The Book of the Courtier
the Rhodian Stoic philosopher PANAÆTIUS (about 180-111 B.C.) is
frequently mentioned by Cicero, from whose _De Oratore_ Castiglione
seems to have taken this whole passage.
Note 437 page 252. In Greek mythology Epimetheus (Afterthought) and
Prometheus (Forethought) were sons of the Titan Iapetus and the ocean
nymph Clymene. Angered by a deceit practised upon him by Prometheus,
Zeus withheld from men the use of fire; but Prometheus stole fire from
heaven and brought it to earth in a hollow reed. For this offence he was
chained to a rock where an eagle preyed daily upon his liver (which grew
again in the night), until he was finally liberated by Hercules. As
compensation for the boon of fire, Zeus sent Pandora (the first woman,
endowed with beauty, cunning and other attributes designed to bring woe
to man) to be the wife of Epimetheus. Although warned by his brother,
Epimetheus accepted her, with the result that she set free the evils
which Prometheus had concealed in a box. In a later form of the legend,
she received from the gods a box containing the blessings of life, and
on her being moved by curiosity to open the box, all of them (save hope)
escaped and were lost.
Note 438 page 263. BIAS was born at Priene in Asia Minor, and lived in
the 6th century B.C. He was celebrated for his apothegms and reckoned
among the Seven Sages of Greece,—the other six being: Thales of Miletus,
Solon of Athens, Chilon of Sparta, Cleobulus of Rhodes, Periander of
Corinth, and Pittacus of Mitylene,—all of whom flourished about 600 B.C.
The fame of these seven men rested not upon their philosophy, as we use
the word, but upon their practical wisdom—the fruit of experience.
Enlarged from a photograph, kindly furnished by Signer Alessandro Luzio
and made by his friend Signor Lanzoni, of a portrait attributed to
Francesco Bonsignori (1455-1519) and owned by the antiquary
Bressanelli of Mantua.
Note 439 page 264. CLEARCHUS, (died 353 B.C.), was for twelve years a
cruel tyrant, not of Pontus, but of Heraclea (the modern Eregli), a city
on the Black Sea about 140 miles east of Constantinople. He is said to
have been a pupil of both Plato and Isocrates, the latter of whom
represents him as a gentle youth.
Note 440 page 264. Of the dozen or more ancients known to have borne the
name ARISTODEMUS, none seem to fit precisely the description given in
the text, which is taken from a passage in Plutarch’s “On the Ignorant
Prince.” Plutarch may have had in mind a certain tyrant of Megalopolis
in the 3d century B.C.
Note 441 page 269. The reference here is to Book V of “The Republic.”
Note 442 page 270. Fregoso here declares for what has been called “that
Utopia of the 16th Century—the _Governo Misto_—a political invention
which fascinated the imagination of Italian statesmen much in the same
way as the theory of perpetual motion attracted scientific minds in the
last century.” (Symonds’s “Renaissance in Italy,” i, 306.) In this
regard the men of Castiglione’s time, men like Machiavelli and
Guicciardini, were only following Plato and Aristotle.
Note 443 page 270. The reference here is to the _Cyropædia_, i, 6.
Note 444 page 270. Castiglione seems to have in mind the game of _tavola
reale_, which is similar to our backgammon.
Note 445 page 273. Circe’s transformation of some of Ulysses’s
companions into swine is narrated in the tenth book of the Odyssey. In
Castiglione’s day the term “King of France” was used to signify the acme
of royal power.
Note 446 page 274. GIANFRANCESCO—more commonly called FRANCESCO—GONZAGA,
(born 1466; died 1519), was the eldest son of the Marquess Federico of
Mantua and Margarita of Bavaria, and a brother of “my lady Duchess.”
Having succeeded his father in 1484, he married (1490) Isabella d’Este,
to whom he had been betrothed at the age of sixteen. Like his ancestors
and most other petty Italian rulers of his time, he was at once
_condottiere_ and sovereign prince. He commanded the Italian troops
against Charles VIII, and although with an overwhelmingly superior force
he failed to block the retreat of the French at Fornovo, he treated that
disgraceful affair as a glorious victory, and even caused it to be
commemorated by Mantegna in a votive picture now in the Louvre. He
served successively as captain of the imperial troops in Italy, as
commander of Duke Ludovico Sforza’s army, as viceroy of Naples under
Louis XII, etc. He joined the League of Cambray and was taken prisoner
by the Venetians. In the general disorders that filled the period of his
reign, he and his more brilliant wife had the address to protect his
dominions from the ravages of war. Although, as Castiglione’s natural
lord, he was asked and gave his consent to the latter’s entry into the
Duke of Urbino’s court (1504), he seems to have continued to resent the
affair until Castiglione’s return (1516) to his service,—in which the
author remained when this part of the text was written. Castiglione’s
eulogy was far from undeserved, for to the Marquess’s munificence, no
less than to his consort’s taste and enthusiasm, must be ascribed the
lustre of their provincial court. Besides being a patron of art and
letters, he was also a successful breeder of horses for use both in war
and in racing.
Note 447 page 274. The duke is said to have had no small share in
planning the palace; his chief architect was one Luciano, a native of
Laurana in Dalmatia on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. The cost of
the structure was about £400,000 sterling. See, besides the authorities
cited in note 28, Luzio and Renier’s _Mantova e Urbino_, (Roux: Turin:
1893), p. 10, note 1.
Note 448 page 274. The ancient basilica of St. Peter’s had become
ruinous by 1450, but little was done towards rebuilding it until 1506,
when the execution of Bramante’s plan was begun with the solemn laying
of the first stone by Julius II on Sunday, 18 April. On the death of
Bramante, Raphael was put in charge of the work in 1514, as we have seen
(note 98), but, apparently owing to lack of funds, progress was slow
until 1534 when Michelangelo’s designs were substituted. The dome was
completed in 1590, and the church dedicated in 1626.
Note 449 page 274. This ‘street’ was designed by Bramante to be a kind
of triumphal way connecting the Vatican with the Belvedere pavilion. It
was to be bordered by palaces, courts, gardens, porticoes, terraces,
etc., but the death of Julius II led to the abandonment of the plan.
Note 450 page 274. Pozzuoli (the ancient Puteoli), situated seven miles
west of Naples, was originally a Greek city, but became one of the chief
commercial ports of the Roman Empire, and a resort of the patrician
class. It is noted for its ruins, especially those of a large
amphitheatre.
Baja (the ancient Baiæ), on the Gulf of Pozzuoli, was the chief Roman
watering place, famous for its luxury, and containing the villas of many
celebrated Romans. Its principal antiquities are ruins of baths.
Civita Vecchia lies on the coast about thirty-eight miles north-west of
Rome, and was anciently known as Centum Cellæ. The Emperor Trajan
(reigned 98-117 A.D.) converted it from a poor village into a great
seaport, and of his monuments some remains are still extant.
Porto was a Roman city near the mouths of the Tiber. In Castiglione’s
time it had become a marshy island. One of the earliest Italian
archæologists, Flavio Biondo, visited the site in 1451, and found there
many huge marble blocks ready for building and bearing quarry marks of
the imperial period. The Apollo Belvedere was discovered here in 1503.
Note 451 page 274. Almost the same phrase occurs in the well known
letter which Raphael (who had been appointed guardian of antiquities)
wrote to Leo X, urging the pontiff to avert the complete destruction of
“that little which remains of Italian glory and greatness in proof of
the worth and power of those divine minds.” Castiglione was long
supposed to be the author of the letter, but is now believed only to
have aided Raphael in its composition.
Note 452 page 274. Alexandria was founded by the conqueror in 332 B.C.
Bucephalia (founded 327 B.C.) was situated on the river Hydaspes (the
modern Jhelum), a branch of the Indus, about 120 miles north-west of
Lahore, and was named in honour of Alexander’s favourite horse, which
died there. Bucephalus (ox-headed) is supposed to have been a name given
to Thessalian horses, which were branded with a bull’s head.
Note 453 page 274. Mount Athos (6780 feet high) forms the extremity of
the easternmost peninsula of Chalcidice in Macedonia. During the Persian
invasion of Xerxes (480 B.C.) it was temporarily converted into an
island, and since the Middle Ages has been noted for its monasteries.
Both Vitruvius and Plutarch give an account of the project mentioned in
the text, and ascribe it to a Macedonian architect who appears under the
names, Dinocrates, Cheirocrates, and Stasicrates,—and who also planned
the city of Alexandria and was chosen to rebuild the great temple of
Artemis at Ephesus. The statue was to represent Alexander, who is said
to have abandoned the idea when he learned that the city to be placed in
the hand of the statue would be without territory and could be
provisioned only by sea,—saying that such a city would be like a child
that cannot grow for failure of its nurse’s milk.
Note 454 page 275. In Athenian legend PROCRUSTES was a cruel robber, who
had a bed upon which he tortured his captives by stretching those who
were too short and by cutting off the legs of those who were too long.
He was finally slain by the hero Theseus.
SCIRON was another legendary Attic robber, who compelled his victims to
wash his feet on the Scironian rocks near Athens, and then kicked them
into the sea where they served to fatten the turtles upon which he fed.
He also was slain by Theseus, and in the same manner in which he had
slain others.
In Roman myth CACUS was a gigantic son of Vulcan, living near the site
of Rome. He robbed Hercules of some of the cattle stolen from the
monster Geryon, and dragged them into his cave backwards, so that they
could not be tracked; but Hercules discovered them by their lowing, and
slew the thief.
DIOMED (not the Argive prince of the Iliad, but Ares’s mythical son, who
was king over the Bistones in Thrace) was slain by Hercules because he
was accustomed to feed his mares on human flesh.
ANTÆUS was a fabulous and gigantic wrestler of Libya, reputed to be the
son of Poseidon and Gæa, the Earth goddess. Being held aloft and thus
deprived of the miraculous strength derived from contact with his mother
earth, he was crushed to death by Hercules. GERYON was the mythical
three-headed king of Hesperia, the theft of whose cattle constituted the
tenth of the Twelve Labours of Hercules.
Note 455 page 275. “The crimes of the tyrants against their subjects and
the members of their own families had produced a correlative order of
crime in the people over whom they tyrannized. Cruelty was met by
conspiracy. Tyrannicide became honourable; and the proverb, ‘He who
gives his own life can take a tyrant’s,’ had worked itself into the
popular language.” (Symonds’s “Renaissance in Italy,” i, 154.) “The
study of the classics, especially of Plutarch, at this time as also
during the French Revolution, fired the imagination of patriots.” (Id.,
151, note 2.)
Note 456 page 275. Similar exhortations to a fresh crusade are of
frequent occurrence in Italian literature of this period, and were often
used by popes and princes as a cover for their selfish designs.
Note 457 page 275. The meaning obviously is that if they had not been