Note 244 — Chapter X · THE PAPACY AND ITS DANGERS.
S. G. C. (Samuel George Chetwynd) Middlemore translation
This in Panvinio alone among contemporary historians (Contin. Platinæ, p. 339), ‘insidiis Cæsaris fratris interfectus ... connivente ... ad scelus patre,’ and to the same effect Jovius, Elog. Vir. Ill. p. 302. The profound emotion of Alexander looks like a sign of complicity. After the corpse was drawn out of the Tiber, Sannazaro wrote (Opera Omnia Latine Scripta 1535, fol. 41 a):
‘Piscatorem hominum ne te non, Sixte, putemus Piscaris natum retibus, ecce, tuum.’
Besides the epigram quoted there are others (fol. 36 b, 42 b, 47 b, 51 a, b—in the last passage 5) in Sannazaro on, i.e. against, Alexander. Among them is a famous one, referred to in Gregorovius i. 314, on Lucrezia Borgia:
Ergo te semper cupiet Lucretia Sextus? O fatum diri nominis: hic pater est?
Others execrate his cruelty and celebrate his death as the beginning of an era of peace. On the Jubilee (see below, p. 108, note 1), there is another epigram, fol. 43 b. There are others no less severe (fol. 34 b, 35 a, b, 42 b, 43 a) against Cæsar Borgia, among which we find in one of the strongest:
Aut nihil aut Cæsar vult dici Borgia; quidni? Cum simul et Cæsar possit, et esse nihil.
(made use of by Bandello, iv. nov. 11). On the murder of the Duke of Gandia, see especially the admirable collection of the most original sources of evidence in Gregorovius, vii. 399-407, according to which Cæsar’s guilt is clear, but it seems very doubtful whether Alexander knew, or approved, of the intended assassination.