Note [161] page 94. The Italian procella (rendered ‘fury’) primarily means a tempest, and is so translated in the earliest French and English versions of The Courtier (estourbillon, storm). The still earlier Spanish version has pestilencia.

Note [162] page 95. The Italian impedito (rendered ‘palsied’) literally means entangled as to the feet.

Note [163] page 96. St. Luke, iv, 8 and 10.

Note [164] page 97. In Æsop’s fable, Asinus Domino Blandiens, an ass receives a sound cudgelling for his efforts to win his master’s favour by caresses that he was ill fitted to bestow.

Note [165] page 100. Titus Manlius,—called Torquatus from the chain (torques) that he took from the body of a gigantic Gaul whom he had slain in single combat,—was a favourite hero of Roman story. The incident referred to here occurred shortly before a Roman victory over the Latins at the foot of Vesuvius. Manlius and his colleague in command had proclaimed that no Roman might engage a Latin singly on pain of death, but a son of Manlius accepted a challenge from one of the enemy, slew his adversary, and bore the bloody spoils in triumph to his father, who thereupon caused the young man to be put to death before the assembled army. Manlius was Consul in 340 B.C.

Note [166] page 101. Publius Licinius Crassus Mucianus was Roman Consul in 131 B.C. According to Livy, the incident narrated in the text occurred during an unsuccessful campaign against Pergamus, which ended in Crassus’s voluntary death.

Note [167] page 103. Rome was sacked only the year before The Courtier was first published. Italy had become the plaything of foreign conquest.

Note [168] page 103. Darius III was King of Persia 336-330 B.C. This story about his sword seems to be founded on the following passage in Quintus Curtius Rufus’s History of Alexander the Great: “At the beginning of his reign, Darius ordered his Persian scabbard to be altered to the form which the Greeks used; whereupon the Chaldeans prophesied that the empire of the Persians would pass to those whose arms he had imitated.”

Note [169] page 104. It will be remembered that Bembo was a Venetian.

Note [170] page 104. The coif (cuffia) here mentioned seems to have been a kind of turban made of cloth wound about the head, with the two ends hanging at the ears.