Angelo, and every day feasts
and great expenditure. Such as the feast of Monte Trestacho, with its
twenty bulls attached to twenty carts, killed as a public spectacle in the
square of St. Peter's; and the race which was run between buffaloes and
horses along the entire Via di Nostra Signora Transpontina to the square
of the said palace. And also those festivals which I have mentioned of the
twelve triumphal cars, gilded and ornamented with many fine figures and
very noble devices; there were Romans and the heads of the districts of
Rome, dressed in the old style, with all the pomp and pride that could be
desired; one hundred sons of citizens on horseback, so brave and so
bizarre in their gallantry of painted antiquity, that in comparison with
them the velvet mantles and plumes and the infinity of novelties and
costumes in which Italy exceeds every other province of Europe, appeared
very ordinary. But when I had seen this noble phalanx and company
descending from the Capitol with many infantry, and had viewed all the
bravery of the cars and the ediles, dressed in the old fashion, and had
seen Senhor Giulio Cesarino pass with the standard of the city of Rome, on
a horse with trappings covered with a white coat of arms and black
brocade, I at once turned my horse towards Monte Cavallo, and thus went
riding along the Thermae road pondering over many things of the olden
times, in which I then felt myself to be more than in the present.
Then I ordered my servant to go without fail to St.
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