He heard, and madly at the motion pleased,
His polish’d bow with hasty rashness seized.[34]
Now these verbal intimations of the minds and judgments of poets are
not difficult to be understood by any one that will heedfully observe
them. But besides these, they give us other hints from actions. As
Euripides is reported, when some blamed him for bringing such an
impious and flagitious villain as Ixion upon the stage, to have given
this answer: But yet I brought him not off till I had fastened him to
a torturing wheel. This same way of teaching by mute actions is to be
found in Homer also, affording us useful contemplations upon those very
fables which are usually most disliked in him. These some men offer
force to, that they may reduce them to allegories (which the ancients
called ὑπόνοιαι), and tell us that Venus committing adultery with Mars,
discovered by the Sun, is to be understood thus: that when the star
called Venus is in conjunction with that which hath the name of Mars,
bastardly births are produced, and by the Sun’s rising and discovering
them they are not concealed. So will they have Juno’s dressing herself
so accurately to tempt Jupiter, and her making use of the girdle of
Venus to inflame his love, to be nothing else but the purification of
that part of the air which draweth nearest to the nature of fire. As
if we were not told the meaning of those fables far better by the poet
himself. For he teacheth us in that of Venus, if we heed it, that light
music and wanton songs and discourses which suggest to men obscene
fancies debauch their manners, and incline them to an unmanly way of
living in luxury and wantonness, of continually haunting the company of
women, and of being
Given to fashions, that their garb may please,
Hot baths, and couches where they loll at ease.