224 JEROME CARDAN 



after their attempt, thus sharing the fate of his enemies 

 at Milan and Pavia. If he is to be believed in this 

 matter, the Fates, though they might not shield him 

 from attack, proved themselves to be diligent and re- 

 morseless avengers of his wrongs. At the end of Sep- 

 tember he turned his back upon Bologna and the cold 

 hospitality it had given him, and set forth on his last 

 journey. He travelled by easy stages, and entered 

 Rome on October 7, 1571, the day upon which Don 

 John of Austria annihilated the Turkish fleet at Lepanto. 

 There are evidences in his later writings beyond those 

 already cited, that Cardan's views on religion had under- 

 gone change during his sojourn at Bologna. It was the 

 custom, even with theologians of the time, to illustrate 

 freely from the classics, wherefore the spectacle of the 

 names of the great men of Greek and Roman letters, 

 scattered thickly about the pages of any book, would 

 not prove or even suggest unorthodoxy. Cardan quotes 

 Plato or Aristotle or Plotinus twenty times for any saint 

 in the Calendar. He does not mention the Virgin more 

 than once or twice in the whole of the De Vita Propria ; 

 and, in discoursing on the immortality of the soul, he 

 cites the opinion of Avicenna, but makes no mention of 

 either saint or father. 1 The world of classic thought was 

 immeasurably nearer and more real to Cardan than it 

 can be to any modern dweller beyond the Alps : to him 

 there had been no solution of continuity between classic 

 times and his own. When he sat down to write in the 

 Theonoston his meditations on the death of his son, in 

 the vain hope of reaping consolation therefrom, he in- 

 voked the golden rule of Plotinus, which lays down that 

 the future is foreseen and arranged by the gods. Being 

 thus arranged, it must needs be just, for God is the 

 1 De Vita Propria, ch. xxii. p. 63. 



