THE GENEALOGY OF THE GODS. We read of Paulus Emilius, that first captain of his illustrious age, that he caused no less marvel by his wisdom and worth to the people of Greece and of many other nations who had assembled in Amphipolis to celebrate various most noble spectacles there after the victory that he had won, than by the circumstance that first, vanquishing Perseus and subjugating Macedonia, he had borne himself valiantly in the management of that war, which was in no small measure laborious and difficult; he having been wont to say that it is scarcely less the office of a good captain, requiring no less order and no less wisdom, to know how to prepare a banquet well in time of peace, than to know how to marshal an army for a deed of arms in time of war. Wherefore if our glorious Duke, born to do everything with noble worth and grandeur, displayed the same wisdom and the same order in those spectacles, and, above all, in that one which I am about to describe, I believe that he will not take it amiss that I have been unwilling to refrain from saying that he was in every part its inventor and ordinator, and in a certain sense its executor, preparing all the various things, and then representing them, with so much order, tranquillity, wisdom, and magnificence, that among his many glorious actions this one also may be numbered to his supreme glory. Now, yielding to him who wrote of it in those days with infinite learning, before me, and referring to that work those who may seek curiously to see how every least thing in this masquerade, which had as title the Genealogy of the Gods, was figured with the authority of excellent writers, and passing over whatever I may judge to be superfluous in this place, let me say that even as we read that some of the ancient Gods were invited to the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis in order to render them auspicious and fortunate, so to the nuptials of this new and most excellent bridal pair it appeared that there had come for the same reason not some only of these same Gods, but all, and not invited, but seeking to introduce themselves and by their own wish, the good auguring them the same felicity and contentment, and the harmful assuring them that they would do them no harm. Which conception appeared gracefully expressed in the following fashion by four madrigals that were sung at various times in the principal places by four very full choirs, even as has been told of the Triumph of Dreams; saying: L' alta che fino al ciel fama rimbomba Della leggiadra Sposa, Che in questa riva erbosa D' Arno, candida e pura, alma colomba Oggi lieta sen vola e dolce posa, Dalla celeste sede ha noi qui tratti, Perche piu leggiadri atti E bellezza piu vaga e piu felice Veder gia mai non lice.