horns of plenty, was seen a car on which Noah and David sat together enthroned; then came Abigail, leading a camel laden with treasures, and a second car with a group of political figures--Italy sitting between Venice and Liguria, the two last with their coats of arms, the former with a stork, the symbol of unity--and on a raised step three female symbolical figures with the arms of the allied princes. This was followed by a great globe with the constellations, as it seems, round it. The princes themselves, or rather their bodily representatives, appeared on other chariots with their servants and their coats of arms, if we have rightly interpreted our author.[974] There was also music at these and all other similar processions. The Carnival, properly so called, apart from these great triumphal marches, had nowhere, perhaps, in the fifteenth century, so varied a character as in Rome.[975] There were races of every kind--of horses, asses, buffalos, old men, young men, Jews, and so on. Paul II. entertained the people in crowds before the Palazzo di Venezia, in which he lived. The games in the Piazza Navona, which had probably never altogether ceased since the classical times, were remarkable for their warlike splendour. We read of a sham fight of cavalry, and a review of all the citizens in arms. The greatest freedom existed with regard to the use of masks, which were sometimes allowed for several months together.[976] Sixtus IV. ventured, in the most populous part of the city--at the Campofiore and near the Banchi--to make his way through crowds of masks, though he declined to receive them as visitors in the Vatican. Under Innocent VIII., a discreditable usage, which had already appeared among the Cardinals, attained its height. In the Carnival of 1491, they sent one another chariots full of splendid masks, of singers, and of buffoons, chanting scandalous verses. They were accompanied by men on horseback.[977] Apart from the Carnival, the Romans seem to have been the first to discover the effect of a great procession by torchlight. When Pius II. came back from the Congress of Mantua in 1459,[978] the people waited on him with a squadron of horsemen bearing torches, who rode in shining circles before his palace. Sixtus IV., however, thought it better to decline a nocturnal visit of the people, who proposed to wait on him with torches and olive-branches.[979]