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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  [P7r p237]

La lettre occit: L’esprit vivifie.[1]

Man killing a dragon who has already killed someone. Man plowing with oxen in the background and soldiers emerging from the ground.
[Click on image to enlarge]

Quand Cadmus heut dens de serpens semées
En terre Grecque: incontinent armées
D’hommes divers sortirent de la terre:
S’entretuans par mutuelle guerre.[2]
Ceulx qui salvéz par Pallas demourerent,
Armes jectans, la paix en main jurerent.
Cadmus premier les lettres apporta,[3]
Et bonnes ars par icelles nota.
Link to an image of this page  Link to an image of this page  [P7v p238] Les professeurs desquelles s’entremordent,
Et point (sinon par Pallas) ne s’accordent.

Cadmus Phoenicien filz du Roy Agenor fut le
premier qui apporta les lettres d’Asie en Euro-
pe, & les espandit par toute la Grece, D’ond est
sortie la fable, qu’il sema les dens d’ung serpent,
desquelles sortirent hommes arméz, se comba-
tans, & entretuans les ungz, les aultres, jusque à
cinq restantz, pacifiéz par Pallas, & depuys mul-
tipliéz en grand peuple. Le serpent est Pruden-
ce, les dens semées sont les lettres agues, & subti-
les dispersées par la Grece, Les hommes arméz,
sortans de telle semence sont les gens literéz, &
savans es ars, & sciences, Lesquelz par envie mu-
tuelle se defont l’ung l’aultre, sinon qu’ilz
soient reduictz en paix par Pallas, qui est Sapience, &
multiplient croissans tous les jours en nombre
infiny: Tant qu’a la fin y en aura trop.

Notes:

1.  2 Corinthians 3:6.

2.  For the story of Cadmus, founder of Thebes (in Aonia, or less correctly in the French, in Thessaly), and the dragon’s teeth, see Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3.99ff. Athena, goddess of wisdom - here called Tritonia, from the place of her birth in North Africa - brought the internecine struggle between the earth-born warriors to an end.

3.  Cadmus supposedly introduced writing to Greece. The scattering of the dragon’s teeth was interpreted as the invention of the alphabet.

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