In these the duke's victories were made the subject of illustration.

There was a procession of great chariots in Piazza Navona, with groups symbolizing the triumphs of the ancient Caesar, in the arrangement of which, no doubt, the assistance had been enlisted of that posse of valiant artists who were then flocking to Rome and the pontifical Court.
Yriarte, mixing his facts throughout with a liberal leaven of fiction, tells us that "this is the precise moment in which Cesare Borgia, fixing his eyes upon the Roman Caesar, takes him definitely for his model and adopts the device 'Aut Caesar, aut nihil.'" Cesare Borgia never adopted that device, and never displayed it.

In connection with him it is only to be found upon the sword of honour made for him when, while still a cardinal, he went to crown the King of Naples.

It is not at all unlikely that the inscription of the device upon that sword--which throughout is engraved with illustrations of the career of Julius Caesar--may have been the conceit of the sword-maker as a rather obvious play upon Cesare's name.( 1) Undoubtedly, were the device of Cesare's own adoption we should find it elsewhere, and nowhere else is it to be found.
1 The scabbard of this sword is to be seen in the South Kensington Museum; the sword itself is in the possession of the Caetani family.
Shortly after Cesare's return to Rome, Imola and Forli sent their ambassadors to the Vatican to beseech his Holiness to sign the articles which those cities had drawn up and by virtue of which they created Cesare their lord in the place of the deposed Riarii.
It is quite true that Alexander had announced that, in promoting the Romagna campaign, he had for object to restore to the Church the States which had rebelliously seceded from her.

Yet there is not sufficient reason to suppose that he was flagrantly breaking his word in acceding to the request of which those ambassadors were the bearers and in creating his son Count of Imola and Forli.