Aurum pluit, dum nascitur Pallas Rhodi, & Sol concumbit Veneri

Michael Maier, 1618 “Aurum pluit, dum nascitur Pallas Rhodi, & Sol concumbit Veneri.” Atalanta Fugiens, Emblema XXIII, page 101, the motto printed over the engraving.

Symbolica, 2026 Maier’s Latin, put into English here: Gold rains when Pallas is born at Rhodes and the Sun lies with Venus.

Michael Maier, 1618 “Res est mira, fidem fecit sed Graecia nobis
Ejus, apud Rhodios quae celebrata fuit.
Nubibus Aureolus, referunt, quod decidit imber,
Solubi erat Cypriae junctus amore Deae:
Tum quoque, cum Pallas cerebro Jovis excidit, aurum
Vase suo pluviae sic cadat instar aquae.” Atalanta Fugiens, Epigramma XXIII, page 101, the six lines printed under the engraving.

Symbolica, 2026 Maier’s epigram, put into English here: It is a strange thing, but Greece made us believe it, the story kept among the Rhodians. A golden shower, they report, fell from the clouds, when the Sun was joined in love with the Cyprian Goddess. And at the time when Pallas sprang from the brain of Jove, gold fell in its vessel like rain water.

Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.

1. Primary motif
2. 1The DivineJove reclining with his eagle while Vulcan splits his head, and Pallas springing armed from the wound
3. Secondary motifs · 1
4. 2The Sun and the Moonthe Sun, with rays about his head, lying with Venus under the canopy at the right

The smith at his anvil, Pallas born in the sky behind, the lovers at the right. By eye

The picture read whole, in the archive's words, from the sources quoted on the marks. Read on, and the picture follows: the motif under discussion keeps its colour.

Decoded: every motif is marked, and each mark carries the reading its author gave it, quoted from the text, or says that it is observed on the picture and not read. The reading above is the archive's own, made from those sources and no others.