[Pagina precedente]... occasions, and that too more than once. Thus the history of Porsenna's war reflects the image of that with Veii in the year (di Roma) 277, which after the misfortune on the Cremera brought Rome to the brink of destruction. In this again the Veientines made themselves masters of the Janiculum; and in a more intelligible manner, after a victory in the field: here again the city was saved by a Horatius (come dal Coclite nella guerra con Porsenna); the consul who arrived [4445]with his army at the critical moment by forced marches from the land of the Volscians: the victors, encamping on the Janiculum, sent out foraging parties across the river and laid waste the country; until some skirmishes, which again took place by the temple of Hope and at the Colline gate, checked their depredations: yet a severe famine arose within the city.
(26. Gen. 1829.)
Niebuhr, ib. sez. intit. The Patrician Houses and the Curies, p.268. Each house (ciascuno dei ?(?? gentes nei quali era anticamente distribuito il popolo ateniese) bore a peculiar name resembling a patronymic in form; as the Codrids, the Eumolpids, the Butads: which produces an appearance, but a fallacious one, of a family affinity (perchè quelle gentes, come ap. i Romani, erano una mera divisione politica; ciascuna gens o casa era composta di più famiglie senz'alcun riguardo ad affinità scambievole). These names may have been transferred from the most distinguished among the associated families to the rest: it is more probable that they were adopted from the name of a hero, who was their eponymus. Such a house was that of the Homerids in Chios; whose descent from the poet was only an inference drawn from their name, whereas others pronounced that they were no way related io him (not.747. Harpocration v. '????(???. It may be warrantably assumed that a hero named Homer was revered by the Ionians at the time when Chios received its laws. See the Rhenish Museum (Museo Renano) I. 257.) In Greek history what appears to be a family, may probably often have been a house of this kind; and this system of subdivision is not to be confined to the Ionian tribes alone.
(27. 1829.)
[4446]Ib. sez. intit. Aeneas and the Trojans in Latium, p.166-7. These wars Virgil describes, effacing discrepancies and altering and accelerating the succession of events, in the latter half of the Aeneid. Its contents were certainly national; yet it is scarcely credible that even Romans, if impartial, should have received sincere delight from these tales. We feel but too unpleasantly how little the poet succeeded in raising these shadowy names (degli eroi di quelle guerre), for which he was forced to invent a character, into living beings, like the heroes of Homer. Perhaps it is a problem that cannot be solved, to form an epic poem out of an argument which has not lived for centuries in popular songs and tales as common national property, so that the cycle of stories which comprises it, and all the persons who act a part in it, are familiar to every one. V. p.4475 - Assuredly the problem was not to be solved by Virgil, whose genius was barren for creating, great as was his talent for embellishing. That he felt this himself, and did not disdain to be great in the way adapted to his endowments, is proved by his very practice of imitating and borrowing, by the touches he introduces of his exquisite and extensive erudition, so much admired by the Romans, now so little appreciated. He who puts together elaborately and by piecemeal, is aware of the chinks and crevices, which varnishing and polishing conceal only from the unpractised eye, and from which the work of the master, issuing at once from the mould, is free. Accordingly Virgil, we may be sure, felt a misgiving, that all the foreign ornament with which he was decking his work, though it might enrich the poem, was not his own wealth, and that this would at last be perceived by posterity. That [4447]notwithstanding this fretting consciousness, he strove, in the way which lay open to him, to give to a poem, which he did not write of his own free choice, the highest degree of beauty it could receive from his hands; that he did not, like Lucan, vainly and blindly affect an inspiration which nature had denied to him; that he did not allow himself to be infatuated, when he was idolized by all around him, and when Propertius sang: Yield, Roman poets, bards of Greece, give way, The Iliad soon shall own a greater lay; that, when death was releasing him from the fetiers of civil observances, he wished to destroy what in those solemn moments he could not but view with melancholy, as the groundwork of a false reputation; this is what renders him estimable, and makes us indulgent to all the weaknesses of his poem. The merit of a first attempt is not always decisive: yet Virgil's first youthful poem shews that he cultivated his powers with incredible industry, and that no faculty expired in him through neglect. But how amiable and generous he was, is evident where he speaks from the heart: not only in the Georgics, and in all his pictures of pure still life; in the epigram on Syron's (così, in vece di Sciron's) Villa: it is no less visible in his way of introducing those great spirits that beam in Roman story.
(29-30. 1829.)
Alla p.4316. Ben d'altra qualità e d'altro peso è la congettura del Niebuhr fondata in profondissima dottrina, e scienza dell'antichità, that the Teucrians and Dardanians, Troy and Hector, ought perhaps to be considered as Pelasgian:... that they were not Phrygians was clearly [4448]perceived by the Greek philologers, who had even a suspicion that they were no barbarians at all. (loc. cit. p.4431. fin., sezione intitolata The Oenotrians and Pelasgians, p.28.) Egli reca i fondamenti di questa sua propria e particolare opinione, ib. Nella sez. intit. Conclusion di quella parte della sua storia che concerne gli antichi popoli d'Italia, p.148, ripete questa sua congettura: In the very earliest traditions they (the Pelasgians) are standing at the summit of their greatness. The legends that tell of their fortunes, exhibit only their decline and fall: Jupiter had weighed their destiny and that of the Hellens; and the scale of the Pelasgians had risen. The fall of Troy was the symbol of their story. (L'autore riguarda la guerra di Troia come un mito. Sez. intit. Aeneas and the Trojans in Latium, p.151. Let none treat this inquiry with scorn, because Ilion too was a fable... Mythical the Trojan war certainly is...: yet it has an undeniable historical foundation; and this does not lie hid so far below the surface as in many other poetical legends. That the Atridae were Kings of the Peloponnesus, is not to be questioned.) Altrove (sez. cit. nella parentesi qui sopra, p.160-61.) egli reca di nuovo i fondamenti di questa opinione, e mette anco innanzi un'altra sua congettura, che la tradizione della venuta d'Enea nel Lazio, dell'avervi egli fondata una colonia donde Roma derivasse, e dell'essere i romani di origine troiana, non fosse altro che un effetto ed un'espressione della national affinity esistente fra i Troiani e i Romani, in quanto questi erano, secondo l'autore, di origine in parte Pelasgica. - I Pelasghi, [4449]secondo il Niebuhr (ed una delle parti più insigni ed eminenti e più originali della sua Storia consiste nelle nuove vedute e nei nuovi lumi ch'ei reca sopra questa misteriosa razza, com'ei la chiama; e nella nuova luce in che egli l'ha posta), furono una nazione distinta, e di origine e di costumi diversa, da quella degli Elleni, che noi co' Latini chiamiamo Greci; e nel tempo medesimo grandemente affine: e parlarono una lingua peculiar and not Greek, e nondimeno grandemente affine alla greca; più affine della Latina, il cui elemento affine al linguaggio greco, quello elemento which is half Greek sembra, dice il Niebuhr, unquestionable che sia d'origine pelasgica. Tuttavia Pelasghi e Greci non s'intendevano insieme, come non s'intendono italiani e francesi ec. (p.23, e passim).
(31. Gen. 1. Feb. 1829.). V. p.4519.
A viver tranquilli nella società degli uomini, bisogna astenersi non solo dall'offendere chi non ci offende, cosa ordinaria; ma eziandio, cosa rarissima, dal proccurare (dal cercare) che altri ci offenda. - Desiderio sincero di viver tranquilli nella società degli uomini, rarissimi sono che l'hanno veramente: avendolo, il conseguire l'effetto è cosa molto più facile che non si crede.
(1. Feb. 1829.)
Tutti, cominciando dal Pindemonte nella sua Epistola, hanno biasimato l'introduzione di Ettore e delle cose troiane nel Carme dei Sepolcri; e tutti leggono quell'episodio con grande interesse, e segretamente vi provano un vero piacere. Certo, quell'argomento è rancido; ma appunto perch'egli è rancido, perchè la nostra acquaintance con quei personaggi dàta dalla nostra fanciullezza, essi c'interessano sommamente, c'interessano in modo, che non sarebbe possibile, sostituendone degli altri, [4450]produrre altrettanto effetto.
(1. Feb. 1829.)
Della lettura di un pezzo di vera, contemporanea poesia, in versi o in prosa (ma più efficace impressione è quella de' versi), si può, e forse meglio, (anche in questi sì prosaici tempi) dir quello che di un sorriso diceva lo Sterne; che essa aggiunge un filo alla tela brevissima della nostra vita. Essa ci rinfresca, per così dire; e ci accresce la vitalità. Ma rarissimi sono oggi i pezzi di questa sorta.
(1. Feb. 1829.). Nessuno del Monti è tale.
(??(??per (??. V. Orelli (loc. cit. p.4431.) tom.2. Lips. 1821. p.529-30.
Grus (grue) - spagn. grulla, quasi grucula o gruicula. - Sol - soleil, quasi soliculus. - Legnaiuolo, armaiuolo ec. quasi lignariolus e simili.
(2. Feb. 1829.)
Mirado (ammirato) per maravigliato; en la noche callada per tacente. Francisco de Rioja, Cancion (cioè sobre) las ruinas de It lica, strofa ultima.
Chi non sa circoscrivere, non può produrre. La facoltà della produzione è scarsa o nulla in quell'ingegno dove le altre facoltà sono troppo vaste e soprabbondano.
(3. Feb. 1829.). Vedi la pag.4484.
Niebuhr (loc. cit. p.4431. fine) sezione intitolata Beginning and Nature of the Earliest History, p.216. segg. The greater is the antiquity of the legends: (dei miti ec. intorno ai fatti dei re di Roma, e ai primi tempi della città): their origin goes back far beyond the time when the annals (gli annali pontificali di Roma) were restored (furono rinnovati, dopo che gli antichi annali erano periti nell'incendio di Roma al tempo della presa della città fatta dai Galli). That they were transmitted from generation to generation in lays, that their contents cannot be more authentic than those of any other poem on the deeds of ancient times which is preserved by song, is not a new notion. A century and a half will soon have elapsed, since Perizonius (not.627. In [4451]his Animadversiones Historicae, c.6.) expressed it, and shewed that among the ancient Romans it had been the custom at banquets to sing the praises of great men to the flute; (not.628. The leading passage in Tusc. Quaest. IV. 2. Gravissimus auctor in Originibus dixit Cato, morem apud majores hunc epularum fuisse, ut deinceps, qui accubarent, canerent ad tibiam clarorum virorum laudes atque virtutes. Cicero laments the loss of these songs; Brut. 18. 19. Yet, like the sayings of Appius the blind, they seem to have disappeared only for such as cared not for them. Dionysius knew of songs on Romulus [(??(????(??????(????(?????? (?(?'P???(???(?????(??(? (?????, dice Dionisio 1. 79. della nota favola circa la nascita di Romolo e Remo, e la vendetta da loro presa di Amulio]) a fact Cicero only knew from Cato, who seems to have spoken of it as an usage no longer subsisting. The guests themselves sang in turn; so it was expected that the lays, being the common property of the nation, should be known to every free citizen. According to Varro, who calls them old, they were sung by modest boys, sometimes to the flute, sometimes without musi...
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