Cauendum à meretricibus
The Demon and the Monster as the central motif. From Alciato's Emblemata.
What is happening
Andrea Alciato, 1648 “Cauendum à meretricibus.”
Symbolica, 2026 Alciato's motto, put into English here: Beware of harlots.
Andrea Alciato, 1648 “Sole sata Circes tam magna potentia fertur,
Verterit ut multos in noua monstra viros.
Testis equûm domitor Picus, tum Scylla biformis,
Atque Ithaci postquam vina bibere sues.
Indicat illustri meretricem nomine Circe,
Et rationem animi perdere, quisquis amat.”
Symbolica, 2026 Alciato's epigram, put into English here: So great is the power reported of Circe, daughter of the Sun, that she turned many men into new monsters. Witness Picus the tamer of horses, then two-formed Scylla, and the Ithacan's men, swine after they had drunk the wine. Circe, by her famous name, points to the harlot, and shows that whoever loves loses the reason of his mind.
Key · 1 motif
The motifs the picture carries, filed by role. The marks on the picture itself come with the entry.
- 1The Demon and the Monstercentral motif as it reads here: Emblema LXXVI
The picture
The men Circe has changed, standing as a stag, a goat and a boar: Alciato's own word for them is monstra. By eye
The reading
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.
A woman in a long gown, her hair loose, leans forward at the right and holds out a long wand toward a group of animals under a tree. A stag with full antlers, a goat and a boar crowd together at the left; a smaller beast stands in the middle of the ground between them. There is water behind and a hatched sky above.
The motto is the reading: Cauendum à meretricibus, beware of harlots. Alciato does not present Circe as a witch or as a lover but as a warning about appetite, and he produces witnesses for it, Picus who was turned into a bird, two-formed Scylla, and the crew of the Ithacan after they drank. The last line is the moral the picture is carrying: Circe, by her famous name, points to the harlot, and whoever loves loses the reason of his mind. The animals are the argument, not the incident.
Not yet decoded: the motifs are tagged by eye and the readings above are quoted from their sources. The marks on the picture and the sourced notes come with the entry.
Also carrying the Demon and the Monster
19 works carry it. The 6 where it is the central motif are here. The symbol.
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
Appone mulieri super mammas bufonem, ut ablactet eum, & moriatur mulier, sitque bufo grossus de lacte
Oedypus Sphynge superata & trucidato Lajo patre matrem ducit in uxorem
Lupus ab Oriente & Canis ab Occidente venientes se invicem momorderunt
Against the slanderers, by right of retort
The Devil (XV)
In the same series
Record
One symbol a week, decoded.
This picture is free at full size from its source, linked above. What an address gets is the Sunday letter: one picture, one symbol marked on it, what it meant and who said so, and the master files of the decoded plates as they are verified. Leave any time.
Free, one letter a week, unsubscribe in one click. How the address is used.
Scroll or pinch to zoom · drag to move · double-tap for 1:1 · 1400 by 1315 pixel web copy; the source file is linked under Record