84 Bacon 



their war against the gods, the Earth their mother in 

 revenge thereof brought forth Fame: 



Illam terra parens, ira irritata Deorum, 

 Extremam, ut perhibent, Coeo Enceladoque sororem 

 Progenuit: l 



expounded, that when princes and monarchs have sup 

 pressed actual and open rebels, then the malignity of the 

 people, which is the mother of rebellion, doth bring forth 

 libels and slanders, and taxations of the states, which is of 

 the same kind with rebellion, but more feminine. So in the 

 fable, that the rest of the gods having conspired to bind 

 Jupiter, Pallas 2 called Briareus with his hundred hands to 

 his aid: expounded, that monarchies need not fear any 

 curbing of their absoluteness by mighty subjects, as long 

 as by wisdom they keep the hearts of the people, who will 

 be sure to come in on their side. So in the fable, that 

 Achilles was brought up under Chiron the Centaur, who was 

 part a man and part a beast, expounded ingeniously but 

 corruptly by Machiavel, 3 that it belongeth to the education 

 and discipline of princes to know as well how to play the 

 part of the lion in violence, and the fox in guile, as of the 

 man in virtue and justice. Nevertheless, in many the like 

 encounters, I do rather think that the fable was first, and 

 the exposition devised, than that the moral was first, and 

 thereupon the fable framed. For I find it was an ancient 

 vanity in Chrysippus, that troubled himself with great 

 contention to fasten the assertions of the Stoics upon the 

 fictions of the ancient poets ; but yet that all the fables and 

 fictions of the poets were but pleasure and not figure, I 

 interpose no opinion. Surely of those poets which are now 

 extant, even Homer himself (notwithstanding he was made 

 a kind of Scripture by the latter schools of the Grecians), 

 yet I should without any difficulty pronounce that his fables 

 had no such inwardness in his own meaning ; but what they 

 might have upon a more original tradition, is not easy to 

 affirm; for he was not the inventor of many of them. 4 



1 Virg. Mn. iv. 178-180. 



Not Pallas, but Thetis, Horn. II. A. 401, sqq. 



3 Horn. //. A. 831, and Machiav. Prince, c. 18. 



4 In the Latin, in room of these examples, the fables of Pan, 

 Perseus, and Dionysus, are expounded to show respectively how 

 physical, political, and moral doctrines might be thence deduced. 



