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Two colossal statues of marble Hercules slaying Cacus, by Bandinelli, and David the Conqueror of Goliath, by Michael Angelo mount near the door their age-long watch, like two gigantic sentinels whom someone has forgotten to relieve.
The Gonfalonier was in correspondence with the Marquis of Carrara on the 10th of May about a block of marble for this giant; but Michelangelo at that time had returned to Rome, and of the Cacus we shall hear more hereafter.
During November or December his pension of fifty crowns a month was renewed, the Pope’s agent in Florence being Battista Figiovanni, Prior of San Lorenzo. In 1528 a block of marble had been assigned to Michael Angelo, from which he determined to extract a heroic group of Hercules and Cacus.
But savage Cacus, infatuate to leave nothing undared or unhandled in craft or crime, drives four bulls of choice shape away from their pasturage, and as many heifers of excellent beauty. And these, that there should be no straightforward footprints, he dragged by the tail into his cavern, the track of their compelled path reversed, and hid them behind the screen of rock.
This trifling success, the first in the State since the loss of New Orleans, attracted attention, and the people rejoiced at the capture of the Des Allemands garrison as might those of Greece at the unearthing of the accomplished and classic thief Cacus. Indeed, the den of that worthy never contained such multifarious "loot" as did this Federal camp.
The battle between Hercules and Cacus, although one of the oldest of the traditions common to the whole Indo-European race, appears in Italy as a purely local legend, and is narrated as such by Virgil, in the eighth book of the AEneid; by Livy, at the beginning of his history; and by Propertius and Ovid.
The place where Hercules pastured his oxen was known long after as the Forum Boarium; near it the Porta Trigemina preserved the recollection of the monster's triple head; and in the time of Diodorus Siculus sight-seers were shown the cavern of Cacus on the slope of the Aventine.
As in the Cave of Cacus, once there, you are there for ever, and few are the cases in which vessels fast aground on the Goodwins ever again get away from the great ship-swallower. The schooner had a cargo of oats, and if she could be got off would be a very valuable prize to her salvors. But 'if' and we all know that 'there's much virtue in your "if".
But I am exasperated at length, to drag out this CACUS from the den of obscurity, where he lurketh, to detect him by the light of those stars he hath so impudently traduced, and to shew there is not a Monster in the skies so pernicious and malevolent to mankind as an ignorant pretender to Physic and Astrology.
Here was a cavern, awful and deep-withdrawn, impenetrable to the sunbeams, where the monstrous half-human shape of Cacus had his hold: the ground was ever wet with fresh slaughter, and pallid faces of men, ghastly with gore, hung nailed on the haughty doors. This monster was the son of Vulcan, and spouted his black fires from his mouth as he moved in giant bulk.
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