In Dante's day, what remained of the famous statue supposed of Mars, _quella pietra scema che guarda il ponte_, "that mutilated stone which guardeth the bridge," still stood here at the corner, probably at the beginning of the present Lungarno Acciaiuoli. "I was of that city that changed its first patron for the Baptist," says an unknown suicide in the seventh circle of Hell, probably one of the Mozzi: "on which account he with his art will ever make it sorrowful. And were it not that at the passage of the Arno there yet remains some semblance of him, those citizens, who afterwards rebuilt it on the ashes left by Attila, would have laboured in vain." Here, as we saw in chapter i., young Buondelmonte was murdered in 1215, a sacrifice to Mars in the city's "last time of peace," _nella sua pace postrema_. [Illustration: THE PONTE VECCHIO] Lower down comes the Ponte Santa Trinità, originally built in 1252; and still lower the Ponte alla Carraia, built between 1218 and 1220 in the days of Frederick II., for the sake of the growing commerce of the Borgo Ognissanti. This latter bridge was originally called the Ponte Nuovo, as at that time the only other bridge over the Arno was the Ponte Vecchio. It was here that a terrible disaster took place on May 1st, 1304--a strange piece of grim mediæval jesting by the irony of fate turned to still grimmer earnest. After a cruel period of disasters and faction fights, there had come a momentary gleam of peace, and it was determined to renew the pageants and festivities that had been held in better days on May-day, "in the good time passed, of the tranquil and good state of Florence," each contrada trying to rival the other. What followed had best be told in the words of Giovanni Villani, an eye-witness:--