Note 383 — Scene II.—The Ducal Chamber.

["Marin Faliero, dalla bella moglie—altri la gode, ed egli la mantien."—Marino Samuto, Vitæ Ducum Venetorum, apud Muratori, Rerum Italicurum Scriptores, 1733, xxii. 628-638]. Navagero, in his Storia della Repubblica Veneriana, ibid., xxiii. 1040, gives a coarser rendering of Steno's Lampoon.—"Becco Marino Fallier dalla belta mogier;" and there are older versions agreeing in the main with that Faliero's by Sanudo. It is, however, extremely doubtful whether Faliro's conspiracy was, in any sense, the outcome of a personal insult. The story of the Lampoon first appears in the Chronicle of Lorenzo de Monaci, who wrote in the latter half of the fifteenth century. "Fama fuit ... quia aliqui adolescentuli nobiles scripserunt in angulis interioris palatii aliqua verba ignominiosa, et quod ipse (il Doge) magis incanduit quoniam adolescentuli illi parva fuerant animadversione puniti." In course of time the "noble youths" became a single noble youth, whose name occurred in the annals, and the derivation or evolution of the "verba ignominiosa," followed by a natural process.—La Congiura, Nuona Archivio Veneto, 1897, tom. xiii. pt. ii. p. 347.]