Abstract
In De sapientia veterum, Bacon advocated the use of mythology as a proper tool for philosophical inquiry. He argued that the myths of pagan antiquity (fabulae) contained a speculative core, while philosophy, by engaging in emblematic interpretations, could provide access to the most recondite principles of human knowledge (fabulam philosophiam continere, et philosophiam rursus fabulam). This fundamental assumption can be seen at work in the way in which Bacon discussed several major philosophical questions. In this chapter, I focus on his emblematic and mythopoetic treatment of the twin notions of natural appetite (Cupid) and human desire (Dionysus).
I would like to thank James A.T. Lancaster , Sorana Corneanu and Samuel Galson for their comments and stylistic suggestions. An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Colloquium on ‘ Dionysos Bacchus Liber: From Mythology to Philosophy’, organized by François Quiviger at the Warburg Institute (22 March 2013). All translations from Bacon’s Latin works are mine.
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Notes
- 1.
See Quintilian’s famous example of metalepsis in his Institutio oratoria (VIII, vi, 38–39): ‘cano canto’, and ‘canto dico’, therefore ‘cano dico’.
- 2.
Bacon 1857–1874, VI, 633 (‘Narcissus, sive philautia’), 661 (‘Deucalion, sive restitutio’).
- 3.
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) began to--> work on his Genealogiae deorum gentilium libri (‘On the Genealogy of the Gods of the Gentiles’) around 1360, and continued to expand and rewrite the work until his death-->. Besides Ovid and Statius, Boccaccio--> drew on the twelfth-century Liber imaginum deorum by a certain Alberic of London, on the source-book of Greek and Roman myths provided by the so called ‘Vatican Mythographers’ (sometime between the ninth and the eleventh centuries), and finally on the popular Mythologiarum libri III by Fulgentius, who lived between the fifth and the sixth centuries.
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- 5.
Bacon 1857–1874, VI, 628. See also De augmentis scientiarum, Bacon 1857–1874, I, 652: ‘Hieroglyphicorum usus vetustus admodum et in veneratione quadam habitus, praecipue apud Aegyptios, gentem valde antiquam; adeo ut videantur Hieroglyphica fuisse Scriptio quaedam ante-nata et senior ipsis Elementis Literarum, nisi forte apud Hebraeos’.
- 6.
On the sources of human knowledge-->, see De augmentis scientiarum, in Bacon 1857–1874, I, 539.
- 7.
See also the fable of ‘Coelum, sive origines’: ‘Fabula videtur aenigma de origine rerum, non multum discrepans ab ea philosophia quam postea Democritus amplexus est. Qui apertissime omnium aeternitatem materiae asseruit, aeternitatem mundi negavit; in quo aliquanto propius ad veritatem verbi divini accessit, cuius narratio materiam informem ante opera dierum statuit’ (Bacon 1857–1874, VI, 649). Here Bacon elaborates on Natale Conti’s Mythologiae, sive explicationum fabularum libri decem. See Conti 1637 [1567], 346a: ‘Pana rursus--> dixerunt esse Mercurii filium, quia cum Mercurius sit vis divina ac voluntas, ut diximus, quae res ad ortum perducit, ac Pan naturalia simplicia corpora, universa illa a divina voluntate gubernantur’.
- 8.
In additions to the risks deriving from drinking too much, Renaissance mythographers emphasized the positive aspects of wine consumption. In Ficino-->, wine intoxication was a symbol of divine ecstasy (Ficino 1989, 102). Conti also --> stressed -->the medicinal virtues of wine and the natural link between wine and natural heat--> (Conti 1637 [1567], 265b–266a, 273a). Euhemerically -->speaking, Conti interpreted Dionysus’s -->cycle of death--> and rebirth as a symbol of wine production: ‘Quidam etiam dixerunt illum a Iove ac Cerere natum esse, et discerptum a terrigenis et coctum, sed a Cerere compactis membris rursus iuvenem revixisse, quae certe omnia spectant ad culturam vitis et vini expressionem. Dicunt enim illud significare e terra et imbre capere incrementum, vinumque ex expresso racemo -->producere’ (Conti 1637 [1567], 276a).
- 9.
Bacon 1857–1874, VI, 666. --> Satyrs and silens also accompanied Pan. See Bacon 1857–1874, VI, 639: ‘una perpetuo comitantur Satyri et Sileni; senectus scilicet et iuventus; omnium enim rerum est aetas quaedam hilaris et saltatrix; atque rursus aetas tarda et bibula: utriusque autem aetatis studia vere contemplanti (tanquam Democrito) fortasse ridicula et deformia videntur, instar Satyri alicuius aut Sileni’.
- 10.
Euripides’s Bacchae were first printed in the original Greek in the Aldine edition of 1503 and then translated into Latin by Rudolf Ambühl (Dorotheus Camillus, 1499–1578), professor of Greek language--> in Zurich, in 1550, and by Coroliano Martirano (1503–1577), Bishop of Cosenza, in 1556.
- 11.
This point is also discussed in the Essayes. See Bacon 1985, 11–16. Bacon’s interest--> in the genesis of human superstition--> and its corrosive effects on human societies is another key aspect that connects his politico-theological inquiry--> to the one later on carried out by -->Spinoza in his Tractatus --> theologico-politicus (1670). See Spinoza 1925–1987, III, 5–6; Spinoza 1999 [1670], 58–60.
- 12.
Bacon 1857–1874, VI, 646: ‘Cum enim aliud sit lumen naturae, aliud divinum; ita, cum illis fit ac si duos soles viderent’.
- 13.
Conti maintained -->that Pentheus wished to eradicate ‘simulators’ of Bacchic rituals (‘Cum vero multa impura facinora orgiorum sacrorumque Bacchanaliorum simulatione committerentur’), but that he failed to understand that changes imposed on ‘inveterate wantonness’ and ‘ancestral overindulgence’ cannot be abrupt (‘cum periculosum sit regibus inveteratam lasciviam et avitam aliquam intemperantiam uno die velle obliterare, cum nihil repentinum aequo animo natura patiatur, paulatimque delenda sint quae minime conveniunt’). See Conti 1637 [1567], 271a.
- 14.
Another emblematic representation of --> action at a distance is Pan’s hair (i.e., the ‘rays of things’). See Bacon 1857–1874, VI, 637: ‘Corpus autem naturae elegantissime et verissime depingitur hirsutum, propter rerum radios; radii enim sunt tanquam naturae crines, sive villi, atque omnia fere vel magis vel minus radiosa sunt: quod in facultate visus manifestissimum est, nec minus in omni virtute et operatione ad distans; quicquid enim operatur ad distans, id etiam radios emittere recte dici potest; sed maxime omnium prominet barba Panis, quia radii corporum coelestium maxime--> ex longinquo operantur et penetrant’.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
For Junior Cupido, see Bacon 1857–1874, VI, 656.
- 18.
Bacon 1857–1874, VI, 647: ‘Orpheus autem ipse tandem a mulieribus furentibus discerptus est, et sparsus per agros’.
- 19.
Bacon 1857–1874, VI, 650: ‘Postquam autem mundus mole et vi sua consisteret, tamen otium ab initio non fuisse. Nam secutos primum in coelestibus regionibus motus notabiles, qui virtute solis in coelestibus praedominante ita sopiti sunt, ut mundi status conservaretur: postea similiter in inferioribus, per inundationes, tempestates, ventos, terrae motus magis universales; quibus etiam oppressis et dissipatis, magis pacata ac durabilis rerum conspiratio et tranquillitas accrevit’.
- 20.
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Giglioni, G. (2016). Cupido, sive Atomus; Dionysus, sive Cupiditas: Francis Bacon on Desire. In: Giglioni, G., Lancaster, J., Corneanu, S., Jalobeanu, D. (eds) Francis Bacon on Motion and Power. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 218. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27641-0_7
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