Notes
Where notes are derived from the notes of others, the source is cited
within parentheses. Uncited notes frequently reflect a cursory inspection
of relevant entries in A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and
Mythology, ed. William Smith (London: 1890). I have refrained from
citing line numbers in primary sources as I have not had the opportunity
to check them myself. The reader is hereby advised to regard my
rudimentary knowledge of the classics or continental Renaissance authors
as not in any way authoritative. [RSB]
[{1}]
E.W.: Edward Wotton, secretary to the English at
the court of Maximilian II. (Duncan-Jones, Sir Philip Sidney
[1989] 372)
[{2}]
Pedenteria: pedantry.
[{3}]
In Renaissance times Musaeus was thought to predate
Homer.
[{4}]
It was believed that the works of the ancients were
intrinsically superior and of great authority. It was a mark of learning
to imitate them, as in fact Sidney does by casting the
Defence in the form of a classical oration.
[{5}]
Amphion: said to have rebuilt Thebes with the
sweetness of his lyre.
[{6}]
Details on the works, or in some cases fragments,
of these Greek philosophers may be found in the excellent exhaustive notes
of Duncan-Jones, 373. She believes Sidney may have encountered them in
Henri Estienne, Poesis Philosophica [1573].
[{11}]
Arentos: areytos. Religious music of the
native inhabitants of Haiti, from Decades of the newe worlde or West
India [1555], by Peter Martyr (tr. Richard Eden), III.vii. (Duncan-Jones 373)
[{12}]
Vaticinium, and Vaticinari: prophecy,
prophesying. The prophetic office of poet has interested poets and
philosophers from Plato to S.T. Coleridge. For a useful discussion of this
poetics in Sidney's time, see Angus Fletcher, The Prophetic Moment:
An Essay on Spenser [1971].
[{13}]
Albinus was the Roman governor of Britain in 192
C.E. (Duncan-Jones and Van Dorsten, Miscellaneous Prose of Sir
Philip Sidney 189) The line quoted from Aeneid II.314
translates
insanely I arm, that have no reason to arm.
[{14}]
Hebritians: Hebricians, scholars of the Hebrew
language. Jerome, and many others after him, believed that the Psalms were
written in verse, and sought in vain to find the rules. (Duncan-Jones
375)
[{15}]
Prosopopeias: attribution of human qualities
(personification) to natural objects or events.
[{16}]
poieten:
a poet,
with which phrase
the Greek word is replaced in subsequent editions.
[{17}]
Art: any skill in production, including of
knowledge, hence inclusive of the sciences.
[{18}]
Theagenes: from Heliodorus,
Aethiopica.
[{19}]
Pylades: from Euripides,
Oresteia.
[{20}]
Orlando: Ariosto, Orlando furioso
[1532].
[{21}]
Cyrus: Ruler of Persia, 600?-529 B.C.E.; from
Xenophon, Cyropaedia.
[{22}]
Aeneas is said to have been regarded during the
Renaissance as the perfect man (Duncan-Jones and Van Dorsten 190); he was
especially attractive to Englishmen as the ancestor of the founders of
Rome and also, according to legend, of the founders of Britain. See
Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion [1612].
[{23}]
Compare Scaliger, Poetics [1561].
The poet, according to Scaliger, creates models, which partake of the
first nature, so that the poet's creativity is like that of God.
[{24}]
Aristotle, Poetics I.2.
[{25}]
Horace, Ars Poetica. Plutarch says,
in the Moralia, that Simonides said this first.
[{26}]
Bible translators.
[{27}]
Paules: subsequent editions have James': the
quote is from James 5:13.
[{28}]
Pontanus: Giovanni Pontano is the only non-classical author here cited. For details on the works alluded to, see
Duncan-Jones, 375.
[{29}]
Heliodorus, Aethiopica.
[{30}]
architectonike: Master-art or science of
science. Analogous to the use of
scientific method
as the
organizing theory of the scientific disciplines today.
[{31}]
Sidney seems to be quoting his Cicero (De
oratore II.ix.36) from memory. The passage reads: Lux vitae,
temporum magistra, vita memoriae, nuntia vetustatis...:
Light of
life, master of the age, life of memory, messenger from the past...
[{32}]
Formidine poenae: fear of being punished.
[{33}]
Virtutis amore: love of virtue.
[{34}]
Anchices: Anchises, the father of Aeneas. See
Virgil, Aeneid II.
[{36}]
Horace, Epistles I.ii.
(Duncan-Jones and Van Dorsten 195)
[{37}]
The first three examples are from the
Iliad; in Aeneid V., Nisus helps Euryalus to
victory in an important race, even though he himself has fallen and cannot
complete the course.
[{38}]
Terence, Eunuchus.
Gnatho
in Sidney's time was any social parasite after the
character by that name in Terence. (Duncan-Jones 376)
[{39}]
Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde. A
pandar
was a procurer of sexual services, after the character
in Chaucer.
[{40}]
Horace, Ars poetica:
Mediocrity in poets is permitted neither by the Gods, nor men, nor
booksellers.
(Books were sold around columns in Rome.)
[{44}]
studiously serious
was omitted in
Ponsonby.
[{45}]
Justin, Histories, translated by
Arthur Golding, 1564. (Duncan-Jones 377)
[{46}]
Dares Phrygius's
purported account of
the Trojan war was traditionally thought to be genuine, but by Sidney's
time there were already serious doubts. (Duncan-Jones and Van Dorsten
196)
[{48}]
Tantalus revealed the secrets entrusted to him by
Zeus and was horribly punished in the underworld; Atreus killed the two
sons of Thyestes and served him their flesh at a banquet.
[{49}]
Quintus Rufus Curtius wrote a life of Alexander
the Great.
[{50}]
Herodotus, Histories III; Justin,
Histories I.x. (Duncan-Jones 378)
[{51}]
Livy, Histories I.iii,iv. (Duncan-Jones 378)
[{52}]
This incident is recorded in
Cyropaedia VI.i, but of Araspas, not Abradates.
(Duncan-Jones 378)
[{53}]
Milciades: Miltiades defeated the Persians at
Marathon, but afterwards misused an Athenian fleet and was imprisoned,
where he died of a leg wound received in the naval adventure. Herodotus,
Histories IV.
[{54}]
Phocion, an Athenian public servant, was executed
for suspicion of illegally negotiating with the Macedonians; Plutarch,
Phocion.
[{55}]
Socrates was condemned and executed on suspicion
of having taught atheism to the youth of Athens; Plato,
Apology, Crito, Phaedo.
[{56}]
Lucius Septimius Severus, Roman emperor, C.E. 193-211, who tended to visit horrible vengeance on defeated foes, and
celebrated victories with massively bloody spectacles in the Roman
circus.
[{57}]
M. Aurelius Alexander Severus, Roman emperor C.E.
222-235, who effected many reforms and halted, for awhile, the
deterioration of the the Roman civilization.
[{58}]
Lucius Sulla and Caius Marius (second century
B.C.E.) fought over Rome for many years, with much loss of blood in civil
strife, yet neither came to a violent end.
[{59}]
Each was killed after he had already fled.
[{60}]
Cato, among the defeated at Pharsalia (48
B.C.E.), was run to ground some time afterward, and killed himself to
avoid capture.
[{61}]
He knew not letters
; Julius Caesar in
Suetonius' biography.
[{62}]
Occidentos esse: occidendos esse,
they are to be executed.
[{63}]
An assortment of noted tyrants.
[{64}]
philophilosophos:
lovers of the
lovers of wisdom.
A fan of philosophers.
[{65}]
gnosis: knowledge; praxis:
performance.
[{66}]
here is the work and the labor.
Virgil,
Aeneid VI. The Sybil on getting back from the
underworld.
[{67}]
Aristotle, Poetics IV.
[{68}]
Amadis de Gaule, written in Spanish,
was much read in French translation and frequently imitated, influencing
the genre of knightly romances, including Sidney's Arcadia.
[{69}]
Virgil, Aeneid II.
[{70}]
And shall my country watch me flee? Is it
such a terrible thing to die?
Virgil,
Aeneid XII. In
Ponsonby
usque
and
adeone
are run together into
one word.
[{71}]
Poetius: Boethius. Perhaps a typographical error
or compositor's misreading of the transcript; corrected elsewhere.
[{72}]
indulgere genio:
indulging one's natural
bent.
[{73}]
A friend of Coriolanus. The story was famous in
antiquity, and is retold in Shakespeare, Coriolanus I.i.
[{74}]
II Samuel 12:1-15.
[{76}]
Sannazaro, Arcadia [1504].
[{77}]
Boethius, De consolatione
philosophiae [524 C.E.].
[{78}]
Virgil, Eclogues I.
[{79}]
I remember this, that conquered Thyrsus
achieved nothing: meanwhile for our time it is Corydon [who is the
winner].
Virgil,
Eclogues VII.
Thyrsim
in
Ponsonby is elsewhere emended to
Thirsin.
[{80}]
A classical genre, in iambic feet, like satire
but less indirect.
[{81}]
The sly one all vices touches on, so that
his friend may laugh.
Persius,
Satires I. In the
original text:
Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico Tangit, et
admissus circum praecordia ludit.
[{82}]
around the heart he plays.
See
quotation from Persius, note 81.
[{83}]
Is there life in Ulubrae for us if we can
keep our balance?
Horace,
Epistles I.xi. Even assuming
we can get to Ulubrae without falling down, the place will bore us stiff,
says Horace. The town was reached by passing through marshes.
(Duncan-Jones and Van Orsten, 200)
[{84}]
Terentian characters, none of whom were intended
to be imitated.
[{85}]
Pistrinum: pistrinum, a type of
Roman flour mill, powered by asses; when slaves misbehaved, they were
sometimes substituted for the asses as a punishment.
[{86}]
An evil ruler's heavy scepter makes him
afraid of those who fear him, and the fear returns to its author.
Seneca,
Oedipus.
[{87}]
This Alexander had killed his uncle and taken
over rule of Pherae (369 B.C.E. approx.), and was particularly noted for
bloodshed. Plutarch, Vita Pelopidae.
[{89}]
Street musician, especially a fiddle player.
[{90}]
Tideus: Tydeus. Statius,
Thebais.
[{91}]
Tasso: Gerusalemme Liberata
[1575].
[{92}]
Marcus Tullius Cicero.
[{93}]
Better than Chrysippus and Crantor.
Horace,
Epistles I.ii. It is Homer that is better for
students than these philosophers, says Horace.
[{94}]
Ovid, Ars Amatoria: et lateat
vitium proximitate boni. Call a woman light instead of short,
thus hiding evil by its nearness to the good.
[{95}]
Cornelius Agrippa, De incertitudine et
vanitate scientiarium et artium [1530].
[{96}]
Scaliger, Poetics I.ii.
[{97}]
Other creatures might have speech or some
reasoning powers, but only in the human, it was thought, are these
combined.
[{98}]
In Ponsonby only; quisq=quisque. See Horace,
Epistles I.xviii; Ovid, Remedia amoris.
[{99}]
Canterbury Tales,
The Knights
Tale
28.
To eare
is
to plow.
[{100}]
Plato, Republic II.iii.
[{101}]
This is but to beg the
question.
[{102}]
Charon: ferryman who conveyed souls to Hades
over the river Styx.
[{103}]
Magicians drew a pentangle within a circle for
conjuring up demons.
[{104}]
eikastike: shown forth.
[{105}]
phantastike: imagined.
[{109}]
Albion Nation: the English.
[{110}]
Chain-shot: two cannon balls connected by a
length of chain, fired at once. Suitable for firing into massed opponents,
or ship's rigging.
[{111}]
Dio Cassius, Historia Roma,
continuation, iii.
[{112}]
I say to him to feel free to be a
fool.
Horace,
Satires I.i.
[{113}]
Scholastic topoi:
essential
nature
and
primary substance
are not subjects that go
well with body armor.
[{114}]
M. Portius Cato Censorious sought to prevent M.
Fulvius Nobilor from obtaining the honor of a Triumph because, as he said,
Fulvius did not maintain proper discipline among his troops and kept a
poet in his camp. See Cicero, Tusculanarum Disputationem
i.2.
[{115}]
M. Porcius Cato, great-grandson of Cato the
Censor.
[{116}]
Pluto: god of the underworld.
[{117}]
Ennius'. Cicero, Pro archia poeta
IX.
[{118}]
Told in Plutarch, Vita Niciae.
[{119}]
Simonides talked Hieron I into being reconciled
to his brother. (Duncan-Jones 383)
[{120}]
Cicero, Pro Caius Rabirio postumo
IX.
[{121}]
Plutarch, Moralia.
[{122}]
Plato, Republic V.
[{123}]
Ponsonby here omits
who yet for the
credit of Poets allegeth twice two poets and one of them by the name of
prophet,
found elsewhere. Acts 17:28 and Titus 1 are cited in the
margin of the Penshurst ms. (Duncan-Jones 383)
[{125}]
[Plato's] authority used by barbarians to
send out poets from the republic,
Scaliger,
Poetics
I.ii.
[{127}]
The Man Who Hurts Himself.
[{128}]
O muse, cause me to remember how, when
balked...
Virgil,
Aeneid I.
[{129}]
Generals and poets all. Adrian: The Roman
Emperor Hadrian (117-38 C.E.). (Duncan-Jones 384)
[{130}]
Robert II of Anjou, the friend and patron of
Francesco Petrarca.
[{133}]
Bembus: Pietro Bembo. Author of number of
works, including poetry; see also Baldsar Castiglione's Il
Cortegiano [1528], in which he figures prominently.
[{134}]
Bibiena: Bernard Dovizi, Cardinal Bibbiena,
served Lorenzo de'Medici. (Duncan-Jones 385)
[{135}]
Beza: Theodore de Beze.
[{136}]
Philip Melancthon was known to Sidney's
humanist friend Hubert Languet.
[{137}]
Fracastorius: Girolamo Fracastorio, scientific
and medical author.
[{138}]
Julius Caesar Scaliger had considerable
influence on the Defence.
[{139}]
Pontanus: Giovanni Pontano.
[{140}]
Muretus: Marc-Antoine Muret.
[{141}]
George Buchanan was a humanist scholar and
tutor to James VI.
[{142}]
Michel Hurault de l'Hospital.
[{143}]
See Ovid, Metamorphoses IV. In
Golding, lines 202ff.
[{144}]
The office of Telearch included keeping the
streets clean. Plutarch, Moralia.
[{145}]
Stream (here, of unnecessary words) flowing
from the spring of the Muses.
[{146}]
From superior clay their being by the
Titan formed.
Juvenal,
Satires XIV.
[{147}]
Orators are made, but poets are
born.
[{148}]
Manured: fertilized. This included the turning
under of the soil.
[{149}]
Dedalus: Daedalus, mythological architect and
archetype of the artist.
Wrings
=
wings.
Daedalus
constructed wings for himself and his son in order to effect an escape.
The fate of Icarus demonstrates Sidney's point that it is the use of a
thing, not the thing itself, that goes awry, though he does not pursue
that point here.
[{150}]
Quodlibet: Scholastic term for
what you
will
; the floor is open to debate on any point.
[{151}]
Anything I attempted to say, verses
became.
Ovid,
Tristia IV.x. (Duncan-Jones 387)
[{152}]
The Mirror of Magistrates first
appeared in 1555, but was suppressed by the Lord Chancellor as a threat to
Queen Mary's reign. It survived through seven more editions, however, and
became immensely popular and influential. There may have been as many as
seven authors in the first edition, and the number grew as the volume was
expanded; hence
partes.
(Hyder Rollins and Baker and Herschel
Baker,
The Renaissance in England: Non-Dramatic Prose and Verse of
the Sixteenth Century [1954] 269)
[{153}]
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Many of his poems
had found their way into the popular volume of Richard Tottel's
Songs and Sonnets Written by the Right Honorable Henry Haward Late
Earl of Surrey and Other [1557], known to posterity as the
Miscellany. In fact only some forty of the poems were
Surrey's; more than ninety are attributed to Thomas Wyatt. (Rollins and
Baker 194).
[{154}]
Edmund Spenser, The
Shepheardes Calender
Conteyning Twelve Aeglogves Proportionable to the Twelve Monethes
[1579]. Theocritus, Virgil, and Sannazaro represent the pastoral tradition
which the Calender follows. Sidney objects that none of them
affects archaic language.
[{155}]
Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton,
Gorboduc [1571].
[{156}]
Aristotle, Poetics V.i. It was
commonly believed that Aristotle limited the action of drama to a single
day, or what computer game designers now call
real-time.
Aristotle was descibing current practice, not laying down rules.
[{157}]
This is not Eunuchus but
Heautontimouromenos (see note 127 above). Sidney, as was very
common at the time and well into the seventeenth century, appears to be
working from memory alone for most of his citations.
[{158}]
Probably a reference to the
Captivi of Plautus.
[{159}]
Calecut: Calicut, a port on the southwest, or
Malibar, coast of India, reached by Vasco da Gama in 1498.
[{160}]
Pacolet, the magician in the medieval romance
Valentine and Orson, had a horse that could transport him
instantaneously to his destination.
[{162}]
ab ovo:
out of the egg.
Horace,
Ars poetica.
[{163}]
The story is from Euripides'
Hecuba.
[{164}]
Hercules, in mythology, fell in love with
Omphale, giving her the leverage to order him to yet more labors besides
the famous Twelve which he had just completed.
[{165}]
Aristotle, Poetics V.i. What
Aristotle actually says is that comedy examines the ludicrous but not to
the extent of finding humor in pain.
[{166}]
There is no greater unhappiness in
poverty than than it makes men appear silly.
Juvenal,
Satires III.
[{167}]
Thraso: a character in Terence,
Eunuchus.
[{168}]
Buchanan: George Buchanan, the tutor of James
VI.
[{169}]
Nizolian paper bookes: common-place books
containing a copia of useful phrases, the misuse of which could
lead to writing that smelled of
ink-horn termes
(Wilson,
Arte of Rhetorique [1553]).
[{170}]
Cicero, In Catilinam I:
Senatus haec intelligit, consu videt; hic tamen vivit. Vivit? Imo
vero etiam in senatum venit...
The Senate knows this, and the
consul has seen it, yet he is still alive. Alive? why, he even comes to
his seat in the senate!
The effect of alliteration of
v
in
sees,
lives,
lives,
truth,
comes
(in the Latin), says Sidney, is
imitative of someone so filled with moral indignation that he hasn't time
to prepare a formal speech on the topic.
[{171}]
Similiter cadenses: similiter cadentes,
use of similar-sounding endings of nouns and clauses in excessive
imitation of Cicero. (Duncan-Jones and Van Dorsten 207)
[{172}]
The Sophists were teachers of rhetoric
criticized by Plato for being too ready to take either side of a question
for pay. The story of the eggs was an old (Thomas More used it) but still
useful joke in Sidney's time.
[{173}]
M. Antonius and L. Crassus, first century
B.C.E. Cicero, De oratore II.i.
[{174}]
pounded: impounded.
[{175}]
Tower of Babel, Genesis 10.
[{176}]
plaise, taise
require two-syllable
pronunciation to take his point.
[{177}]
motion, potion
in Sidney's example
of
sdrucciola are three-syllable words.
[{178}]
Attributed to Aristotle by Boccaccio, De
genealogia deorum XIV.vii. (Duncan-Jones 390, Duncan-Jones and Van
Dorsten 208)
[{179}]
Scaliger, Poetics III.xix.
[{180}]
Conrad Clauser, preface to 1543 translation of
Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, De natura deorum gentilium. (Duncan-Jones 390)
Quid non?
is
What not?
[{181}]
Landin: Cristoforo Landino, preface to edition
[1481] of Dante Alighieri, Divina commedia. (Duncan-Jones and
Van Dorsten 209)
[{182}]
Of a free father born.
Horace,
Satires I.iv.
[{183}]
Herculea proles:
descendants of
Hercules.
[{184}]
If these my numbers have any power.
Virgil,
Aeneid IX.
[{185}]
Plinius Secundus, Historia
Naturalis XXXVI.v. The sculptor Bupalus was driven to kill himself
by the recited poetry of Hipponax. (Duncan-Jones 390)
