TREATISE OF EQUIVOCATION.
As having originated the inquiry in "NOTES AND QUERIES"[1] respecting this Treatise, under the signature of J. M., I feel great obligation both to the editor of that journal, and the editor of the Treatise itself, for having brought it to light by publication, and added it to the stock of accurate and very important historical information. Indeed, a real vacancy was left for it; and it is a subject of high self-gratulation, that a boon previously, and for a length of time, hidden and unproductive, is now accessible and operative without limit. I have no doubt that all your readers, and the whole reading public, join with me in rejoicing that the editorship of the work has fallen into hands so competent and so successful.
[1] Vol. i., pp. 263. 357.; Vol. ii., pp. 136. 168. 446. 490.
I was, not for ten, but twenty years or more, in quest of the MS. now so happily made public property, and should have fallen upon it much earlier, but for the misleading title under which it appears, where it is really; for it has been found. In the Catalogus Lib. MSS.: Ox. 1697, among the Laudian MSS. appears, p. 62., "968.95. A Treatise against Equivocation, or fraudulent Dissimulation." Against! when no such word is in the original, and the real matter and meaning is for! I had, at some early time, marked the very entry; but presuming that the work had been actually printed (which I believe it was in a very few copies, which have disappeared), naturally enough I did not pursue the search in that direction. Others, I am happy, have, and I am gratified.
The work is very important; for there is not a work more evidently genuine and authentic than this is proved to be by plain historic evidence, both as to the document itself and the facts which it attests. The witness, or witnesses, appearing in it, give their testimony respecting themselves with the most unsuspectable simplicity. They meant not, and have not, misrepresented themselves: they have proclaimed their own doctrine for themselves respecting Equivocation and Mental Reservation—the last of which is really of most importance; and it was most needful to the Roman body at the time, and under their circumstances. Their object, for mere safety, was concealment as to their resorts or residences. They could not exist, as they did, without the assistance and knowledge of many individuals, some of inferior class. Against the incessant inquiries to which they were exposed they had no defence, except the power of disappointing or misleading by ambiguity or deception, which was completely secured by reserved termination in the mind to any uttered declaration. Now, there is in this very Treatise plain admission that all the co-religionists of the endangered party, particularly a lady who is distinctly noticed, were not convinced of the moral rectitude of such a procedure; and it was necessary, or expedient, that their hesitation should be removed. And this seems to be the main object of the present work. How far it has succeeded must depend upon the evidence which is adduced.
We have generally had the doctrine of the Roman body on the subject of the Treatise presented by opponents; here we have it as deliberately stated by themselves. There is a passage rather observable in p. 103., beginning at the bottom and extending to the words "he hath no such meaning to tell them," of which we are not acquainted with a duplicate. But the whole has something of the freshness and interest of novelty.
Macbeth, it is agreed, I believe, was written in 1607, consequently after the Powder Plot, when the doctrine before us was brought forward pointedly against the traitors. Might there not be some reference to the fact in the Second Act, where the porter of the castle, roused by repeated knockings, on the murder, after other exclamations in the manner of the poet, proceeds:
"Here's an Equivocator, that could swear in both the scales, against either scale: who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven. Oh, come in, Equivocator"?
Mr. Jardine will thank your correspondent for pointing out an error or two which should be corrected in another edition. At p. 44., for "χθο," in the margin, should be printed "sub verbo." The word in the MS. is a contraction to that effect: the capital "V" has a curved stroke across the first line of the "V," followed by "bo." Generally the Dubium, in alphabetic works of the kind referred to, ranks under some alphabetic word, one or more, as it may happen; but in Em. Sà's work the word Dubium comes under the letter D., and this is meant to be expressed. At p. 49. the footnote should be omitted, as the Vulgate, which is followed, calls the 1st of Samuel the 1st of Kings. The first line of p. 56. should have "autem" instead of "antea." I have inspected the MS. carefully, and therefore speak with confidence.
EUPATOR.
NOTES ON VIRGIL.
(Continued from p. 308.)
IV. "Illum expirantem transfixo pectore flammas
Turbine corripuit scopuloque infixit acuto."
Virg. Æn. I. 48.
"TURBINE; volubilitate ventorum. SCOPULO; saxo eminenti."—Servius.
"Hub sie im Wirbel empor, und spiesst' an ein scharfes Gestein ihn."—Voss.
"Ipsum vero Pallas fulmine percussum procellæ vi scopulo etiam allisit."—Heyne.
"Impegit rupi acutæ."—Ruæus.
"Infixit. Inflixit, lectionem quorundam MSS. facile prætulissem, et quod statim præcesserit transfixo, unde evadit inconcinna cognatæ dictionis repetitio, et quod etiam Æn. x. 303.:
"'Namque inflicta vadis, dorso dum pendet iniquo,'
"si Sidon. Apoll. v. 197. haud tueretur vulgatam scripturam:
"'Fixusque Capharei
Cautibus, inter aquas flammam ructabat Oileus.'"—Wakefield.
To which criticism of Wakefields's, Forbiger adds: "Præterea etiam acuto scopulo infigendi voc. accommodatius videtur quam infligendi." And Wagner: "acuto scopulo infigi melius."
This interpretation and these criticisms are founded altogether on a false conception of the meaning of the word infigere, which is never to fix on, but always either to fix in, or to fix with, i.e. pierce with. Scopulo infixit acuto, fixed or pinned down or to the ground with a sharp rock; i.e. hurled a sharp-pointed rock on him, so as to nail him to the ground. So (Æn. XII. 721.) "Cornua obnixi infigunt," fix their horns, not on, but in; infix their horns; stick their horns into each other; stick each other with their horns: q.d. Cornibus se mutuo infigunt: and, exactly parallel to our text:
"Saturnius me sic infixit Jupiter,
Jovisque numen Mulcibri adscivit manus.
Hos ille cuneos fabrica crudeli inserens,
Perrupit artus; qua miser sollertia
Transverberatus, castrum hoc Furiarum incolo."
Cicero (translating from Æschylus), Tuscul. Quæst. II. 10.
In confirmation of this view of the passage, I may observe: 1st, that it is easier to imagine a man staked to the ground by a sharp-pointed rock, than flung on a sharp-pointed rock, so as to remain permanently impaled on it; and 2dly, that the account given of the transaction, both by Quintus Calaber and Seneca, agree as perfectly with this view as they disagree with the opposite:
Καί νύ κεν ἐξήλυξε κακὸν μόρον, εἰ μὴ ἄρ'αὐτῷ,
ῥήξας αἶαν ἔνερθεν, ἐπιπροέηκε κολώνην·
εὖτε πάρος μεγάλοιο κατ' Ἐγκελάδοιο δαΐφρων
Παλλὰς ἀειραμένη Σικελὴν ἐπικάββαλε νῆσον·
ἦ ῥ' ἔτι καίεται αἰὲν ὑπ' ἀκαμάτοιο Γίγαντος,
αἰθαλόεν πνείοντος ἔσω χθονός· ὡς ἄρα Λοκρῶν
ἀμφεκάλυψεν ἄνακτα δυσάμμορον οὔρεος ἄκρη,
ὑψόθεν ἐξεριποῦσα, βάρυνε δὲ καρτερὸν ἄνδρα·
ἀμφὶ δέ μιν θανάτοιο μέλας ἐκιχήσατ' ὄλεθρος,
γαίῃ ὁμῶς δμηθέντα καὶ ἀκαμάτῳ ἐνὶ πόντῳ.
Quintus Calab. XIV. 579.
And so Seneca; who, having presented us with Ajax clinging to the rock to which he had swum for safety, after his ship had been sunk, and himself struck with lightning, and there uttering violent imprecations against the Deity, adds:
"Plura cum auderet furens,
Tridente rupem subruit pulsam pater
Neptunus, imis exerens undis caput,
Solvitque montem; quem cadens secum tulit:
Terraque et igne victus et pelago jacet."
Agam. 552.
And, so also, beyond doubt, we are to understand Sidonius Apollinaris's—
"Fixusque Capharei
Cautibus, inter aquas flammam ructabat Oileus."
Not, with Wakefield and the other commentators, fixed on the rocks of Caphareus, but, pierced with the rocks of Caphareus, and lying under them. Compare (Æn. IX. 701.) "fixo pulmone," the pierced lung; "fixo cerebro" (Æn. XII. 537.); "verubus trementia figunt" (Æn. I. 216.), not, fix on the spits, but, stick or pierce with the spits; and especially (Ovid. Ibis. 341.),
"Viscera sic aliquis scopulus tua figat, ut olim
Fixa sub Euboico Graia fuere sinu,"
pierced and pinned down with a rock, at the bottom of the Eubœan gulf.
TURBINE. SCOPULO.—Not two instruments, a whirlwind and a rock, but one single instrument, a whirling rock; scopulo turbineo; in modo turbinis se circumagente; as if Virgil had said, Solo affixit illum correptum et transverberatum scopulo acuto in eum maxima vi rotato: or, more briefly, Turbine scopuli acuti corripuit et infixit. Compare:
"Præcipitem scopulo atque ingentis turbine saxi
Excutit effunditque solo."
Æn. XII. 531.
"Stupet obvia leto
Turba super stantem, atque emissi turbine montis
Obruitur."
Stat. Theb. II. 564.
"Idem altas turres saxis et turbine crebro
Laxat."
So understood, 1st, the passage is according to Virgil's usual manner, the latter part of the line explaining and defining the general statement contained in the former; and, 2ndly, Pallas kills her enemy, not by the somewhat roundabout and unusual method of first striking him with thunder, and then snatching him up in a whirlwind, and then either dashing him against a sharp rock, and leaving him impaled there, or, as I have shown is undoubtedly the meaning, impaling him with a sharp rock, but by the more compendious and less out-of-the-way method of first striking him with thunder, and then whirling a sharp-pointed rock on top of him, so as to impale him.
From Milton's imitation of this passage, in his Paradise Lost (ii. 180.), it appears that even he fell into the general and double error:
"Caught in a fiery tempest shall be hurled,
Each on his rock transfixed."
Caro's translation shows that he had no definite idea whatever of the meaning:
"A tale un turbo
In preda il diè; che per acuti scogli
Miserabil ne fe' rapina, e scempio."
V. "Ast ego, quæ Divûm incedo regina, Jovisque
Et soror et conjux, una cum gente tot annos
Bella gero."
Æn. I. 50.
"'INCEDERE' wird besonders von der feierlichen, würdevollen Haltung im Gange gebraucht: vers 500, von der Dido, 'Regina incessit.' (Ruhnk. zu Terent. And. I. i. 100. Eun. v. 3. 9.) Deshalb der majestätischen Juno eigenthümlich, Ἡραῖον βαδίζειν. Also nicht für sum, sondern ganz eigentlich."—Thiel.
"But I who walk in awful state above."—Dryden.
"Incedere est ingredi, sed proprie cum quadam pompa et fastu."—Gesner.
"Incessus dearum, imprimis Junonis, gravitate sua notus."—Heyne.
And so also Holdsworth and Ruæus.
I think, on the contrary, that incedo, both here and elsewhere, expresses only the stepping or walking motion generally, and that the character of the step or walk, if inferable at all, is to be inferred only from the context. Accordingly, "Magnifice incedit" (Liv. II. 6.); "Turpe incedere" (Catull. XXXXII. 8.); "Molliter incedit" (Ovid, Amor. II. 23.); "Passu incedit inerti" (Ovid, Metam. II. 772.); "Melius est incessu regem quam imperium regno claudicare" (Justin. VI. ii. 6.); "Incessus omnibus animalibus certus et uniusmodi, et in suo, cuique, genere" (Plin. X. 38.).
The emphasis, therefore, is on regina, and the meaning is, I who step, or walk, QUEEN of the Gods; the dignity of the step being not expressed by "incedo," but inferable from "regina." The expression corresponds exactly to "ibit regina" (Æn. II. 578.); with this difference only, that "ibit" does not, like "incedo," specify motion on foot.
"Jovisque et soror et conjux."—Both the ets are emphatic. "Jovisque et soror et conjux."
"Bella" expresses the organised resistance which she meets, and the uncertainty of the issue; and being placed first word in the line is emphatic.
JAMES HENRY.