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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
In a recent book, Dante poeta veltro (Florence, 1953), Leonardo Olschki discussed the statues of Castor and Pollux that stand at the top of the ramp leading onto the Capitoline hill in Rome. He showed that these representations of the Dioscures were brought to the heart of the Renaissance city not merely as works of art, but as symbols: symbols of heavenly protection (they are the Gemini of the Zodiac) and of Liberty (to Dante they stood for popular resistance to tyranny), in which roles they had been the guardians of Rome since ancient times. In addition, Olschki discovered an attribute appended for political reasons by a sixteenth-century Pontiff, Clement VII, that made the twins respectively the Pope and the Emperor—co-rulers of the modern Roman Empire.
1 I owe the discovery of this diagram to Prof. Harry Bober, who is preparing a book on die schemata.
2 ‘Here's the Campidoglio, where Titus sold so many Jews at market. This is called the Tarpeian Rock, from which Cleopatra threw down her husband. Marcus Aurelius stays there all dressed up without fear of storms. And one day, says Abbot Fea, it will all become gold, down to the last finger [some of the original gilding of the bronze is preserved, ed.]. And if you examine the horse's arse and the man's face, you can already see some sign that the yellow is bursting out. And when it is all gold, that's the end: even the pedestal will come crashing down, and Judgment Day will be close.’
