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2Sa_13:4 And he said unto him, Why [art] thou, [being] the king’s son, lean from day to day? wilt thou not tell me? And Amnon said unto him, I love Tamar, my brother Absalom’s sister.
Ver. 4. Why art thou, being the king’s son?] And therefore needest not want for anything. But in addition Amnon should have considered, that in maxima libertate minima licentia, that although the king’s son, yet he should not have desired or done anything unbeseeming his dignity; and Jonadab, had he been a friend indeed, would have told him as much. Antigonus, being invited to a place where a notable harlot was to be present, asked counsel of Menedemus what he should do: he bade him only remember that he was a king’s son.
Lean from day to day.] Heb., Thin every morning; sc., For want of sleep, through thoughtful anxieties by night.
“ Invidia vel amore vigil torquebere. ” - Horat.
Plato saith, He that is in love liveth in the body of another, but dieth in his own; whilst the whole man macrescit, marcescit et contabescit ex amoris vehementia. Hence Apollonius Tyanaeus the philosopher, when the king of Babylon - devising how to punish a certain young courtier who had lain with a concubine of his - asked him what was the greatest of all tortures, answered, that he could not punish him worse than by suffering him to live in the fire of lust, which would secretly but certainly devour him. {a} Hence that of the poet,
“ Tristatur, pallet, non dormit, nil edit, ardet,
Nec tamen aegrotat Calliodorus: amat. ”
Wilt thou not tell me?] Who can both keep counsel and give counsel. But what counsel gave he other than what Julia gave Caracalla, her son-in-law, when he said, O si liceret Oh that I might lie with thee! She impudently answered, Si libet licet: imperator dat leges, non aceipit, You may if you will: for an emperor giveth laws to others, he taketh none himself.
I love Tamar, my brother Absalom’s sister.] He saith not, My sister, for shame. Sin is a blushful business. This filthy love is the disease which the physicians call Eñùí , and is by one not unfitly compared to that shirt which Clytemnestra put upon her husband Agamemnon; or to those asps {b} which Cleopatra applied to her body to suck out her lifeblood; or to those Charonean ditches, mortiferum spiritum exhalantes, that send out a deadly air. Good, therefore, is the tragedian’s counsel,
“ Recedat a te, temere ne credas, Amor:
Florem decoris singuli ne carpent dies. ”
- Sen. in Octav.
{a} Agnus curio, apud Plaut. Macilentus, quasi curis confectus. Spec. Hum Vit., p. 125.
{b} Plin., lib. ii. cap. 93.