Dattiri was bound naked to a plank and killed piecemeal by the people, who bit his flesh, cut slices out, and sold and ate it--distributing his living body as a sort of infernal sacrament among themselves.
[3] See the article 'Perugia' in my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_.
To multiply the records of crime revenged by crime, of force repelled by violence, of treason heaped on treachery, of insult repaid by fraud, would be easy enough.

Indeed, a huge book might be compiled containing nothing but the episodes in this grim history of despotism, now tragic and pathetic, now terror-moving in sublimity of passion, now despicable by the baseness of the motives brought to light, at one time revolting through excess of physical horrors, at another fascinating by the spectacle of heroic courage, intelligence, and resolution.

Enough however, has been said to describe the atmosphere of danger in which the tyrants breathed and moved, and from which not one of them was ever capable of finding freedom.

Even a princely house so well based in its dynasty and so splendid in its parade of culture as that of the Estensi offers a long list of terrific tragedies.

One princess is executed for adultery with her stepson (1425); a bastard's bastard tries to seize the throne, and is put to death with all his kin (1493); a wife is poisoned by her husband to prevent her poisoning him (1493); two brothers cabal against the legitimate heads of the house, and are imprisoned for life (1506).