M /SDOM OF THE AXCIRNFS. 453 



XXVI. THE FARLE OF TYPIION. 



EXPLAINED OF REBELLION. 



THE fable runs, that Juno, enraged at Jupiter s bringing forth Pallas 

 without her assistance, incessantly solicited all the gods and goddesses, 

 that she might produce without Jupiter: and having by violence and 

 importunity obtained the grant, she struck the earth, and thence im 

 mediately sprung up Typhon, a huge and dreadful monster, whom she 

 committed to the nursing of a serpent. As soon as he was grown up, 

 this monster waged war on Jupiter, and taking him prisoner in the 

 battle, carried him away on his shoulders, into a remote and obscure 

 quarter : and there cutting out the sinews of his hands and feet, he 

 bore them off, leaving Jupiter behind miserably maimed and mangled. 



But Mercury afterwards stole these sinews from Typhon, and 

 restored them to Jupiter. Hence, recovering his strength, Jupiter 

 again pursues the monster ; first wounds him with a stroke of his 

 thunder, when serpents arose from the blood of the wound : and now 

 the monster being dismayed, and taking to flight, Jupiter next darted 

 Mount /Etna upon him, and crushed him with the weight. 



EXPLANATION. This fable seems designed to express the various 

 fates of kings, and the turns that rebellions sometimes take, in 

 kingdoms. For princes may be justly esteemed married to their 

 states, as Jupiter to Juno : but it sometimes happens, that, being 

 depraved by long wielding of the sceptre, and growing tyrannical, they 

 would engross all to themselves; and slighting the counsel of their 

 senators and nobles, conceive by themselves ; that is, govern according 

 to their own arbitrary will and pleasure. This inflames the people, 

 and makes them endeavour to create and set up some head of their 

 own. Such designs arc generally set on foot by the secret motion and 

 instigation of the peers and nobles, under whose connivance the 

 common sort are prepared for rising : whence proceeds a swell in the 

 state, which is appositely denoted by the nursing of Typhon. This 

 growing posture of affairs is fed by the natural depravity, and ma 

 lignant dispositions of the vulgar, which to kings is an envenomed 

 serpent. And now the disaffected, uniting their force, at length break 

 out into open rebellion, which, producing infinite mischiefs, both to 

 prince and people, is represented by the horrid and multiplied de 

 formity of Typhon, with his hundred heads, denoting the divided 

 powers ; his flaming mouths, denoting fire and devastation ; his 

 girdles of snakes, denoting sieges and destruction ; his iron hands, 

 daughter and cruelty; his eagle s talons, rapine and plunder; his 

 plumed body, perpetual rumours, contradictory accounts, etc. And 

 sometimes these rebellions grow so high, that kings are obliged, as if 

 carried on the backs of the rebels, to quit the throne, and retire to 



