Alciato's Book of Emblems

Emblem 117

An old man in love with a maiden

When Sophocles, though much afflicted by age, drew the maid Archippe from prostitution to his own desires, and allured her by money, a young man, mad with jealousy, bore it bitterly, and described both of them with these lines:

like a night-owl among the tombstones,
like a horned owl over corpses,
so my girl now sits with Sophocles.