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It was not only the celebrated examples of statuary, the Laocoon and the Apollo of the cabinets of the Belvedere, the Meleager, or even the torso of Hercules that astonished him.
The former Hercules wished to overthrow with his sword, but Mercury touched him on the arm and told him that the souls of the departed were only empty shadow pictures and could not be wounded by mortal weapons. With the soul of Meleager the hero chatted in friendly fashion, and received from him loving messages for the upper world.
In telling our tale we fain would not dwell much on the cradledom of our Meleager. The young widow in her widow's cap grew to be more lovely than she had ever been before her miscreant husband had seen her.
Meleager and Atalanta are Diana's servants, servants of all order, purity, due sequence of season, and time. The orbed architecture of Tuscany, with its sculptures of the succession of the labouring months, as compared with the rude vaults and monstrous imaginations of the past, was again the victory of Meleager.
Its eyes shone with blood and fire, its bristles stood like threatening spears, its tusks were like those of Indian elephants. The growing corn was trampled, the vines and olive trees laid waste, the flocks and herds were driven in wild confusion by the slaughtering foe. All common aid seemed vain; but Meleager called on the heroes of Greece to join in a bold hunt for the ravenous monster.
"None of these prayers moved him. The gates were beaten down; the enemy was within the walls; the tide of battle shook the very tower where Meleager sat; the doom of Calydon seemed to be sealed. Then came the fair Cleopatra, and knelt before her husband, and besought him to withhold no longer the aid which he alone could give. 'O Meleager, she sobbed, 'none but thou can save us.
It was no longer with the comparative merits of Stoicism and Epicureanism and Neo-Platonism, or with the rival literary fame of their own Ariston and Kerykos as against Meleager and Menippus and Theodorus of Gadara, that the Gerasenes concerned themselves.
Thus and thus, then, spoke a mere provincial, a Jew who, though far less conspicuous and interesting, came from the region of Meleager and Philodemos not from their town of Gadara, nor possibly from their district, but from some place not so very far away. It was not to be expected that he should win the hearts of men as he did. He had not the Greek culture of the two Gadarenes.
At the same time, far away with his companions, and unwitting of these things, Meleager was struck through with a sudden pang. Wondering and helpless, the heroes gathered about, to behold him dying of some unknown agony, while he strove to conquer his pain.
Of works of sculpture, the Sleeping Fawn, now in Munich, was formerly here; the masterly group representing Atalanta and Meleager, a Juno, a sick Satyr by Bernini, the bust of Cardinal Barberini by the same artist, and the busts of Marius, Sylla, and Scipio Africanus, are in this palace.
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