[269] Tota denique castrensis disciplina Galli imagine denotari potest. Cristam enim pro galea, calcaria pro ense gerit, excubias cantu testatur, pugnat acie aperta, absque insidiis hostem invadit, caudae erectione vexilla imitatur, victoriam cantu, triumphumque ostendit.

Finally the entire discipline of military life can be denoted by the image of the rooster. In fact in place of the crest he carries the comb, the spurs in place of the sword, with his crowing he attests guard duties, he fights in open field and attacks the enemy without traps, with the erection of the tail he imitates the banners, he declares the victory and the triumph with his crowing.

HIEROGLYPHICA.

SYMBOLOGIES

Victoriae hieroglyficum erat Gallinaceus Gallus. Hinc Lacedaemonii, ut apud Plutarchum[1] est, cum hostem viribus profligassent, Gallum immolabant. Alibi[2] etiam idem Spartanos scribit ante Leutricam cladem Gallum immolasse. Sed quid illud sibi vult, quod Harpocratem silentii Deum Galli Gallinacei vocalissimae alioquin alitis guttur sinistro cubito prementem depingerent? Id sane mysterio carere minime putandum est. Cum enim Gallus maximum sui usum hominibus praestet, cantu suo quotidianas docens oportunitates, et ea ratione is habeatur veluti magister quidam operum omnium per horas distribuendorum; sic Harpocrates otium quaerere dicebatur, et omnium operum externorum vacationem, itaque non permittit Gallo, ut hoc excitandi ad labores munere fungatur, et ideo quemadmodum digito sua labia compescit, ita huic cubito guttur coercet.

The rooster was a symbol of the victory. Therefore Spartans, as it’s found in Plutarch, when had defeated enemies with their own strength, immolated a rooster. In another point the same author writes that Spartans immolated a rooster before the defeat of Leuctra. But what does it mean the fact that they were representing Harpocrates the god of the silence in the act of compressing with his left elbow the throat of the rooster that otherwise is a bird singing a lot? By no means this can be considered as lacking in mystery. Since the rooster offers a big use of himself to human beings, informing with his crowing about the right time of the day, and that for such a reason he is thought as a teacher of all the activities which are to be distributed over the hours; thus it was said that Harpocrates required the rest and the abstention from all external activities, and therefore he doesn't allow the rooster to carry out this task of stirring to activities, and therefore as he is compressing his own lips with his finger, so he closes the throat of the rooster with his elbow.

Sed interroget quis, si nulla huius avis utilitas sit ad ea vel praestanda, vel iuvanda, quae Harpocratis symbolo denotantur, cur ad partes vocetur? Cur non potius, ut nihil ad rem faciens omittatur, perinde ac Picae, Corniculae, Grac{c}uli, Philomelae, et {caetera} <ceterae> id genus aviculae, aut garrulae, aut canorae? Et certe si nocturnum quaeratur silentium, Luscinia potius quam Gallus compesci debuisset, quod ea sola totas fere noctes canendo ducat insomnes; hic vix ter stridulam, et minime durantem vocem exhalet. Est quidem hoc, verum ut ante[3] ostendimus, Gallus animal solare est, et inter omnia solaria tenet principatum, adeo ut non frustra videatur erigere cristas. Igitur diligenter diurni temporis vices observans, atque homines ad agendum incitans, non potuit apud Harpocratem asymbolus manere. Cum enim maxima cupiditate id quod quiescens agit, agere videatur, ut Cupidinis arma declarant, quid gratius habere potuisset, quam animal sub cubito tenere, in cuius gutture iam vocem moliente sentiretur tacitum, et internum incitamentum? Quanvis enim vocem edere nequiret, urgebatur tamen ad vocem: et quod exterius praestare non posset, id musculis, et vocalibus instrumentis moliebatur: quod facile erat ei sentire, qui cubito guttur pressum teneret. Gallus igitur hic sic positus est, ut non cantet ille quidem, nec silentium rumpat, sed usum tamen illum praestet, ut tacita corporis molitione solaris cursus det significationem.

But someone may ask: if some utility of this bird doesn't exist in order to show or to help those things expressed by the symbol of Harpocrates, why he is called to take part of it? In order that nothing is omitted concerning the matter, why similarly do you not rather call to become part of it magpies, little crows, crows, nightingales and the other garrulous or singing birdies of this kind? And without doubt if a nighttime silence is desired, one would to eliminate nightingale rather than rooster, since only the former when singing makes sleepless almost all nights, while the latter is uttering barely three times a strident voice and a very briefly lasting one. As we have shown before, this is indeed a truth, that the rooster is a solar animal, and among all solar animals he holds the record, so that he doesn't seem to rise the combs without a reason. Thus, observing attentively the alternating diurnal time, and inciting the humans to act, he wasn't able to remain for Harpocrates as one who doesn't pay his share. For since one who is resting seems to do with extreme cupidity what he is doing, as are showing the weapons of Eros - or Cupid, what would he have been able to retain more pleasant than to hold an animal under his elbow, in whose throat, which was already preparing the voice, a silent and inside stimulus was perceived? For despite he didn't succeed in uttering the voice he was nevertheless persisting in uttering the voice, and since he wasn’t able in doing this outside, he prepared it with his muscles and with vocal tools: which was easy to be perceived for he who was holding tightened the throat with elbow. Then in this representation the rooster is positioned in such a manner that he is not able to sing and that he doesn’t break the silence, but nevertheless that he can offer that use in giving an indication of the course of the sun through a tacit effort of his body.

Quia vero Gallus, inquit Pierius Valerianus[4], a prima mediae noctis inclinatione {explandentibus} <explaudentibus>, ut Lucretius[5] ait, alis

Auroram clara consuetus voce vocare

matutino crepusculo, matutinis astris Deum item laudantibus quotidie commodulatur, excubiarum, et vigiliarum signum apud antiquos fuit, eaque de causa Mercurio dicatus ferebatur.

Giovan Pietro Bolzani says that since the rooster, beginning from first turning of midnight, by clapping his wings, as Lucretius says

He is accustomed to call the dawn with a ringing voice

he every day is pacing the morning’s twilight and the morning’s stars which similarly praise God, among the ancients he was the symbol of guards and watches, and for this reason he was said sacred to Mercury.

Et rursus: Neque praetereundum est illud, quod ex imagine Gallinacei impietas ipsa hieroglyphice figuratur. Is enim matrem salit, ut Hippopotamus: et patrem etiam immaniter incessit: eaque de causa sapientissimi legum latores Gallum una cum vipera, simia, et cane in parricidae culeum[6] includendum censuerunt, ut qui eius criminis rei sunt eodem supplicio simul afficerentur, et poenas pares luerent. Notum illud apud Aristophanem, quod {Philippides} <Phidippides>, qui patrem verberaverat, exemplo Galli factum tuetur suum: patrem enim ille male mulctat.

And more: Neither we must to omit that through the image of the rooster the impiety itself is symbolically represented. For he mates his mother as the hippopotamus does: and he also attacks in terrible way his father: and for this reason the most wise legislators decreed that the rooster was shut up in the parricide’s bag - culleus - together with viper, monkey and dog, so that those who are guilty of that crime might suffer the same torture together and pay the same penalty. In Aristophanes - Clouds - is famous the fact that Phidippides, who had struck his father - Strepsiades - following the example of the rooster, safeguards his own interest: for he badly punishes his father.

Mulierem tribadem, vel quae maris officium aggredi non erubescit, vel etiam, quae viro dominari affectat, per Gallinam, quae cristam, caudamque erigit, cuique etiam parva calcaria prominent, intelligi veteres tradiderunt. Ea siquidem ubi marem, quod nonnullae faciunt, pugnando vicerit, cucu<r>rire incipit, et exemplo marium tentat coitu supervenire, Gallinasque reliquas perinde ac si rem peragere possit, solicitat, {at} <et>[7] saliendo fatigat, cristam caudamque tollit, ac ea incedit specie, ut non facile inde sit, utrum mas, an faemina sit, internoscere.

The ancients handed down that a lesbian woman, or that one who doesn’t feel ashamed to perform the task of a male, or even that one who feigns to be dominated by a man, is regarded as a hen, rising comb and tail and in whom also some small spurs are sticking out. And then if by chance, a thing that some of them are doing, she has defeated the male in fighting, she begins to crow, and following the example of the males she tries to fuck, and she pursues the other hens as if she could carry it out, and by fucking she makes them exhausted, rises comb and tail, and walks in such a fashion that it is not easy to infer whether she is a male or a female.

Virum vero, qui opulentissimas divitias dilapidavit, et, ut apud Horatium est[8], res maternas, atque paternas fortiter absumpsit, significare volentes, Gallinam aureos nummos depascentem pingunt: de qua miraculum illud proditur[9], quod si auro liquescenti eius membra misceantur, illud in carnes eius consumi deprehendatur, atque ita sit, ut Gallina sit auri venenum.

But when they whish to depict a man who squandered enormous wealth and, as it is written in Horace, deeply frittered away the substances of his mother and father, they draw a hen feeding on gold coins: apropos of which is handed down that miracle, so if to melting gold are mixed pieces of hen, it is captured for being absorbed inside its fleshes, and it would be because of this that the hen would be a poison of the gold.

Coniectores autem autumant eum, qui per somnium Gallinarum gregem ad se venientem, et domum ingredientem inspexerit, et divitiis, et honoribus auctum iri: quin etiam addunt, si per quietem ita visae Gallinae pusillae admodum apparuerint, earundem rerum tenuitatem praesagiri. Qui fabulas delectabili philosophandi genere commenti sunt, {Sirenas} <Sirenes> confinxere blanditiis amatoriis, et voluptuosa nequitia [270] homines ad se trahere, illecebrisque irretire, ita ut apud eas mollitudinis omnifariae luto inhaesitantes foede computrescerent.

But the interpreters of dreams assert that he who in a dream has seen a flock of hens coming towards him and entering his house, he will grow in wealth and honors: but rather they add that if during the sleep the hens so seen will appear extremely small, a shortage of those same things is foreseen. Those people who invented fables belonging to the delightful kind of philosophizing, they invented that the Sirens attract to themselves the humans with loving flatteries and with a voluptuous dissoluteness, and that they enmesh them with flatteries, so that those who get entangled amid them by every kind of seduction are growing rotten in a horrible way.