_Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora: tempora Mavos Olim habuit; nunc sua tempora Pallas habet: Mars fuit; est Pallas; Cypra semper erit._ Formerly Venus reigned supreme, then Mars, now Pallas: Mars was, Pallas now is, Venus shall always be. Cardinals were not ashamed to contend openly for the favors of celebrated courtesans, and Charles VIII., when on his march to Naples, was provided by Ludovico Sforza and his wife Beatrice, his liberal entertainers, with the most beautiful women that could be procured.[223] Charles, indeed, is by some authors asserted to have been actually the first who introduced the venereal disease into Italy. An eccentric trophy of public license is to be found in the poem of Fracastoro, a physician and accomplished writer--a really elegant production under the title of Syphilis. The argument of it is drawn from the sufferings of Syphilus, a shepherd who has been punished by Apollo with a malignant disease for impiety. In this work the author introduces the reader to the inner regions of the earth; to the mines, minerals, and attendant sprites, and explains the discovery of mercury, and its beneficent and healing influences on the invalid, who, once cured, is enjoined to pay his vows to Diana. In 1520, that turbulent and reprobate artist Benvenuto Cellini, in his autobiography (one of the most spirited representations of national manners extant) gives an account of a syphilitic disease which he contracted from a courtesan. He says little of the mode of cure, but it is evident from the above that the use of mercury was known at a very early period after public attention was generally directed to the disorder. The excesses of this iron age were not limited to ordinary licentiousness; crimes against nature seem to have been prevalent, and are even alleged to have been a source of revenue. In a collection of papal lives which has fallen under our notice, but which is not very particular in giving its authorities,[224] we find it stated that a memorial was presented to Sextus IV. by certain individuals of the family of the Cardinal of St. Lucia for an indulgence to commit sodomy, and that the Pope wrote at the bottom of it the usual "_Fiat_." The case of Beatrice Cenci is better attested. Every one recollects the accumulated horrors of the story. The father, hating his children, his wife, all mankind, introduces prostitutes to his house, and debauches his daughter Beatrice by force. Through the instrumentality of a bishop she procures him to be murdered, and, with her step-mother, was executed for the crime, the Pope refusing to show any mercy. The Count Cenci had been addicted to unnatural offenses, and had thrice compounded with the papal government for his crimes by paying an enormous sum of money, and the narrator says that the acrimony of the Pope toward the wretched daughter was for having cut off a profitable source of revenue.