Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/307

 THE THIRD BOOK OF THE COURTIER BY COUNT BALDESAR CASTIGLIONE TO MESSER ALFONSO ARIOSTO I — ^e read that Pythagoras very ingeniously and cleverly discovered the measure of Hercules's body; and the way was this : it being known that the space where the Olympic games were celebrated every five years, before the temple of Olympian Jove near Elis, in Achaia,'" had been measured by Hercules, and a stadium made six hundred and twenty-five times the length of his own foot; and that the other stadia which were afterwards established throughout Greece by later generations, were like- wise of the length of six hundred and twenty-five feet, and yet were somewhat shorter than the first one: by this proportion Pythagoras easily reckoned how much larger Hercules's foot was than other human feet ; and thus, knowing the measure of the foot, from this he argued that the whole body of Hercules was larger than other men's in the same proportion that the first stadium bore to the other stadia. So you, my dear messer Alfonso, by the same reasoning may clearly see, from this small part of the whole body, how superior the court of Urbino was to all others in Italy, considering how much the games that were devised for the refreshment of minds wearied by the most arduous labours, were superior to those that were practised in the other courts of Italy. And if these were of such sort, think what were the other worthy pursuits to which our minds w^ere bent and wholly given; and of this I con- fidently make bold to speak with hope of being believed; for I am not praising things so ancient that I might be allowed to invent, but can prove what I affirm by the testimony of many men worthy of faith, who are still living and personally saw and knew the life and behaviour that one time flourished in that court: and I hold myself bound, as far as I can, to strive with every effort to rescue this bright memory from mortal oblivion, and by my writing to make it live in the hearts of posterity. 171