Germanicus, without a word of allusion to his own name. The Duke of
Alva, on his return from the battle-fields of Brabant and Friesland,
reared a colossal statue of himself, and upon its pedestal caused these
lines to be engraved: "To Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva,
Governor of the Netherlands under Philip the Second, for having
extinguished sedition, chastised rebellion, restored religion, secured
justice, established peace; to the King's most faithful minister this
monument is erected."

[Bor, iv. 257, 258. Meteren, 61. De Thou, v. 471-473, who saw it
after it was overthrown, and who was "as much struck by the beauty
of the work as by the insane pride of him who ordered it to be
made."]

So pompous a eulogy, even if truthful and merited, would be sufficiently
inflated upon a tombstone raised to a dead chieftain by his bereaved
admirers. What shall we say of such false and fulsome tribute, not to a
god, not to the memory of departed greatness, but to a living, mortal
man, and offered not by his adorers but by himself? Certainly, self-
worship never went farther than in this remarkable monument, erected in
Alva's honor, by Alva's hands. The statue was colossal, and was placed
in the citadel of Antwerp. Its bronze was furnished by the cannon
captured at Jemmingen. It represented the Duke trampling upon a
prostrate figure with two heads, four arms, and one body. The two
heads were interpreted by some to represent Egmont and Horn, by others,
the two Nassaus, William and Louis. Others saw in them an allegorical
presentment of the nobles and commons of the Netherlands, or perhaps an
impersonation of the Compromise and the Request. Besides the chief
inscription on the pedestal, were sculptured various bas-reliefs; and the
spectator, whose admiration for the Governor-general was not satiated