b:--

Fur, scortum, leno, moechus, pedico, cynaedus,
Et scurra, et fidicen cedat ab Italia:
Namque illa Ausonii pestis scelerata senatus,
Petrus, ad infernas est modo raptus aquas.

After the death of Pietro, Sixtus took his last nephew, Giovanni della
Rovere, into like favor. He was married to Giovanna, daughter of
Federigo di Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and created Duke of Sinigaglia.
Afterwards he became Prefect of Rome, upon the death of his brother
Lionardo. This man founded the second dynasty in the Dukedom of Urbino.
The plebeian violence of the della Rovere temper reached a climax in
Giovanni's son, the Duke Francesco Maria, who murdered his sister's
lover with his own hand when a youth of sixteen, stabbed the Papal
Legate to death in the streets of Bologna at the age of twenty, and
knocked Guicciardini, the historian, down with a blow of his fist during
a council of war in 1526.

[1] The infamous stories about Sixtus and Alexander may in part
be fables, currently reported by the vulgar and committed to
epigrams by scholars. Still the fact remains that Infessura,
Burchard, and the Venetian ambassadors relate of these two
Popes such traits of character and such abominable actions as
render the worst calumnies probable. Infessura, though he
expressed horror for the crimes of Sixtus, was yet a dry
chronicler of daily events, many of which passed beneath his
own eyes, Burchurd was a frigid diarist of Court ceremonies,
who reported the rapes, murders, and profligacies of Alexander
with phlegmatic gravity. The evidence of these men, neither of
whom indulges in satire strictly so called, is more valuable
than that of Tacitus or Suetonius to the vices of the Roman
emperors. The dispatches of the Venetian ambassadors, again,
are trustworthy, seeing they were always written with political
intention and not for the sake of gossip.

[2] See ch. iii. p. 113.

[3] As Julius II., by far the greatest name in his age. Yet
even Giuliano did not at first impress men with his power.
Jacobus Volaterranus (Mur. xxiii. 107) writes of him: 'Vir est
naturae duriusculae, ac uti ingenii, mediocris literaturae.'

[4] For what follows read Corio, _Storia di Milano_, pp.
417-20.

[5] Mach. _1st. Fior_. lib. vii.; Corio, p. 420.

[6] See Corio, p. 420. Corio hints that the Venetians poisoned
the Cardinal for fear of thi