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Link to an image of this page  Link to an image of this page  [E5v]

IN EUM QUI SIBI IPSI[1]
damnum apparat.

One who brings about his own downfall

A wolf cub being suckled by a goat.
[Click on image to enlarge]

Capra lupum non sponte meo nunc ubere lacto,
Quod male pastoris provida cura iubet.[2]
Creverit ille simul, mea me[3] post ubera pascet,
Improbitas nullo flectitur obsequio.[4]

I am a goat giving suck against my will - to a wolf. The improvident kindness of the shepherd makes me do this. Once the wolf has grown, after feeding at my teats, he will then eat me. Wickedness is never deterred by services rendered.

Notes:

1.  Textual variant: ‘ipsi’ omitted.

2.  This is a translation of Anthologia graeca 9.47. For the content cf. Aesop, Fables 313-5.

3.  Corrected from the Errata.

4.  ‘Wickedness is never deterred by services rendered’. See Erasmus, Adagia 1086, Ale luporum catulos.

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Section: SCIENCE. View all emblems in this section.

Link to an image of this page  Link to an image of this page  [P4v p232]

Les Antiquitez sont controuvées.[1]

Apologie. Dialogisme.

Figure of half-man, half-beast in the sea, holding a trident.
[Click on image to enlarge]

D. Vieillard Proteu[2], qui has forme muable:
Homme par fois, puys beste dissemblable:
Quelle raison toute espece en toy mue:
Tant que tu n’has figure de tenue?
R. Je represente antique Poësie,
De qui chascun songe à sa phantasie.

Des choses anciennes, & mises hors de toute memoire: cha-
scun en songe, & en divine à sa phantasie: tellement que les au-
theurs ne s’ac
cordans, font une monstrueuse histoire ou fable
de variables formes, tel que les Poëtes faignent estre Proteus
dieu marin, fort vieulx, & muable en toutes formes.

Notes:

1.  In the 1549 French edition, this emblem has no woodcut.

2.  Proteus was ‘the Old Man of the Sea’, who evaded capture by constantly changing his shape. See e.g. Homer, Odyssey, 4.400ff.; Vergil, Georgics, 4. 405-10, 440-2; Erasmus, Adagia, 1174 (Proteo mutabilior). Vergil (Georgics, 4.391) describes him living near the headland of Pallene (on the Macedonian coast). The idea of Proteus as a gifted actor or mime-artist is taken from Lucian, Saltatio, 19.

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