
FUTILITAS, LIBIDO, ET AVA-
RITIA MERITRICUM.
THE WORTHLESSNESS, LUST, AND GREED OF PROSTITUTES
In coitu occîdit proprios de nocte maritos
Natarum Danai perfida progenies.
Crimen ob hoc, haurit pertusis flumina vasis.
Quae nunquam expleri (quod fluat unda) queunt:
Pertusum Meretrix vas est, rimisque fathiscens
Perfluit hàc, illàc, continet atque nihil
Seu spectes animum, seu corpus. perfluit omni
Parte, nec arcanum, nec venerem retinet.
Adde quòd expleri vas insatiabtle [=insatiabile]
, vulva
Semper hians nequeat. sed nec avaritia
Ergo virum in coitu nocturno, (ut fabula signat)
Si qua libidinis est insatiata, necat.
Semper, & exhaurit futili vas ore: nec implet.
Ipsaque vas portat: ipsaque vas simul est.
Proinde velut mereticiae [=meretriciae]
imago libidinis ista
Insatiabilis est, Sic & Avaritiae.
At night while making love the treacherous daughters of Danaus killed their own husbands, and for their crime, they carry water in cracked pots that can never be filled (for the water flows out). A whore is a cracked pot, gaping with holes, she lets everything through on this side and that and holds nothing, whether you consider her soul or her body. She lets everything through everywhere, and can keep neither secret nor love. Add, too, that this pot, her vulva, can’t be filled: it’s always gaping and insatiable. But neither can greed. So if some desire of hers is unfulfilled, she kills her man while making love at night (as the story hints); and she sucks the jug dry always with her worthless mouth and does not fill it: the jug she carries and is at the same time. Therefore this picture you see is, as it were, a picture of the insatiable lust and greed of the prostitute.
Iconclass Keywords
Relating to the image:
- adult woman [31D15] Search | Browse Iconclass
- arm raised, with fingers spread out [31A25112] Search | Browse Iconclass
- arm stretched sidewards [31A2513] Search | Browse Iconclass
- clouds [26A] Search | Browse Iconclass
- container of ceramics: jar, jug, pot, vase [41A773] Search | Browse Iconclass
- groups of trees [25G11] Search | Browse Iconclass
- hand on the heart [31A25162] Search | Browse Iconclass
- landscape with ruins [25I9] Search | Browse Iconclass
- low hill country [25H114] Search | Browse Iconclass
- more than eight persons [31A(+79)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- pouring [41C122] Search | Browse Iconclass
- sisters (second degree family relationships) [42G2222] Search | Browse Iconclass
- the Danaids pouring water into a perforated vessel [93E85] Search | Browse Iconclass
- trees [25G3] Search | Browse Iconclass
- water (one of the four elements) [21D] Search | Browse Iconclass
Relating to the text:
- (story of) Venus (Aphrodite) [92C4] Search | Browse Iconclass
- Curiosity, Inquisitiveness, Desire of Knowledge; 'Curiosit?' (Ripa) [52A12] Search | Browse Iconclass
- female sexual organs [31A22362] Search | Browse Iconclass
- Greed, Covetousness, Cupidity; 'Cupidit?' (Ripa) [55CC11] Search | Browse Iconclass
- Hades, the Underworld [93E] Search | Browse Iconclass
- Secret [52DD11] Search | Browse Iconclass
- the Danaids, with the exception of Hyperm(n)estra, stab their husbands at night [95B(DANAIDS)41] Search | Browse Iconclass
- whore, prostitute [33C52] Search | Browse Iconclass
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