The text uses Plato’s term for soul-generation, psychogony. The author has indeed read Plutarch’s Commentary on the Psychogony, which Plato describes in his Timaeus, and his number lore from him (1016Aff.)
Cf. Erasmus, Adages, III, VI, XXII, ‘More obscure than the numbers of Plato’, which makes Pythagoras the source of Plato’s mathematical obscurity. There are sustained attempts to link this chapter to the four books. One example amongst others: for the bites from dogs’ teeth and toothache, cf. the end of Pantagruel Chapter 10, variant.
Also noteworthy is the appearance of the ‘favourite number’ of Rabelais, seventy-eight.]
We then descended a marble underground step on to a landing. Turning to the left, we went down two more, where there was a similar landing. Then three more, turning on to a similar landing, then, likewise, four more.
Panurge asked, ‘Are we there?’
‘How many steps have you counted?’ said our magnificent Lantern.
‘One plus two plus three plus four,’ Pantagruel replied.
‘How many does that add up to?’ she asked.
‘Ten,’ replied Pantagruel.
‘Multiply that resultant,’ she said, ‘by the Pythagorean tetrad.’
‘That makes ten, twenty, thirty, forty,’ said Pantagruel.
‘And what do those numbers add up to?’ she said.
‘One hundred,’ replied Pantagruel.
‘To that, add the Prime Cube, which is eight. At the end of that number of destiny we shall find the door to the Temple. And there wisely note that is the true psychogony of Plato (so famous amongst the Academics, yet so little understood): the half of it is composed of unity, plus the first two simple numbers, plus their squares and their cubes.’30
As we went down that number of steps we first needed our legs – for without them we would have simply gone down like barrels rolling into the cellars below – and secondly our bright Lantern, for during our way down no other light appeared to us, any more than if we had been in Saint Patrick’s hole in Hibernia or in the cavern of Trophonius in Boeotia.
Once we had gone down seventy-eight stairs, Panurge cried out, addressing his words to our shining Lantern:
‘O miracle-working Dame, with a contrite heart I beg you to let us turn back. By the Death of Ox, I am dying of funk. I consent never to get married. You have taken great trouble over me and undergone great toil. God will repay you in his Great Repayment. Nor shall I be ungrateful, once I have issued forth from this Troglodites’ cavern. Of your grace, let us go back. I greatly fear lest this be Tenarum, by which men go down to Avernus, and I seem to hear Cerberus barking. Hark! Either my ears are a-tingle or it’s him! I’m no devotee of his: no toothache is greater than the ache of dogs’ teeth in our legs. If this is the cave of Triphonius, then spectres and hobgoblins will at once gobble us up alive for want of scraps, as they ate one of the halberdiers of Demetrius. Are you there, Frère Jean? Stay close to me, I beg you, old Fat-guts! I’m dying of fright. Have you got your cutlass? I’ve got no weapons at all, either to defend or attack. Let us go back!’
‘I’m here,’ said Frère Jean; ‘I’m here. Don’t be afraid: I’ve got you by the scruff of the neck. Eighteen devils will never get you out of my arms, even though you have no weapons. No man lacks weapons in his hour of need who combines a stout heart with a strong arm. Weapons would rather rain down from Heaven as boulders once did – and they’re still there – over the fields of La Crau hard by Les Fosses Mariannes in Provence, in order to help Hercules, who had nothing else to fight with against the two sons of Neptune.
‘But what is this? Are we going down to the babies in Limbo – good God they’ll shit all over us! – or else to all the devils in Hell? God’s Body! Now that I have those vine-leaves in my shoes I’ll whack ‘em hard! O, how ferociously I shall fight! Where is this? Where are they? It’s only their horns that I fear, and the two horns that Panurge the married man will wear shall protect me from them entirely. In the spirit of prophecy I can foresee him there as another horn-bearing, horny Actaeon, with a horn on his bum.’31
‘When the time comes for marrying off monks, Brother, see you don’t wed Quartan Fever. For may I never return safe and sound from these hypogean chambers if I won’t ram her for you simply to make you a horn-bearing farter of horns. Apart from that I think that Quartan Fever is very nasty old bag. I remember that Catty-claws wanted to give her to you as a wife, but you called him a heretic’
Here the conversation was interrupted by our resplendent Lantern who admonished us that here was the place where it behove us solemnly to guard our lips, suppressing speech and stilling our tongues. And she categorically asserted that since we had lined our shoes with vine-leafs we need never fear having to return without the Word of La Bouteille.
‘Let us get on, then,’ said Frère Jean, ‘and charge head-first right through all the devils. You can only die once! I did mean to save my life, though, for some great battle. Charge! Charge! Fight our way through! I’ve more than enough courage. True, my heart’s all of a tremble, but that is not brought on by fear or fever but by the chill and stench of this Underworld.
‘Charge! Charge! Let us push, push, pass, press and piss our way through. I am William the Fearless.’32
How the doors of the Temple opened by themselves, wonderfully
CHAPTER 36
[The saying έν οϊνω αλήθεια is better known by its Latin form, In vino Veritas, which merits a longish commentary by Erasmus (Adages, I, VII, XVII).
For ‘Corinthian brass’ see an adage of Adrian Junius (Basle, 1558): ‘Corinthian and Ionian words’.
For the herb called ‘aetheopis’ which opens things, cf. Chapter 62 of the Fourth Book, where it is one of Rabelais ‘many debts to Calcagnini.
The Indian diamond here acts as a lodestone.]
At the bottom of the steps we came to a portal of fine jasper, all laid out and constructed as work in the Doric style, on the tympanum of which was written this saying in Ionic lettering of the finest gold: έν οϊνω αλήθεια, that is to say, ‘In wine: Truth’.
The two doors were of a brass similar to that of Corinth, massive and decorated with a motif of exquisitely enamelled vine-leaves, in relief as the sculpture demanded. Both of them came together and shut evenly in their mortises without fastening, closure or lock of any kind. There an Indian diamond as big as an Egyptian bean was simply hanging down; it was set in fine gold raised at two points and hexagonal in shape. On either side of it, cloves of garlic were suspended in a straight line along the wall.
Our noble Lantern then told us that, though she now desisted from conducting us any further, we must accept her excuse as legally binding; we merely had to obey the instructions of the High Priestess Bacbuc, for she herself was not allowed to enter in, for specific reasons which it was better to pass over in silence than reveal to anyone living this mortal life. But she commanded us to be on the alert whatever happened, not to be in any way fearful or afraid, and to put our trust in her for our way back.
She then tugged at the diamond hanging down where the two doors met, and tossed it to the right into a silver receptacle expressly reserved for it. Then, from the hinges on either side of the gates, she pulled a cord of crimson silk, about a span and a half in length, from which the garlic was suspended; she attached them both to two golden clasps which hung down at the sides precisely for that purpose. She then withdrew.
Suddenly, without being touched by anyone, the two doors swung open. They made no strident squeal when doing so nor any ghastly grating noise such as tough, heavy brass doors usually do, but rather a sweet and pleasant sound which echoed through the vault of the Temple.
Pantagruel understood why as soon as he espied small rollers set beneath the edge of each door and attached to their hinges: as each swung back towards the wall it rubbed against a hard, very even, smoothed-down piece of porphyry, thus producing that sweet, harmonious sound.
I was astounded and wondered how t
hose two doors opened by themselves without being pushed. To understand such a marvel, as soon as we had gone in I cast my eyes on to the gap between the doors and the walls, longing to find out by what power and device they had been thrown back, wondering whether our friendly Lantern had placed against them when they were closed that herb called aetheopis, by means of which one can open all objects which are shut; but I noted that the parts where the two doors were fitted into their inside mortises were made of plates of high-quality steel let into the Corinthian bronze. I also noticed two wide slabs of sky-blue Indian lode-stone about half-a-palm thick, very smooth, highly polished and cut flush into the wall of the Temple over their entire thickness at the point where the doors, once wide open, were now arrested by the wall. So it was by the violent appetite of the lodestone that those steel plates had yielded to that motion through an occult and wondrous institution of Nature: as a result, those doors were slowly seized and attracted, but not always: only once that lodestone had been removed was the steel absolved and freed from the subjection it naturally has to a magnet when sited close by; moreover, the two bunches of garlic had been set aside: our merry Lantern had pulled them away and hung them up, because garlic counteracts a lodestone and strips it of its power of attraction.
On one of the tablets I mentioned, on the right, was exquisitely carved in antique Roman script this line of verse in senarian iambics:
Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.
(The fates lead the willing: the unwilling they drag.)33
On the other tablet I saw on the left, elegantly incised in capital letters this adage:
ALL THINGS MOVE TO THEIR END.34
How the floor of the Temple was paved with a wondrous mosaic
CHAPTER 37
[Readers often compare the rich architecture with that of the Dream of Polifilo of Colonna. The astonishing realism of the painter Xeuxis is mentioned in the Fourth Book, Chapter 17. The dominant theme is the vine as the symbol of Bacchus.
Where the text refers to ‘Sositratus’ the manuscript rightly reads ‘Sosus, as in the source (Pliny, Natural History, 36, 25, 30.]
Having read those inscriptions I turned my eyes to contemplating the magnificent temple; I lingered over the incredible art with which the pavement was put together; nothing beneath the canopy of Heaven, now or in the past, can reasonably be compared to it, not even the pavement of the temple of Fortuna in Praeneste in the days of Sylla, nor that of the Greeks called asserotum, which was made in Pergamo by Sositratus; for it was a mosaic formed of little square tablets, each of fine polished stone, each stone in its natural colour: one was of red jasper, delightfully spangled with a variety of colour flecks; another was of snake-stone; another of porphyry; another of wolf’s-eye, with a scattering of golden sparks as tiny as atoms; another of agate with a random confusion of tiny flames, milky in colour; another of the choicest chalcedony; another of green jasper with clear red and yellow veins all separated by a diagonal line. The paving above the portico was constructed of a mosaic of little stones fitted together, each with its natural colour, which served to form a figurative design, as though one had strewn a scattering of vine-branches over that pavement without much concern for their order, for in one place they had been thickly strewn, and in another more thinly. That vine-foliage was everywhere remarkable, but particularly so where, in one place, snails were palely inching over the grapes; in another, where little lizards were darting through the branches; and in another, where there were figured grapes, both half and fully ripe. All were made and disposed with such art and decorative skill that they would have easily deceived starlings and other little birds as did the portrait of Zeuxis by Heraclea.
Be that as it may, they deceived us all right, for at the point where the architect had scattered the vine-branches more thickly we – fearing to trip over them – walked with great, high-stepping strides as one does when making one’s way through an uneven stony place.
After that I looked attentively at the vault and walls of the temple, which were encrusted all over with a mosaic of marble and porphyry, forming a wonderful mosaic, stretching from one end to the other, beginning on the left of the entrance with an unbelievably elegant representation of the battle which the good god Bacchus won against the Indians. The description of it is as follows.
How the Battle of Bacchus against the Indians was portrayed on the mosaic-work of the Temple
CHAPTER 38
[After an echo of the Bacchantes of Euripides, this chapter and Chapters 39 and 42 are exceptionally indebted to Lucian’s Dionysus, one of the main Bacchic texts of Antiquity. There are also echoes of Plutarch (648 Bff: Symposiaca, 3, Question 2: ‘On ivy and on Bacchus’); indeed all of this Question in Plutarch is concerned with wine. For mint and blood see Aristotle, Problems, 20, 2.]
It started by depicting various towns, villages, castles, fortresses, fields and forests, all in flames and ablaze. Various demented and dishevelled women were depicted there, frenetically tearing living calves, sheep and ewes to pieces and devouring their flesh. That signified for us how Bacchus, as he went into India, put everything to fire and sword.
Despite which, Bacchus was held in such contempt by the Indians that they did not deign to march out to meet him, having received conclusive news from their spies that there were no fighting-men in his army, only a little old womanish fellow who was always drunk, accompanied by some yokelish lads (stark naked and always dancing and leaping about, with tails and horns like kids) and by a large number of drunken women. They therefore resolved to let them pass through without armed resistance as though a victory over such folk would bring them not honour and glory but shame, dishonour and ignominy.
Bacchus, despised, went on gaining ground, putting everything to the fire (since fire and thunderbolt are the weapons of his father and since even before he was born he had been saluted by Jupiter with the thunderbolts which burnt and destroyed by fire Semele his mother and her house) and likewise to the sword, since Bacchus naturally produces blood in times of peace and draws it off in times of war. Witness the fields of the isle of Samos called panaema (that is, all-blood), where Bacchus overtook the Amazons who were fleeing from the land of the Ephesians and killed them all by phlebotomy, so that that field of battle was drenched and bespattered with blood.
From which you may understand from now on (better than Aristotle ever explained it in his Problems) why men of old cited as a current proverb: In time of war eat not and plant not mint. The reason is that blows are then regularly struck without discrimination: if any man who has handled or eaten mint is wounded that day, it is impossible (or very hard) to staunch his blood.
Next on that mosaic was portrayed how Bacchus went to war riding in a magnificent chariot drawn by three pairs of young leopards yoked together. His face was as that of a little child (to teach us that no good drinker ever grows old) and as red as a cherubim’s, without a hair on his chin. Upon his head he bore sharp horns, topped by a beautiful crown made from vine-branches and grapes, and a mitre of crimson-red. And on his feet he wore gilded buskins.
In his fighting-force there was no man: his whole guard and soldiery consisted of Bassarides, Evantes, Euhyades, Edonides, Trietherides, Ogygiae, Mimallones, Maenads, Thyades and Bacchides, who are raving, raging frenzied women, with belts of live snakes and serpents rather than girdles, with their hair flying in the wind, bands of vine-leaves on their foreheads and clad in the skins of stags and goats; in their hands they wield axes, thyrses, bill-hooks, halberds shaped like pineapples, and special, light little bucklers which clanged and resounded when they were struck ever so lightly, which they used when necessary as tambourines and cymbals. They numbered seventy-nine thousand, two hundred and twenty-seven.
The vanguard was led by Silenus, a man who had in the past gained his complete confidence and whose manly virtue, magnanimity, courage and wisdom he had witnessed on several situations.
He was a shaky, bent little old man, fat, with sagging guts, big straight ears
, a pointed aquiline nose and huge shaggy eyebrows; he rode astride a well-hung ass; in his hand he held a stick for support and also to fight with gallantly if ever it were appropriate to dismount; he was dressed in a yellow garment such as women wear.
His unit was composed of young country lads, horned like goats and cruel as lions, quite naked, always singing and dancing lascivious dances: they were called Tityri and Satyrs. They numbered eighty-five thousand, six-score and thirteen.
Pan brought up the rear: a terrifying monster of a man, for with his hairy thighs he was like a goat in his nether limbs; on his head were horns pointing straight up to the heavens. His face was rubicund and flushed, his beard extremely long: he was a bold, courageous, daring male, easily provoked to wrath; in his left hand he held a flute; in his right, a bent stick. His bands were made up of satyrs, hemipans, aegipans, sylvans, fauns, lemures, lares, goblins and hobgoblins, to the number of seventy-eight thousand, one hundred and fourteen.
The watchword, shared by all, was Euhoe.
How the assault and attack of our good Bacchus against the Indians were portrayed in the mosaic
CHAPTER 39
[More praise of Bacchus, still closely following the Dionysus of Plutarch. The last paragraph is indebted to Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris, 362 C.
In the third paragraph for ‘Words’ the manuscript reads ‘Echo’.]
Next there were portrayed the violent assault and attack launched by our good Bacchus against the Indians. There I contemplated the leader of the vanguard, Silenus, dripping great drops of sweat and harshly belabouring his ass. And that ass, with its jaws yawning horrifying wide, whisked off the flies, advanced and skirmished about in the most terrifying manner as though it had a horse-fly up its rump.
Gargantua and Pantagruel Page 100