Once upon a time Immortality and Old Age were quarrelling. The cause was small, the quarrel was and still is a grievous one. Immortality had reared from the nest a tame jackdaw, cunning, thievish, clever, with a power of imitating our language not unmusically. She had kept it in luxury for ninety years. The neighbours actually approved of it in their enjoyment of the constant jesting and laughter which it caused. For it used secretly to steal from the tailor’s workboxes rings and needles and other implements, and then, when the fancy seized it, all of a sudden gave them back. How the onlookers used to laugh and applaud when it brought a modest blush to a maiden’s cheek as she walked along the road by calling with a gentle chuckle Ω χόρη καλη[306] (it had learnt Greek as well as Latin) Ἡλίου ὡς ὁμοιῷ φωτί.[307] But Old Age was envious and sent disease, her frequent minister, and killed the jackdaw. So was war kindled. Then when Old Age had taken many towns, and sacked many cities, she forced Immortality at length to take refuge in her citadel.
Her citadel stands on a high mountain. Its walls and battlements are of brass, but the rooms of its inner chambers of sweetest-smelling cedarwood. The enemy is held at bay (and this no one who did not know would easily believe) by maidens alone, by three maidens with their songs and verses. Now, could you but extract the harmonies of these maidens from the letters in which they are written and manage to apply them to your bare breast and heart, there is nothing so health-giving against all diseases of body and mind. I commend myself to you. Farewell.—Florence, April 15, 1484.
Thy Bartolommeo Scala.[308]
“In Amorpham Nympham,” Latin poem by Bartolommeo Scala, sent to Lorenzo De’ Medici at Bagno a Morba, April 25, 1484
Thou askest who I am, what is my name, and whence comes this hot and health-giving water that springs perennial? Once I was the loveliest nymph of these woods. Apollo loved me and gave me the power of curing all ills. Fleeter of foot than the stag or the roe, I was the most renowned and the most welcome of the Oread sisters or the Dryads. But we have long known how cruel and potent is fate, and how unstable are all things here below. When wandering one day, bow in hand, my quiver on my shoulder, O unhappy nymph! Cerberus saw me and was inflamed with brutal lust. Of no avail were my bow, my arrows, or my swift feet. Furiously he pursued me and deaf to my prayers and tears he seized me, O unhappy one. In vain I screamed and struggled, and called upon all the Gods of heaven. Almost vanquished I cried out, imploring aid: “O you sylvan nymphs, have mercy, hasten to save me.” The goddesses heard, changed me into a hot stream and thus delivered me from those ferocious hands. As a spring I still preserve the power bestowed by Apollo of curing all ills. Phœbus pitied and wept over my fate, and swore by the Styx to undo thee, O Cerberus. A huge stone, high as a mountain, surrounded by precipices and broken rocks, was torn asunder and a yawning and dark cave opened, whence issued a horrid wind charged with fetid odours. Inside all was putrid, in festering matter lay the entrails and bones of oxen which he bore while yet alive into the cave to satiate his rabid hunger. Whilst intent on devouring the raw flesh and sucking the stream of hot blood, the highborn Archer wounded him. His torn and bleeding entrails gushed forth. But as he could change his form at will, Cerberus became a dog. From three throats came despairing howls and the vapour of burning sulphur when Apollo hurled him down from the rock into deepest hell, where it is rumoured that he still retains the semblance of a dog. There, where the brute sank, remain signs of hell, and they say that sinners are there drawn down to well-deserved punishment. All around are lakes of deep mud; mud and sulphur are belched up, and from afar one still hears the ever-renewed howling of dogs. The rock preserved the name and the mountain whence it fell is called Cerberus. But I remain unknown, no kind Muse remembered me and I waited for one to tell of my woes. Lo he comes, and here he writes a poem for me. Read it, O pilgrim; then thou wilt know that Amorba is the name of the nymph. The waters will drive away all illness, let the sick come here and they will find health.[309]
Lorenzo’s great enemy Sixtus IV. died on August 12, 1484, killed, say contemporaries, by a violent fit of anger at the proclamation of the peace of Bagnolo. The Cardinals entered into Conclave on August 26th, and three days later Giovanni Battista Cibò, born at Genoa in 1432, was elected Pope under the name of Innocent VIII.
Guidantonio Vespucci, Florentine Ambassador at Rome, to Lorenzo de’ Medici at Florence
Magnifice vir,—If my letter about the election of the Pope [Innocent VIII.] was delayed, the fault lies with Antonio Tornabuoni who sent off the courier without waiting for me. I was at Mass with the other ambassadors and could not leave before them. The Milanese courier was despatched by Francesco da Casale and not by the ambassador. I beg you to excuse me.
Of the new Pope I will tell you all I have heard. As Cardinal he passed for a kindly and benign man, and was most courteous to all, kissing any and all even more than one you know of. His political experience is small and he is not learned, though not ignorant. He was always devoted to S. Pietro in Vincula [Giuliano della Rovere, afterwards Julius II.] and indeed was made a cardinal by his influence. He is tall, full in the face, about fifty-five years of age, and very robust. He has a brother, at least one grown-up bastard son and some daughters, who are married here. As cardinal he did not agree well with the Count [Girolamo Riario, nephew of the late Pope]. S. Pietro in Vincula is now as good as Pope and will have more power than under Sixtus if he knows how to steer. The Pope has a Genoese friar who is said to have a mistress of the house of Cibò, Guelph of course. Here he has a nephew, a priest, related to Filippo di Nerone, whose mistress is a certain Maria Clemenza—she was wife to Stoldo Altoviti. The late Captain of infantry is married to a relation of his. The Pope seems rather a man in need of advice than one capable of giving it to others.
The election took place thus. The Rev. Monsignori of Aragona and Visconti seeing that they could not effect the election of the Vice-Chancellor and that he stood on the defence, tried to persuade him to play their game, and ante omnia reconciled the Camarlingo and Ursino with S. Pietro in Vincula, towards whom they were beginning to be friendly, and I think they promised to arrange the affairs of the Count and of the Camarlingo. Many other promises were made. First, to the Cardinal of Aragona the Pope gives his own house; to Messer di Visconti the house belonging to the Count, which the Pope will pay for, besides 12,000 ducats, the legation of the Patrimony, and I know not what besides at Castello; to Savello the legation of Bologna; to Milan that of Avignon; all of which latter legations were held by S. Pietro in Vincula who consented to everything in order to carry this business through, he has also renounced certain abbeys to satisfy others whose names I know not. Colonna will no doubt also be recompensed, and the Vice-Chancellor has obtained certain things he wanted in Spain. Noara has had I know what castle. Of others I have not heard. No doubt there are many similar cases.