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THE SECOND BOOKE 255
strange conceit, with our owne affliction to goe about to
please and appay divine goodnesse : As the Lacedemonians,
who flattered and wantonized their Diana by
torturing of young boyes, whom often in favour of her
they caused to be whipped to death. It was a savage
kinde of humor to thinke to gratifie the Architect with
the subversion of his architecture: and to cancel the
punishment due unto the guiltie by punishing the
guiltles, and to imagine that poore Iphigenia, in the port
of Aulis, should by her death and sacrifice discharge
and expiate towards God, the Grecians armie of the
offences which they had committed.
Et casta incetfe nubendi tempore in ipso
Hostia concideret mactatu mcesta parentis, 1
She, a chaste offring, griev'd incestuously
By fathers stroke, when she should wed, to dye.
And those two noble and generous soules of the
Decii, father and sonne, to reconcile and appease the
favour of the Gods towards the Romanes affaires,
should headlong cast their bodies athwart the thickest
throng of their enemies. Qum fuit tarda Deorum
iniquitas, ut placari populo Romano non possint, nisi
tales viri occidissent? 2 'What injustice of the Gods
was so great as they could not be appeased unlesse such
men perished?' Considering that it lies not in the
offender to cause himselfe to be whipped, how and
when he list, but in the judge, who accompteth nothing
a right punishment except the torture he appointeth ;
and cannot impute that unto punishment which is in
the free choice of him that suffereth. The divine
vengeance presupposeth our full dissent, for his justice
and our paine. And ridiculous was that humor of
Polycrates, the Tyrant of Samos, who, to interrupt the
course of his continuall happinesse, and to recompence
it, cast the richest and most precious Jewell he had into
the Sea, deeming that by this purposed mishap he
should satisfie the revolution and vicissitude of fortune;
which, to deride his folly, caused the very same jewel,
1 LUCR. 1. i. 99. ² CIC. De Nat. Deor, 1. iii. 6.