
Abies.
The fir tree
EMBLEMA CCI.
Apta fretis Abies in montibus editur altis:
Est & in adversis maxima commoditas.[1]
The fir tree that is fit to sail the sea grows high up on the hills. Even in hard circumstances, there is great advantage to be found.
1. This is because it grows strong by withstanding the gales and harsh weather. Contrast Anthologia Graeca, 9.30ff, 105, and the much-translated 376 for an opposing view of the fir tree: “how can the fir, storm-tossed while growing on land, resist the gales at sea?” 9.31 was translated by Alciato (Selecta epigrammata, p. 98).
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- Liber emblematum ... Kunstbuch (1567), Franckfurt am Main: Abies. Dannenbaum. | Open in other pane
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- trees: fir (+ plants used symbolically) [25G3(FIR)(+1)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- trees: fir (+ bearing fruit) [25G3(FIR)(+34)] Search | Browse Iconclass
Relating to the text:
- water (one of the four elements) [21D] Search | Browse Iconclass
- mountains [25H11] Search | Browse Iconclass
- ships (in general) [46C21] Search | Browse Iconclass
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SALIX.
The willow
Emblema. 199.
Quod frugisperdam salicem vocitarit Homerus,[1]
Link to an image of this page [Mmm4r f460r as 463]
Clitoriis homines moribus ad simultat [=assimilat]
.[2]
When Homer called the willow ‘seed-loser’, he made it like men with Clitorian habits.
1. Homer, Odyssey, 10.510. See Pliny, Natural History, 16.46.110: the willow drops its seed before it is absolutely ripe, and for that reason was called by Homer ‘seed-loser’.
2. The waters of Lake Clitorius in Arcadia generated an aversion to wine in those who drank of them. See Pliny, Natural History, 31.13.16; Ovid, Metamorphoses, 15.322ff. The combination of the two images here may symbolise minds and characters gone to the bad and producing nothing of value. See Erasmus, Parabolae, p. 268: “As willow-seed, shed before it ripens, is not only itself barren but when used as a drug causes barrenness in women by preventing conception, so the words of those who teach before they have truly learnt sense not only make them no better in themselves, but corrupt their audience and render it unteachable”; and p. 230: “Those who have drunk of the Clitorian Lake develop a distaste for wine, and those who have once tasted poetry reject the counsels of philosophy, or the other way round. Equally, those who gorge themselves with fashionable pleasures reject those satisfactions which are honourable and genuine.”
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