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x The Bacchic Group in Casaubon's Gem
The reference is to the Lucretian lines (31-42) of Silenus' song in
the sixth eclogue of Virgil. That eclogue is the starting-point of
Jonson's masque, and Casaubon's monograph supplied all the
scholarly knowledge needed to elucidate it.
For instance, the note on the Centaurs, 65 d. Some writers think
the Satyrs in Thessaly
' a Centauris esse genitos: vtrumque genus sed diuerso modo.
vtrosque Attici & lones vel appellarunt' (p. 45). 'luuat
coniecturam nostram, quod Attici & lones Satyros vocarunt
siue vt apud Hippocratem obseruat Galenus. etiam poetarum
principi' [Iliad, i. 268, ii. 743] sunt Centauri' (p. 54).
The note on Silenus as ' Grandsire' (77) refers to lulius Pollux on
the Satyric drama:
'proprij Satyric? sunt Satyri & Sileni: de quibus lulius Pollux in
ea parte capitis xix. lib. iv quam de Satyricis personis inscnpsit.
inquit,
(pp. 135-6).
The final reference is to the Emperor Julian's Ccesares, siue Satyrce
in Romanes Imperatores, Plantin 1612, in which Silenus comments
to Bacchus on each emperor as he appears. Bacchus addresses him,
; (p. 116), and
(P- 147).
The design of this gem appears as a picture in Vicenzo Cartari's
Le Imagini dei Dei degli Antichi, in the edition published by Lorenzo
Pignona at Padua, 1615, and in Natale di Conti's Mythologia, published
by Paulus Frambottus at Padua, 1637.