The sibyl is reading aloud from one of her books of oracles.  The two little genii standing behind her shoulder, and listening with absorbed attention, hold another book, not yet unclasped, ready for her.  She reads her prophecy with keen, searching eyes, and a manner that is almost stern.  We can see in the large, strong features the determination of her character.

It is not a gentle face, and not pleasing, but it is full of meaning.  We read there the record of the centuries which have passed over her head, bringing her the deep secrets of life.  Yet the prophecies are still unfulfilled, and there is a look of unsatisfied longing in her wrinkled old face.

You will notice that the outlines of the Cumaean sibyl are drawn in an oval figure similar to that inclosing the Delphic sibyl.  Here, however, the oval is of a more elongated form, and the left side is broken midway by the introduction of the book.

The old writer Pausanias, writing his “Description of Greece,” in the second century, says that the people of Cumae showed a small stone urn in the temple of Apollo containing the ashes of the sibyl.  For many centuries her cavern was pointed out to travellers in a rock under the citadel of Cumae.  Finally the fortifications of the city were undermined, but to this day a subterranean passage in the rock on which they were built is still shown as the entrance to the sibyl’s cave.

XIII

LORENZO DE’ MEDICI

The statue of Lorenzo de’ Medici is the central figure on the tomb erected to the memory of this prince.  He was the rather unworthy namesake of his illustrious grandfather, who was known as Lorenzo the Magnificent.  The Medici family was for many generations the richest and most powerful in Florence.  They were originally merchants, and, as the name signifies, physicians, and, accumulating great wealth, they became powerful leaders, and really the rulers of the republic.

Some of them were munificent patrons of art and literature.  There was one named Cosimo, who did so much to make his city famous that he was called Pater Patriae, the father of the country, as was, centuries afterwards, our own Washington.  His grandson Lorenzo won the title of the Magnificent for his lavish generosity and superb plans for the advancement of art and learning.  So much power could not safely be in the hands of a single family.  The Medici, from being benefactors, finally became tyrants.

The Lorenzo of this statue was one of the more insignificant members of the family.  It is said that “he inherited the vices without the genius of the family, and was ambitious, unscrupulous, and dissipated.  His uncle, Pope Leo X., after depriving the Duke of Urbino of his hereditary domains, bestowed them, with the title of duke, on Lorenzo, whom he also made general of the pontifical forces."[29] In 1518 Leo united him in marriage to a French princess, and their daughter was the afterwards celebrated Catharine de’ Medici, queen of the French king, Henry II.  These are the main facts in the life of a man who is remembered only because he had illustrious ancestors, a famous daughter, and a superb tomb.