IL se trouue vne merueilleuse relation et correspondance, en cette vniuerselle police des ouurages de Nature: qui montre bien qu’elle n’est ny fortuite ny conduite par diuers maistres. Les maladies et conditions de nos corps, se voyent aussi aux estats et polices: les royaumes, les republiques naissent, fleurissent et fanissent de vieillesse, comme nous.
There is a wonderful relationship and correspondence in this universal government of Nature’s works, which shows clearly that it is neither a matter of chance nor directed by several masters. The diseases and conditions of our bodies are seen also in states and governments: kingdoms and republics are born, flourish and wither with age, as we do.
Nous sommes subiects à vne repletion d’humeurs inutile et nuysible, soit de bonnes humeurs, (car cela mesme les medecins le craignent: et par ce qu’il n’y a rien de stable chez nous, ils disent que la perfection de santé trop allegre et vigoureuse, il nous la faut essimer et rabatre par art, de peur que nostre nature ne se pouuant rassoir en nulle certaine place, et n’ayant plus où monter pour s’ameliorer, ne se recule en arriere en desordre et trop à coup: ils ordonnent pour cela aux atletes les purgations et les saignées, pour leur soustraire cette superabondance de santé) soit repletion de mauuaises humeurs, qui est l’ordinaire cause des maladies.
We are subject to a useless and harmful surfeit of humors. It may be of good humors: for even this the physicians fear, and because nothing in us is stable, they say that a perfection of health too buoyant and vigorous must be trimmed and reduced by art, lest our nature, unable to settle in any fixed place and having nowhere higher to climb to improve, should fall back in disorder and too suddenly; that is why they prescribe purges and bleedings for athletes, to draw off that superabundance of health. Or it may be a surfeit of bad humors, which is the ordinary cause of diseases.
De semblable repletion se voyent les estats souuent malades: et a lon accoustumé d’vser de diuerses sortes de purgation. Tantost on donne congé à vne grande multitude de familles, pour en descharger le païs, lesquelles vont chercher ailleurs où s’accommoder aux despens d’autruy. De cette façon nos anciens Francons partis du fons d’Alemaigne, vindrent se saisir de la Gaule, et en deschasser les premiers habitans: ainsi se forgea cette infinie marée d’hommes, qui s’escoula en Italie soubs Brennus et autres: ainsi les Gots et Vuandales: comme aussi les peuples qui possedent à present la Grece, abandonnerent leur naturel païs pour s’aller loger ailleurs plus au large: et à peine est il deux ou trois coins au monde, qui n’ayent senty l’effect d’vn tel remuement.
States are often seen to be sick with a similar surfeit, and various kinds of purgation are customarily used. Sometimes a great multitude of families are sent off to relieve the country of them, and they go seeking a place to settle elsewhere at others’ expense. In this way our ancient Franks, setting out from the depths of Germany, came to seize Gaul and drive out its first inhabitants; so was formed that boundless tide of men that poured into Italy under Brennus and others; so the Goths and Vandals; and so, too, the peoples who now possess Greece left their native country to settle elsewhere with more room. There are hardly two or three corners in the world that have not felt the effect of such a migration.
Les Romains bastissoient par ce moyen leurs colonies: car sentans leur ville se grossir outre mesure, ils la deschargeoient du peuple moins necessaire, et l’enuoyoient habiter et cultiuer les terres par eux conquises. Par fois aussi ils ont à escient nourry des guerres auec aucuns leurs ennemis, non seulement pour tenir leurs hommes en haleine, de peur que l’oysiueté mere de corruption, ne leur apportast quelque pire inconuenient: Et patimur longæ pacis mala; sæuior armis, / Luxuria incumbit. Mais aussi pour seruir de saignée à leur Republique, et esuanter vn peu la chaleur trop vehemente de leur ieunesse: escourter et esclaircir le branchage de ce tige abondant en trop de gaillardise: à cet effect se sont ils autrefois seruis de la guerre contre les Carthaginois.
The Romans founded their colonies by this means: feeling their city swell beyond measure, they relieved it of the less necessary people and sent them to live on and farm the lands they had conquered. Sometimes, too, they deliberately kept wars going with some of their enemies, not only to keep their men in trim, for fear that idleness, the mother of corruption, might bring them some worse trouble—We suffer the evils of a long peace; luxury, more cruel than arms, / Weighs upon us—but also to serve as a bloodletting for their Republic, to vent a little of the too vehement heat of their youth, to lop and thin the branches of a trunk that grew too lustily. That is what they once used the war against the Carthaginians for.
Au traité de Bretigny, Edoüard troisiesme Roy d’Angleterre, ne voulut comprendre en cette paix generalle, qu’il fit auec nostre Roy, le different du Duché de Bretaigne, affin qu’il eust où se descharger, de ses hommes de guerre, et que cette foulle d’Anglois, dequoy il s’estoit seruy aux affaires de deça, ne se reiettast en Angleterre. Ce fut l’vne des raisons, pourquoy nostre Roy Philippe consentit d’enuoyer Iean son fils à la guerre d’outre-mer: à fin d’emmener quand et luy vn grand nombre de ieunesse bouïllante, qui estoit en sa gendarmerie.
At the Treaty of Brétigny, Edward III, King of England, refused to include the dispute over the Duchy of Brittany in the general peace he made with our king, so that he would have somewhere to unload his men of war, and so that the throng of Englishmen he had used in his affairs over here would not spill back into England. This was one of the reasons why our King Philip agreed to send his son John to the war overseas: so that he would take with him a great number of hot-blooded young men who were among his men-at-arms.
Il y en a plusieurs en ce temps, qui discourent de pareille façon, souhaitans que cette esmotion chaleureuse, qui est parmy nous, se peust deriuer à quelque guerre voisine, de peur que ces humeurs peccantes, qui dominent pour cette heure nostre corps, si on ne les escoulle ailleurs, maintiennent nostre fiebure tousiours en force, et apportent en fin nostre entiere ruine. Et de vray, vne guerre estrangere est vn mal bien plus doux que la ciuile: mais ie ne croy pas que Dieu fauorisast vne si iniuste entreprise, d’offencer et quereler autruy pour nostre commodité. Nil mihi tam valdè placeat, Rhamnusia virgo, / Quòd temerè inuitis suscipiatur heris.
There are many in our time who reason in the same way, wishing that the feverish agitation among us could be diverted into some neighboring war, for fear that the noxious humors now dominating our body, unless drained off elsewhere, will keep our fever always at full strength and in the end bring about our complete ruin. And indeed, a foreign war is a much milder evil than civil war; but I do not believe that God would favor so unjust an enterprise as to injure others and pick quarrels with them for our own convenience. Rhamnusian maiden, may nothing please me so much / That I would rashly seize it against its owners’ will.
Gladiators
Rome trained its people in courage by gladiatorial combats, a bad means used for a good end.
Toutesfois la foiblesse de nostre condition, nous pousse souuent à cette necessité, de nous seruir de mauuais moyens pour vne bonne fin. Lycurgus, le plus vertueux et parfaict legislateur qui fut onques, inuenta cette tres-iniuste façon, pour instruire son peuple à la temperance, de faire enyurer par force les Elotes, qui estoyent leurs serfs: à fin qu’en les voyant ainsi perdus et enseuelis dans le vin, les Spartiates prinsent en horreur le desbordement de ce vice.
Yet the weakness of our condition often drives us to the necessity of using bad means for a good end. Lycurgus, the most virtuous and perfect lawgiver who ever lived, devised this very unjust method of teaching his people temperance: he had the Helots, who were their serfs, made drunk by force, so that the Spartans, seeing them thus lost and buried in wine, would come to abhor the excess of this vice.
Ceux là auoyent encore plus de tort, qui permettoyent anciennement que les criminels, à quelque sorte de mort qu’ils fussent condamnez, fussent deschirez tous vifs par les medecins, pour y voir au naturel nos parties interieures, et en establir plus de certitude en leur art: car s’il se faut desbaucher, on est plus excusable, le faisant pour la santé de l’ame, que pour celle du corps: comme les Romains dressoient le peuple à la vaillance et au mespris des dangers, et de la mort, par ces furieux spectacles de gladiateurs et escrimeurs à outrance, qui se combattoient, détailloient, et entretuoyent en leur presence: Quid vesani aliud sibi vult ars impia ludi, / Quid mortes iuuenum, quid sanguine pasta voluptas? Et dura cet vsage iusques à Theodosius l’Empereur.
Those were even more in the wrong who in ancient times allowed criminals, whatever kind of death they had been condemned to, to be cut open alive by physicians, so as to see our internal parts in their natural state and establish greater certainty in their art. For if we must go astray, it is more excusable to do so for the health of the soul than for that of the body. Thus the Romans trained the people in valor and in contempt of dangers and death through those furious spectacles of gladiators and fencers fighting to the death, who fought, carved up and killed one another before their eyes: What else does the impious art of these mad games mean, / What these deaths of young men, what this pleasure fed on blood? And this practice lasted until the Emperor Theodosius.
Arripe dilatam tua, dux, in tempora famam, / Quódque patris superest, successor laudis habeto. / Nullus in vrbe cadat, cuius sit pæna voluptas. / Iam solis contenta feris, infamis arena / Nulla cruentatis homicidia ludat in armis. C’estoit à la verité vn merueilleux exemple, et de tres-grand fruict, pour l’institution du peuple, de voir tous les iours en sa presence, cent, deux cents, voire mille coupples d’hommes armez les vns contre les autres, se hacher en pieces, auec vne si extreme fermeté de courage, qu’on ne leur vist lascher vne parolle de foiblesse ou commiseration, iamais tourner le dos, ny faire seulement vn mouuemont lasche, pour gauchir au coup de leur aduersaire: ains tendre le col à son espee, et se presenter au coup.
Seize, prince, the glory reserved for your reign, / And be heir to what remains of your father’s praise. / Let no one fall in the city whose punishment is a pleasure. / Let the infamous arena, content now with wild beasts alone, / No longer stage murders with bloodstained weapons. It was, in truth, a wonderful example, and most fruitful for the education of the people, to see every day before their eyes a hundred, two hundred, even a thousand pairs of armed men set against one another hack each other to pieces with such extreme firmness of courage that they were never seen to let slip a word of weakness or pity, never to turn their backs, nor even to make a cowardly movement to dodge their opponent’s blow, but rather to stretch out their necks to his sword and offer themselves to the stroke.
Il est aduenu à plusieurs d’entre eux, estans blessez à mort de force playes, d’enuoyer demander au peuple, s’il estoit content de leur deuoir, auant que se coucher pour rendre l’esprit sur la place. Il ne falloit pas seulement qu’ils combattissent et mourussent constamment, mais encore allegrement: en maniere qu’on les hurloit et maudissoit, si on les voyoit estriuer à receuoir la mort. Les filles mesmes les incitoient: Consurgit ad ictus; / Et, quoties victor ferrum iugulo inserit, illa / Delicias ait esse suas, pectúsque iacentis / Virgo modesta iubet conuerso pollice rumpi. Les premiers Romains employoient à cet exemple les criminels.
Many of them, mortally wounded many times over, sent to ask the people whether they were satisfied with their performance before lying down to give up the ghost on the spot. It was not enough that they fight and die steadfastly; they had to do it cheerfully too, so that they were howled at and cursed if they were seen to resist receiving death. Even the young women urged them on: She rises at each blow; / And every time the victor plunges his sword into a throat, / She calls it her delight, and, turning her thumb, / The modest virgin bids the fallen man’s breast be pierced. The early Romans used criminals for this example.
Mais depuis on y employa des serfs innocens, et des libres mesmes, qui se vendoyent pour cet effect: iusques à des Senateurs et Cheualiers Romains: et encores des femmes: Nunc caput in mortem vendunt, et funus arenæ, / Atque hostem sibi quisque parat, cùm bella quiescunt. / Hos inter fremitus nouósque lusus, / Stat sexus rudis insciúsque ferri, / Et pugnas capit improbus viriles. Ce que ie trouuerois fort estrange et incroyable, si nous n’estions accoustumez de voir tous les iours en nos guerres, plusieurs miliasses d’hommes estrangers, engageants pour de l’argent leur sang et leur vie, à des querelles, où ils n’ont aucun interest.
But later they used innocent slaves, and even free men who sold themselves for the purpose—even Roman senators and knights—and women as well: Now men sell their lives to death and to burial in the arena, / And each, when wars are at rest, makes himself an enemy. / Amid this uproar and these new games / Stands the sex untrained and ignorant of the sword, / And shamelessly takes up men’s combats. I would find this very strange and incredible, if we were not used to seeing every day in our wars many thousands of foreigners pledging their blood and their lives for money in quarrels in which they have no stake.