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 NOTES TO THE THIRD BOOK OF THE COURTIER Sannazaro) accompanied him to France, and shared his exile there until his death in 1504. Being, by the terms of a treaty between Louis XII and Ferdi- nand the Catholic, compelled to leave France, she and her four children took refuge, first with her sister Antonia at Gazzuolo, and then at Ferrara, where she was kindly treated and maintained by her husband's nephew Duke Alfonso d'Este. Here she spent the last twenty-five years of her life, but at times in such poverty that when Julius II placed Ferrara under the ban of the Church, she obtained special permission to have religious services per- formed in her house, on the plea that she had not the means wherewith to leave the city. Note 401, page 205. Federico III, (born 1452; died 1504), was a son of Ferdinand I of Naples, a younger brother of Alfonso II, and an uncle of his immediate predecessor, Ferdinand II. Having taken part in the weak resis- tance offered to Charles VIII's invasion of Naples in 1494, he became king on the early death of his nephew in October 1496, and seems to have tried to keep aloof from the turbulent schemes in which Alexander VI sought to involve him. After another vain attempt to withstand the invasion of Louis XII, and having been shamefully betrayed by the Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand the Catholic, to both of whom he had appealed for aid, he retired with his wife and children to the island of Ischia (which furnished refuge at the same time to his wido^wed sister Beatrice, ex-Queen of Hungary, and to his widowed niece Isabella, ex-Duchess of Milan), ceded his crown to Louis XII in exchange for 30,000 ducats and the Countship of Maine, and spent the last three years of his life in France. Note 402, page 205. Federico's eldest son Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, was besieged in Taranto during the Franco-Spanish invasion which resulted in his father's downfall. On a sworn promise to set him free, he surrendered to the Great Captain (see note 239), but was treacherously detained and sent as a prisoner to Spain, where he was treated by Ferdinand the Catholic with almost royal honours. He continued to reside in Spain, and on the death of his mother in 1533, he was joined at Valencia by his two sisters. Note 403, page 205. The reference here is probably to the siege of Pisa by the Florentines in 1499, which was finally abandoned owing in part at least to the bravery of the Pisan women. Castiglione himself was the author of some Latin verses celebrating an incident of the siege. Note 404, page 205. TOMYRIS was in fact queen of the Massagetae, who were a nomadic people allied to the Scythians and dwelt north-east of the Caspian Sea. Herodotus relates that Cyrus the Great sent her an offer of marriage, and on being refused, invaded her kingdom and captured her son, but was finally defeated and slain, 529 B.C. The ARTEMISIA referred to in the text is probably not the Queen of Halicarnassus (who fought on the Persian side at Salamis in 480 B.C.), but rather the sister-consort and successor of 400