I, as Æneas our great ancestor
Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder
The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber
Did I the tired Cæsar: and this man
Is now become a god, and Cassius is
A wretched creature, and must bend his body
If Cæsar carelessly but nod on him.”
Aneau, 1552.
Progne, or Procne, Medeia’s counterpart for cruelty, who placed the flesh of her own son Itys before his father Tereus, is represented in Aneau’s “Picta Poesis,” ed. 1552, p. 73, with a Latin stanza of ten lines, and the motto, “Impotentis Vindictæ Foemina,”—The Woman of furious Vengeance. In the Titus Andronicus (act. v. sc. 2, l. 192, vol. vi. p. 522) the fearful tale of Progne enters into the plot, and a similar revenge is repeated. The two sons of the empress, Chiron and Demetrius, who had committed atrocious crimes against Lavinia the daughter of Titus, are bound, and preparations are made to inflict such punishment as the world’s history had but once before heard of. Titus declares he will bid their empress mother, “like to the earth swallow her own increase.”