Even to the end of the thirteenth century, however, the Arsenal was not firmly established, and vessels were built in temporary dockyards, wherever room was found. But with the beginning of the fourteenth century the Senate determined on making the Arsenal so fine and so strong that it could not be taken by an enemy. It was constantly guarded, and many attempts were made to destroy it. At the end of the fifteenth century it was under the care of a special magistracy, and sixteen thousand ship-builders and thirty-six thousand seamen were employed in Venice. The three magistrates or keepers of the Arsenal were appointed for a term of thirty-two months, and were obliged to inhabit three official houses, called Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno. Each keeper was on duty fifteen days at a time, during which he slept within the fortification, kept the key in his room, and was answerable with his head for the safety of the place. But one passage led out of the Arsenal,--that to the iron gate which opens on the small campo. With the exception of the great lions now at the entrance,--brought from Greece in the seventeenth century,--the exterior has changed but little in three centuries and a half. Small arms and artillery were made here, as well as ships; and in each department the superiority of the manufactures resulted from the skill of the workmen and the quality of the materials used. The ship timber, after {215} being carefully selected and brought from various countries, was floated near the Lido for ten years to season it. The different parts of the vessels were cut and fitted in the workshops with such exactness that they could be put together with marvellous rapidity. It is said that when Henry III. of France visited Venice, a galley was put together and launched in two hours, while he was at a banquet; and during the famous League, before the battle of Lepanto, for one hundred days a new galley left the Arsenal each morning. In truth, the Arsenal was a town by itself,--a town of foundries, forges, magazines of arms, and munitions of war, timber-yards, rope-walks, model-rooms, and warehouses; a town full of smoke, toil, and uproar. Dante had been here; and when he wished to describe a lake of pitch in which corrupt statesmen are immersed, in his Inferno, he thus begins:-- "In the Venetians' arsenal as boils Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear Their unsound vessels; for the inclement time Sea-faring men restrains, and in that while His bark one builds anew, another stops The ribs of his that hath made many a voyage, One hammers at the prow, one at the poop, This shapeth oars, that other cables twirls, The mizzen one repairs, and mainsail rent."