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Link to an image of this page  Link to an image of this page  [S7r f187r]

Strenuorum immortale nomen.

Achievers have an immortal name

Emblema cxxxv.

Woman at a tomb by the seashore. Leaves on tomb, dolphin in sea.
[Click on image to enlarge]

Aeacidae tumulum Rhaeteo in littore cernis,[1]
Quem plerumque pedes visitat alba Thetis.[2]
Obtegitur semper viridi lapis hic amarantho,[3]
Quòd nunquam herois sit moriturus honos.
Hic Graiûm murus,[4] magni nex Hectoris. Haud plus
Debet Maeonidae, quàm sibi Maeonides.[5]

You see the tomb of Aeacus’ descendant on the Rhoetean shore, which white-footed Thetis often visits. This stone is always covered with green amaranth, because the honour due to heroes shall never die. This man was‘the wall of the Greeks’, and the destruction of great Hector, and he owes no more to the Lydian poet than the poet does to him.

Link to an image of this page  Link to an image of this page  [S7v f187v]

SUmptum ex 3. Graecorum Epigrammaton & Pausania in
Atticis: quo intelligitur, heroum & clarorum
virorum famam perpetuò apud posteros quasi vi-
rescere, nunquam intermori, nunquam marcescere.

Link to an image of this page  Link to an image of this page  [S8r f188r]

Le nom des vaillans hommes ne
meurt jamais.

VOy le tombeau d’Achille au rivage Rhetois,
Que la blanche Thetys vient visiter par fois.
Là le passevelours est tousjours en verdure,
Ne flestrissant jamais sur ceste pierre dure.
“ C’est que l’honneur des grands se maintient immortel:
Comme de cest Achille, à qui n’est trouvé tel:
Seul grand support des Grecs: qui Hector mit par terre,
Et qui n’est plus tenu au grand poëte Homere
Qui ses hauts faicts de guerre à descri proprement
Qu’Homere à nostre Achille, à parler rondement.

PRins du 3. livre des Epigrammes Grecs,
& de Pausanias es Attiques. De cecy on
apprend que la renommee des grans & il-
lustres personnages demeure tousjours com-
me verdissante à la posterité, ne mourir ja-
mais, ne jamais flestrir.

Notes:

1.  ‘Aeacus’ descendant’, i.e. Achilles, the greatest warrior on the Greek side in the Trojan War. Rhoeteum was a promontory on the Trojan coast (though normally associated with the tomb of Ajax).

2.  Thetis, a sea-nymph, mother of Achilles, called ‘silver-footed’ by Homer.

3.  amarantho: the name of the plant means ‘never-fading’. See Pliny, Natural History, 21.23.47.

4.  ‘the wall of the Greeks’, translating Homer’s description of Achilles at Iliad, 3.229.

5.  Maeonidae, ‘to the Lydian poet’, i.e. Homer, who told in the Iliad the famous story of Achilles’ wrath and refusal to fight during the Trojan War, and of his eventual slaying of Hector, the chief warrior on the Trojan side. (For which see Emblem 153, [FALc153]). For the sentiment that great deeds need to be sung in order not to be forgotten, see Horace, Odes, 4.8.20ff; and that great literature needs great themes, see Tacitus, Dialogus de oratoribus, 37.

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