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"Hut-and-tortoise": an "ecological" topos from Vitruvius in George Wither's collection of emblemes

George Wither's A Collection of Emblemes was published in London in 1635.1The fourteenth emblem in the fourth book of this handsomely produced compilation, perhaps the most original and important emblematic anthology ever to appear in England, depicts the largely unprecedented emblematic combination of both a hard-shelled tortoise and a rustic hut-having a steeply peaked roof covered with reeds and fronds (fig. 1). A schematic title is written in classical Greek -"OIKOS PHILOS, OIKO ARISTOS"and the essential meaning of the humanist tag was paraphrased in Wither's English motto: "The best, and fairest House, to mee,/ Is that, where best I love to bee." Wither's literally "learned" motto (that is, it was borrowed by him) contains only three Greek words: oikos, a "house," that is "loved" (philos) because it is literally the "best"aristos. Referring now to a modem etymologilizing dictionary, I find evidence for two different concepts functioning as potential sub-texts, and the somewhat surprising result is that the "aristocracy" is negatively compared to "ecology." Because this conclusion must initially seem a bit far-fetched-after all, ECOLOGY, currently a vastly popular topic in the mass-media, must surely be a strictly modern invention!-I need only quote the appropriate lexical entries (from Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 5th edition):