It is
true that, both as priest and cosmographer, he was interested alike in
classical and Christian monuments and in the marvels of nature. Or was
he doing violence to himself when he wrote that Nola was more highly
honoured by the memory of St. Paulinus than by all its classical
reminiscences and by the heroic struggle of Marcellus? Not, indeed,
that his faith in relics was assumed; but his mind was evidently rather
disposed to an inquiring interest in nature and antiquity, to a zeal
for monumental works, to a keen and delicate observation of human life.
In the last years of his Papacy, afflicted with the gout and yet in the
most cheerful mood, he was borne in his litter over hill and dale to
Tusculum, Alba, Tibur, Ostia, Falerii, and Otriculum, and whatever he
saw he noted down. He followed the Roman roads and aqueducts, and tried
to fix the boundaries of the old tribes which had dwelt round the city.
On an excursion to Tivoli with the great Federigo of Urbino the time
was happily spent in talk on the military system of the ancients, and
particularly on the Trojan war. Even on his journey to the Congress of
Mantua (1459) he searched, though unsuccessfully, for the labyrinth of
Clusium mentioned by Pliny, and visited the so-called villa of Virgil
on the Mincio. That such a Pope should demand a classical Latin style
from his abbreviators, is no more than might be expected.
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