64 THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS. 



are of ambiguous use, serving as well for hurt as for 

 remedy, and they have in a manner power both to 

 loose and bind themselves. 



Unlawful trades, and so by consequence, arts 

 themselves, are often persecuted by Minos, that is by 

 laws, which do condemn them, and prohibit men to 

 use them. Nevertheless they are hid and retained 

 every where, finding lurking holes and places of 

 receit, which was well observed by Tacitus of the 

 mathematicians and figure-flingers of his time, in a 

 thing not so much unlike ; &quot; Genus hominum quod in 

 &quot; civitate nostra semper et retinebitur et vetabitur.&quot; 

 There is a kind of men that will always abide in our 

 city, though always forbidden. And yet notwith 

 standing unlawful and curious arts of what kind 

 soever, in tract of time, when they cannot perform 

 what they promise, do fall from the good opinion 

 that was held of them, no otherwise than Icarus fell 

 down from the skies, they grow to be contemned and 

 scorned, and so perish by too much ostentation. And 

 to say the truth, they are not so happily restrained 

 by the reins of law, as bewrayed by their own vaniiy. 



ERICTHONIUS, OR IMPOSTURE. 



The poets fable that Vulcan solicited Minerva 

 for her virginity, and impatient of denial, with an 

 inflamed desire, offered herviolence,but in struggling 

 his seed fell upon the ground, whereof came Eric- 

 thonius, whose body, from the middle upward, was 

 of a comely and apt proportion, but his thighs and 

 legs like the tail of an eel, small and deformed. To 



