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Updated: May 3, 2025
For infinitely various are the incidents in one man's life which cannot be reduced to unity; and so, too, there are many actions of one man out of which we cannot make one action. Hence, the error, as it appears, of all poets who have composed a Heracleid, a Theseid, or other poems of the kind. They imagine that as Heracles was one man, the story of Heracles must also be a unity.
The fact that verse-writing was an innocuous way of spending one's leisure doubtless drove many to it. CODRUS, or Cordus, was the author of an ambitious epic, the Theseid, composed on the scale, but without the wit, of the Thebaid. The stage, too, engaged many writers.
The verses she received on that theme would have made a Theseid, those she had to hear would have kept the rhapsodists for a twelve-month, those she saw the very Sala del Consiglio could not have contained. Mantegna has her armoured, with greaves to the knee and spiked cups on her breastplate.
An infinity of things befall that one man, some of which it is impossible to reduce to unity; and in like manner there are many actions of one man which cannot be made to form one action. One sees, therefore, the mistake of all the poets who have written a Heracleid, a Theseid, or similar poems; they suppose that, because Heracles was one man, the story also of Heracles must be one story.
The former, besides a Theseid, wrote a narrative and descriptive poem in the epic manner, on the northern campaigns of Germanicus, the latter was the author of an epic on the conflict with Antonius, which was kept alive for a short time by court favour; the stupid and amiable aide-de-camp of Tiberius, Velleius Paterculus, no doubt repeating what he heard in official circles, speaks of him and Virgil as the two most eminent poets of the age!
For the account which the author of the poem called the Theseid gives of this rising of the Amazons, how Antiope, to revenge herself upon Theseus for refusing her and marrying Phaedra, came down upon the city with her train of Amazons, whom Hercules slew, is manifestly nothing else but fable and invention.
XXVIII. The above is all that is worthy of mention about the Amazons; for, as to the story which the author of the 'Theseid' relates about this attack of the Amazons being brought about by Antiope to revenge herself upon Theseus for his marriage with Phaedra, and how she and her Amazons fought, and how Herakles slew them, all this is clearly fabulous.
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