“Me miserum!  Copista etiam mihi carmina figit;
  Et tribuit nugas jam mihi quisque suas.”

He seems to have been successful in putting a stop to this injurious treatment; for not long after he declared, with a sarcasm directed against the prominent qualities of his fellow-citizens, “There is no better man at Rome than I. I seek nothing from any one.  I am not wordy.  I sit here and am silent.”

  “Non homo me melior Rome est.  Ego nil peto ab ullo. 
  Non sum verbosus.  Hic sedeo et taceo.”

It had become the custom, upon occasions of public festivity, to adorn Pasquin with suits of garments, and with paint, forcing him to assume from time to time different characters according to the fancy of his protectors.  Sometimes he appeared as Neptune, sometimes as Chance or Fate, as Apollo or Bacchus.  Thus, in the year 1515, he became Orpheus, and, while adorned with the plectrum and the lyre of the poet, Marforio addressed a distich to him in his new character, which hints at the popular appreciation of the Pope.  The year 1515 was that of the descent of Francis I, into Italy, and of the bloody battle of Marignano.  “In the midst of war and slaughter and the sound of trumpets,” said Marforio, “you sing and strike your lyre:  this is to understand the temper of your Lord.”

  “Inter bella, tubas, caedes, canis ipse, lyramque
  Percutis.  Hoc sapere est ingenium Domini."[7]

But the character of most of those pasquinades which belong to the pontificate of Leo is so coarse as to render them unfit for reproduction.  A general licentiousness pervaded Rome, and the vices of the Pope and the higher clergy, veiled, but not hidden, under the displays of sensual magnificence and the pretended refinements of degraded art, were readily imitated by a people taught to follow and obey the teachings of their ecclesiastical rulers.  Corruption of every sort was common.  Virtue and vice, profane and sacred things, were alike for sale.  The Pope made money by the sale of cardinalates and traffic in indulgences.  “Give me gifts, ye spectators,” begged Pasquin; “bring me not verses:  divine Money alone rules the ethereal gods.”

  “Dona date, astantes; versus ne reddite:  sola
  Imperat aethereis alma Moneta deis.”

Leo’s fondness for buffoons, with whom he mercilessly amused himself by tormenting them and exciting them to make themselves ridiculous, is recorded in a question put to Pasquin on one of his changes of figure.  “Why have you not asked, O Pasquil, to be made a buffoon? for at Rome everything is now permitted to the buffoons.”

  “Cur non te fingi scurram, Pasquille, rogasti? 
  Cum Romae scurris omnia jam liceant.”

Leo died in 1521.  His death was sudden, and not without suspicion of poison.  It was said that the last offices of the Church were not performed for the dying man, and an epigram sharply embodied the report.  “Do you ask why at his last hour Leo could not take the sacred things?  He had sold them.”