Link to an image of this page [M3v p182]
Impossibile.
The impossible
Abluis Aethiopem quid frustrà? ah desine, noctis
Illustrare nigrae nemo potest tenebras.[1]
Why are you washing an Ethiopian in vain? Oh, do stop. No one can turn the shades of black night into light.
Link to an image of this page [M4r p183]
Impossible.
Il est ung milier de negoces,
Ou lon ne peult remede mettre.
Et quoy que ardemment ten courrouces,
Si nen seras tu ja le maistre.
Parquoy si tu quiers hors blasme estre,
Ne prans peine a blanchir ung More.
En la nuict, ne peult clarte naistre.
Ung vice invetere demoure.
1. This is a translation of Anthologia graeca 11.428. See also Aesop, Fables 11; Erasmus, Adagia 350, Aethiopen lavas.
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Link to an image of this page [Q1v f108v]
EMBLEMA CLXIX [=168] .
In sordidos.
Disgusting people
Quae rostro (clystere velut) sibi proluit alvum
Ibis, Niliacis cognita littoribus,[1]
Transiit opprobrii in nomen: quo Publius hostem
Naso suum appellat, Battiadesque suum.[2]
The ibis, a bird familiar on the banks of the Nile, washes out its bowels using its beak like a syringe. ‘Ibis’ has become a term of insult. Publius Naso [Ovid] called his enemy Ibis; and the inhabitant of Battus’ town did the same.
Das CLXIX [=168] .
Wider die Garstigen.
Der Vogel Ibis so bekannt
Ist am Nil in Egyptenlandt
Link to an image of this page [Q2r f109r]
Der sich mit seim Schnabel clystiert
Und auß seim Leib den unflat führt
Deß Nam ist worden zu einr schmach
Dann also nennt sein Feind darnach
Der Poet Publius Naso
Auch Batiades sein also.
1. For this information about the ibis, see Aelian, De natura animalium, 2.35; Cicero, De natura deorum, 2.126; Pliny, Natural History, 8.41.97.
2. Battiades, ‘the inhabitant of Battus’ town’, i.e. the poet Callimachus, a native of Cyrene, a town founded by Battus. Ovid refers to Callimachus’ invective (not now extant) in his own poem Ibis, 53ff.
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