ABSTRACT
Macareus and Canace, son and daughter to Aeolus, god of the winds, loved each other incestuously. Canace was delivered of a son, and committed him to her nurse, to be secretly conveyed away. The infant crying out, by that means was discovered to Aeolus, who, enraged at the wickedness of his children, commanded the babe to be exposed to wild beasts on the mountains; and withal sent a sword to Canace with this message, that her crimes would instruct her how to use it. With this sword she slew herself; but before she died, she writes the following letter to her brother Macareus, who had taken sanctuary in the temple of Apollo. If streaming blood of the fatal letter stain, Imagine, ere we read, the writer slain: One hand the sword, and one the pen employs, and in the author lap the ready paper lies.
