e. In which life, since he always had
about him boys and beardless youths, whom he loved more than was
decent, he acquired the by-name of Sodoma; and in this name, far from
taking umbrage or offence, he used to glory, writing about it songs
and verses in terza rima, and singing them to the lute with no little
facility. He delighted, in addition, to have about the house many
kinds of extraordinary animals; badgers, squirrels, apes, marmosets,
dwarf asses, horses, barbs for running races, little horses from Elba,
jays, dwarf fowls, Indian turtle-doves, and other suchlike animals, as
many as he could lay his hands on. But, besides all these beasts, he
had a raven, which had learned from him to speak so well, that in some
things it imitated exactly the voice of Giovanni Antonio, and
particularly in answering to anyone who knocked at the door, doing
this so excellently that it seemed like Giovanni Antonio himself, as
all the people of Siena know very well. In like manner, the other
animals were so tame that they always flocked round anybody in the
house, playing the strangest pranks and the maddest tricks in the
world, insomuch that the man's house looked like a real Noah's Ark.

[Illustration: SCENE FROM THE LIFE OF S. BENEDICT

(_After the fresco by =Giovanni Antonio Bazzi [Il Sodoma]=. Monte
Oliveto Maggiore_)

_Alinari_]

Now this manner of living and his eccentric ways, with his works and
pictures, wherein he did indeed achieve something of the good, caused
him to have such a name among the people of Siena--that is, among the
populace and the common herd, for the people of quality knew him
better--that he was held by many to be a great man. Whereupon, Fra
Domenico da Lecco, a Lombard, having been made General of the Monks of
Monte Oliveto, Sodoma went to visit him at Monte Oliveto di Chiusuri,
the principal seat of that Order, distant fifteen miles from Siena;
and he so contrived with his persuasive words, that he was
commissioned to finish the stories of the life of S. Benedict, part of
which had been executed on a wall by Luca Signorelli of Cortona. This
work he finished for a small enough price, besides the expenses that
he incurred, and those of certain lads and colour-grinders who
assisted him; nor would it be possible to describe the amusement
that he gave while he was labouring at that place to those fathers,
who called him Il Mattaccio,[13] in the mad pranks that he played.

[Footnote 13: Madcap o