Hermes Trismegistus--the Pimandra, doubtless, which he is represented,
on the floor of Siena Cathedral, as offering to a Jew and a Gentile--nine
represents the sun and all beautiful bright things that draw their
influence from it, as the gleam of beaten gold, the rustle of silken
stuffs, the smell of the flower heliotrope, and all such men as
delineate human beings with colours, or make their effigy in stone or
metal; moreover, Phoebus Apollo, whom the poets describe as the most
beautiful of the gods, as indeed he is represented in all statues and
reliefs.

Domenico would often discuss these matters with a learned man who
greatly frequented his company. This was the humanist Niccolo Feo, known
as Filarete. Filarete was a native of Southern Apulia, a bastard of the
house of the Counts of Sulmona, who, in order to prevent any plots
against the legitimate branch, had handsomely provided for him in an
abbey of which they enjoyed the patronage. But his restless spirit
drove him from the cloister, and impelled him to long and adventurous
journeys. He had travelled in India and the East, and in Greece,
returning to Italy only when Constantinople fell before the Turks.
During these years he had acquired immense learning, considerable
wealth, and a vaguely sinister reputation. He had been persecuted by
Paul II. for taking part in the famous banquets, savouring oddly of
Paganism, of Pomponius Laetus; but the late Pontiff Sixtus IV. had taken
him into his favour together with Platina, one of his fellow-sufferers
in the castle of Saint Angelo. He was now old, and, after a life of
study, adventure, and possibly of sin, was living in affluence in a
house given him by the illustrious Cardinal at St. Peter ad Vincula, who
had also obtained him a canonry of St. John Lateran. He was busying his
last year in a great work of fancy and erudition, for which he required
the assistance of a skilful draughtsman and connoisseur of antiquities,
than whom none could suit him so well as Domenico Neroni.

The book of Filarete, of which the rare copies are among the most
precious relics of the Renaissance, was a strange mixture of romance,
allegory, and encyclopaedic knowledge, such as had been common in the
Middle Ages, and was still fashionable during the revival of letters,
which merely added the element of classical learning. Like the
_Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_ of Francesco Colonna, of which it was
doubtless the prototype, the _Alcandros_ of Fi