[871] Which must have been taken about 10 or 11 o’clock. See Bandello, parte ii. nov. 10.
[872] Prato, Arch. Stor. iii. p. 309, calls the ladies ‘alquante ministre di Venere.’
[873] Biographical information and some of her letters in A. v. Reumont’s Briefe heiliger und gottesfürchtiger Italiener. Freiburg (1877) p. 22 sqq.
[874] Important passages: parte i. nov. 1, 3, 21, 30, 44; ii. 10, 34, 55; iii. 17, &c.
[875] Comp. Lorenzo Magn. dei Med., Poesie, i. 204 (the Symposium); 291 (the Hawking-Party). Roscoe, Vita di Lorenzo, iii. p. 140, and append. 17 to 19.
[876] The title ‘Simposio’ is inaccurate; it should be called, ‘The return from the Vintage.’ Lorenzo, in a parody of Dante’s Hell, gives an amusing account of his meeting in the Via Faenza all his good friends coming back from the country more or less tipsy. There is a most comical picture in the eighth chapter of Piovanno Arlotto, who sets out in search of his lost thirst, armed with dry meat, a herring, a piece of cheese, a sausage, and four sardines, ‘e tutte si cocevan nel sudore.’
[877] On Cosimo Ruccellai as centre of this circle at the beginning of the sixteenth century, see Macchiavelli, Arte della Guerra, l. i.
[878] Il Cortigiano, l. ii. fol. 53. See above pp. 121, 139.
[879] Caelius Calcagninus (Opere, p. 514) describes the education of a young Italian of position about the year 1506, in the funeral speech on Antonio Costabili: first, ‘artes liberales et ingenuae disciplinae; tum adolescentia in iis exercitationibus acta, quæ ad rem militarem corpus et animum praemuniunt. Nunc gymnastae (i.e. the teachers of gymnastics) operam dare, luctari, excurrere, natare, equitare, venari, aucupari, ad palum et apud lanistam ictus inferre aut declinare, caesim punctimve hostem ferire, hastam vibrare, sub armis hyemen juxta et aestatem traducere, lanceis occursare, veri ac communis Martis simulacra imitari.’ Cardanus (De prop. Vita, c. 7) names among his gymnastic exercises the springing on to a wooden horse. Comp. Rabelais, Gargantua, i. 23, 24, for education in general, and 35 for gymnastic art. Even for the philologists, Marsilius Ficinus (Epist. iv. 171 Galeotto) requires gymnastics, and Maffeo Vegio (De Puerorum Educatione, lib. iii. c. 5) for boys.
[880] Sansovino, Venezia, fol. 172 sqq. They are said to have arisen through the rowing out to the Lido, where the practice with the crossbow took place. The great regatta on the feast of St. Paul was prescribed by law from 1315 onwards. In early times there was much riding in Venice, before the streets were paved and the level wooden bridges turned into arched stone ones. Petrarch (Epist. Seniles, iv. 4) describes a brilliant tournament held in 1364 on the square of St. Mark, and the Doge Steno, about the year 1400, had as fine a stable as any prince in Italy. But riding in the neighbourhood of the square was prohibited as a rule after the year 1291. At a later time the Venetians naturally had the name of bad riders. See Ariosto, Sat. v. 208.