The drama of the time attained its highest perfection at the Vatican under Leo X. The skill of the actors, all men of fashion, their sober Attic style, without a trace of the mere craftsman, made the drama an artistic delight. As yet no women appeared on the stage. Their parts were sustained by men, and in this connection we must present to our fair readers a young prelate named Tommaso Inghirami, who was the coryphaeus of female parts at the court of Leo X. A Florentine and an intimate friend[247] of the pope, who, as everyone knows, had his own portrait painted along with Inghirami by Raphael,—so perfect a writer that Erasmus calls him “the Cicero of the age,”—Inghirami could have taken one of the most notable positions in this illustrious generation if his amiable and indolent dilettantism had not led him to believe that writing books was carried to excess. He was satisfied with shining in conversation, and in that he was inimitable: Bembo and Sadoleto constantly speak of him with enthusiasm, and, moreover, in one of the most appreciative but critical societies that ever existed, he won for himself as a conversationalist a European renown. If he had not the extraordinary gaiety of Bibbiena, he spoke with dazzling passion, wit, and fire; his large coal-black eyes have an astonishing power: looking at them, one feels light flashing from his soul. He had an ardent love for the theatre. One day, when playing the part of Phaedra in the _Hippolytus_ of Seneca before Cardinal St. George, he so captivated the spectators by his distinction, and especially by his passion, that the name of “Phaedra” became inseparably fastened to him. He was a preacher, the learned librarian of the Vatican, the dignified Bishop of Ragusa; but, for all that, from one end of Europe to the other he was no longer known except as “Phaedra,” or at most “Thomas Phaedra.” Only, the name was masculinised: thus Erasmus wrote: “I knew and loved _Phaedrum_.” Unhappily, about 1505, letters from Rome spread a deplorable piece of news: Phaedra is putting on flesh, Phaedra is big. “So much the better,” retorts Bembo in Greek, “we wish she may have twins!” The portrait in the Pitti Palace shows him to us, indeed—this superb platonist type of the pseudo-woman—as by no means a slender man. There is no doubt he had been handsome! His eyes continue to flash and throw their unabated fire towards the ceiling; he still has his fair, plump hand, his fine mouth; and yet, seated at his table, he no longer looks anything but a handsome prelate.