The festivities in honour of Cesare’s return were renewed in Rome upon
the morrow, and to this the circumstance that the season was that of
carnival undoubtedly contributed and lent the displays a threatrical
character which might otherwise have been absent. In these the duke’s
victories were made the subject of illustration. There was a procession
of great chariots in Piazza Navona, with groups symbolizing the triumphs
of the ancient Caesar, in the arrangement of which, no doubt, the
assistance had been enlisted of that posse of valiant artists who were
then flocking to Rome and the pontifical Court.
Yriarte, mixing his facts throughout with a liberal leaven of fiction,
tells us that “this is the precise moment in which Cesare Borgia, fixing
his eyes upon the Roman Caesar, takes him definitely for his model and
adopts the device ‘Aut Caesar, aut nihil.’”
Cesare Borgia never adopted that device, and never displayed it. In
connection with him it is only to be found upon the sword of honour
made for him when, while still a cardinal, he went to crown the King
of Naples. It is not at all unlikely that the inscription of the device
upon that sword--which throughout is engraved with illustrations of the
career of Julius Caesar--may have been the conceit of the sword-maker
as a rather obvious play upon Cesare’s name.(1) Undoubtedly, were the
device of Cesare’s own adoption we should find it elsewhere, and nowhere
else is it to be found.
1 The scabbard of this sword is to be seen in the South Kensington
Museum; the sword itself is in the possession of the Caetani family.
Shortly after Cesare’s return to Rome, Imola and Forli sent their
ambassadors to the Vatican to beseech his Holiness to sign the articles
which those cities had drawn up and by virtue of which they created
Cesare their lord in the place of the deposed Riarii.
It is quite true that Alexander had announced that, in promoting the
Romagna campaign, he had for object to restore to the Church the States
which had rebelliously seceded from her. Yet there is not sufficient
reason to suppose that he was flagrantly breaking his word in acceding
to the request of which those ambassadors were the bearers and in
creating his son Count of Imola and Forli. Admitted that this was to
Cesare’s benefit and advancement, it is still to be remembered that
those fiefs must be governed for the Church by a Vicar, as had ever been
the case.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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