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Link to an image of this page  Link to an image of this page  [P5r p233]

Armoiries des Poëtes.

En leurs escuz aulcuns portent grandz bestes
Aigles, Lyons, Serpens, Mais des Poëtes
Les armes, n’hont de telz animaulx signe.
Mais en ung champ coeleste, le blanc cygne.
Link to an image of this page  Link to an image of this page  [PP5v p234] Oyseau Phoebus, & à nous domesticque
Roy fut,[1] & garde encor’ son tiltre antique.

Le cygne fut jadis Roy: frere de Phaëton,
Oyseau fluvial, chantant tresdoulcement, &
de tresgrande blancheur, consacré à Phoe-
bus
Prince des Muses, & des Poëtes: Les-
quelz le portent en leurs enseignes: car ilz
sont de laurier coronnéz comme Roys: usent
de telle liberté à escripre, que les Roys, à
faire: font les guerres par carmes, comme
les Roys par armes. aiment les rivieres &
lieux plaisans, sont purs, & candides: & chantent tres-
doulcement en leurs vers bien sonnans.

Notes:

1.  ‘a king once’. See Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.367ff. for the story of Cycnus, king of Liguria, turned into a swan and inhabiting the marshes and lakes of the plain of the Po (Alciato’s homeland).


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Link to an image of this page  Link to an image of this page  [E8v]

EI QUI SEMEL SUA PRO-
degerit aliena credi non
oportere.

Others’ property should not be entrusted to a person who has once squandered his own

Cholchidos in gremio nidum quid congeris? heu
Nescia cur pullos tam male credis avis.
Dira parens Medaea suos saevissima natos
Perdidit, & speras parcat ut illa tuis.[1]

Why do you build your nest in the bosom of the woman from Colchis? Alas, ignorant bird, why do you entrust your nestlings so mistakenly? That frightful mother, Medea, in her savagery slew her own children. Do you expect her to spare yours?

Notes:

1.  This is based on Anthologia graeca 9.346, a much-translated epigram, on the subject of a swallow that built her nest on a representation of Medea. Colchidos, ‘of the woman from Colchis’, refers to Medea, from Colchis on the Black Sea, who slew her children by Jason, leader of the Argonauts, to avenge his unfaithfulness. See further [A31a034].


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