Corresponding Footnotes to Sidney's The Defense of
Poetry
NotesDefencePoetry
1. Mimesis Aristotle, see Poetics
Back to text
2. margent: The margins of the page, where the
notes to a text were then placed. Back to text
3. Fugientem haec terra videbit?: "And shall
the land see me fleeting? And after all, is death so sad a thing?"Back to text
4. indulgere genio: To indulge one's
nature.Back to
text
5.Haec memini et victum frustra...: "I
remember those things, and that conquered Thyrsis strove in vain. Since
then Corydon is for us Corydon." from Virgil, Eclogues
7:69-70.Back to
text
6. omne vafer vitium...: "The rogue touches
every vice while making his friend laugh." from Persius, Satires
1:116-17. Back to
text
7.circum praecordia ludit: "He plays about the
heartstrings." Persius, Satires.Back to text
8.est Ulubris animus...: "Happiness is to be
found even in Ulubrae [a dead city], so long as we don't lose our sense
of porportion." from Horace, Epistles 1:2, line 30.Back to text
9. pistrinum: A treadmill for slaves.Back to text
10. Qui sceptra saevus...: "The savage
ruler who wields the sceptre with a hard hand/ Fears the timid, and thus
fear returns to ist author." from Seneca Oedipus 705-6.Back to text
11. commonwealth: Plato Republic,
Book 10.Back to
text
12. petere principium: To beg the question,
to assume what one needs to prove.Back to text
13. actions: Gorboduc fails to satisfy the
unities of place and time which Sidney ascribes to Aristotle.Back to text
14. inartificially: Unartistically.Back to text
15. Eunuchus: Actually, the
Self-Tormentor, not the Eunuch.Back to text
16. nuncius: Messenger.Back to text
17.ab ovo: „From the egg.¾ Horace praises
Homer for not beginning his tale of the Trojan war with the egg from
which Helen was hatched. See Horace's Ars Poetica.Back to text