous and wary not supine and negligent in matters concerning their profit but yet industrious and making choise of that which is good and honest but such as tearme wily-craftinesse by the name of fine wit and take erroneous opinion and mechanicall nigardise for wisedome may even aswell and with as good reason say that as many as when they be drinking at the table speake their mindes roundly and utter with libertie what they thinke be senselesse fooles but contrariwise our ancients called Bacchus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is as much to say as Deliverer and Freer being of opinion that there was to be ascribed unto him a great part of divination not for that he was furious raging mad as Euripides said but because he delivereth the minde and freeth it from all servile feare diffidence and cowardise giving us freedome and libertie to speake the trueth and use franknesse of speech one to another THE EIGHTH BOOKE OF SYMPOSIAQUES OR TABLE-DISCOURSES The Summarie 1 OF those daies upon which were borne certeine not able and famous persons and withall as touching that progenie which is said to descend from the gods 2 In what sense Plato said that God alwaies exerciseth Geometrie 3 What is the reason that sounds be more audible in the night than in the day 4 What is the cause that of the sacred games some have this garland and others that but all the date-tree branch as also why the great dates be called Nicolai 5 Wherefore they that saile upon the river Nilus draw up water for their use before it be day 6 Of those that come late to supper and therewith whereupon came these names of refections 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 7 Of certeine Pythagorean precepts by which for bidden we are to enterteine swallowes within our houses and when we are newly risen out of our beds to ruffle the clothes 8 What might be the motive that induced the Pythagoreans among all other living creatures to abstaine most from fish 9 Whether it be possible that by our meats there should be engendred new diseases 10 What is the cause that we take least heed of our dreames in Autumne THE EIGHTH BOOKE OF Symposiaques or table-discourses The Proëme THey that chase philosophie out of feasts and banquets ô Sossius Senecio do not the same but worse farre than those who take away the light from thence for that when the lampe is gone such persons as be made temperate and well disposed will be nothing the woorse therefore making as they doe more account of a reverent regard than of the mutuall sight one of another whereas if rudenesse ignorance and leaudnesse be joined with wine the very golden lampe of Minerva if it were there could not possibly make the feast or banquet lovely gracious modest and well ordered for that men should feed and fill themselves together in silence without a word saying were the fashion that savoured very much of stil swine at their draffe and perhaps a thing impossible but whosoever reserveth speech in a feast and withall admitteth not the wise and profitable use thereof is more worthy to be laughed at than he who thinketh verily that guests should be ever eating and drinking at a supper but not filleth unto them wine undelaied unseasoned and which is meere of it selfe or setteth before them viands unseasoned without salt or sauce and the same not cleanly dressed for that there is no meat or drinke so unsavorie unpleasant and hurtfull for want of good and orderly handling as words carried unseemly and without discretion at a banquet which is the reason that philosophers when they reproove drunkennesse call it a doting by wine and surely this dotage is no other thing but raving or vaine foolish and undiscreet using of words now when disordinate babling and foolish talke meeteth once with wine in a banquet it can not chuse but the issue thereof will be reprochfull contumelie insolencie brainsicke follie and villanie which of all others is a most unpleasant end and farthest from all muses and graces and therefore it is no foolish ceremonie and absurd fashion which the women in our countrey observe at their feasts called Agronia where they make semblance for a while as if they sought for Bacchus being fled out of the way but afterwards give
is no action considering it doth cleane contrary to action for that action intendeth commenseth and beginneth a processe or sute but exception or inhibition dissolveth undooeth and abolisheth the same semblably they thinke also that the Tribunate was an empeachment inhibition and restraint of a magistracie rather than a magistracie it selfe for all the authority and power of the Tribune lay in opposing himselfe and crossing the jurisdiction of other magistrates and in diminishing or repressing their excessive and licentious power Or haply all these reasons and such like are but words and devised imaginations to mainteine discourse but to say a trueth this Tribuneship having taken originally the first beginning from the common people is great and mighty in regard that it is popular and that the Tribunes themselves are not proud nor highly conceited of themselves above others but equall in apparell in port fare and maner of life to any other citizens of the common sort for the dignity of pompe and outward shew apperteineth to a Consull or a Praetour as for the Tribune of the people he ought to be humble and lowly and as M. 〈◊〉 was woont to say ready to put his hand under every mans foot not to carie a loftie grave and stately countenance nor to bee hard of accesse nor strange to be spoken with or dealt withall by the multitude but howsoever he behave himselfe to others he ought to the simple and common people above the rest for to be affable gentle and tractable and heereupon the maner is that the dore of his house should never be kept shut but stand open both day and night as a safe harbour sure haven and place of refuge for all those who are distressed and in need and verilie the more submisse that he is in outward appeerance the more groweth hee and encreaseth in puissance for they repute him as a strong hold for common recourse and retrait unto al commers no lesse than an altar or priviledged sanctuarie Moreover as touching the honour that he holdeth by his place they count him holy sacred and inviolable insomuch as if he doe but goe foorth of his house abroad into the citie and walke in the street the maner was of all to clense and sanctifie the body as if it were steined and polluted 82 What is the reason that before the Prators generall Captaines and head Magistrates there be caried bundels of roddes together with hatchets or axes fastned unto them IS it to signifie that the anger of the magistrate ought not to be prompt to execution nor loose and at libertie Or because that to undoe and unbinde the said bundels yeeldeth sometime and space for choler to coole and ire to asswage which is the cause otherwhiles that they change their mindes and doe not proceed to punishment Now forasmuch as among the faults that men commit some are curable others remedilesse the roddes are to reforme those who may be amended but the hatchets to cut them off who are incorrigible 83 What is the cause that the Romanes having intelligence given vnto them that the Bletonesians a barbarous nation had sacrificed unto their gods a man sent for the magistrates peremptorily as intending to 〈◊〉 them but after they once understood that they had so done according to an ancient law of their countrey they let them go againe without any hurt done unto them charging them onely that from thence foorth they should not obey such a law and yet they themselves not many yeeres before had caused for to be buried quicke in the place called the Beast Market two men and two women that is to say two Greekes and two Gallo-Greekes or Galatians For this seemeth to be verie absurd that they themselves should do those things which they reprooved in others as damnable MAy it not be that they judged it an execrable superstition to sacrifice a man or woman unto the gods marie unto divels they held it necessarie Or was it not for that they thought those people who did it by a law or custome offended highly but they themselves were directed thereto by expresse commaundement out of the bookes of Sibylla For reported it is that one of their votaries or Vestall nunnes named Helbia riding on horse-backe was smitten by a thunderbolt or blast of lightning and that the horse was found lying along all bare bellied and her selfe likewise naked with her 〈◊〉 and petticote turned up above her privie parts as if she had done it of purpose her shooes her rings her coife and head attire cast here and there apart from other things and withall lilling the toong out of her head This strange occurrent the soothsayers out of their learning interpreted to signifie that some great shame did betide the sacred virgins that should be divulged and notoriously knowen yea and that the same infamie should reach also as far as unto some of the degree of gentlemen or knights of Rome Upon this there was a servant belonging unto a certaine Barbarian horseman who detected three Vestal virgins to have at one time forfeited their honor been naught of their bodies to wit Aemilia 〈◊〉 Martia and that they had companied too familiarly with men a long time and one of their names was Butetius a Barbarian knight and master to the said enformer So these vestall Votaries were punished after they had beene convicted by order of law and found guiltie but after that this seemed a fearfull and horrible accident ordeined it was by the Senate that the priests should peruse over the bookes of 〈◊〉 prophesies wherein were found by report those very oracles which denounced and foretold this strange occurrent and that it portended some great losse and calamitie unto the common-wealth for the avoiding and diverting whereof they gave commaundement to abandon unto I wot not what maligne and divelish strange spirits two Greekes and two Galatians likewise and so by burying them quicke in that verie place to procure propitiation at Gods hands 84 Why began they their day at midnight WAs it not for that all policie at the first had the beginning of militarie discipline and in war and all expeditions the most part of woorthy exploits are enterprised ordinarily in the night before the day appeare Or because the execution of desseignes howsoever it begin at the sunne rising yet the preparation thereto is made before day-light for there had need to be some preparatives before a worke be taken in hand and not at the verie time of execution according as Myson by report answered unto Chilo one of the seven sages when as in the winter time he was making of a van Or haply for that like as we see that many men at noone make an end of their businesse of great importance and of State affaires even so they supposed that they were to begin the same at mid-night For better proofe whereof a man may frame an argument hereupon that the Roman chiefe ruler never made league nor concluded any
sent by king Ptolomaeus surnamed Soter to the city Sinope for to carie the god Serapis together with their captaine Dionysius were by force of winde and tempest driven against their willes beyond the cape or promontorie Malea where they had Peloponnesus on the right hand and when they wandered and were tossed to and fro upon the seas not knowing where they were making account they were lost and cast away there shewed himslefe before the prow of their ship a dolphin which seemed to call unto them and who guided them unto those coasts where there were many commodious havens and faire baies for ships to harbour and ride in with safetie and thus he conducted and accompanied their ship from place to place untill at length he brought it within the rode of Cirrha where after they had sacrificed for their safe arrivall and landing they understood that of two images there they were to have away that of Pluto and carrie it with them but the other of Proserpina to leave behinde them when they had taken onely the mould and patterne thereof Probable it is therefore that the god Apollo carried an affection to this dolphin for that it loveth musicke so well whereupon the poet Pindarus comparing himselfe unto the dolphin saith that he was provoked and stirred up to musicke by the leaping and dauncing of this fish Like as the dolphin swimmes apace Directly forward to that place Whereas the pleasant shawmes do sound And whence their noice doth soone rebound What time both winds and waves do lie At sea and let no harmonie or rather we are to thinke that the god is well affected unto him because he is so kind and loving unto man for the onely creature it is that loveth man for his owne sake and in regard that he is a man whereas of land-beasts some you shall have that love none at all others and those that be of the tamest kinde make much of those onely of whom they have some use and benefit namely such as feed them or converse with them familiarly as the dogge the horse and the elephant and as for swallowes received though they be into our houses where they have enterteinment and whatsoever they need to wit shade harbour and a necessary retrait for their safetie yet they be afraied of man and shun him as if he were some savage beast whereas the dolphin alone of all other creatures in the world by a certeine instinct of nature carrieth that sincere affection unto man which is so much sought for and desired by our best philosophers even without any respect at all of commoditie for having no need at all of mans helpe yet is he neverthelesse friendly and courteous unto all and hath succoured many in their distresse as the storie of Arion will testifie which is so famous as no man is ignorant thereof and even you Aristotimus your owne selfe rehearsed to very good purpose the example of Hesiodus But yet by your good leave my friend Of that your tale you made no end for when you reported unto us the fidelitie of his dogge you should have proceeded farther and told out all not leaving out as you did the narration of the dolphins for surely the notice that the dogge gave by baying barking and running after the murderers with open mouth was I may tell you but a blinde presumption and no evident argument About the citie Nemium the dolphins meeting with the dead corps of a man floting up and downe upon the sea tooke it up and laied it on their backs shifting it from one to another by turnes as any of them were wearie with the carriage and very willingly yea and as it should seeme with great affection they conveied it as farre as to the port Rhium where they laied it downe upon the shore and so made it knowen that there was a man murdered Myrtilus the Lesbian writeth that Aenalus the Acolian being fallen in fansie with a daughter of Phineus who according to the oracle of Amphirite was by the daughters of Pentheus cast downe headlong into the sea threw himselfe after her but there was a dolphin tooke him up and brought him safe unto the isle Lesbos Over and besides the affection and good will which a dolphin bare unto a yoong lad of the citie Iasos was so hot and vehement in the highest degree that if ever one creature was in love with another it was he for there was not a day went over his head but he would disport play and swimme with him yea and suffer himselfe to be handled and tickled by him upon his bare skinne and if the boy were disposed to mount aloft upon his backe he would not refuse nor seeme to avoide him nay hee was verie well content with such a carriage turning what way soever hee reined him or seemed to encline and thus would hee doe in the presence of the Iasians who oftentimes would all runne foorth to the sea side of purpose to behold this sight Well on a daie above the rest when this ladde was upon the dolphins backe there fell an exceeding great shower of raine together with a monstrous storme of haile by reason whereof the poore boy fell into the sea and there died but the dolphin tooke up his bodie dead as it was and together with it shut himselfe upon the land neither would he depart from the corps so long as there was any life in him and so died judging it great reason to take part with him of his death who seemed partly to be the cause thereof In remembrance of which memorable accident the Iasians represent the historie thereof stamped and printed upon their coine to wit a boy riding upon a dolphin which storie hath caused that the fable or tale that goeth of Caeranus is beleeved for a truth for this caeranus as they say borne in Paros chanced to be upon a time at Byzantium where seeing a great draught of dolphins taken up in a casting-net by the fishers whom they meant to kill and cut into pieces bought them all alive and let them go againe into the sea Not long after it hapned that he sailed homeward in a foist of fiftie oares which had aboord by report a number of pyrates and rovers but in the streights betweene Naxos and Paros the vessel was cast away and swallowed up in a gust in which shipwracke when all the rest perished he onely was saved by meanes as they say of a dolphin which comming under his bodie as he was newly plunged into the sea bare him up tooke him upon his backe and carried him as farre as to a certaine cave about Zacynthus and there landed him which place is shewed for a monument at this day and after his name is called Coeranium upon this occasion Archilachus the poet is said to have made these verses Of fiftie men by tempest drown'd And left in sea all dead behind Coeran alone alive was found God Neptune was to him so kind
Afterwards the said Caeranus himselfe died and when his kinsfolke friends burned his corps nere to the sea side in a funerall fire many dolphins were discovered along the coast hard by the shore shewing as it were themselves how they were come to honour his obsequies for depart they would not before the whole solemnitie of this last dutie was performed That the scutchion or shield of Ulysses had for the badge or ensigne a dolphin Stesichorus hath testified but the occasion and cause thereof the Zacynthians report in this manner as Criteus the historian beareth witnesse Telemachus his sonne being yet an infant chanced to slip with his feet as men say to fall into a place of the sea where it was very deep but by the means of certaine dolphins who tooke him as he fell saved he was and carried out of the water whereupon his father in a thankfull regard and honour to this creature engraved within the collet of his signet wherewith hee sealed the portrait of a dolphin likewise carried it as his armes upon his shield But forasmuch as I protested in the beginning that I would relate to you no fables and yet I wot not how in speaking of dolphins I am carried farther than I was aware and fallen upon Ulysses and Caeranus somewhat beyond the bounds of likelihood and probabilitie I will set a fine upon mine owne head and even here for amends lay a straw and make an end You therefore my masters who are judges may when it pleaseth you proceed to your verdict SOCLARUS As for us we were of mind a good while since to say according to the sentence of Sophocles Your talke ere while which seem'd to disagre Will soone accord and joint-wise framed be for if you will both of you conferre your arguments proofes and reasons which you have alledged of the one side and the other and lay them all together in common betweene you it will be seene how mightily you shall confute and put downe those who would deprive bruit beasts of all understanding and discourse of reason WHETHER THE ATHENIANS WERE MORE RENOWMED FOR MARTIALL ARMES OR GOOD LETTERS The Summarie WE have here the fragments of a pleasant discourse written in the favour of Athenian warriours and great captaines which at this day hath neither beginning nor end and in the middle is altogether maimed and unperfect but that which the infortunitie of the times hath left unto us is such yet as thereout we may gather some good and the intention of Plutarch is therein sufficiently discovered unto us for he sheweth that the Atheutans were more famous and excellent in feats of armes than in the profession of learning Which position may seeme to be a strange paradox considering that Athens was reputed the habitation of the muses and if there were ever any brave historians singular poets and notable oratours in the world we are to looke for them in this citie Yet for all this he taketh upon him to proove that the prowesse of Athenian captaines was without all comparison more commendable and praisewoorthie than all the dexteritie of others who at their leasure have written in the shade and within house the occurrents and accidents of the times or exhibited pleasures and pastimes to the people upon the stage or scaffold And to effect this intended purpose of his be considereth in the first place historiographers and adjoineth thereto a briefe treatise of the art of painting and by comparison of two persons bringing newes of a field fought where of the one was onely a beholder and looker on the other an actor himselfe and a souldier fighting in the battell he sheweth that noble captaines ought to be preferred before historians who pen and set downe their desseignes and executions From history he passeth on to poesie both comicall and tragicall which he reproveth and debaseth notwithstanding the Athenians made exceeding account thereof giving to understand that their valor consisted rather in martiall exploits-In the last place he speaketh of oratours and by conference of their or ations and other reasons proveth that these great speakers deserve not that place as to have their words weighed in ballance against the deeds of many politike and valiant warriours WHETHER THE ATHENIANS were more renowmed for martiall armes or good letters WEll said this was in trueth of him unto those great captaines and commanders who succeeded him unto whom hee made way and gave entrance to the executions of those exploits which they performed afterwards when himselfe had to their hands chased out of Greece the barbarous king Xerxes and delivered the Greeks out of servitude but aswell may the same be said also to those who are proud of their learning and stand highly upon their erudition For if you take away men of action you shall be sure to have no writers of them take away the politike government of Pericles at home the navall victories and trophaes atchieved by Phormio neere the promontorie of Rhium the noble prowesses of Nicias about the isle Cythera as also before the cities of Corinth and Megara take away the sea-sight of Demosthenes before Pylos the foure hundred captives and prisoners of Cleon the worthy deeds of Tolmias who scowred all the coasts of Peloponnesus the brave acts of Myronides and the battell which he woon against the Boeotians in the place called Oenophyta and withall you blot out the whole historie of Thucydides take away the valiant service of Alcibtades shewed in Hellespont the rare manhood of Thrasylus neere unto the isle Lesbos the happie suppression and abolition of the tyrannicall oligarchie of the thirty usurpers by Theramenes take away the valourous endevours of Thrasybulus and Archippus to gether with the rare desseignes and enterprises executed by those seven hundred who from Phyla rose up in armes and were so hardie and resolute as to levie a power and wage warre against the lordly potentates of Sparta and last of all Conon who caused the Athenians to go to sea againe and maintaine the warres and therewithall take away Cratippus and all his Chronicles For as touching Xenophon he was the writer of his owne historie keeping a booke and commentarie of those occurrents and proceedings which passed under his happie conduct and direction and by report he gave it out in writing that Themistogenes the Syracusian composed the said narration of his acts to the end that Xenophon might win more credit and be the better beleeved writing as he did of himselfe as of a stranger and withall gratifying another man by that meanes with the honour of eloquence in digesting and penning the same All other historians besides as these Clinodemi and Diylli Philochorus and Philarchus may be counted as it were the actors of other mens plaies who setting downe the acts of kings princes and great captaines shrowded close under their memorials to the end that themselves might have some part with them of their light and splendor For surely there is a certaine
wit the skill of measures then afterwards to Astrologie which is the knowledge of the stars in the highest place above all the rest setteth Harmonicae which is the skill of sounds and accords for the subject of Geometrie is this when as to quantity in generall there is adjoined magnitude in length bredth of Stereometrie when to the magnitude of length and bredth there is added depth or profunditie Likewise the proper subject of Astrology is this when to the solid magnitude there cōmeth motion The subject of harmony or musick when to a bodie moving there is adjoined sound or voice If we subtract then and take away from moving bodies voice from solid bodies motion from superficies depth and profundity and from quantities magnitude we shall come by this time to the intelligible Ideae which have no difference among them in regard of one and sole thing for unitie maketh no number unlesse it come once to touch binarie or two which is infinite but in this wise having produced a number it proceedeth to points and pricks from pricks to lines and so forth from lines to superficies from superficies to profundities from thence to bodies and so forward to the qualities of bodies subject to passions and alrerations Moreover of intellectuall things there is no other judge but the understanding or the mind for cogitation or intelligence is no other thing but the understanding so long as it is applied unto Mathematicals wherein things intellectuall appeare as within mirrours whereas for the knowledge of bodies by reason of their great number nature hath given unto us five powers and faculties of severall and different senses for to judge withall and yet sufficient they are not to discover all objects for many there be of them so small that they can not be perceived by the senses And like as although every one of us being composed of soule and bodie yet that principall part which is our spirit and understanding is a very small thing hidden and inclosed within a great masse of flesh even so very like it is that there is the same proportion within the universall world betweene things sensible and intellectuall for the intellectuall are the beginning of corporall now that which proceedeth from a beginning is alwaies in number more and in magnitude greater than the said beginning But on the contrary a man may reason thus and say First and formost that in comparing sensible and corporall things with intellectuall we doe in some sort make mortall things equall with devine for God is to be reckened among intellectuals Now this is to be granted that the content is alwaies lesse then the continent but the nature of the universall world within the intellectuall comprehendeth the sensible For God having set the soule in the midst hath spred and stretched it through all within and yet without forth hath covered all bodies with it As for the soule it is invisible yea and inperceptible to all the naturall senses according as he hath written in his booke of lawes and therefore every one of us is corruptible but the world shall never perish for that in each of us that which is mortall and subject to dissolution containeth within it the power which is vitall but in the world it is cleane contrary for the principall puissance and nature which is ever after one sort immutable and doth alwaies preserve the corporall part which it containeth and imbraceth within it selfe Besides in a bodily nature and corporall a thing is called individuall and importible for the smallnesse therof to wit when it is so little that it cannot be devided but in the spirituall and incorporall it is so called for the simplicity sincerity purity thereof as being exempt from all multiplicity diversity for otherwise folly it were to cast a guesse at spirituall things by corporal Furthermore the very present time which we call Now is said to be inpartible and indivisible howbeit instant together it is every where neither is their any part of this habitable world without it but all passions all actions all corruptions generations throughout the world are comprised in this very present Now. Now the onely instrument to judge of things intellectuall is the understanding like as the eie of light which for simplicity is uniforme every way like unto it selfe but bodies having many diversities differences are comprehended by divers instruments judged some by this and others by that And yet some there be who unwoorthily disesteeme and contemne the intellectuall puissance and spirituall which is in us for in truth being goodly and great it surmounteth every sensible thing and reacheth up as farre as to the gods But that which of all others is most himselfe in his booke entituled Symposium teaching how to use love and love matters in withdrawing the soule from the affection of beauties corporall and applying the same to those which are intellectuall exhorteth us not to subject and inthrall our selves into the lovely beauty of any body nor of one study and science but by erecting and lifting up our mindes aloft from such base objects to turne unto that vast ocean indeed of pulcritude and beauty which is vertue 3 How commeth it to passe that considering he affirmeth evermore the soule to be more ancient than the body as the very cause of the generation of it and the beginning likewise thereof yea contrariwise he saith that the soule was never without the bodie nor the understanding without the soule and that of necessitie the soule must be within the bodie and the understanding in the soule for it seemeth that heere in there is some contradiction namely that the body both is and is not in case it be true that it is together with the soule and yet neverthelesse ingendred by the soule IS it because that is true which we oftentimes doe say namely that the soule without understanding and the body without forme have alwaies beene together neither the one nor the other had ever commensment of being nor beginning of generation but when the soule came to have participation of understanding and of harmonie and became to be wise by the meanes of consonance and accord then caused she mutation in matter and being more powerfull and strong in her owne motions drew and turned into her the motions of the other and even so the bodies of the world had the first generation from the soule whereby it was shaped and made uniforme For the soule of her selfe brought not foorth the nature of a body nor created it of nothing but of a body without all order and forme whatsoever he made it orderly and very obeisant as if one said that the force of a seed or kernell is alwaies with the bodie but yet neverthelesse the body of the sig tree or olive tree is engendred of the seed or kernell he should not speake contrarieties for the very body it selfe being mooved and altered by the seed
Logicall as touching speech Ethicall concerning maners and Physicall belonging to the nature of things of which that which is respective unto speech ought to precede and be ranged first secondly that which treateth of maners thirdly that which handleth naturall causes Now of these Physicks and naturall arguments the last is that which treateth of God and this is the reason that the precepts and traditions of divine matters and of religion they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as one would say the very last and comming in the end Howbeit this treatise of the gods which by his saying ought to be set last himselfe in the very same booke rangeth above maners and setteth before all other morall questions For neither seemeth he to speake of the ends nor of justice nor of good and evill things nor of marriage nor of the nouriture and education of children 〈◊〉 yet of law nor of the government of the Common-wealth in any sort but as they who propose and publish decrees unto cities and States make some preamble before of good lucke or happie fortune so he useth the preface of Jupiter of Fatall destinie of Divine providence also that there being but one world the same doth consist and is mainteined by one mightie power Which points no man doth firmly beleeve nor can be resolutely perswaded in unlesse he wade deeply into the profoundest secrets and discourses of naturall Philosophie But hearken I beseech you a little to that which he saith of these matters in his third booke of the gods It is not possible quoth he to finde out any other fountaine and original beginning of justice than from Jupiter and common nature for from hence it must needs be that every such thing is derived if that we meane to discourse of good things and evill Againe in his Treatise of naturall positions there is no other way or at leastwise not a better of proceeding to the discourse of good things and bad nor of of vertues nor of sovereigne felicitie than from common nature and the administration of the world Moreover as he goeth forward in another place We are to annex and adjoine hereunto quoth he a treatise of good and evill things considering there is not a better beginning thereof nor yet a reference and relation more proper neither is the speculation and science of nature in any other respect requisit or necessarie to be learned but onely for to know the difference of good and evill And therefore according to Chrysippus this naturall science both goeth before and also followeth after morall things or to say a trueth at once in more expresse termes it were a strange and difficult inversion of order to holde that it is to be placed after them considering that without it it were impossible to comprehend any of the other and a very manifest repugnance it were to affirme that science naturall is the beginning of morall which treateth of good and evill and yet ordeine neverthelesse that it should be taught not before but after it Now if any man say unto me that Chrysippus in his booke entituled The use of speech hath written that he who first learneth Logicke I meane the knowledge and philosophie concerning words ought not altogether for to forbeare the learning of other parts but that he ought to take a taste of them according as he hath meanes thereto well may he speake a trueth but withall confirme he shall my accusation still of his fault for he fighteth with himselfe in ordering one while that a man should learne in the last place and after all the science that treateth of God as if that were the reason why it was called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say Finall and another while teaching cleane contrarie that the same is to be learned even with the very first and at the beginning for then farewell all order for ever and welcome confusion if we must learne all things hudled together at all times But yet this is not the woorst for having set this downe for a reasolution That the doctrine as touching good things and evill ought to begin and proceed from the knowledge of God yet he will not have them who settle themselves and enter into the studie of morall philosophie to take their beginning there but that in learning this to catch somewhat of that by the way even as much as they have easie meanes to come by and afterwards to repasse from morall philosophy unto Theologie without which he saith there can bee neither entrance nor progresse in the knowledge of maners Moreover he saith that To dispute of one and the same question pro contra to and fro he disalloweth not simply and in generality but his advise is to use the same so warily and with such discretion as otherwhiles oratours doe in pleading when they alledge the reasons of their adversaries not to uphold and mainteine the same but onely for to refure and disproove that likelihood and probabilitie which they pretend For otherwise quoth he thus to doe is the maner of those Skepticks who be alwaies doubtfull and withhold their consent in every thing a meere shift that serveth their turne for whatsoever they hold but as for those who would worke and establish in mens hearts a certeine science according to which they might undoubtedly guide and conduct themselves they ought to sound and search the contrary and from point to point by stepmeale to direct their novices newly entred even from the beginning to the very end wherein there falleth out otherwhiles fit opportunity to make mention of contrary sentences and opinions for to refute and resolve that which might seeme to have apparence of trueth as the maner is in pleading before judges for these be the very words and proper tearmes that he useth Now what an absurd and impertinent a thing it is that philosophers should thinke they were to put downe the contrary opinions of other philosophers and not withall their reasons and arguments but onely as advocates pleading at the barre to disable and weaken their proofes and so to weary their adversaries as if disputation were onely to win the honour of victory and not to finde out a trueth we have elsewhere discoursed against him sufficiently But that himselfe not heere and there in his disputations but oftentimes and in many places hath confirmed with might and maine yea and with so great asseveration and contention contrary resolutions unto his owne opinions that it were a right hard matter for any man to discerne which of them he approoveth most they themselves in some sort doe say who admire the subtilty of the man and the vivacity of his spirit who also both thinke and sticke not to affirme that Carneades spake nothing of his owne invention but by the helpe and meanes of which arguments Chrysippus used to proove his owne assertions hee returned the same contrariwise upon himselfe to confute his precepts
from it daily is highly to be reckoned and accounted of and therefore neither can the Delphians be noted for follie in that they terme Venus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say a chariot by reason of this yoke-fellowship nor Homer in calling this conjunction of man and wife 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say amity and friendship Solon likewise is deemed by this to have beene an excellent law-giver and most expert in that which concerneth mariage when he decreed expresly that the husband should thrice in a moneth at the least embrace his wife and company in bed with her not for carnall pleasures sake I assure you but like as cities and states use after a certeine time betweene to renew their leagues and confederacies one with another so he would have that the alliance of mariage should eftsooones be enterteined anew by such solace and delectation after jarres which otherwhiles arise and breed by some bone cast betweene Yea but there be many enormious and furious parts will some one say that are plaied by such as are in love with women And be there not more I pray by those that are enamoured upon boies do but marke him who uttereth these passionate words So often as these eies of mine behold That beardlesse youth that smooth and lovely boy I faint and fall then wish I him to hold Within mine armes and so to die with joy And that on tombe were set where I do lie An Epigram mine end to testifie But as there is a furious passion in some men doting upon women so there is as raging an affection in others toward boies but neither the one nor the other is love Well most absurd it were to say that women are not endued with other vertues for what need we to speake of their temperance and chastity of their prudence fidelity and justice considering that even fortitude it selfe constant confidence and resolution yea and magnaminity is in many of them very evident Now to holde that being by nature not indisposed unto other vertues they are untoward for amitie onely and frendship which is an imputation laid upon them is altogether beside all reason For well knowen it is that they be loving to their children and husbands and this their naturall affection is like unto a fertile field or battell soile capable of amitie not unapt for perswasion nor destitute of the Graces And like as Poesie having sitted unto speech song meeter and thime as pleasant spices to aromatize and season the same by meanes whereof that profitable instruction which it yeeldeth is more attractive and effectuall as also the danger therein more inevitable Even so nature having endued a woman with an amiable cast and aspect of the eie with sweet speech and a beautifull countenance hath given unto her great meanes if she be lascivious and wanton with her pleasure to decive a man and if she be chaste and honest to gaine the good will and favour of her husband Plato gave counsell unto Xenocrates an excellent Philosopher and a woorthy personage otherwise howbeit in his behavior exceeding soure and austere to sacrifice unto the Graces and even so a man might advise a good matron and sober dame to offer sacrifice unto Love for his propitious favour unto mariage and his residence with her and that her husband by her kind loving demeanour unto him may keepe home and not seeke abroad to some other and so be forced in the end to breake out into such speeches as these out of the Comoedie Wretch that I am and man unhappy I So good a wife to quit with injury For in wedlocke to love is a better and greater thing by farre than to be loved for it keepeth folke from falling into many faults slips or to say more truly it averteth them from all those inconveniences which may corrupt marre ruinate a mariage as for those passionate affections which in the beginning of matrimoniall love moove fittes somewhat poinant and biting let me entreat you good friend Zeuxippus not to feare for any exulceration or smart itch that they have although to say a trueth it were no great harme if haply by some little wound you come to be incorporate and united to an honest woman like as trees that by incision are engraffed and grow one within another for when all is said is not the beginning of conception a kinde of exulceration neither can there be a mixture of two things into one unlesse they mutually suffer one of the other be reciprocally affected And verily the Mathematical rudiments which children be taught at the beginning trouble them even as Philosophie also at the first is harsh unto yong men but like as this unpleasantnesse continueth not alwaies with thē no more doeth that mordacity sticke still among lovers And it seemeth that Love at the first resembleth the mixture of two liquors which when they begin to incorporate together boile and worke one with another for even so Love seemeth to make a certaine confused tract and ebullition but after a while that the same be once setled and throughly clensed it bringeth unto Lovers a most firme and assured habit and there is properly that mixtion and temperature which is called universall and thorough the whole whereas the love of other friends conversing and living together may be very well compared to the mixtion which is made by these touching and interlacings of atomes which Epicurus speaketh of and the same is subject to ruptures separations and startings a sunder neither can it possibly make that union which matrimoniall love and mutuall conjunction doeth for neither doe there arise from any other Loves greater pleasures nor commodities more continually one from another ne yet is the benefit and good of any other friendship so honorable or expetible as When man and wife keepe house with one accord And lovingly agree at bed and bord Especially when the law warranteth it and the bond of procreation common betweene them is assistant thereto And verily nature sheweth that the gods themselves have need of such love for thus the Poets say that the heaven loveth the earth and the Naturalists hold that the Sunne likewise is in love with the Moone which every moneth is in conjunction with him by whom also she conceiveth In briefe must it not follow necessarily that the earth which is the mother and breeder of men of living creatures and all plants shall perish and be wholly extinct when love which is ardent desire and instinct inspired from god shall abandon the matter and the matter likewise shall cease to lust and seeke after the principle and cause of her conception But to the end that we may not range too farre nor use any superfluous and nugatory words your selfe doe know that these paederasties are of all other most uncertaine and such as use them are wont to scoffe much thereat and say that the amitie of such boies is in manner of an egge divided
and comprehend another that the rainebow which compasseth the other without forth yeeldeth dim colours and not sufficiently distinct expressed because the outward cloud being farther remote from our sight maketh not a strong and forcible reflexion And what needs there any more to be said considering that the very light of the Sunne returned and sent backe by the Moone 〈◊〉 all the heat and of his brightnesse there commeth unto us with much adoe but a small remnant and a portion very little and feeble Is it possible then that our sight running the same race there should any percell or residue thereof reach from the Moone backe againe to the Sunne For mine owne part I thinke not Consider also I beseech you quoth I even your owne selves that if our eiesight were affected and disposed alike by the water and by the Moone it could not otherwise be but that the Moone should represent unto us the images of the earth of trees of plants of men and of starres as well as water doth and all other kinds of mirrors Now if there be no such reflexion of our eie sight 〈◊〉 the Moone as to bring backe unto us those images either for the feeblenesse of it or the rugged innequallity of her superficies let us never require that it should leape backe as far as to the Sun Thus have we reported as much as our memory would carrie away whatsoever was there delivered Now is it time to desire Sylla or rather to require exact of him to make his narration for that admitted he was to here this discourse upon such a condition And therefore if you thinke so good let us give over walking and sitting downe here upon these seates make him a sedentarie audience All the companie liked well of this motion And when we had taken our places Theon thus began Certes I am desirous quoth he and none of you all more to heare what shall be said But before I would be very glad to understand somewhat of those who are said to dwell in the Moone not whether there be any persons there inhabiting but whether it be possible that any should inhabit there For if this cannot be then it were mere folly and beside all reason to say that the Moone is earth otherwise it would be thought to have beene created in vaine and to no end as bearing no fruits nor affoording no habitation no place for nativity no food or nourishment for any men or women in regard of which cause and for which ends we 〈◊〉 hold that this earth wherein we live as Plato saith was made and created even to be our nourse and keeper making the day and night distinct one from another For you see and know that of this matter many things have beene said aswell merily and by way of laughter as 〈◊〉 and in good earnest For of those who inhabit the Moone some are said to hang by the heads under it as if they were so many 〈◊〉 others contrariwise who dwell upon it are tied fast like a sort of 〈◊〉 and turned about with such a violence that they are in danger to be slung and shaken out And verily she moveth not after one single motion but three maner of waies whereupon the Poets call her other while 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Trivia performing her course together according to length bredth and depth in the Zodiak Of which motions the first is called A direct revolution the second An oblique winding or wheeling in and out and the third the Mathematicians call I wote not how An inequalitie and yet they see that she hath no motion at all even and uniforme nor certeine in all her monthly circuits and reversions No marvell therefore considering the impetuositie of these motions if there fell a lion sometimes out of her into Peloponnesus nay rather we are to wonder why we see not every day a thousand sals of men women yea and as many beasts shaken out from thence and flung downe headlong with their heeles upward For it were a meere mockerie to dispute and stand upon their habitation there if they neither can breed nor abide there For considering that the 〈◊〉 and Troglodytes over whose heads the Sunne standeth directly one moment onely of the day in the time of the Solstices and then presently retireth hardly escape burning by reason of the excessive siccitie of the circumstant aire how possibly can the men in the Moone endure 12 Summers every yere when the Sunne once a moneth is just in their Zenith and setleth plumbe over head when she is at the full As for winds clouds and raines without which the plants of the earth can neither come up nor be preserved it passeth all imagination that there should be any there the aire is so subtile drie and hote especially seeing that even here beneath the highest mountaines doe admit or feele the hard and bitter Winters from yeere to yeere but the aire about them being pure and cleere and without any agitation whatsoever by reason of the subtilitie and lightnesse avoideth all that thicknesse and concretion which is among us unlesse haply we will say that like as Minerva instilled and dropped into Achilles mouth some Nectar and Ambrosia when he received no other food so the Moone who both is called and is indeed Minerva nourisheth men there bringeth foorth daily for them Ambrosia according as olde Pherecides was wont to say that the very gods also were sedde and nourished For as touching that Indian root which as Megasthenes saith certeine people of India who neither eat nor drinke nor have so much as mouthes whereupon they be called Astomi do burne and make to smoake with the odor and perfume whereof they live how can they come by any such there considering the Moone is never watered nor refreshed with raine When 〈◊〉 had thus said You have quoth I very properly and sweetly handled this point you have I say by this mery conceited jest laied smooth and even those bent and knit browes the austerity I meane of this whole discourse which hath given us heart and encouraged us to make answere for that if we faile and come short we looke not for streight examination nor feare any sharpe and grievous punishment For to say a trueth they who take most offence at these matters rejecting and discrediting the same are not so great adversaries unto those who are most perswaded thereof but such as will not after a milde and gentle sort consider that which is possible and probable First and formost therefore this I say that suppose there were no men at all inhabiting the Moone it doth not necessarily follow therefore that she was made for nothing and to no purpose for we see that even this earth here is not thorowout inhabited nor tilled in all parts nay there is but a little portion thereof habitable like unto certeine promontories or 〈◊〉 arising out of the deepe sea for to breed in gender and bring forth
plants living creatures for of the rest some part is desert waste and barren by reason of excessive colde and heat but in trueth the greatest portion lieth drowned under the great and maine sea But you for the great love that you beare to Aristarchus whom you admire so much and evermore have in your hands give no eare to Crates notwithstanding that you reade these verses in Homer The ocean sea from whence both men and gods were first 〈◊〉 With surging waves the greatest part of earth 〈◊〉 over spred And yet God forbid that these parts should be said for to have beene made for nought for the sea doth expire and breath forth certeine mild vapours and the most gentle and pleasant winds which arise and blow in the greatest heat of Summer come from frozen regions and not inhabited for extreame colde which the snow melting and thawing by little and little do send from them and scatter over all our countreys And the earth as Plato saith ariseth out of the sea in the mids as a guardianesse and workmistresse of night and day What should hinder then but that the Moone also may well be without living creatures in it and yet give reflexions unto the light diffused and spred about her yea and yeeld a receit or receptacle of the stars raies which have their confluence meeting and temperature in her whereby she concocteth the evaporations ascending from the earth and withall 〈◊〉 the over-ardent and firie heat of the Sunne Over besides attributing as we do very much to the ancient opinion voice which we have received from our forefathers we will be bold to say that she hath bene reputed Diana as a virgin barren and fruitlesso but otherwise salutarie helpfull and profitable to the world And of all this that hath bene said my friend Theon there is nothing that doth proove and shew directly this habitation of men in the Moone to be impossible for her turning about being so middle so kinde and calme polisheth the aire neere unto it it distributeth and spreadeth the same all about in so good disposition that there is none occasion given to feare that those who live in it should fall downe or slide out of her unlesse she also come downe withall As for that manifold variety of her motions it proceedeth not from any inequality error or confusion but the Astrologers demonstratively shew thereby an order and course most admirable contriving it so that she should be fast within certeine circles that turne and winde about other circles some devising that she herselfe stirreth not others supposing that she mooveth alwaies equally smoothly and in conforme celerity for these are the ascensions of divers circles the circumvertions and turnings about the habitudes in references one to another yea and respective to us which make most elegantly those orderly elevations and depressions in altitude which appeare in her motion yea and her digressions in latitude all jointly with that ordinary and direct revolution of hers in longitude As touching that exceeding heat and continuall inflamation of the Sunne you will cease I am sure to be afraid thereof in case first and formost you will lay to those eleven hote and aestivall conjunctions as it were in exchange as many oppositions when she is at the full and then oppose unto those excessive and enormous extremities which holde not long the continuall change and mutation which reduceth them into a proper and peculiar temperature taking from them that which is excessive and overmuch in both for it seemeth very probable that the time betweene is a season resembling the Springtide Moreover the Sun sendeth his beames into us thorow a grosse and troubled aire casting his heat nourished and fed by evaporations whereas the aire there about the Moone being subtile transparent doth disgre gate and disperse the said beames as having no nouriture to mainteine them nor body to settle upon To come now unto trees woods and fruits here indeed with us they be the raines that nourish them but in other high countreys with you namely about Thebes and Siene it is not the water from heaven but out of the earth that feedeth them for the earth being soaked therewith and besides refreshed with coole winds and comfortable dewes would be loth to compare infertilitie with the best watered ground in the world such is the goodnesse vertue and temperature of the soile And verily the trees of the same kinde with us if they have beene well Wintered that is to say if they have endured a sharpe and long Winter bring forth plenty of good fruit but in Libya and with you in Aegypt they are soone hurt and offended with colde and it they seare exceedingly And whereas the provinces of Gedrosia and Trogloditis lying hard upon the ocean sea be very barren by reason of their drouth and are altogether without trees yet within the sea adjoining thereto and which beateth upon the continent there grow trees of a wonderfull bignesse yea there be that put foorth fresh and greene at the very bottome of the sea whereof some they call Olive trees others Lawrels and some againe Isis haires As for those plants which be called Anacampserotes after they be plucked foorth of the ground where they grow and so hanged up they doe not onely live as long as a man would have them but that which more is budde and put foorth greene leaves Moreover of those plants which are set or sowen some as namely Centauri if they be planted or sowed in a rich or sat soile and the same well drenched and watered doe degenerate and grow out of their naturall qualitie yea and leese all their vertue for that they love to grow drie and in their proper nature and soile agreeable thereto they thrive passing well Others cannot so much as away with any dewes as the most part of the Arabian plants for wet them once they mislike fade and die What marvell then if there grow within the Moone rootes seeds plants and trees that have no need either of shewers or of winter winde and weather but are appropriate naturally to a subtile and dry aire such as the summer season doeth affoord And why may it not stand with good reason that the Moone herselfe sends certeine warme windes and that by her shaking and agitation as she still mooveth there should breath foorth a sweet and comfortable aire fine dewes and gentle moistures spred and dispersed all about sufficient to mainteine the plants fresh and greene considering withall that she of her owne temperature is not ardent nor exceeding drie but rather soft and moist and engendring all humiditie For there commeth not from her unto us any one effect or accident of siccity but of moisture and of a seminine soft constitution many to wit the growing and thriving of plants the putrefaction of flesh killed the turning of wines to be sowre flat and dead the srumnesse and tendernesse of wood and the easie
away the life of Croesus gave unto the baker aforesaid poison willing her when she had tempered it with dough and wrought it into bread to serve the same up unto Croesus But the woman gave secret intelligence hereof unto Croesus and withall bestowed the poisoned bread among the children of this step dame In regard of which demerit Croesus when he came to the crowne would acknowledge and require the good service which this woman had done with the testimony as it were of this god himselfe wherein he did well and vertuously And therefore quoth he meet it is and seemly to praise and honor highly such oblations if any have beene presented and dedicated by cities upon semblable occasions like as the Opunitians did For when the tyrants of the Phocaeans had broken and melted many sacred oblations both of golde and silver and thereof coined money which they sent and dispersed among the cities the Opuntians gathered as much silver as they could wherewith they filled a great pot sent in hither and made thereof an offering to Apollo And I verily for my part doe greatly comend those of Smyrna and Apollonia for sending hither certeine corne-eares of gold in token of harvest and more than that the Eretrians and Magnesians for presenting this god with the first fruits of their men women recognising thereby him to be the giver not only of the fruits which the earth yeeldeth but also of children as being the authour of generation and the lover of mankind But I blame the Megarians as much for that they onely in maner of all the Greeks caused to be erected here the image of this our god with a lance in his hand after the battell with the Athenians who upon the defeature of the Persians held their city in possession and were by them vanquished in fight and disseized thereof againe And yet true it is that these men afterward offered unto Apollo a golden plectre wherewith to play upon his Cittern or Viole having heard as it should seeme the Poet Scythinus speaking of the said instrument Which Don Apollo faire and lovely sonne Of Jupiter doth tune in skilfull wise As who is wont of all things wrought and done All ends with their beginnings to comprise And in his hand the plectre bright as golde Even glittering raies of shining Sun doth holde Now when Serapion would have said somewhat els of these matters A pleasure it were quoth the stranger to heare you devise and discourse of such like things but I must needs demand the first promise made unto me as touching the cause why the Prophetesse Pythia hath given over to make answere any longer by oracle in verse and meetre and therefore if it so please you let us surcease visiting the rest of these oblations and ornaments and rather sit we downe in this place for to heare what can be said of this matter being the principall point and maine reason which impeacheth the credit of this oracle for that of necessitie one of these two things must needs be either that the Prophetesse Pythia approcheth not neere enough to the very place where the divine power is or els that the aire which was woont to breathe and inspire this instinct is utterly quenched and the puissance quite gone and vanished away When we had fetched therefore a circuit about we sat us downe upon the tablements on the South side of the temple nere unto the chappell of Tellus that is to say the Earth where we beheld the waters of the fountaine Castilius and the temple of the Muses with admiration in such sort as Boethus incontinently said that the very place it selfe made much for the question and doubt mooved by the stranger For in olde time quoth he there was a temple of the Muses even there from whence the river springs insomuch as they used this water for the solemne libations at sacrifices according as Simonides writeth in this wise Where water pure is kept in basons faire Beneath of Muses with their yellow haire And in another place the same Simonides with a little more curiositie of words calling upon Cleio the Muse saith she is the holy keeper The sacred ewres who doth superintend Whereby from lovely fountaine do deseend Those waters pure which all the world admires And thereof for to have a taste desires As rising from those caves propheticall That yeeld sweet odors most mirificall And therefore Eudoxus was much overseene to beleeve those who gave out that this was called the water of Styx But in trueth they placed the Muses as assistants to divination and the warders thereof neere unto that riveret and the temple of Tellus aforesaid whereunto apperteined the oracle whereby answeres were rendred in verse and song And some there be who say that this heroique verse was first heard here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is to say You pretie Bees and birds that sing Bring hither both your wax and wing at what time as the oracle being forsaken and destitute of the god Apollo lost all the dignity and majesty that it had Then Serapion These things indeed quoth he ô Boethus are more meet and convenient for the Muses For we ought not to fight against God nor together with prophesie and divination take away both providence and divinitie but to seeke rather for the solution of those reasons which seeme to be contrary thereto and in no wise to abandon and cast off that faith and religious beliefe which hath in our countrey time out of minde passed from father to sonne You say very well and truely quoth I good Serapion for we despaire not of Philosophie as if it were quite overthrowen and utterly gone because Philosophers beforetime pronounced their sentences and published their doctrines in verse as for example Orpheus Hesiodus Parmenides Xenophanes Empedocles Thales and afterwards ceased and gave over to versifie all but your selfe for you have into Philosophie reduced Poetrie againe to set up aloud and loftie note for to incite and stirre up yoong men Neither is Astrologie of lesse credite and estimation because Aristarchus Timochares Aristyllus and Hipparchus have written in prose whereas Eudoxus Hesiodus and Thales wrote before them in verse of that argument at leastwise if it be true that Thales was the author of that Astrologie which is ascribed unto him And Pindarus himselfe confesseth that he doubted greatly of that maner of melodie which was neglected in his daies wondering why it was so despised For I assure you it is no absurd thing nor impertinent to search the causes of such mutations But to abolish all arts and faculties if haply somewhat be changed or altered in them I hold neither just nor reasonable Then came in Theon also with his vie adding moreover saying that it could not be denied but that in truth herein there have bene great changes mutations how beit no lesse true it is that even in this very place there have bene many oracles answers delivered in prose
as require a short simple and plaine answere were the part of an ambitious and vainglorious Sophister who tooke a pride in the elegant composing of oracles Over and besides Pythia of her selfe is of a gentle and generous nature and when she descendeth thither and converseth with the god she hath more regard of trueth than of glory neither paseth she whether men praise or dispraise her And better iwis it were for us if we also were likewise affected But we now in a great agony as it were fearefull perplexity lest the place should leese the reputation which it hath had for the space of three thousand yeeres and doubting that some would abandon it and cease to frequent it as if it were the schoole of a Sophister who feared to lose his credit and to be despised devise apologies in defence thereof faining causes and reasons of things which we neither know nor is beseeming us for to learne and all to appease and perswade him who complaineth and seemeth to finde fault whereas we should rather shake him off and let him goe For with him first It will be worst who hath such an opinion of this our God as that he approved and esteemed these ancient sentences of the Sages written at the entrance of the temple Know thy selfe Too much of nothing principally for their brevity as containing under few words a pithy sentence well and closely couched and as a man would say beaten soundly togehter with the hammer but reproved and blamed moderne oracles for delivering most part of their answeres briefely succinctly simply and directly And verily such notable Apophthegmes and sayings of the ancient Sages resemble rivers that runne through a narrow streight where the water is pent and kept in so close that a man cannot see through it and even so unneth or hardly may the bottom of their sense be sounded But if you consider what is written or said by them who endevour to search unto the very bottom what every one of these sentences doth comprehend you shall finde that hardly a man shall meet with orations longer then they Now the dialect or speech of Pythia is such as the Mathematicians define a straight and direct line namely the shortest that may be betweene two points and even so it bendeth not it crookeneth not it maketh no circle it carieth no double sense and ambiguity but goeth straight to the trueth and say it be subject to censure and examination and dangerous to be misconstured and beleeved amisse yet to this day it hath never given advantage whereby it might be convinced of untrueth but in the meane time it hath furnished all this temple full of rich gifts presents and oblations not onely of Greeke nations but also of barbarous people as also adorned it with the beautiful buildings and magnificent fabricks of the amphictyons For you see in some sort many buildings adjoined which were not before and as many repaired and restored to their ancient perfection which were either fallen to decay and ruined by continuance of time or else lay confusedly out of order And like as we see that neere unto great trees that spred much and prosper well other smaller plants and shrubs grow and thrive even so together with the city of Delphos Pylaea flourisheth as being fed and maintained by the abundance and affluenee which ariseth from hence in such sort as it beginneth to have the forme and shew of solemne sacrifices of stately meetings and sacred waters such as in a thousand yeeres before it could never get the like As for those that inhabited about Galaxion in Baeotia they found and felt the gracious presence and favour of our God by the great plenty and store of milke For From all their ewes thicke milke did spin As water fresh from lively spring Their tubs and tunnes with milke therein Brim full they all home fast did bring No barrels bottels pailes of wood But full of milke in houses stood But to us he giveth better markes and more evident tokens and apparent signes of his presence and favour than these be having brought our countrey as it were from drinesse and penurie from desert waste wildernesse wherein it was before to be now rich and plentiful frequented and peopled yea and to be in that honor and reputation wherein we see it at this day to flourish Certes I love my selfe much better for that I was so well affected as to put to my helping hand in this businesse together with Polycrates and Petraeus Yea and him also I love in my heart who was the first author unto us of this government and policy and who tooke the paines and endevoured to set on foot and establish most part of these things But impossible it was that in so small a time there should be seene so great and so evident a mutation by any industry of man whatsoever if God himselfe had not bene assistant to sanctifie and honour this oracle But like as in those times past some men there were who found fault with the ambiguity obliquity and obscurity of oracles so there be in these daies others who like sycophants cavill at the overmuch simplicitie of them whose humorous passion is injurious and exceeding foolish For even as little children take more joy and pleasure to see rainbowes haloes or garlands about the Sunne Moone c. yea and comets or blasing starres than they do to behold the Sunne himselfe or the Moone so these persons desire to have aenigmaticall and darke speeches obscure allegories and wrested metaphors which are all reflexions of divination upon the fansie and apprehension of our mortall conceit And if they understand not sufficiently the cause of this change and alteration they go their waies and are ready to condemne the God and not either us or themselves who are not able by discourse of reason to reach unto the counsell and intention of the said gods OF THE DAEMON OR FAMILIAR SPIRIT OF SOCRATES A Treatise in maner of a Dialogue The Summarie THe The bans having lost their freedome and liberty by the violent proceedings of Archias Leontidas and other tyrants who banished a great number of good citizens and men of woorth in which roll and catalogue Pelopidas was one as appeareth in the storie of his life wherein Plutarch writeth of all this matter at large it fell out at last that the exiled persons tooke heart drew to an head and wrought so as they reentred the city of Thebes slew the tyrants and displaced the garrison of the Spartans Which done they dispatched their ambassages to other States and Common wealths of Greece for to justifie this their action and namely among the rest they sent Caphisias to Athens who being there at the request of Archidamus a personage of great authoritie related and reported the returne of the banished men the surprising of the tyrants and the restoring of the citie to their ancient franchises and that with discourses woonderfull patheticall and such as
friend can not chuse but proceed from a foolish vanitie and presumptuous ostentation and not of truth and franke simplicitie for which we esteeme this personage to be very great and excellent above others in case for some voice comming without foorth or by reason of sneesing he should be troubled and empeached in the continuance of an action which he had commenced already and so relinquish his dessigne and deliberation whereas it seemeth cleane contrary that the motions and inclinations of Socrates caried with them a firmitude and durable vehemence in whatsoever he went about and undertooke as proceeding from a direct and powerfull judgement and from a strong motive that set him on worke For he continued voluntarily all his life time in povertie whereas he might have had wealth enough if he would have received at his friends hands sufficient who were very willing yea and tooke joy to bestow their goods upon him also he would never leave the studie and profession of Philosophie for all the great hinderances and empeachments that he met withall and finally when he might easily have escaped and saved himselfe by the meanes that his friends had prepared and for him he would never be remooved nor yeeld unto their praiers nor desist from his maner of merie and jesting speeches though death were presented unto him but held his reason firme and unremoveable in the greatest perill that was These were not the parts of a man who suffered himselfe to be transported or caried away with vaine voices or sneesings from any resolution which he had taken but of him who was guided and conducted by a greater command and more puissant power unto his dutie I heare also that he foretold some of his friends the defeature and overthrow of the Athenians armie in Sicilse And before these things Pyrilampes the sonne of Antephon being taken by us in the chase and execution of victorie about Delion and wounded with a javelin when he heard by those who were sent from Athens unto us for to treat of peace that Socrates together with Alcibiades and Laches being gone downe by the way of Rhetiste were returned in safety made report unto us that Socrates had many times called him backe other of his friends and of his band who flying with him for company along the mountaine Parnes were overtaken and killed by our horsemen for that they had taken another way of flight from the battell and not it that he directed him unto by his angell or familiar spirit And thus much I suppose that Simmias himselfe hath heard as well as I. True quoth Simmias I have heard it oftentimes and of many persons for upon this example and such like the familiar spirit of Socrates was not a little spoken of in Athens Why suffer we then ô Simmias quoth Phidolaus this Galaxidorus here by way of jest and meriment to debase so much this so great a worke of divination as to passe it away in I wot not what voices and sneesings Which signes the vulgar sort of ignorant persons made use of by jest and mockerie in small matters and of no consequence for when the question is of more greevous dangers and affaires of greater importance the saying is verified of Euripides Noman will play the foole nor such vaine words Cast out so neere the edge and dint of swords And Galaxidorus If Simmias quoth he ô Phidolaus hath hard Socrates himselfe say ought of these matters I am willing to give eare and to pardon him with you but for any thing that you ô Polymnis have said an easie matter it is to confute the same for like as in Physicke the beating of the pulse is no great matter in it selfe nor a pimple or whelke but signes they be both of no small things unto the Physician and unto the pilot and master of a ship the noise of the sea the sight or voice of some bird or a thin cloud running through the aire signifieth some great winde or violent tempest in the sea even so unto a propheticall and divining minde a sneesing or a voice spoken in it selfe considered is no such great matter but signes these may be of most important accidents For in no art nor science whatsoever men doe despise the collection or judgement of many things by a few nor of great matters by small but like as if an ignorant person who knoweth not the power of letters seeing them few in number and in forme vile and contemptible could not beleeve that a learned man was able to read and relate out of them long warres in times past the foundations of cities the acts of mighty kings and their variable fortunes and should say that there were something underneath which tolde and declared unto the said Historian every one of those matters in order he might give good occasion of laughter pleasantly to deride his ignorance unto as many as hard him speake so even so take heed and beware lest we for that we know not the vertue and efficacy of every signe and foretoken in as much as they presage future things be not foolishly angred if some prudent and wise man by the same signes foretell somewhat as touching things unknowen and namely if he say that it is not a voice nor a sneesing but a familiar spirit which hath declared the same unto him For now come I to you Polymnis who esteeme and admire Socrates as a personage who by his plaine simplicity without any counterfet vanity whatsoever hath humanized as I may so say Philosophy and attributed it to humaine reason if he called not his signe that he went by a voice or sneesing but after a tragicall maner should name it a spirit familiar For contrariwise I would marvell rather that a man so well spoken as Socrates was so eloquent and who had all words so ready at command should say that it was a voice or a sneesing and not a divine spirit that taught him as if one should say that himselfe was wounded by an arrow and not with an arrow by him who shot it or that a poise was weighed by the balance and not with a balance by him that held or managed the balance in his hand for the worke dependeth not upon the instrument but upon him who hath the instrument and useth it for to doe the worke and even so the instrument is a kinde of signe used by that which doth signify and prognosticate thereby But as I have said already we must listen what Simmias will say as the man who knoweth this matter more exactly than others doe You say true indeed quoth Theocritus but let us see first who they be that enter heere in place and the rather because Epaminondas is one who seemeth to bring with him hither unto us the stranger above said And when we looked all toward the gates we might perceive Epaminondas indeed going before and leading the way accompanied with Ismenodorus Bacchilidas and Melissus the plaier upon the flute The
leapt out of their pallets upon their feete and willingly drew their chaines and irons after them but such as had their feet fast in the stockes stretched forth their hands and cried unto us beseeching they might not be left behinde and whiles we were busie in setting them loose many of the neighbours by this time who dwelt neere and perceived what was done were run forth already into the streets with glad and joifuil hearts The very women also as any of them heard ought of their acquaintance without regard of observing the custome and maner of the Boeotians ran out of dores one unto another and demanded of every one whom they met in the street what newes And as many of them as light either upō their fathers or husbands followed them as they went and no man impeached them in so doing for the pitifull commiseration the teares praiers and supplications especially of honest and chast wives were in this case very effectuall and moved men to regard them When things were brought to this passe so soone as we heard that Epamtnondas and Gorgidas with other friends were now assembled within the temple of Minerva we went directly unto them and thither repaired also many honest citizens and men of quality flocking still more and more in great frequencie Now after relation was made unto them how al things sped that they were requested to assist us in the performance and execution of that which was behind and for that purpose to meet all together in the common market place incontinently they set up a shout and cried unto the citizens Liberty liberty distributing armes and weapons among as many as came to joine with them which they tooke forth of the temples and halles being full of the spoiles of al sorts won from enimies in times past as also out of the armorers furbushers and cutlers shops there adjoining Thither came Hipposthenidas likewise with a troupe of friends and servants bringing those trumpetters with him who were by chaunce come to the city against the feast of Hercules and immediatly some sounded the al'arm in the market place and others in all parts of the city besides and all to astonish and affright those of the adverse part as if the whole city were revolted and had risen against them who making a great smoake for the nonce in the streets because they would not be descried put themselves within the castle Cadmea drawing with them those choise soldiers called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say the better who were wont usually to ward all night and keepe a standing corps de guard about the said castle Now those who were above in the said fort seeing their owne captaine to run so disorderly and in great affright and to make hast to get in perceiving also from above how we were gathered together about the market place in armes and no part of the city quiet but full of tumult uprores and garboiles whereof the noise ascended up unto them durst not adventure to come downe though they were to the number of five thousand as fearing the present danger but pretended for their excuse the absence of Lysanoridas their captaine who was ever wont to remaine with them but onely that day which was the cause that afterwards as we have heard the Lacedaemonians making meanes by a peece of money to apprehend him in Corinth whether he was retired and immediately put him to death but upon composition and safe conduct they delivered up the castle into our hands and departed with all the soldiers in it OF THE MALICE OF HERODOTUS The Summarie PLutarch considering in what credit and reguest Herodotus the Historiographer was who in many places of his bookes which are at this day extant in our bands defameth divers states and hcnorable persons of Greece is minded heere in this treatise to arme as it were and prepare the readers against all such false suggestions and imputations and in the very entry of his discourse accuseth Herodotus of malice and leasing For proofe of this challenge he setteth downe certaine markes whereby a man may discerne a slanderous writer from a sage and discrect Historiographer Which done he applieth the said markes unto Herodotus shewing by a number of examples drawen out of his stories and narrations that often times he useth odious words when as others more milde and gentle were as ready for him to use that he describeth an evill matter when as there was no need to make mention thereof that he taket hpleasure to speake ill to raile that among praises he inserteth the bitter blames of one and the same personage and in recounting one thing two maner of waies and more he resteth alwaies in the worse and imputeth worthy deeds and brave exploits unto disordinate andirregular passions and so after an oblique maner doth the persons injury So that this treatise teacheth as well the writers of histories to looke well about themselves and stand upon their guard lest they be esteemed slanderous foolish and impudent as also the readers to carry with them a pure and sincere judgement for to make their profit by those bookes which they take in hand to read OF THE MALICE of Herodotus MAny men there be ô Alexander whom the stile phrase of Herodotus the Historiographer because it seemeth unto them plaine simple naturall and running smoothly upon the matters which he delivereth hath much deceived but more there are who have bene caught and brought into the same errour by his maners and behaviour For it is not onely extreame injustice as Plato said to seeme just and righteous when a man is nothing lesse but also an act of malice in the highest degree to counterfait mildenesse and simplicity and under that pretence and colour to be covertly most bitter and malicious Now for that he sheweth this spight of his against the Boeotians and Corinthians especially although he spareth not any others whatsoever I thought it my part and duty doe defend heerein the honor of our ancesters in the behalfe of trueth against this onely part of his writings and no more For to pursue and goe thorow all other lies and forged tales of his dispersed in that historie would require many great volumes But as Sophocles said Of eloquence the flattering face Prevaileth much and winneth grace especially when it meeteth with a tongue which is pleasant and carieth such a force asto cover among other vices the malicious nature of an Historiographer Philip king of Macedonie was woont to say unto those Greeks who revolted from his alliance and sided with Titus Quintius that they had changed their former chaines and given them for others that were indeed more polished howbeit longer a faire deale Even so a man may say that the malignitie of Herodotus is smoother and more delicate than that of Theopompus but it toucheth neerer to the quicke and stingeth more like as the windes are more sharpe and piercing which blow through a narrow streight or
his body to be hanged up when he was dead and the other to be pricked whiles he was alive And this our Historiographer hath used this cruelty which they shewed unto Leonidas dead for a manifest proofe that the Barbarous king hated Leonidas in his life time above all men in the world And in avouching that the Thebans who sided with the Medes at Thermopylae were thus branded marked as slaves and afterwards being thus marked fought egerly in the behalfe of the same Barbarians before Plateae me thinks he may well say as Hippoclides the feat moriske dancers unto whom when at a feast he bestirred his legges and hopped artificially about the tables one said unto him Thou dancest truly Hippoclides answered againe Hippoclides careth not greatly for the trueth In his eighth booke he writeth that the Greeks being affrighted like cowards entred into a resolution for to flie from Artemisium into Greece and that when those of Euboea besought them to tarry still a while untill such time as they might take order how to bestow their wives children and familie they were nothing moved at their praiers nor gave any eare unto them untill such time as Themistocles tooke a peece of mony of them and parted the same betweene Eurybiades and Adimantus the Pretour or captaine of the Corinthians And then they staied longer and fought a navall battell with the Barbarians And verily Pindarus the Poet albeit he was not of any confederate city but of that which was suspected and accused to hold of the Medians side yet when he had occasion to make mention of the battell at Artemisium brake forth into this exclamation This is the place where Athens youth sometime as writers say Did with their bood of liberty the glorious groundworke lay But Herodotus contrariwise by whom some give out that Greece hath bene graced and adorned writeth that the said victory was an act of corruption bribery and mere theft and that the Greeks fought against their wils as being bought and sold by their captaines who tooke mony therefore Neither is here an end of his malice For all men in maner doe acknowledge and confesse that the Greeks having gotten the upper hand in sea fight upon this coast yet abandoned the cape Artemisium and yeelded it to the Barbarians upon the newes that they heard of the overthrow received at Thermopylae For it had bene no boot nor to any purpose for to have sitten still there and kept the sea for the behoofe of Greece considering that now the warre was hard at their dores within those straights and Xerxes master of all the Avenies But Herodotus feigneth that the Greeks before they were advertised of Leontidas death held a counsell and were in deliberation to flie For these be his words Being in great distresse quoth he and the Athenians especially who had many of their ships even the one halfe of their fleet shrewdly brused and shaken they were in consultation to take their flight into Greece But let us permit him thus to name or to reproch rather this retrait of theirs before the battell but he termed it before a flight and now at this present he calleth it a flight and hereafter he will give it the name of flight so bitterly is he bent to use this vile word flight But quoth he there came to the Barbarians presently after this in a barke or light pinnace a man of Estiaea who advertised them how the Greeks had quit the cape Artemisium and were fledde which because they could not beleeve they kept the messenger in ward and safe custody and thereupon put forth certaine swift foists in espiall to discover the trueth What say you Herodotus What is it you write That they fled as vanquished whom their very enimies themselves after the battell could not beleeve that they fled as supposing them to have had the better hand a great deale And deserveth this man to have credit given him when he writeth of one perticular person or of one city apart by it selfe who in one bare word spoileth all Greece of the victory He overthroweth and demolisheth the very Trophaee and monument that all Greece erected He abolisheth those titles and inscriptions which they set up in the honor of Diana on the East side of Artimisium calling all this but pride and vaineglory And as for the Epigram it ran to this effect From Asia land all sorts of nations stout When Athens youth sometime in navall fight Had vanquished and all these coasts about Disperst their fleet and therewith put to flight And staine the hast of Medes Loe heere in sight What monuments to thee with due respect Diana virgin pure they did erect He described not the order of the battels and how the Greeks were ranged neither hath he shewed what place every city of theirs held during this terrible fight at sea but in that retrait of their fleet which he termeth a flight he saith that the Corinthians sailed formost and the Athenians hinmost he should not then have thus troden under foot and insulted too much over those Greeks who tooke part with the Medes he I say who by others is thought to be a Thurian borne and reckoneth himselfe in the number of the Halicarnasseans and they verily being descended from the Dorians come with their wives and children to make warre against the Greeks But this man is so farre off from naming and alledging before the streights and necessities whereto those states were driven who sided with the Medians that he reporteth thus much of the Medians how notwithstanding the Phocaeans were their captiall enemies yet they sent unto them aforehand that they would spare their countrey without doing any harme or damage unto it if they might receive from them as a reward fifite talents of silver And this wrote he as touching the Phocaeans in these very termes The Phocaeans quoth he were the onely men who in these quarters sided not with the Medians for no other cause as I finde upon mature consideration but in regard of the hatred which they bare against the Thessalians for if the Thessalians had bene affected to the Greeks I suppose the Phocaeans would have turned to the Medes And yet a little after himselfe wil say that thirteene cities of the Phocaeans were set on fire and burnt to ashes by the Barbarian king their countrey laid waste the temple within the citie Abes consumed with fire their men and women both put to the sword as many as could not gaine the top of the mount Pernassus Neverthelesse he rangeth them in the number of those that most affectionatly tooke part with the Barbarians who indeed chose rather to endure all extremities and miseries that warre may bring than to abandon the defence and maintenance of the honour of Greece And being not able to reproove the men for any deeds committed he busied his braines to devise false imputations forging and framing with his pen divers surmises and suspicions against them not
without the losse of bloud what citie or towne didst thou cause to be yeelded unto him without a garrison or what army without their weapons where found he ever through thy grace any kings sluggish and slothfull any captaine carelesse and negligent any warder or porter of the gates drowsie and sleepie nay he never met with river that had farre passable Winter that was tolerable or Summer that was not painfull and irkesome Goe thy waies goe to Antiochus the sonne of Seleucus to Artaxerxes the brother of Cyrus to Ptolomaeus Philadelphus These were they whom their fathers in their life time declared heires apparent yea and crowned them kings these wonne fields and battels for which never eie shed teare these kept holiday continually these celebrated festivall solemnities daily in theaters with all maner of pompes and goodly sights every one of these reigned in all prosperitie untill they were very aged whereas Alexander if there were nothing else lo how his body is wounded and piteously mangled from the crowne of his head to the sole of his foot gashed heere thrust in there drie beaten brused and broken with all maner of hostile weapons With launce and speare with sword most keene With stones that bigge and massie beene At the river Granicus his armet or morion was cleft with a curtelace as farre as to the haire of his head before the towne of Gaza he was shot into the shoulder with a dart in the Maragandians countrey his shin was wounded with a javelin in so much as the greater bone thereof was so broken and shattered that it came out at the wound in Hircania he gat a knocke with a great stone behinde in his necke which shooke his head so as that his eie-sight was dimmed thereby so as for certeine daies he was afraid that he should have beene starke blinde for ever in a skirmish with the Assacans his ancle was wounded with an Indian dart at what time when he saw it to bleed he turned unto his flatterers and parasites and shewing them the place smiled and said This is very bloud indeed And not that humour say all what you will Which from the gods most blessed doth destill At the battell of Issus his thigh was pierced with a sword even by king Darius himselfe as Chares writeth who came to close with him at hand fight And Alexander himselfe writing simply and the plaine trueth to Antipater I my selfe also caught a stab with a short sword in my thigh but thanked be God quoth he I had no great hurt thereby either at the present or afterwards Fighting against the Mallians he was wounded with a dart two cubits long that being driven through his cuirace entred in at his brest and came out againe at his necke according as Aristobulus hath left in writing Having passed over the river Tanais for to march against the Scythians when he had defaited them in battell he followed the chase and pursued them on horsebacke for a hundred and fifty stadia notwithstanding all the while he was troubled with a sore laske or flux of the belly Now truly fortune much beholden is Alexander unto thee for advancing his estate Is this thy making of him great by suffering him thus to be pierced through on every side Here is a faire upholding of him indeed to lay open thus all the parts of his bodie cleane contrary to that which Minerva did unto Menelaus who with her hand turned aside all the shot of the enimies and made them light upon his armour where it was most sure and of the best proofe to wit upon his cuirace his bawdricke or belt or upon his helmet and by that meanes brake the force of the stroke before it could come to the bare bodie so as all the harme it could do was but a little to rase the skin and let out some smal shew and a few drops of blood but thou contrariwise hast exposed his naked and unarmed parts and those most dangerous to be wounded causing the shot to enter so farre as to goe through the very bone environing and hemming in his body round besetting his eies and feet impeaching him for chasing his enimies diverting the traine of his victories and overturning all his hopes Certes I am of this opinion that there never was king who had fortune more adverse a shrewder stepdame than he although she hath beene curst envious and spightfull enough to many besides for whereas she hath fallen upon others violently like a thunderbolt or shot of lightning whom she hath cut off and distroied right out at once her malice and hatred unto Alexander hath bene cankred obstinate and implacable even as it was before him unto Hercules For what Typhons or monstrous Giants of prodigious stature hath she not raised up as concurrents to fight with him What enimies hath not she fortified and furnished against him with infinit store of armes with deepe rivers with prerupt and craggy rocks or with extraordinary strength of most savage beasts Now if the courage of Alexander had not bene undaunted and the same arising from exceeding great vertue firmely grounded and settled thereupon to encounter fortune how could it otherwise have bene but the same should have failed and given over as being wearied and toiled out with setting so many battels in array arming his soldiers so daily laying seege so many times unto cities and townes chasing and pursuing his enimies so often checked with so many revolts and rebellions crossed so commonly with infinit treasons conspiracies and insurrections of nations troubled with such a sort of stiffe necked kings who shooke off the yoke of allegeance and in one word whiles he conquered Bactra Maracanda and the Sogdians among faithlesse and trecherous nations who waited alwaies to spie some opportunity and occasion to do him a displeasure who like to the serpent Hydra as fast as one head was cut off put forth another and so continually raised fresh and new warres I shall seeme to tell you one thing very strange and incredible howbeit most true Fortune it was and nothing but fortune by whose maligne and crosse aspect he went very neere of losing that opinion that went of him namely that he was the sonne of Jupiter Ammon For what man was there ever extract and descended from the seed of the gods who exploited more laborious more difficult and dangerous combates unlesse it were Hercules againe the sonne of Jupiter And yet one outrageous and violent man there was who set him a worke enjoining him to take fell lions to hunt wilde bores to chase away ravenous fowles to the end that he should have no time to be emploied in greater affaires whiles he visited the world namely in punishing such as Antaeus and in repressing the ordinary murders which that tyrant Busiris and such like committed upon the persons of guests and travellers But it was no other thing than vertue alone that commanded Alexander to enterprise and exploit such a peece of
the ancient Mages and Philosophers which done he entreth into a discourse of Osiris Isis and Typhon referring and reducing all into Physicks and Metaphysicks with a certaine conference or comparison of Platoes doctrin with that of the Aegyptians which maketh him take in hand a particular treatise of matter forme the Ideae of generation also and corruption Having thus examined and discussed the Aegyptians Theology Philosophy he ariseth to the more hidden secret mysteries of the Isiake priests then descendeth againe to the consideration of naturall causes especially of the state of the Moone and drawing compendeously into one word all his precedent discourse he declareth what we ought to understand by Isis Osiris and Typhon Consequently he adjoineth three observations to make this treatise more pleasant and profitable withdrawing thereby the reader and plucking him backe both from super stition and Atheisme Then having condemned the Greeks for being taint with the same solly that the Aegyptians were addicted to he brocheth many opinions concerning the transformation of the pagans gods into sundry sorts of beasts discovering thereby the dotage and foolery arising from this argument and matter most corruptly under stood and stretching the same yet farther he rendreth areason of that honour which the Aegyptians did to such creatures whereupon he would not have us in any wise to rest but rather to looke into the divinity represented by them And for an end he entreth into an allegoricall discourse of the habilliments perfumes and divers odoriferous confections made every day in the temple of Isis but more especially he treateth of one named Cyphi wherein there be to the number of sixteene ingredients which composition they use in their very drinke observing therein as in all the rest of their superstitions a million of ceremonies whereof he doth particularize especially in the third part of this discourse even to the very end thereof All the premises being reduced to their right use do shew the vanity of men abandoned and given over to their owne senses and prove that all their sufficienct is nothing but blockish folly and their intelligence a darke and mirke night when the brightnesse and light of Gods word doth faile them For the more apparence they have both of celestiall and also human wisdome the more appeareth their blinde superstition in such sort as in sted of resting upon the creatour they remaine fixed upon the creatures and have a longing and languishing desire after discourses void of true instructions and consolations which ought to incite so much the more all Christians to make great account of the effectuall grace offered unto them in the meditation and practise of true Philosophy as well naturall as divine OF ISIS AND OSIRIS MEn that are wise or have any wit in them ô Clea ought by praier to crave all good things at the hand of the gods but that which we most wish for and desire to obteine by their meanes is the very knowledge of them so farre foorth as it is lawfull for men to have for that there is no gift either greater for men to receive or more magnificall and beseeming the gods to give than the knowledge of the trueth for God bestoweth upon men all things else whereof they stand in need but this he reserveth to himselfe and keepeth for his owne use Neither is the godhead and divine power in this regard counted happie and blessed because it possesseth a great quantity of gold or silver nor puissant in respect of thunder and lightning but for prudence and wisdome And verily of all those things which Homer hath well delivered this simply is the best and most elegant speech when as touching Jupiter and Neptune he saith thus The selfe same parents they both had one native soile them bred But Jupiter the elder was and had the wiser head whereby he affirmeth that the preeminence and rule of Jupiter being the elder was more venerable sacred and fuller of majestie for his knowledge and wisdome And of this opinion I assure you am I that the beatitude and felicitie of eternall life which Jupiter enjoieth consisteth heerein that he is ignorant of nothing that is done as also that immortalitie if it be despoiled of the knowledge and intelligence of all things that be and are done is not life indeed but bare time And therefore we may very well say that the desire of deitie and divinity is all one with the love of trueth and especially of that trueth which concerneth the nature of the gods the study whereof and the searching after such science is as it were a profession and entrance into religion yea and a worke more holy than is the vow or obligation of all the chastity purity in the world or than the cloister or sanctuarie of any temple whatsoever right acceptable also is this goddesse whom you serve considering that she is most wise full of knowledge according as the very derivation of her name doth imply that skill cunning apperteineth unto her more than to any other for Isis is a meere Greeke word like as Typhon also the very adversarie and enemie opposite unto this goddesse as one puffed up and swollen by his ignorance and error dissipating defacing and blotting out the sacred word and doctrine which this goddesse collecteth composeth and delivereth unto those who are initiated and professed in this divine religion by a continuall precise observance of a sober and holy life in absteining from many meats in depriving themselves of all fleshly pleasures for to represse lust and intemperance and in being acquainted long before to abide and endure within temples and churches hard and painfull services performed unto the gods of all which abstinences paines and suffrances the end is the knowledge of that first prince and lord who is apprehended onely by intelligence and understanding whom the goddesse exhorteth to search and seeke after as conversing and companying with her And verily the name of her temple doth manifestly promise an intelligence or knowledge of that which is for Ision it is called which is as much to say as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for that if we enter into that sacred place and holy religion of this goddesse with reason and devotion as we ought to doe we shall atteine to the understanding of all things whatsoever Moreover many have written that she is the daughter of Mercurie others of Prometheus of which twaine the one is reputed the author of wisdome and providence and the other namely Mercurie the inventor of Grammar and Musicke And heereupon it is that in the city Hermopolis they call the former of the Muses both Isis and also Justice as being wisdome herselfe according as hath elsewhere beene said and shewing divine things to them who are justly surnamed Hierophori and Hierostoli that is to say religious and wearing the habits of holinesse and religion And these be they that cary in their minde and keepe enclosed as within a box
ready and ever in hand and be subject evermore to alternative alterations therefore they be laid abroad and displaied for to be seene often But the intelligence of that which is spirituall and intellectuall pure simple and holy shining as a flash of lightning offereth it selfe unto the soule but once for to be touched and seene And therefore Plato and Aristotle call this part of Philosophie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for that those who discourse of reason have passed beyond all matters subject to mingled variable opinions leape at length to the contemplation of this first principle which is simple and not materiall and after they have in some sort attained to the pure and sincere trueth of it they suppose that their Philosophy as now accomplished is come to 〈◊〉 perfection And that which the priests in these daies are very precise and wary to shew keeping it hidden and secret with so great care and diligence allowing not so much as a sight thereof secretly by the way also that this god raigneth ruleth over the dead and is no other than he whom the Greeks name Hades and Pluto the common people not understanding how this is true are much troubled thinking it very strange that the holy sacred Osiris should dwell within or under the earth where their bodies lie who are thought to be come unto their finall end But he verily is most farre remooved from the earth without staine or pollution pure and void of all substance or nature that may admit death or any corruption whatsoever Howbeit the soules of men so long as they be heere beneath clad within bodies and passions can have no participation of God unlesse it be so much onely as they may attaine unto the intelligence of by the study of Philosophy and the same is but in maner of a darke dreame But when they shall be delivered from these bonds and passe into this holy place where there is no passion nor passible forme then the same god is their conductour and king then they cleave unto him as much as possible they can him they contemplate and behold without satietie desiring that beautie which it is not possible for men to utter and expresse whereof according to the old tales Isis was alwaies inamoured and having pursued after it untill she enjoied the same she afterwards became replenished with all goodnesse and beautie that heere may be engendred And thus much may suffice for that sense and interpretation which is most beseeming the gods Now if we must besides speake as I promised before of the incense and odors which are burnt every day let a man consider first in his minde and take this with him that the Aegyptians were men evermore most studious in those matters which made for the health of their bodies but principally in this regard they had in recommendation those that concerned the ceremonies of divine service in their sanctifications and in their ordinary life and conversation wherein they have no lesse regard unto holsomnesse then to holinesse For they thinke it neither lawfull nor beseeming to serve that essence which is altogether pure every way sound and impolluted either with bodies or soules corrupt with inward sores and subject to secret maladies Seeing then that the aire which we most commonly use and within which we alwaies converse is not evermore alike disposed nor in the same temperature but in the night is thickned and made grosse whereby it compresseth and draweth the body into a kind of sadnesse and pensivenesse as if it were overcast with darke mists and waighed downe so soone as ever they be up in a morning they burne incense by kindling Rosin for to clense and purifie the aire by this rarefaction and subtilization awaking as it were and raising by this meanes the inbred spirits of our bodies which were languishing and drowsie for that in this odor there is a forcible vertue which vehemently striketh upon the senses Againe about noone perceiving that the Sunne draweth forcibly out of the earth by his heat great quantity of strong vapours which be intermingled with the aire then they burne 〈◊〉 For the heat of this aromaticall gum and odor is such as that it dissipateth dispatcheth whatsoever is grosse thicke and muddy in the aire And verily in the time of pestilence Physicians thinke to remedy the same by making great fires being of this opinion that the flame doth subtiliate and rarefie the aire which it effecteth no doubt the better in case they burne sweet wood as of the Cypresse trees of Juneper or Pitch tree And heereupon reported it is that the Physician Acron when there raigned a grievous plague at Athens wan a great name and reputation by causing good fires to be made about the sicke persons For he saved many by that meanes And Aristotle writeth that the sweet sents and good smels of perfumes ointments flowers and fragrant medowes serve no lesse for health than for delight and pleasure For that by their heat and mildnesse they gently dissolve and open the substance of the braine which naturally is cold and as it were congealed Againe if it be so that the Aegyptians call myrth in their language Bal which if a man interpret signifieth as much as the discussing and chasing away of idle talke and raving this also may serve for a testimonie to confirme that which we say As for that composition among them named Cyphi it is a confection or mixture receiving sixteene ingredients For there enter into it hony wine raisins cyperous rosin myrrh aspalathus seseli Moreover the sweet rush Schaenos Bitumen Mosse and the docke Besides two forts of the juniper berries the greater the lesse Cardamomum and Calamus All these speeches are compounded together not at a venture and as it commeth into their heads but there be read certaine sacred writings unto the Apothecaries and Perfumers all the while that they mix them As for this number although it be quadrate and made of a square and onely of the numbers equal maketh the space contained within equall to his cercumference we are not to thinke that this is any way materiall to the vertue thereof but most of the simples that goe to this composition being aromaticall cast a pleasant breath from them and yeeld a delectable and holsome vapour by which the aire is altered and withall the body being mooved with this evaporation is gently prepared to repose and taketh an attractive temperature of sleepe in letting slacke and unbinding the bonds of cares wearinesse and sorrowes incident in the day time and that without the helpe of surfet and drunkenesse polishing and smoothing the imaginative part of the braine which receiveth dreames in maner of a mirrour causing the same to be pure and neat as much or rather more than the sound of harpe lute viole or any other instruments of musicke which the Pythagoreans used for to procure sleepe enchanting by that device and dulcing the unreasonable part
was in no lesse reputation for both the one and the other was sought unto And in that of Ptous Apollo when the priest or prophet who served in the oracle used the Aeolian language and made answer unto those who were sent thither from the Barbarians insomuch as none of the assistants understood one word this Enthusiasme or divine inspiration covertly gave thereby thus much to understand that these oracles perteined nothing unto the Barbarians neither were they permitted to have the ordinary Greeke language at their command As for that of Amphiaraus the servant who was thither sent falling a sleepe within the sanctuarie thought as he dreamed that he saw and heard the minister of the god as if with his word and voice he seemed at the first to drive him out and command him to depart foorth of the temple saying that his god was not there but afterwards to thrust him away with both his hands but in the end seeing that he staid still tooke up a great stone and therewith smot him upon the head And verily all this answered just to that which afterwards befell and was a very prediction and denunciation of a future accident for Mardonius was vanquished not by the king himselfe but by the Tutour and lieutenant of the king of Lacedaemon who at that time had the conduct and command of the Greeks armie yea and with a stone felled to the ground according as the Lydian servant aforesaid imagined in his sleepe that he was smitten with a stone There flourished likewise about the same time the Oracle of Tegyrae where the report goeth that the god Apollo himselfe was borne and verily two rivers there are that runne neere one to the other whereof the one some at this day call Phoenix that is to say the date tree the other Elaea that is to say the olive tree At this Oracle during the time of the Medes warre when the prophet Echecrates there served god Apollo answered by his mouth that the Greeks should have the honour of the victory in this warre and continue superior Also in the time of the Peloponnesiaque warre when the Delians were driven out of their Island there was brought unto them an answer from the Oracle at Delphi by vertue whereof commanded they were to search and seeke out the place where Apollo was borne and there to performe certeine sacrifices whereat when they marvelled and in great perplexity demaunded againe whether Apollo were borne any where else but among them the prophetesse Pythia added moreover said That a crow should tell them the place Whereupon these deputies who were sent unto the Oracle in their returne homeward chanced to passe through the city Chaeronea where they heard their hostesse in whose house they lodged talking with some passengers and guests who were going to Tegyrae as touching the Oracle and when they departed and tooke their leave they saluted her and bad her farewell in these termes Adieu dame Cornice for that was the womans name which signifieth as much as Crow By this meanes they understood the meaning of the forsesaid Oracle or answer of Pythia and so when they had sacrificed at Tegyrae not long after they were restored and returned into their native countrey Moreover there were other apparitions besides of Oracles more fresh and later than those which we have alledged but now they are altogether ceased so that it were not amisse considering that we are met neere unto Apollo Pythius for to enquire into the cause of this so great change alteration As we thus communed talked together we were now by this time gone out of the temple so farre as to the very gates of the Gnidian hall and when we were entred into it we found those friends of ours sitting there within whom we desired to meet withall and who attended our comming Now when all the rest were at leisure and had nothing else to doe being at such a time of the day but either to anoint their bodies or else looke upon the champions and wrestlers who there exercised themselves Demetrius after a smiling maner began and said What were I best to tell some lie Or make report of truth shall I It seemeth as farre as I can perceive that you have in hand no matter of great consequence for I saw you sitting at your ease and it appeareth by your cheerefull and pleasant looks that you have no busie thoughts hammering in your heads True it is indeed quoth Heracleo the Megarian for we are not in serious argument disputation about the verbe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whether in the Future tense it should lose one of the two comparatives neither reason we about these two comparatives 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say Worse and better of what Positves they should come nor of what Primitives these two Superlatives 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say Worst and best be derived For these questions such like are those that make men knit and bend their browes but of all other matters we may reason and Philosophize well enough and quietly without making any furrowes in our forheads and looking with an austere and soure countenance for the matter upon the companie present with us Why then quoth Demetrius admit and receive us into your societie and together with us enterteine the question also which erewhile was moved among us being as it is meet for this place and in regard of god Apollo pertinent unto us all as many as we be but I beseech you of all loves let us have no srowning nor knitting of browes whiles we reason upon the point Now when we were set intermingled one with another and that Demetrius had propounded the foresaid question immediately Didymus the Cynique Philosopher surnamed Planetiades started up and stood upon his feete and after he had stamped with his staffe twise or thrice upon the floore cried out in this maner O God! Come you hether with this question indeed as if it were a matter so hard to be decided and had need of some long and deepe inquisition for a great marvell no doubt it is if seeing so much sinne and wickednesse is spred over the face of the whole world at this day not onely shame and just indignation or Nemesis according as Hesiodus prophesied before have abandoned mans life but also the providence of God being dislodged and carying away with it all the Oracles that be is cleane departed and gone for ever But contrariwise I will put foorth unto you another matter to be debated of namely how it comes to passe that they have not rather already given over every one and why Hercules is not come againe or some other of the gods and hath not long since plucked up and caried away the three-footed table and all being so full ordinarily of shamefull vilanous and impious demands proposed there daily to Apollo whiles some preferre matters unto him