Link to an image of this page [Pp8v p608]
AEmulatio impar.
Competing on unequal terms
EMBLEMA CXLII.
Altivolam miluus comitatur degener harpam[1]
Et praedae partem saepe cadentis habet.
Mullum prosequitur, qui spretas sargus ab illo[2]
Praeteritasque avidus devorat ore dapes.
Sic mecum Oenocrates agit: at deserta studentum
Utitur hoc lippo curia tanquam oculo.[3]
An ignoble kite accompanies the soaring hawk and often gets a piece of the prey as it falls. The sargus follows the mudfish and greedily devours the food that it scorns and passes by. Oenocrates behaves like this with me - but the lecture-hall I’ve abandoned treats him like a runny eye.
1. For the association of the kite and the hawk see Aristotle, Historia animalium, 9.1.609.
2. For the sargus see Emblem 75 ([A21a075]). For its habit of following the lutarius (the mudfish) and eating the food it disturbs as it burrows in the mud, see Pliny, Natural History, 9.30.65; Erasmus, Parabolae, p. 253.
3. lippo...tamquam oculo, ‘like a runny eye’, a proverbial expression. See Erasmus, Adagia, 4100 (Lippo oculo similis): a runny eye is something you would prefer to be rid of, but while you have it you cannot leave it alone; similarly there are people you do not like, but you find yourself obliged to make use of them.
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- rodents: hare (+ animal(s) in motion; positions, expressions of animals) [25F26(HARE)(+5):31A2733] Search | Browse Iconclass
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- predatory birds: falcon (+ postures, positions of animal(s)) [25F33(FALCON)(+53)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- predatory birds: kite (+ animal with prey) [25F33(KITE)(+452)] Search | Browse Iconclass
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- wine-testing, wine-grading [47I4251] Search | Browse Iconclass
- Imparity, Inequality (+ emblematical representation of concept) [51BB3(+4):54EE33(+4)] Search | Browse Iconclass
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