El IYNX o Rhombus en la farmaceutria de Quevedo

Abstract

One ofthe sorceries that the speaker ofQuevedo’s Farmaceutria applies to the achievement of Aminta’s love is based on the rombo (?????, ??????, rhombus), spinned with a gyratory movement through the threads that cross its center, according to a tradition documented in Theocritus’s idyll II, in several latin poets (Properce, Ovid, Martial, Lucan) and in Saimazaro’s Ecloga VI. This ceremony is mentioned in two pasajes, with linked correspondences: “quiero traer el rombo a la redonda; / varios lazos en el tengo tejidos” (w. 111-112), “jQuien los sagrados licios revolviera / y con ellos profeta un plato hiciera!”. Such a interpretation ratifies as definitive the reading of Las tres musas ultimas castellanas (1670), against the hesitations ofother testimonies that have altered the presence ofthe magic wheel in the second example.