
ΑΝΤΕΡΩΣ ΕΡΩΣ.
LOVE AND ANTI-LOVE
O quam haec porta fuit meritň scelerata vocata:
Quae tantům admisit per sua claustra nephas!
Iret in amplexus ut amati Tullia Prisci,
Per patris occisi corpus adegit equos.
Oderat ánne patrem? Non. sed Tarquinium amabat.
Iste libidinis est: is pietatis amor.[1]
Cumque duo affectus traherent hinc inde potentes.
Corpora praeposuit viva cadaveribus.
Hunc memor esse virum, ast illum oblita esse parentem:
Est malus ergo pii victor Amoris Amor.
Hem quis Amor? calcare patrem? sectari alienum?
Non Amor est certč. Sed furor, & rabies.[2]
With justice did they call this gate the Sinful one, which admitted such a great crime to pass through its barred doors! To go to the arms of her beloved Priscus, Tullia drove her horses over the body of her murdered father. Did she hate her father? No: but she loved Tarquinius. On one side sex, on the other love of family ; and when these two great forces were tugging her two and fro she preferred living bodies to stiff ones. To remember this her husband, and forget him, her father as he lies there: thus evil Love conquered familial Love. Alas! What is Love? To trample the father? To chase other men? Surely this is not love, but frenzied madness!
1. For the story of Tullia helping to overthrow her father, Servius Tullius, in this particularly brutal manner, see Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 1.48. Aneau, however, has mistaken the name of her lover, and the successor of Tullius as king of Rome, who was Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, not Lucius Tarquinius Priscus (the predecessor of Tullius as king).
2. pietas: the emotion that binds children to their parents; pietatis amor: ‘the love of pietas’.
Related Emblems
Iconclass Keywords
Relating to the image:
- adult man [31D14] Search | Browse Iconclass
- adult woman [31D15] Search | Browse Iconclass
- animal trampling, treading, stamping on someone or something [25F(+5227)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- birds [25F3] Search | Browse Iconclass
- branch, stick «« KEY (22) TO 25G plants; vegetation [25G(+22)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- chariot, triumphal car [43A421] Search | Browse Iconclass
- city-view in general; 'veduta' [25I1] Search | Browse Iconclass
- clouds [26A] Search | Browse Iconclass
- four-wheeled vehicle drawn by more than three animals [46C1444] Search | Browse Iconclass
- front façade [41A311] Search | Browse Iconclass
- galloping horse [46C13183] Search | Browse Iconclass
- sceptre, staff (symbol of sovereignty) [44B192] Search | Browse Iconclass
- six persons [31A(+76)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- Tullia drives her chariot over the dead body of her father Servius Tullius [98C(TULLIA)41] Search | Browse Iconclass
- whip [46C1463] Search | Browse Iconclass
Relating to the text:
- Anteros [92D1911] Search | Browse Iconclass
- devotion, piety; 'Divotione' (Ripa) [11Q0] Search | Browse Iconclass
- emotional illness, derangement, madness [31A464] Search | Browse Iconclass
- filial love, 'Pietas filiorum' [42B4] Search | Browse Iconclass
- Lust, Luxury, 'Luxuria'; 'Lussuria' (Ripa) ~ personification of one of the Deadly Sins [11N36] Search | Browse Iconclass
- non-aggressive activities of Tarquinius Superbus [98B(TARQUIN)5] Search | Browse Iconclass
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