The name of Pasquil was soon given to the papers which were deposited with the statue, and eventually a _pasquil_, or _pasquin_, was only another name for a lampoon or libel. Not far from this statue stood another, which was found in the forum of Mars (_Martis forum_), and was thence popularly called Marforio. Some of these satirical writings were composed in the form of dialogues between Pasquil and Marforio, or of messages from one to the other. A collection of these pasquils was published in 1544 in two small volumes.[94] Many of them are extremely clever, and they are sharply pointed. The popes are frequent objects of bitterest satire. Thus we are reminded in two lines upon pope Alexander VI. (_sextus_), the infamous Borgia, that Tarquin had been a Sextus, and Nero also, and now another Sextus was at the head of the Romans, and told that Rome was always ruined under a Sextus-- De Alexandro VI. Pont. _Sextus Tarquinius, Sextus Nero, Sextus et iste: Semper sub Sextis perdita Roma fuit._ The following is given for an epitaph on Lucretia Borgia, pope Alexander's profligate daughter:-- _Hoc tumulo dormit Lucretia nomine, sed re Thais, Alexandri filia, sponsa, nurus._ [94] "Pasquillorum Tomi duo." Eleutheropoli, MDXLIIII. In another of a rather later date, Rome, addressing herself to Pasquil, is made to complain of two successive popes, Clement VII. (Julio de Medicis, 1523-1534) and Paul III. (Alexandro Farnese, 1534-1549), and also of Leo X. (1513-1521). "I am," Rome says, "sick enough with the physician (_Medicus_, as a pun on the Medicis), I was also the prey of the lion (_Leo_), now, Paul, you tear my vitals like a wolf. You, Paul, are not a god to me, as I thought in my folly, but you are a wolf, since you tear the food from my mouth"-- _Sum Medico satis ægra, fui quoque præda Leonis, Nunc mea dilaceras viscera, Paule, lupus. Non es, Paule, mihi numen, ceu stulta putabam, Sed lupus es, quoniam subtrahis ore cibum._ Another epigram, addressed to Rome herself, involves a pun in Greek (in the words _Paulos_, Paul, and _Phaulos_, wicked). "Once, Rome," it says, "lords of lords were thy subjects, now thou in thy wretchedness art subject to the serfs of serfs; once you listened to the oracles of St. Paul, but now you perform the abominable commands of the wicked"-- _Quondam, Roma, tibi suberant domini dominorum, Servorum servis nunc miseranda subes; Audisti quondam divini oracula Παύλου, At nunc των φαύλων jussa nefanda facis._ The idea, of course, is the contrast of Rome in her Pagan glory, with Rome in her Christian debasement, very much the same as that which struck Gibbon, and gave birth to his great history of Rome's "decline and fall."[95]