Arcadia.Arcadia is bounded on the East with Eliso, on the West with Misenia, on the North with Achaia inferiour, and on the South with a part of Laconia and the sea: It was formerly termed Pelasgia, and lastly it tooke the name from Arcas the sonne of Jupiter and Calisto, the people whereof, did long imagine they were more auncient then the Moone;
This soyle of whom Arcas great patrone was,
In age the Moone excell’d, in wit the Asse.
But because it is a tradition of more antiquity then credit, I doe rather note it, then affirme it: And as men should dread the thunder-bolt, when they see the lightning, so ignorance and idolatry placed amongst us, and round about us, may be a warning to the professours of the trueth, to take heed of the venome, least by their Arcadian antiquitie surpassing the Moone, they become novices to some new intended massacre, for as powder faild them, but alas, not poison! so now with policy they prevaile in all things: how long the holy one of Israell knoweth, but certainely, our sinnes are the causes of their domineering and of our carelesse drouping.
In this Desart way, I beheld many singular Monuments, and ruinous Castles, whose names I knew not, because I had an ignorant guide: But this I remember, amongst these rockes my belly was pinched, and wearied was my body, with the climbing of fastidious mountaines, which bred no small griefe to my breast. Yet notwithstanding of my distresse, the rememberance of these sweet seasoned Songs of Arcadian Sheepheards which pregnant Poets have so well penned, did recreate my fatigated corps with [II. 70.]many sugred suppositions. These sterile bounds being past, we entred in the Easterne plaine of Morea, called aunciently Sparta, where that sometimes famous Citty of Lacedemon flourished, but now sacked, and the lumpes of ruines and memory onely remaines. Marching thus, we left Modena and Napoli on our right hand, toward the sea side, and on the sixt day at night, we pitched our tents in the disinhabited villages of Argo and Micene, from the which unhappy Helen was ravished.
The rapt of Helen.This cursed custome of base prostitution, is become so frequent, that the greater sort of her mercenary sexe, following her footsteps, have out-gone her in their loathsom journeies of Libidinous wayes: she being of such an infinite and voluptuous crew, the arch mistresse and ring-leader to destruction, did invite my Muse to inveigh against her lascivious immodesty, as the inordinate patterne of all willing and licentious rapts:
I would thy beauty (fairest of all Dames)
Had never caus’d the jealous Greekes to move
Thy eyes from Greece, to Ilion cast flames,
And burnt that Trojan, with adulterate love: