Castiglione's most polished exercises are written on fictitious subjects in elegiac metre. Thus he feigns a letter from his wife, in the style of the 'Heroidum Epistolæ,' praying him to beware of Rome's temptations, and to keep his heart for her.[478] Again he warns his mistress to avoid the perils of the sea-beach, where the Tritons roam:—

Os informe illis, rictus, oculique minaces,
Asperaque anguineo cortice membra rigent:
Barba impexa, ingens, algâ limoque virenti
Oblita, oletque gravi lurida odore coma.[479]

In these couplets we seem to read a transcript from some fresco of Mantegna or Julio Romano. Two long elegies are devoted to the theme of marine monsters, and the tale of Hippolytus is introduced to clinch the poet's argument. Among Castiglione's poems of compliment, forming a pleasant illustration to his book of the 'Courtier,' may be mentioned the lines on 'Elisabetta Gonzaga singing.'[480] Nor can I omit the most original of his elegies, written, or at least conceived, in the camp of Julius before Mirandola.[481] Walking by night in the trenches under the beleaguered walls, Castiglione meets the ghost of Lodovico Pico, who utters a lamentation over the wrongs inflicted on his city and his race. The roar of cannon cuts short this monologue, and the spectre vanishes into darkness with a groan. During his long threnody the prince of Mirandola apostrophises the warlike Pope in these couplets:—

O Pater, O Pastor populorum, O maxime mundi
Arbiter, humanum qui genus omne regis;
Justitiæ pacisque dator placidæque quietis,
Credita cui soli est vita salusque hominum;
Quem Deus ipse Erebi fecit Cœlique potentem,
Ut nutu pateant utraque regna tuo![482]

When the spiritual authority of the Popes came thus to be expressed in Latin verse, it was impossible not to treat them as deities. The temptation to apply to them the language of Roman religion was too great; the double opportunity of flattering their vanity as Pontiffs, and their ears as scholars, was too attractive to be missed. In another place Castiglione used the following phrases about Leo:—

Nec culpanda tua est mora, nam præcepta Deorum
Non fas, nec tutum est spernere velle homini:
Esse tamen fertur clementia tanta Leonis
Ut facili humanas audiat ore preces.[483]

Navagero called Julius II. novus ex alto demissus Olympo Deus (a new God sent down from heaven to earth), and declared that the people of Italy, in thanksgiving for his liberation of their country from the barbarians, would pay him yearly honours with prayer and praise:—

Ergo omnes, veluti et Phœbo Panique, quotannis
Pastores certis statuent tibi sacra diebus,
Magne Pater; nostrisque diu cantabere silvis.
Te rupes, te saxa, cavæ te, Maxime Juli,
Convalles, nemorumque frequens iterabit imago.
At vero nostris quæcumque in saltibus usquam
Quercus erit, ut quæque suos dant tempora flores,
Semper erit variis ramos innexa coronis;
Inscriptumque geret felici nomine truncum.
Tum quoties pastum expellet, pastasve reducet
Nostrum aliquis pecudes; toties id mente revolvens
Ut liceat, factum esse tuo, Pater optime, ductu;
Nullus erit, qui non libet tibi lacte recenti,
Nullus erit qui non teneros tibi nutriat agnos.
Quin audire preces nisi dedignabere agrestes,
Tu nostra ante Deos in vota vocaberis omnes.
Ipse ego bina tibi solenni altaria ritu,
Et geminos sacrâ e quercu lauroque virenti
Vicino lucos Nanceli in litore ponam.[484]

It will be remembered that the oak was the ensign of the Della Rovere family, so that when the poets exalted Julius to Olympus, they were not in want of a tree sacred to the new deity. To trace this Pagan flattery of the Popes through all its forms would be a tedious business. It will be enough to quote Poliziano's 'Sapphics' to Innocent VIII.:—