234 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS StJerome xvi.18 John Chrysostom xvii.42-5 Augustine xvii.46-52 John of Damascus xvii.103-5 Orosius xviii.6 Leo the Great xx.29 Council of Chalcedon xx.35 Attila xx.45 Uther Pendragon xx.49 Prosper of Aquitaine xx.58-72 Finding of St Michael on Gargano xx.102 Fulgentius xx.104-11 Clovis xxi.4-26 St Leonard xxi.11-12 Justinian xxi.50 Boethius xxi.15-20 Theodoric xxi.5 Cassiodorus xxi.49 Priscian xxi.50 St Benedict xxi.54-8 Totila xxi.66 King Arthur xxi.74 Gregory the Great xxii.9-103 Phocas xxii. 104 Chosroes xxiii.11-12 Raising of the Cross xxiii. 12 Isidore xxiii.31-4 Mohamed xxiii.39-7 Bede xxiii.133 Pippin xxiii.154 Pope Zacharias xxxiii.154 Carolus monk of Montecassino xxxiii. 154 Charlemagne xxiv. 1 Hugh Capet xxiv.93 William the Conqueror xxv.39 Godefroi de Bouillon xxv.92 Christian conquest of Jerusalem xxv.92 St Bernard xxvi.22-4 Hugh of St Victor xxvi.47-118 Petrus Lombardus xxix. 1 Petrus Comestor xxix.1 Frederick Barbarossa xxix. 1 Saladin xxix.43-57 Charles, King of Sicily [missing] Pope Nicholas III Orsini [missing] Pope Boniface VIII Caetani [missing] Edward, Prince of Wales [missing] Tamburlain [missing] A FIFTEENTH-CENTURY SITE REPORT ON THE VATICAN OBELISK* T he archaeological practices of the fif- teenth century are not easy to recon- struct. The rich antiquarian texts of Poggio Bracciolini, Flavio Biondo and Pomponio Leto survey Rome's ruins vividly, if rapidly. Epigraphic notebooks and the fantastic woodcuts of the Hypnerotomachia Polifili mingle meticulous observation of fallen columns and broken temples with nostalgic evocations of a lost world. But few detailed records of the investigation of individual sites have come to light. Jacopo Mazzocchi's Epigrammata antiquae urbis, of 1521, gave native and foreign scholars a decisive and natural stimulus for precise reporting. Anto- nius Laelius Podager was only one of many owners who made their copies of Mazzocchi into portable notebooks, adorning the mar- gins with vignettes of the splendours and miseries of archaeology in a world without institutes, professorships and grants. These sources, as Rodolfo Lanciani showed long ago, let us see, almost day by day, how anti- quarians gained an increasingly clear im- age of the topography and appearance of ancient Rome in the decades just before the Sack. By contrast, we have little concrete in- formation on the works and days of earlier readers of the city-even those as devoted and influential as Pomponio Leto and Leon Battista Alberti. Their attitudes are familiar, but the texture and detail of their work remain elusive.' These circumstances give special interest to the text that follows:2 a detailed descrip- tion and analysis of the Vatican obelisk, which forms part of the Milanese humanist * We owe thanks to Fabio Barry, Martin Davies, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Hugo Meyer, John Pinto and Paul Zanker, who provided valuable advice, criti- cism and information. 1 R. Lanciani, The Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome, London 1897; Storia degli scavi di Roma, 4 vols, Rome 1902-12, reissued with an additional unpub- lished volume, Rome 1989-94. The standard recent survey remains R. Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, Oxford 1969 (repr. 1973, new edn 1988), which gives references to the older literature. 2 Below, pp. 240-8 (translation and Latin text). Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Volume 58, 1995