
AMOR FILIORUM.
Love of one’s children
Emblema. 192.
Ante diem bernam [=vernam]
boreali cana palumbes
Frigore nidificat, praecoqua & ova fovet.
Mollius & pulli ut iaceant, sibi vellicat alas,
Queis nuda hiberno deficit ipsa gelu.[1]
Ecquid Colchi pudet, vel te Procne improba? mortem
Cum volucris propriae prolis amore subit?[2]
Before the day of spring, the wood-pigeon, all white with winter snow, builds her nest and cherishes her premature eggs. To make her chicks lie more softly, she plucks her own wing-feathers, and stripped of them, she herself perishes from the wintry frost. Woman of Colchis, do you feel any shame? Or you, heartless Procne? - when a bird submits to death out of love for her own off-spring.
1. This is based on Anthologia graeca 9.95.
2. Both Medea (the woman of Colchis) and Procne killed their own children. They are the legendary infamous child-killers. See [A15a070] n. for Procne, [A15a054] n. for Medea.
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Related Emblems

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Iconclass Keywords
Relating to the image:
- farm or solitary house in landscape [25I3] Search | Browse Iconclass
- groups of plants (herbs) [25G13] Search | Browse Iconclass
- groups of trees [25G11] Search | Browse Iconclass
- other birds (with NAME) (+ brooding, hatching) [25F39(RING-DOVE)(+412)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- other birds (with NAME) (+ nest, den, burrow) [25F39(RING-DOVE)(+421):25F39(RING-DOVE)(+352)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- rural housing, e.g. country-house, villa, cottage [41A16] Search | Browse Iconclass
- trees (+ bare plant) [25G3(+351)] Search | Browse Iconclass
Relating to the text:
- feathers [25F(+352)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- killing a child (absence of parental love) [42B290] Search | Browse Iconclass
- Medea kills her two children; she flees from Corinth in a chariot drawn by winged dragons [94A74] Search | Browse Iconclass
- mother-love [42B120] Search | Browse Iconclass
- parental love [42B1] Search | Browse Iconclass
- Procne kills Itys, her son by Tereus, in order to serve him up as food to her husband [95B(PHILOMELA & PROCNE)66] Search | Browse Iconclass
- winter, 'Hyems'; 'Inverno' (Ripa) [23D41] Search | Browse Iconclass
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