The Wayfarer

As once in high Crete is told the Labyrinth,
With a path woven of blind walls, and an ambiguous
Trick with a thousand ways, where the sign of following
Deceived the unsuspecting and unretracable error.

This passage quotes Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 5, describing the Labyrinth of Crete.

It held captive those enclosed within, like a prison, who suffered no harm other than being deceived by the perplexity of the paths, unable to escape from there. Truly, these magnificent works, built over a long time and with unspeakable labor—the Egyptian one by King Miris, the Cretan one by Minos with the workman Daedalus—are recounted for no other reason than to attest to the immense wealth of their authors along with their perpetual memory. In this same way, a most perplexing Labyrinth is observed in natural philosophy, founded and erected by various authors. Whoever falls into it can hardly ever, or very rarely, extricate themselves. I mean the Chymical alchemical books, through which those entangled are scarcely able to extricate even one in a thousand, so that they might be certain of the true and indubitable exit. How few of the great number of writers have testified to anything other than to declare themselves not ignorant of the secret of the Philosophers, while in the meantime entangling those who follow their footsteps and detaining them with added delays. Who has not imitated the spider with his textures and nets, who, as often as he sees a fly fall into it, rushes up and entangles it more, lest it escape, so far is he from setting it free? Very rarely does one follow the praiseworthy custom of the Athenians, among whom it was considered a crime