West Indies, and shot birds sacred to the Sun,[455] one of which spoke with human voice, predicting the evils that would fall upon the crew for their impiety. Not the least of these was to be a strange and terrible disease. The natives of the islands flocked to meet the strangers, and some of them were tettered with a ghastly eruption. This leads to the episodical legend of the shepherd Syphilus, who dared to deride the Sun-god, and of the king Alcithous, who accepted divine honours in his stead. The Sun, to requite the insolence of Syphilus, afflicted him with a dreadful sickness. It yielded to no cure until the nymph Ammericë initiated him in the proper lustral rites, and led him to the tree Hyacus. The poem ends with a panegyric of Guaiacum. [Footnote 451: quoniam in primis ostendere multos Possumus, attactu qui nullius hanc tamen ipsam Sponte suâ sensere luem, primique tulere. _Poemata Selecta_, p. 67.] [Footnote 452: Quumque animadvertas, tam vastæ semina labis Esse nec in terræ gremio, nec in æquore posse, Haud dubie tecum statuas reputesque necesse est, Principium sedemque mali consistere in ipso Aëre, qui terras circum diffunditur omnes. _Ibid._ p. 69.] [Footnote 453: _Ibid._ pp. 79, 80.] [Footnote 454: _Ibid._ pp. 95, 96.] [Footnote 455: These phrases he finds for a fowling-piece:-- Cava terrificis horrentia bombis Aera, et flammiferum tormenta imitantia fulmen. _Poemata Selecta_, p. 101.] I have sketched the subject of the 'Syphilis' in outline because of its importance not only for the neo-Latin literature of the Renaissance, but also for the history of medical opinion. As a didactic poem, it is constructed with considerable art; the style, though prosaic, is forcible, and the meaning is always precise. Falling short of classic elegance, Fracastoro may still be said to have fulfilled the requirements of Vida, and to have added something male and vigorous peculiar to himself. His adulatory verses to Alessandro Farnese, Paul III., and Julius III. might be quoted as curious examples of fulsome flattery conveyed in a _barocco_ style. They combine Papal cant with Pagan mannerism, Virgilian and Biblical phraseology, masculine gravity of diction and far-fetched conceits, in a strange amalgam, as awkward as it is ridiculous.[456] [Footnote 456: Cf. the passage about Alessandro Farnese's journeys-- Matre deâ comitante et iter monstrante nepoti-- and the reformation in Germany. _Poemata Selecta_, p. 125. The whole idyll addressed to Julius III., _ib._ pp. 130-135, is inconceivably uncouth.]