[86] The employment of fowls in this connection was generally curative. Pepys writes, in describing the treatment of a half-drowned man (vol. vii. p. 288, ed. 1896), “and they did lay pigeons to his feet while I was in the house, and all despair of him and with good reason.” In the case of these criminals the remedy may have been applied to revive them for the next stage of the torture.
[87] Probably the Sala Ducale, painted by Mattheus Bril.
[88] There had been considerable activity in the reconstruction of the city under Pius IV. The reigning Pope had continued this work as far as the disorder in the finances would permit. The most important building operations were carried out a little later under Sixtus V.—operations which were accompanied unfortunately by the destruction of many interesting remains of antiquity.
[89] Monte Testaccio. Gurson was a village in Périgord, the seat of the Marquis de Foix, an intimate friend of Montaigne.
[90] This is incorrect: the present position and aspect of the Temple of Janus indicate very little alteration of the level of the surface.
[91] Eugenius IV. laid a fine of 1130 scudi on the Jews of Rome, which was spent in Carnival festivities and sports, of which Jew-baiting was one of the most popular. The Jew races began under Paul II. in 1468, and became more and more barbarous till their abolition by Clement IX. in 1668.
[92] Exorcism is still a portion of the baptismal rite in the Roman Church.
[93] Sent by Ivan the Terrible.
[94] This was not the Athenian, but Ælius Aristides, a rhetorician of Smyrna, who lived in the time of M. Aurelius. The inscription on the pedestal is ΑΡΙΣΤΙΔΕΣ ΣΜΥΡΝΕΟΣ.
[95] The polyglot version printed by the famous Antwerp Press in 1569.