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Prudentes.

The Wise.

VIII.

Iane bifrons, qui transacta futuraque calles,
Quique retro sannas sicut & antè vides, [1]
Tot te cur oculis, tot fingunt vultibus? an quòd
Circunspectum hominem forma fuisse docet?

Two-headed Janus, you know about what has already happened and what is yet to come, you see the jeering faces behind just as you see them in front. Why do they represent you with so many eyes, why with so many faces? Is it because this form tells us that you were a man of circumspection?

Notes:

1.  quique retro sannas, sicut et ante, vides, ‘you see the jeering faces behind just as you see them in front’, a line based on Persius, Satirae, 1.58-62.

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    Scyphus Nestoris.

    Nestor’s cup

    A large vessel with birds perched around it.
    [Click on image to enlarge]

    Nestoreum geminis cratera hunc accipe fundis, [1]
    Quod gravis argenti massa profudit opus.
    Claviculi ex auro: stant circum quattuor ansae:
    Unam quanque super fulva columba sedet.
    Solus eum potuit longaevus tollere Nestor.
    Maeonidae doceas quid sibi musa velit.
    Est coelum scyphus ipse. color argenteus illi est:
    Aurea sunt coeli sidera claviculi.
    Pleiadas esse putant, quas dixerit ille columbas.[2]
    Umblici [=Umbilici] gemini,[3] magna minorque fera est.[4]
    Haec Nestor longo sapiens intelligit usu.
    Bella gerunt fortes, callidus astra tenet.

    Receive this bowl of Nestor with its double support, a work which a heavy mass of silver shaped. Its studs are of gold. Four handles stand about it. Above each one sits a yellow dove. Only aged Nestor was able to lift it. Do tell us what Homer’s Muse intended. The cup itself is the heavens; its colour is silvery; the studs are the golden stars of heaven. They think that what he called doves are the Pleiades. The twin bosses are the great and lesser beast. The wise Nestor understood this by long experience: the strong wage war, the wise man grasps the stars.

    Notes:

    1.  Nestor’s bowl is described at Homer, Iliad, 11.632-7. Only Nestor, for all his great age could lift it when full. For the interpretation of Nestor’s cup (or mixing bowl) given here, see Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, 11.487 F ff.

    2.  The Greek word for ‘doves’ is πελειάδες.

    3.  ‘twin bosses’, i.e. possibly the protuberances inside the bowl where it was joined to the two supports.

    4.  ‘great and lesser beast’, i.e. the Great and Little Bear, a phrase based on Ovid, Tristia, 4.3.1: ‘magna minorque ferae’.

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