in the many-eyed Argus; also with his motto, saying:
Creare il sonno puo Mercurio ancora.
And there was seen, to express the nobility and divinity of the same
Sleep, an ornate little temple of AEsculapius, in which many men,
emaciated and infirm, sleeping, appeared to be winning back their lost
health; likewise with a verse signifying this, and saying:
Rende gl' uomini sani il dolce Sonno.
Even as in another place there was seen Mercury pointing towards some
Dreams that were shown flying through the air and speaking in the ears
of King Latinus, who was asleep in a cave; his verse saying:
Spesso in sogno parlar lece con Dio.
Orestes, then, spurred by the Furies, was seen alone taking some rest
amid such travail by the help of the Dreams, who were shown driving away
those Furies with certain bunches of poppies; with his verse that said:
Fuggon pel sonno i piu crudi pensieri.
And there was the wretched Hecuba likewise dreaming in a vision that a
lovely hind was rapt from her bosom and strangled by a fierce wolf; this
being intended to signify the piteous fate that afterwards befell her
hapless daughter; with a motto saying:
Quel ch' esser deve, il sogno scuopre e dice.
Even as in another place, with a verse that said:
Fanno gli Dei saper lor voglie in sogno,
there was seen Nestor appearing to Agamemnon, and revealing to him the
will of almighty Jove. And in the seventh and last was depicted the
ancient usage of making sacrifice, as to a revered deity, to Sleep in
company with the Muses, represented by an animal sacrificed upon an
altar; with a verse saying:
Fan sacrifizio al Sonno ed alle Muse.
All these little scenes were divided and upheld by various Satyrs,
Bacchants, boys, and witches, and rendered pleasingly joyous and ornate
by divers nocturnal animals and festoons of poppies, not without a
beautiful medallion set in place of a shield in the last part of the
car, wherein was seen painted the story of Endymion and the Moon;
everything, as has been said, being executed with such delicacy and
grace, patience and design, that it would entail too much work to seek
to describe every least part with its due praise. But those of whom it
has been told that they were placed as the children of Sleep in such
extravagant costumes upon the above-described car, singing to the
favourite airs of the city the following canzonet, seemed truly, with
their soft and marvellous harmony, to be seeking to infuse a most
gracious and sweet sleep in their hearers, saying:
Or che la rugiadosa
Alba la rondinella a pianger chiama,
Questi che tanto v' ama,
Sonno, gran padre nostro e dell' ombrosa
Notte figlio, pietosa
E sacra schiera noi
Di Sogni, o belle donne, mostra a voi;
Perche il folle pensiero
Uman si scorga, che seguendo fiso
Amor, Fama, Narciso
E Bellona e Ricchezza il van sentiero
La notte e il giorno intero
S' aggira, al fine insieme
Per frutto ha la Pazzia del suo bel seme.
Accorte or dunque, il vostro
Tempo miglior spendete in cio che chiede
Natura, e non mai fede
Aggiate all' arte, che quasi aspro mostro
Cinto di perle e d' ostro
Dolce v' invita, e pure
Son le promesse Sogni e Larve scure.
OF THE CASTLE.
By way of having yet another different spectacle, there was built with
singular mastery on the vast Piazza di S. Maria Novella a most beautiful
castle, with all the proper appurtenances of ramparts, cavaliers,
casemates, curtains, ditches and counterditches, secret and public
gates, and, finally, all those considerations that are required in good
and strong fortifications; and in it was placed a good number of
valorous soldiers, with one of the principal and most noble lords of the
Court as their captain, a man determined on no account ever to be
captured. That magnificent spectacle being divided into two days, on the
first day there was seen appearing in most beautiful order from one side
a fine and most ornate squadron of horsemen all in armour and in
battle-array, as if about to meet real enemies in combat, and from the
other side, with the aspect of a massive and well-ordered army, some
companies of infantry with their baggage, waggons of munitions, and
artillery, and with their pioneers and sutlers, all drawn close
together, as is customary amid the dangers of real wars; these likewise
having a similar lord of great experience and valour as captain, who was
seen urging them on from every side, and fulfilling his office most
nobly. And after the attackers had been reconnoitred several times and
in various ways, with valour and artifice, by those within the castle,
and various skirmishes had been fought, now by the horsemen and now by
the infantry, with a great roar of musketry and artillery, and charges
had been delivered and received, and several ambuscades and other
suchlike stratagems of war had been planned with astuteness and
ingenuity; finally the defenders were seen, as if overcome by the
superior force, to begin little by little to retire, and in the end it
seemed that they were constrained to shut themselves up completely
within the castle. But the second day, after they had, as it were during
the night, constructed their platforms and gabionade and planted their
artillery, there was seen to begin a most terrible bombardment, which
seemed little by little to throw a part of the walls to the ground;
after which, and after the explosion of a mine, which in another part,
in order to keep the attention of the defenders occupied, appeared to
have made a passing wide breach in the wall, the places were
reconnoitred and the cavalry drew up in most beautiful battle-array, and
then was seen now one company moving up, and now another, some with
ladders and some without, and many valorous and terrible assaults
delivered in succession and repeated several times, and ever received by
the others with skill, boldness, and obstinacy, until in the end it was
seen that the defenders, weary, but not vanquished, made an honourable
compact with the attackers to surrender the place to them, issuing from
it, with marvellous satisfaction for the spectators, in military order,
with their banners unfurled, their drums, and all their usual baggage.
THE GENEALOGY OF THE GODS.
We read of Paulus Emilius, that first captain of his illustrious age,
that he caused no less marvel by his wisdom and worth to the people of
Greece and of many other nations who had assembled in Amphipolis to
celebrate various most noble spectacles there after the victory that he
had won, than by the circumstance that first, vanquishing Perseus and
subjugating Macedonia, he had borne himself valiantly in the management
of that war, which was in no small measure laborious and difficult; he
having been wont to say that it is scarcely less the office of a good
captain, requiring no less order and no less wisdom, to know how to
prepare a banquet well in time of peace, than to know how to marshal an
army for a deed of arms in time of war. Wherefore if our glorious Duke,
born to do everything with noble worth and grandeur, displayed the same
wisdom and the same order in those spectacles, and, above all, in that
one which I am about to describe, I believe that he will not take it
amiss that I have been unwilling to refrain from saying that he was in
every part its inventor and ordinator, and in a certain sense its
executor, preparing all the various things, and then representing them,
with so much order, tranquillity, wisdom, and magnificence, that among
his many glorious actions this one also may be numbered to his supreme
glory.
Now, yielding to him who wrote of it in those days with infinite
learning, before me, and referring to that work those who may seek
curiously to see how every least thing in this masquerade, which had as
title the Genealogy of the Gods, was figured with the authority of
excellent writers, and passing over whatever I may judge to be
superfluous in this place, let me say that even as we read that some of
the ancient Gods were invited to the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis in
order to render them auspicious and fortunate, so to the nuptials of
this new and most excellent bridal pair it appeared that there had come
for the same reason not some only of these same Gods, but all, and not
invited, but seeking to introduce themselves and by their own wish, the
good auguring them the same felicity and contentment, and the harmful
assuring them that they would do them no harm. Which conception appeared
gracefully expressed in the following fashion by four madrigals that
were sung at various times in the principal places by four very full
choirs, even as has been told of the Triumph of Dreams; saying:
L' alta che fino al ciel fama rimbomba
Della leggiadra Sposa,
Che in questa riva erbosa
D' Arno, candida e pura, alma colomba
Oggi lieta sen vola e dolce posa,
Dalla celeste sede ha noi qui tratti,
Perche piu leggiadri atti
E bellezza piu vaga e piu felice
Veder gia mai non lice.
Ne pur la tua festosa
Vista, o Flora, e le belle alme tue dive
Traggionne alle tue rive,
Ma il lume e 'l sol della novella Sposa,
Che piu che mai gioiosa
Di suo bel seggio e freno
Al gran Tosco divin corcasi in seno.
Da' bei lidi, che mai caldo ne gielo
Discolora, vegnam; ne vi crediate
Ch' altrettante beate
Schiere e sante non abbia il Mondo e il Cielo;
Ma vostro terren velo
E lor soverchio lume,
Questo e quel vi contende amico nume.
Ha quanti il Cielo, ha quanti
Iddii la Terra e l' Onda al parer vostro;
Ma Dio solo e quell' un che il sommo chiostro
Alberga in mezzo a mille Angeli santi,
A cui sol giunte avanti
Posan le pellegrine
E stanche anime al fine, al fin del giorno,
Tutto allegrando il Ciel del suo ritorno.
I believe I can affirm most surely that this masquerade--a spectacle
only to be arranged by the hand of a wise, well-practised, great, and
valiant Prince, and in which almost all the lords and gentlemen of the
city, and many strangers, took part--was without a doubt the greatest,
the most magnificent, and the most splendid which can be remembered to
have been held in any place for many centuries down to our own times,
for the greater part of the vestments were not only made of cloth of
gold and silver and other very rich draperies, and, when the place
required it, of the finest skins, but, what is more (art surpassing the
materials), composed with rare and marvellous industry, invention, and
loveliness; and to the end that the eyes of the spectators, as they
gazed, might be able with greater satisfaction to recognize one by one
which of the Gods it was intended to represent, it was thought expedient
to proceed to divide them into twenty-one distinct companies, placing at
the head of each company one that should be considered as the chief,
and causing each of these, for greater magnificence and grandeur, and
because they are so figured by the ancient poets, to be drawn upon
appropriate cars by their appropriate and particular animals. Now in
these cars, which were beautiful, fantastic, and bizarre beyond belief,
and most splendid with silver and gold, and in representing as real and
natural the above-named animals that drew them, without a doubt the
dexterity and excellence of the ingenious craftsmen were such, that not
only they surpassed all things done up to that time both within and
without the city, which at all times has had a reputation for rare
mastery in such things, but they also (infinite marvel!) took away from
everyone all hope of ever being able to see another thing so heroic or
so lifelike. Beginning, then, with those Gods who were such that they
were reputed to be the first causes and the first fathers of the others,
we will proceed to describe each of the cars and of the companies that
preceded them. And since the representation was of the Genealogy of the
Gods, making a beginning with Demogorgon, the first father of them all,
and with his car, we have to say that after a graceful, lovely, and
laurel-crowned Shepherd, representing the ancient poet Hesiod, who,
singing of the Gods in his Theogony, first wrote their genealogy, and
who, as guide, carried in his hand a large, square, and ancient ensign,
wherein were depicted in divers colours Heaven and the four Elements,
and in the centre was painted a large Greek O, crossed with a serpent
that had the head of a hawk; and after eight trumpeters who were
gesticulating in a thousand graceful and sportive ways, representing
those tibicines who, having been prevented from eating in the temple,
fled in anger to Tibur, but were made drunk and put to sleep by deceit,
and brought back with many privileges to Rome; beginning, I say, with
Demogorgon, there was seen his car in the form of a dark and double
cavern drawn by two awful dragons, and for Demogorgon was seen a figure
of a pallid old man with the hair ruffled, all wrapped in mist and dark
fog, lying in utter sloth and negligence in the front part of the
cavern, and accompanied on one side by youthful Eternity adorned
(because she never grows old) with verdant draperies, and on the other
side by Chaos, who had the appearance, as it were, of a mass without
any shape. Beyond that cavern, which contained the three figures
described, rose a graceful little mound all covered and adorned with
trees and various plants, representing Mother Earth, at the back of
which was seen another cavern, but darker and deeper than that already
described, wherein Erebus was shown likewise lying in the guise that has
been told of his father Demogorgon, and in like manner accompanied on
one side by Night, the daughter of Earth, with two children in her arms,
one white and the other dark, and on the other side by AEther, the child
of the aforesaid Night and Erebus, who must be figured, so it appeared,
as a resplendent youth with a ball of turquoise-blue in the hand. At the
foot of the car, then, was seen riding Discord, who separates things
confused and is therefore held by philosophers to preserve the world,
and who is regarded as the first daughter of Demogorgon; and with her
the three Fates, who were shown spinning various threads and then
cutting them. And in the form of a youth all robed in draperies of
turquoise-blue was seen Polus, who had a terrestrial globe in the hand,
and over him, alluding to the fable that is related of him, many sparks
appeared to have been scattered from a vase of glowing coals that was
beneath him; and there was seen Python, also the son of Demogorgon, all
yellow and with a mass of fire in the hand, who seemed to have come in
the company of his brother Polus. After them, then, came Envy, the
daughter of Erebus and Night, and with her Timidity, her brother, in the
form of a pallid and trembling old man, who had the head-dress and all
the other vestments made from skins of the timid deer. And after these
was seen Obstinacy, who is born from the same seed, all in black, with
some boughs of ivy that seemed to have taken root upon her; and with the
great cube of lead that she had on the head she gave a sign of that
Ignorance wherewith Obstinacy is said to be joined. She had in her
company Poverty, her sister, who was seen all pale and raging, and
negligently covered rather than clothed in black; and with them was
Hunger, born likewise from the same father, who was seen feeding the
while on roots and wild herbs. Then Complaint or Querulousness, their
sister, covered with tawny draperies, and with the querulous solitary
rock-thrush, which was seen to have made her nest in her head-dress, was
shown walking in profound melancholy after them, having in her company
the sister common to them, called Infirmity, who by her meagreness and
pallor, and by the garland and the little stalk of anemone that she held
in her hand, made herself very well known to the spectators for what she
was. And on her other side was the other sister, Old Age, with white
hair and all draped in simple black vestments, who likewise had, not
without reason, a stalk of cress in the hand. The Hydra and the Sphinx,
daughters of Tartarus, in the guise wherein they are generally figured,
were seen coming behind them in the same beautiful order; and after
these, to return to the other daughters of Erebus and Night, was seen
License, all nude and dishevelled, with a garland of vine-leaves on the
head, and keeping the mouth open without any restraint, and in her
company was Falsehood, her sister, all covered and wrapped in various
draperies of various colours, with a magpie on the head for better
recognition, and with a cuttle-fish in the hand. These had Thought
walking on a level with them, represented as an old man, likewise all
dressed in black, with an extravagant head-dress of peach-stones on the
head, and showing beneath the vestments, which at times fluttered open
with the wind, the breast and the whole person pricked and pierced by a
thousand sharp thorns. Momus, then, the God of censure and of
evil-speaking, was seen coming after them in the form of a bent and very
loquacious old man; and with them, also, the boy Tages, all resplendent,
although he was the son of Earth, figured in such a manner because he
was the first inventor of the soothsayer's art, in token of which there
was hung from his neck a lamb split down the middle, which showed a good
part of the entrails. There was seen, likewise, in the form of an
immense giant, the African Antaeus, his brother, who, clothed in barbaric
vestments, with a dart in the right hand, appeared to wish to give on
that day manifest signs of his vaunted prowess. And following after him
was seen Day, also the son of Erebus and Night, represented in like
manner as a resplendent and joyous youth, all adorned with white
draperies and crowned with ornithogal, in whose company was seen
Fatigue, his sister, who, clothed in the skin of an ass, had made
herself a cap from the head of the same animal, with the ears standing
erect, not without laughter among the spectators; to which were added
two wings of the crane, and in her hands were placed also the legs of
the same crane, because of the common opinion that this renders men
indefatigable against all fatigue. And Jurament, born of the same
parents, in the form of an old priest all terrified by an avenging Jove
that he held in the hand, and bringing to conclusion the band attributed
to the great father Demogorgon, was the last in their company.
And here, judging that with these deities the origins of all the other
Gods had been made sufficiently manifest, the followers of the first car
were brought to an end.
SECOND CAR, OF HEAVEN.
In a second car of more pleasing appearance, which was dedicated to the
God Heaven, held by some to be the son of the above-named AEther and Day,
was seen that jocund and youthful God clothed in bright-shining stars,
with a crown of sapphires on the brow, and with a vase in the hand that
contained a burning flame, and seated upon a ball of turquoise-blue all
painted and adorned with the forty-eight celestial signs; and in that
car, which was drawn by the Great and the Little Bear, the one known by
the seven and the other by the twenty-one stars with which they were all
dotted, there were seen painted, in order to render it ornate and rich
in pomp, with a most beautiful manner and a graceful distribution, seven
of the fables of that same Heaven. In the first was figured his
birth--in order to demonstrate, not without reason, the other opinion
that is held of it--which is said to have been from Earth; even as in
the second was seen his union with the same Mother Earth, from which
were born, besides many others, Cottus, Briareus, and Gyges, who, it is
believed, had each a hundred hands and fifty heads; and there were born
also the Cyclopes, so called from the single eye that they had on the
brow. In the third was seen how he imprisoned their common children in
the caverns of that same Earth, that they might never be able to see the
light; even as in the fourth their Mother Earth, seeking to deliver them
from such oppression, was seen exhorting them to take a rightful
vengeance on their cruel father; wherefore in the fifth his genital
members were cut off by Saturn, when from their blood on one side it
appeared that the Furies and the Giants were born, and on the other,
from the foam that was shown fallen into the sea, was seen a different
birth, from which sprang the beautiful Venus. In the sixth was seen
expressed the anger that he showed against the Titans, because, as has
been told, they had allowed his genitals to be cut off; and in the
seventh and last, likewise, was seen the same God adored by the
Atlantides, with temples and altars devoutly raised to him. Now at the
foot of the car (as with the other already described) was seen riding
the black, old, and blindfolded Atlas, who has been reputed to have
supported Heaven with his stout shoulders, on which account there had
been placed in his hands a great globe of turquoise-blue, dotted with
stars. After him was seen walking in the graceful habit of a huntsman
the young and beautiful Hyas, his son, in whose company were his seven
sisters, also called Hyades, five of whom, all resplendent in gold, were
seen to have each on the head a bull's head, for the reason that they
are said to form an ornament to the head of the Heavenly Bull; and the
two others, as being less bright in the heavens, it was thought proper
to clothe in grey cloth of silver. After these followed the seven
Pleiades, daughters of the same Atlas, figured as seven other similar
stars; one of whom, for the reason that she shines with little light in
the heavens, it was thought right and proper to adorn only with the same
grey cloth, whereas the six others, because they are resplendent and
very bright, were seen in front glittering and flashing with an infinite
abundance of gold, but at the back they were clothed only in vestments
of pure white, that being intended to signify that even as at their
first appearance the bright and luminous summer seems to have its
beginning, so at their departure it is seen that they leave us dark and
snowy winter; which was also expressed by the head-dress, which had the
front part woven of various ears of corn, even as the back appeared to
be composed of snow, ice, and hoar-frost. There followed after these the
old and monstrous Titan, who had with him the proud and audacious
Iapetus, his son. And Prometheus, who was born of Iapetus, was seen
coming after them all grave and venerable, with a little statue of clay
in one of his hands, and in the other a burning torch, denoting the fire
that he is said to have stolen from Jove out of Heaven itself. And after
him, as the last, to conclude the company of the second car, there were
seen coming, with a Moorish habit and with a sacred elephant's head as a
cap, likewise two of the Atlantides, who, as has been told, first adored
Heaven; and, in addition, in token of the things that were used by them
in their first sacrifices, there were in the hands of both, in a great
bundle, the ladle, the napkin, the cleaver, and the casket of incense.
THIRD CAR, OF SATURN.