Crotone

“ THE SAGE OF CROTON
The popularity of this sage at Croton offers no problem: the inhabitants had become sufficiently civilized to appreciate the charm of being regenerated. We all do. Renunciation has always exercised an irresistible attraction for good society; it makes us feel so comfortable, to be told we are going to hell—and Pythagoras was very eloquent on the subject of Tartarus as a punishment. ”

“ For few cities bear so fair a name or seem as full of promise as Cortona. Although the world has long since passed her by, she loiters on her hill-top between the valley and the sky like a forgotten goddess who is loth to quit her great estate. Her towering walls encompass her about, those mighty walls built for a mighty people which Virgil sings of in the Aeneid; she frowns as though she were still girt for war, and had forgotten how to smile; her lean grey castle, stark upon the crest of the hill, points to the heaven like an avenging sibyl. ”

“ In every country and every age those talk most who have least to say that is worth saying. These tonguesters of Cotrone had their predecessors in the public place of Croton, who began to gossip before dawn, and gabbled unceasingly till after nightfall; with their voices must often have mingled the bleating of goats or the lowing of oxen, just as I heard the sounds to-day. ”

“ This in the town which still bears the name of Croton. The people are all more or less unhealthy; one meets peasants horribly disfigured with life-long malaria. There is an agreeable cordiality in the middle classes; business men from whom I sought casual information, even if we only exchanged a few words in the street, shook hands with me at parting. I found no one who had much good to say of his native place; every one complained of a lack of water. Indeed, Cotrone has as good as no water supply. ”

“ Onesimus rose, miserable and crestfallen. ‘I am penniless,’ he said, ‘or I would try to show myself grateful.’
‘Tush!’ answered Croto. ‘I am King of the Grove and priest of Diana and of Virbius—whoever Virbius was,’ he added under his breath. ‘The women give me so many offerings that, but for the never knowing where or when the sword will smite, I should be as fat as a Salian, and I feed nearly as well. Nay, poor lad, I can well do something for thee and never feel the loss. I have more money than I know what to do with, for I can never leave the grove. ”

“ But it was in the early morning, as I have said, that we discovered the nameless charm of Cortona—that same charm which we found in a different guise in all the little towns of Umbria and Tuscany. Our inn, though it towered more than a thousand feet above the valley, was at the bottom of the city, for Cortona in the immemorial Etruscan fashion hangs from the crest of her hill. Even the ambitious motor-bus could not climb higher than the Piazza Signorelli, because nearly all the streets above it are so steep that they are built in shallow steps. ”

“ One ragged urchin offers to accompany him to the cathedral; another persists in following him round nearly the whole circuit of the ancient walls. This last is too bad; a walk round the walls of Cortona is emphatically one of those things which are best enjoyed in one's own company.
As an Italian city which has lived, though in rather a feeble way, through 17 the regular stages of Roman colony and mediæval commonwealth, Cortona has of course its monuments which record those periods of its being. ”

“ Strength is the parent of sweetness in this wonderful winged youth. But not a single sacrifice is made in the whole picture to mere elegance.—Cortona is a place which, independently of Signorelli, well deserves a visit. Like all Etruscan towns, it is perched on the top of a high hill, whence it commands a wonderful stretch of landscape—Monte Amiata and Montepulciano to the south, Chiusi with its lake, the lake of Thrasymene, and the whole broad Tuscan plain. ”

“ It is more than likely that many of us are making mistakes almost as serious to-day, so we need not find such an attitude incredible.
PLATE VII.—SOUVENIR D’ITALIE
Corot at the height of his powers is seen in the “Souvenir d’Italie.” The thousand subtle nuances of exquisite colour in the luminous sky, the refined drawing and firm painting of the trees, and the happy confidence revealed by every brush mark upon the canvas, make it one of the most delightful and, we may say, most “lovable” of its creator’s works. ”

“ The Persians pursuing Democedes, arrived at Crotona, found him in the public market, and laid hands on him. Some of the Crotonians, dreading the Persian power, were ready to deliver him up; but others seized the Persians in turn, and beat them with staves, though they expostulated in these terms: "Men of Crotona, have a care what you do, you are rescuing a man who is a runaway from the king; how will king Darius endure to be thus insulted? How can what you do end well, if you force this man from us? ”

“ Up, up. Croft glanced at his companion and found her face wide-eyed. Up, up, as she floated beside him, her slender shape in the void of darkness beyond the atmosphere of Palos beginning to flash and glow with its contained fire. For Croft had willed himself to that one of the moons on which he had first come down from his daring journey from the earth. And now it swung above them. Together they swam toward it, and came to it finding its barren and lifeless crags and plains aglare in the light of Sirius, partly steeped in impenetrable gloom. ”

“ But their worshippers regarded them as men of the olden time; and, in fact, the most of the heroes lived at one time. Many are historical personages: generals like Leonidas, Lysander; philosophers like Democritus and Aristotle; legislators like Lycurgus and Solon. The people of Croton adored even one of their fellow-citizens, Philip by name, because he had been in his time the most beautiful man in Greece. The leader who had guided a band of colonists and founded a city became for the inhabitants the Founder; a temple was raised to him and every year sacrifices were offered to him. ”

“ It is indeed hard to realize that a town thronged with citizens covered all this area. Yet so it is. Every footstep is a memory. Along this very track walked the sumptuous ladies of Croton on their way to deposit their vain jewels before the goddess Hera, at the bidding of Pythagoras. ”

“ In the underground portion of a tower at Crotoy, still to be seen, although the upper part has disappeared, facing the sea, is a door-way, which local tradition points out as that of the dungeon of Joan of Arc. Crotoy, or Le Crotoy, is on the coast of Picardy, a little to the north of Abbeville. In the fifteenth century it was a place of some warlike importance, especially to the English. Its situation near the coast, and the strength of its fortress, made Le Crotoy one of the principal places on the sea line, whence stores and war provender could be carried into France. ”

“ Crothers had been a widow.
“Well,” said Mrs. Crothers idly, “then I feel encouraged and anointed for better things. I was thinking what a stupid time I was going to have—I, a house-mouse, with such a field-mouse as Sara Audrey here.”
“That is disingenuous of you,” said Arnold promptly. “No girl of twenty-two, however charming, can compete with the woman who looks twenty-two and is a very little more.”
“Men like brains,” admitted Mrs. Crothers with pretty thoughtfulness, “but they love complexions.” ”

“ At Crotona, where he finally established himself, his extraordinary qualities collected round him a great number of disciples. The inhabitants were notorious for luxury and licentiousness, but the good effects of his influence were soon visible. Sobriety and temperance succeeded. Six hundred of the inhabitants became his disciples and enrolled themselves in a society to aid each other in the pursuit of wisdom, uniting their property in one common stock for the benefit of the whole. They were required to practise the greatest purity and simplicity of manners. ”

“ Italy gave to his delicacy some of its strength, invested the most tender-hearted of painters with the touch of sternness that could alone save his work from becoming invertebrate: but it could not materially alter his habit of vision, or turn into dramatic shape an inherently lyrical gift. He saw Nature as a song in France first of all and last of all; Italy only helped [Pg 57] him to give the song a more severe metrical basis than it might otherwise have possessed. Much that was sweet in Corot it would seem that the relentless landscapes and pitiless skies of Italy helped to make strong. ”

“ Pietro da Cortona and his followers. After the middle of the seventeenth century, the Florentine school, and also that of Rome, underwent a remarkable revolution, occasioned by the vast number of the followers of Pietro da Cortona. Sects in painting have the same fate as sects in philosophy: one succeeds another; and the new principles are propagated more or less rapidly, according to the degree of opposition they have to encounter where they happen to be diffused. The manner of Cortona met with considerable opposition in Rome, as we shall find in the proper place. ”

“ Nor was his influence confined to Kroton. Other towns in Italy and Sicily,—Sybaris, Metapontum, Rhêgium, Katana, Himera, etc., all felt the benefit of his exhortations, which extricated some of them even from slavery. Such are the tales of which the biographers of Pythagoras are full. ”

“ Mr. Crotchet gave a long whistle.
"Very good," said Sir Richard; "we shall be back with you soon. You take good care of the horses."
"I will, sir."
"What do you think of that, Crotchet?" said Sir Richard, as they made their way into the very meadow across which Todd and Lupin had run to get to Caen Wood.
"It's the finger o' Providence, yer worship."
"Well, I cannot deny, Crotchet, but that it may be so. At all events, whether it be Providence or chance, one thing is quite certain, and that is, that we are on the track of those whom we seek." ”

“ On that little hill by the city of Florence, where the lovers of Giorgione are lying, it is always the solstice of noon, of noon made so languorous by summer suns that hardly can the slim naked girl dip into the marble tank the round bubble of clear glass, and the long fingers of the lute-player rest idly upon the chords. It is twilight always for the dancing nymphs whom Corot set free among the silver poplars of France. In eternal twilight they move, those frail diaphanous figures, whose tremulous white feet seem not to touch the dew-drenched grass they tread on. ”

“ On the way up, I had glimpses down a thousand feet or more into the Mucone or Acheron, raging and foaming in its narrow valley. It rises among the mountains called “Fallistro” and “Li Tartari”—unquestionably Greek names.
On this river and somewhere above Acri stood, according to the scholarly researches of Lenormant, the ancient city of Pandosia. I do not know if its site has been determined since his day. It was “very strong” and rich and at its highest prosperity in the fourth century B.C.; after the fall of Sybaris it passed under the supremacy of Croton. ”

“ Something is just going to happen—somebody is coming, some one we love—you can almost detect a faint perfume, long remembered, never to be forgotten. A Corot is a tryst with all that you most admire and love best—it speaks of youth, joyous, hopeful, expectant youth. The flavor is Grecian, and if the Greeks had left us any paintings they would all have been just like Corot's. ”

“ The Crotonians were headed by Milo, the famous champion; over whose shoulders a lion’s skin was thrown, and himself armed with a club, like another Hercules. The latter gained a complete victory, and made a dreadful [Pg 383] havoc of those who fled, so that very few escaped; and Sybaris was depopulated.
About sixty years after this some Thessalians came and settled in it; however, they did not long enjoy peace, being driven out by the Crotonians. Being thus reduced to the most fatal extremity, they implored the succour of the Lacedæmonians and Athenians. ”

“ But Croton laughed, from contempt. “I undertake, worthy lord,” said he, “to bear away with this hand whomever thou shalt point out to me, and with this other defend myself against seven such Lygians, and bring the maiden to thy dwelling though all the Christians in Rome were pursuing me like Calabrian wolves. If not, I will let myself be beaten with clubs in this impluvium.”
“Do not permit that, lord,” cried Chilo. “They will hurl stones at us, and what could his strength effect? Is it not better to take the girl from the house,—not expose thyself or her to destruction?” ”

“ The newest formed leaves are light olive green with mid-ribs and veins of golden yellow, and the interspaces spotted with the same color. As the leaves become older, the green deepens and changes to a bright bronzy crimson, and the golden yellow of the mid-ribs, veins and spots becomes a rich orange scarlet." Princess of Wales is one of the long-leaved drooping forms of Croton, and is very distinct in character. The leaves are from one and one-half to two feet in length. The ground color is green, and the variegations creamy-yellow, very variable in color. ”

“ Folliott.—Sir, Lais was a Corinthian.
Mr. Crotchet.—Od’s vengeance, sir, some Aspasia and any other Athenian name of the same sort of person you like—
The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—I do not like the sort of person at all: the sort of person I like, as I have already implied, is a modest woman, who stays at home and looks after her husband’s dinner.
Mr. Crotchet.—Well, sir, that was not the taste of the Athenians. They preferred the society of women who would not have made any scruple about sitting as models to Praxiteles; as you know, sir, very modest women in Italy did to Canova ”