143) of Livy at Padua? When, by dint of great entreaties, he obtained an arm-bone of the skeleton from the Venetians, and received it with solemn pomp at Naples, how strangely Christian and pagan sentiment must have been blended in his heart! During a campaign in the Abruzzi, when the distant Sulmona, the birthplace of Ovid, was pointed out to him, he saluted the spot and returned thanks to its tutelary genius. It gladdened him to make good the prophecy of the great poet as to his future fame.[519] Once indeed, at his famous entry into the conquered city of Naples (1443), he himself chose to appear before the world in ancient style. Not far from the market a breach forty ells wide was made in the wall, and through this he drove in a gilded chariot like a Roman Triumphator.[520] The memory of the scene is preserved by a noble triumphal arch of marble in the Castello Nuovo. His Neapolitan successors (p. 37) inherited as little of this passion for antiquity as of his other good qualities. Alfonso was far surpassed in learning by Frederick of Urbino[521]--the great pupil of the great teacher Vittorino da Feltre--who had but few courtiers around him, squandered nothing, and in his appropriation of antiquity, as in all other things, went to work considerately. It was for him and for Nicholas V. that most of the translations from the Greek, and a number of the best commentaries and other such works, were written. He spent much on the scholars whose services he used, but spent it to good purpose. There were no traces of the official poet at Urbino, where the Duke himself was the most learned in the whole court. Classical antiquity, indeed, only formed a part of his culture. An accomplished ruler, captain, and gentleman, he had mastered the greater part of the science of the day, and this with a view to its practical application. As a theologian, he was able to compare Scotus with Aquinas, and was familiar with the writings of the old fathers of the Eastern and Western Churches, the former in Latin translations. In philosophy, he seems to have left Plato altogether to his contemporary Cosimo, but he knew thoroughly not only the ‘Ethics’ and ‘Politics’ of Aristotle but the ‘Physics’ and some other works. The rest of his reading lay chiefly among the ancient historians, all of whom he possessed; these, and not the poets, ‘he was always reading and having read to him.’ The Sforza,[522] too, were all of them men of more or less learning and patrons of literature; they have been already referred to in passing (pp. 38 sqq.). Duke Francesco probably looked on humanistic culture as a matter of course in the education of his children, if only for political reasons. It was felt universally to be an advantage if the Prince could mix with the most instructed men of his time on an equal footing. Ludovico Moro, himself an excellent Latin scholar, showed an interest in intellectual matters which extended far beyond classical antiquity (p. 41 sqq.).