ctacle
only to be arranged by the hand of a wise, well-practised, great, and
valiant Prince, and in which almost all the lords and gentlemen of the
city, and many strangers, took part--was without a doubt the greatest,
the most magnificent, and the most splendid which can be remembered to
have been held in any place for many centuries down to our own times,
for the greater part of the vestments were not only made of cloth of
gold and silver and other very rich draperies, and, when the place
required it, of the finest skins, but, what is more (art surpassing the
materials), composed with rare and marvellous industry, invention, and
loveliness; and to the end that the eyes of the spectators, as they
gazed, might be able with greater satisfaction to recognize one by one
which of the Gods it was intended to represent, it was thought expedient
to proceed to divide them into twenty-one distinct companies, placing at
the head of each company one that should be considered as the chief,
and causing each of these, for greater magnificence and grandeur, and
because they are so figured by the ancient poets, to be drawn upon
appropriate cars by their appropriate and particular animals. Now in
these cars, which were beautiful, fantastic, and bizarre beyond belief,
and most splendid with silver and gold, and in representing as real and
natural the above-named animals that drew them, without a doubt the
dexterity and excellence of the ingenious craftsmen were such, that not
only they surpassed all things done up to that time both within and
without the city, which at all times has had a reputation for rare
mastery in such things, but they also (infinite marvel!) took away from
everyone all hope of ever being able to see another thing so heroic or
so lifelike. Beginning, then, with those Gods who were such that they
were reputed to be the first causes and the first fathers of the others,
we will proceed to describe each of the cars and of the companies that
preceded them. And since the representation was of the Genealogy of the
Gods, making a beginning with Demogorgon, the first father of them all,
and with his car, we have to say that after a graceful, lovely, and
laurel-crowned Shepherd, representing the ancient poet Hesiod, who,
singing of the Gods in his Theogony, first wrote their genealogy, and
who, as guide, carried in his hand a large, square, and ancient ensign,
wherein were depicted in divers colours Heaven and the four Elements