...body to protect his subjects. Sadeler depicts a figure holding a pair of scales in his right hand and a cornucopia in his left, bearing the inscription: "Of Good Hope." He attributes this symbol to the most Christian King of the French, Charles IX of Valois.

Similarly, Gabriel Simeoni portrays a man carrying scales, one of which has snapped under excessive weight, with the title: "The Order of the Balance Must Not Be Transgressed." The author was suggesting that unjust men observe no limit or measure; consequently, they often experience a harmful and unexpected end, just as the scale breaks when overloaded by too much weight.

Costalius also depicted a man holding scales in his hand with the inscription: "Nothing is Better than Virtue, Nothing more Excellent." The author alludes to Critolaus weighing money, honors, and virtues. Through this symbol, the author shows that virtue is to be preferred over wealth and ambition, although to some, this hardly seems to capture the true nature of a symbol. The same author adds another emblem which, according to some, possesses nothing of the symbolic; he depicts a man striking a rock with his fist, titled: "An Example of Folly." In this way, he attempts to show that one should not contend with the stubborn.

However, Gabriel Simeoni delineates a man carving letters into marble with the title: "The Injured Man Writes in Marble." This signifies that anyone who has been wronged remains mindful of the injury. There are some who rely so heavily on their own authority and resources that they easily inflict insults upon those of the lowest condition, thinking that in the course of time such things will be consigned to oblivion. Nonetheless, they are mistaken, as an injury is written in marble.

Sambucus devised an image of a man sitting on the ground holding an open book in his hand, with a sword, a sickle, and a cornucopia above his head, adding the title: "Counsel." This was to suggest that all things must be carried out with deliberation. Gabriel Simeoni figured a man standing over an image of the globe with a sword in his right hand and a book in his left. The title is: "Caesar from Both." He intended to signify that Julius Caesar was so well-armed with letters, and so learned in arms, that he achieved dominion over the entire world.

Bocchius depicted a tightrope walker holding a long pole in both hands, with the inscription: "To Always Hold the Middle is Prudence." By this symbol, we are reminded that virtue consists in the middle path.

Gabriel Simeoni portrays a man with the globe in his right hand and a sheet of paper in his left, adding this title: "Either Caesar or Nothing." This was the symbol, or rather the motto, of Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois, even without the accompanying image, which Simeoni later adopted as a title for this described figure to suggest to the reader that he would either die or perform some celebrated deed. Indeed, the armed man in this image, holding the representation of the world in one hand, reflects in a way the monarchy of Julius Caesar, while the sheet in the other hand, covered in dense characters, represents "nothing." This symbol was aptly suited to the reckless Borgia; for he achieved nothing, but while still a young man, he was slaughtered in the Kingdom of Navarre and buried with an epitaph of this sort:

Borgia was Caesar in deeds, and Caesar in name,

Either nothing or Caesar," he said; he was both.

I remember reading a four-line verse on this subject of the following tenor:

Borgia wishes to be called "Either nothing or Caesar"—and why not?

Since he can be both "nothing" and "Caesar" at once.

You conquered all, you hoped for all, Caesar;

All things fail you, and you begin to be nothing.

Philip II, King of the Spains, expressed in a painting the globe of the earth upon the shoulders of Hercules, with the epigraph: "So that Atlas may Rest," after the Emperor Charles V, his father, ceded the administration of his kingdoms to him. Sadeler also figures a man holding a sword in his right hand and a palm branch in his left, with the inscription: "This is the Certain Rest from Labors," and he attributes this symbol to Charles of Bourbon, King of the Navarrese. Likewise, he delineates a man erecting columns with his right hand and grasping a spear with his left, gracing the symbol with this verse: "A wondrous faith: a single hand raises the fallen columns." He assigns this symbol to Charles IX, the twenty-sixth Valois King of the French. Gabriel Simeoni presents an image of a man on his knees, entreating a personification of Death, who appears to be attacked by a weapon...