Piso

“ It was natural that the Phoceans should have adopted the art, and given a name to it, as was their wont, from their own language. The resemblance is too close to be accidental with “Piazza.” Piso, in Spanish, is to stamp: it is also the floor of a house, formerly made by ramming down, just as the walls were—Pistor in Latin. Their bread was better kneaded than ours; so piston, pestle, &c.
[359] At Shemish, the most remarkable Phœnician ruin that I visited, the Phœnician lime and mortar are conjoined with the Hellenic blocks. ”

“ St. Jerome, Chron., (Migne, Vol. XXVII, coll. 453, 454) : “M. Annaeus Lucan of Cordova, a poet, having been detected as participating in the conspiracy of Piso, held out his arm to the physician that his veins might be opened.” ”

“ Even at the outset of his military career his excessive love of wine gave him the name of Biberius, instead of Tiberius, Caldius for Claudius, and Mero for Nero. Later, when emperor and at the very time that he was busy correcting the public morals, he spent a night and two whole days feasting and drinking with Pomponius Flaccus and Lucius Piso, immediately afterwards making the one governor of the province of Syria and the other prefect of the city, and even declaring in their commissions that they were the most agreeable of friends, who could always be counted on. ”

“ Just as with other building materials, the possibilities of this material can only be judged by an examination of properly planned and constructed examples of the pisé-builder’s art. Such are found here and there throughout the country, pleasing to look at, affording comfort and satisfaction to their owners. A properly constructed pisé building can be finished to suit the taste of the most fastidious. Even without plaster the walls can be ‘floated’ down and a ‘skin’ obtained on them which, when limewashed, resembles stonework. ”

“ If reason rule, pisé will make good and all will be well.
If pisé-building is attempted where the conditions are unsuitable and in defiance of its physical limitations, the misguided enthusiasts responsible must blame only themselves. But it is not self-reproach alone that they will have to suffer, for the author and all true friends of pisé will view their troubles with as much anger as sorrow.
Nothing could be so well calculated to bring discredit on a new movement as the failures of a few enthusiastic incompetents.
91
Sketch of a Pisé House in Course of Erection. ”

“ You must be careful to cover this lump of pisé with a little board; for though a shower of rain, falling in an oblique direction, will not injure it, yet it may be a little damaged if the rain falls perpendicularly, and especially if it remains upon it. Leave the lump exposed to the air, only covered with a board or flat stone, and if it continues without cracking or crumbling, and increases daily in density and compactness as its natural moisture decreases, you may be sure that the earth is fit for building. ”

“ I never knew how beautiful marble could be until I came to Pisa and Rome. Somehow I had associated Pisa with the Leaning Tower, and not with the Baptistry. I knew it existed, and, vaguely, that it was worth seeing; but Pisa meant the Leaning Tower to me. Now I couldn't tell you which has left the deeper impression. I'm not at all the same girl that I was before I put Pisa and Rome into the gallery of my mind. I must make myself a worthy frame for such pictures as I am storing up now. ”

“ In mud walls they put straw, chopped hay, hair, flocks, wool, etc., to make the mud adhere to the wood, or laths; whereas the workmen who build in pisé are careful to pick out the least straw or the smallest bit of root which remains in the earth: in short, the pisé is a mineral substance imitating stone, consequently anything that can slake or rot must be excluded. ”

“ Not far from the sanctuary is a small building containing a bronze chest, in which are kept the bones of Pelops. Of the wall and of the rest of the building there were no remains, but vines were planted over all the district where Pisa stood.
6.22.2 The founder of the city, they say, was Pisus, the son of Perieres, the son of Aeolus. The people of Pisa brought of themselves disaster on their own heads by their hostility to the Eleans, and by their keenness to preside over the Olympic games instead of them. ”

“ Pisé-work executed with too much water is worse than if done with dry earth, as, on account of the elasticity of the wet earth, the effect of the ramming is deadened, and the earth remains unconsolidated. The men should be prohibited to keep time in ramming, as it causes vibration, which is injurious to the stability of the wall. On working over a lower course, it is as well to let the lower tie-bars about 4 in. into the same to give the boxes a firm hold on the old work, thereby the joints become imperceptible, and the upper edge of the lower course is prevented from chipping off. ”

“ As for Pisa at large, although it is not exactly what one would call a mouldering city--for it has a certain well-aired cleanness and brightness, even in its supreme tranquillity--it affects the imagination very much in the same way as the Campo Santo. And, in truth, a city so ancient and deeply historic as Pisa is at every step but the burial-ground of a larger life than its present one. ”

“ Tired with their march across the wintry Apennines, the foreign soldiers found in Pisa a city full of friends. Tables were laid in the streets where all might sup on wine and meat and enjoy the hospitality of the city. Under foot the branches of pine and boughs of autumn roses exhaled their fresh aroma; and the ruined walls of the cracked and damp-stained palaces were hidden by the great squares of pale-crimson silk, gold brocade, and Turkey carpets that were hung from every window. ”

“ There are some curious old façades, and a richly ornamented Gothic front of brickwork in the Lung’ Arno, part of which, now occupied by the Caffè dell’ Ussaro, is worth notice.
On Tuesday, I went with the younger Dr. Savi, son to the professor of botany in the university, to the baths of Pisa. The rock in the neighbourhood seems a dark gray limestone. The water as it rises has a temperature of from 95° to 104° in the different springs; it is clear and tasteless; several other springs rise in the neighbourhood, just sensibly warm to the hand. ”

“ It is now only that I realise what a time of tension our stay at Pisa has been. We breathe quietly. Even the calm placid Mother feels the relief of not having to start up at every sound and wonder whether 'L'Arno é sbordato.'
"I always feel as if a special Providence watched over us in respect of lodgings. It has certainly been so this time, as we could never have hoped, arriving so late, to obtain this charming apartment, with full sun, glorious view, and all else we can wish. ”

“ Still haunted by these memories, we took the carriage road to Pisa, over which Shelley's friends had hurried to and fro through those last days. It passes an immense forest of stone-pines—aisles and avenues; undergrowth of ilex, laurustinus, gorse, and myrtle; the crowded cyclamens, the solemn silence of the trees; the winds hushed in their velvet roof and stationary domes of verdure. ”

“ This country abounds in pigeons, nuts, and mushrooms. We went for a certain distance over the plain and arrived at the baths of Pisa, of which there are several. One of these bears an inscription cut in marble which I could not rightly decipher. It is in rhymed Latin verses and seems to celebrate the virtues of these springs. As far as I could gather it was written in 1300.
The largest and the most seemly of these baths is square-built with one side open, very well fitted, and having marble staircases. It measures thirty paces square, and in one corner the spring flows in through a spout. ”

“ Anon I went to make water, not dreaming of any thing but my testicle that by some accident I might have bruised as I used to do, but in pissing there come from me two stones, I could feel them, and caused my water to be looked into; but without any pain to me in going out, which makes me think that it was not a fit of the stone at all; for my pain was asswaged upon my lying down a great while before I went to make water. Anon I made water again very freely and plentifully. ”

“ From the summit of a lofty hill beyond Carrara, the first view of the fertile plain in which the town of Pisa lies—with Leghorn, a purple spot in the flat distance—is enchanting. Nor is it only distance that lends enchantment to the view; for the fruitful country, and rich woods of olive-trees through which the road subsequently passes, render it delightful.
The moon was shining when we approached Pisa, and for a long time we could see, behind the wall, the leaning Tower, all away in the uncertain light ”

“ In our English climate Pisé-building is a summer craft, and the small-scale experiments of one person through a single summer cannot in the nature of things add very greatly to the sum of our knowledge of what is possible with Pisé and of what is not. ”

“ Porto Fino! On our way to Castagnolo, at lovely Lastre a Signa, we paused at Pisa for a night.
“Pisa is a bald Florence, if I may say so; beautiful, but so empty and lifeless. There are houses there quite peculiar, however, to Pisa, most interesting for their local style. Very broad in effect are those flat blank surfaces without mouldings. The frescoes on them, alas! are now merely very beautiful blotches and stains of colour. ”

“ A STOP AT PISA Baedeker says that Pisa has a population of twenty-seven thousand two hundred people and that it is a quiet town. It is. I caught the spell of a score of places like this as I walked out into the open square facing the depot. The most amazing botch of a monument I ever saw in my life I saw here—a puffing, swelling, strutting representation of Umberto I, legs apart, whiskers rampant, an amazing cockade, all the details of a gaudy uniform, a breast like a pouter-pigeon—outrageous! ”

“ Pisa is more of a sanitarium than it is a gay{126} watering place however. The city is, in fact, like its celebrated leaning tower, half tottering on the brink of its grave. Commerce and industry are far from active and its streets are half deserted; many of them are literally grass-grown and all the others are paved with great flat clean-swept flags, a delight for the automobilist, whose chief experience of pavements has been in France and Belgium.
The entrance to Pisa by road from the north is one of the most pleasing of that of any Italian city. ”

“ Pisa, so celebrated in Elis, was originally Pisan, of the same purport as the Aquæ Pisanæ above. It was so called from a sacred fountain, to which only the name can be primarily applicable: and we are assured by Strabo [610] Την κρηνην Πισαν ειρησθαι, that the fountain had certainly the name of Pisan. I have mentioned that Mount Pyrene was so called from being a fountain of fire: such mountains often have hot streams in their vicinity, which are generally of great utility. ”

“ The quarrying of this famous marble, the purer quality of which is of close grain (the fine statuary marble) , is a source of employment to a vast number of workmen. When the traveller has time to spare, it is no doubt worth stopping a few hours between trains to visit the place. At last we arrived in sight of Pisa, and as we entered the town got a glimpse from the carriage windows of the buildings which have made it celebrated.
PISA.
The weather was cold, and lunch hardly helped to warm us, so we speedily set out to get a brisk walk and see the [267] lions. ”

“ I was a young man when I dwelt at Pisa. One day I went out begging with a certain lay brother, a good-for-nothing. He was a Pisan, and the same who afterwards went and lived with the brothers at Fixulus, where they had to drag him out of a well which he had jumped into from some foolishness or desperation. Then he disappeared, and could not be found. The brothers thought the devil had carried him off. However that may have been, this day at Pisa he and I went with our baskets to beg bread, and chanced to enter a courtyard. ”

“ So I was thankful when we were able to come on to this comfortable hotel, where Flora and the faithful Victoire are incessant in their attentions. I am still anxious about my sweet Mother, who is very ailing and unable to go out; otherwise I always like staying at Pisa, with its clean quiet streets and the interest of the Campo Santo, so full of beautiful relics and memories. Many delightful hours have I spent there, and what a school of art and history it is! And then the Spina is always so graceful and striking against the crimson sunset which turns the muddy Arno into a river of fire. ”

“ Strength.—“Hence these houses, made of earth alone, are able to resist the violence of the highest winds, storms and tempests. The height that is intended to be given to each story being known, boards of 3 or 4 ft. in length should be placed beforehand in the pisé, in those places where the beams are to be fixed, and as soon as the mould no longer occupies that place, the beams may be laid on, though the pisé be fresh made ”

“ There were pusiones, or Pisans, not made at Pisa, but defences, as Mr. Hudson Turner well observes, for the pis, or breast. For the thighs of the collegiate guard there was small protection, the harness for one leg only having a quisshew, or cuissart. ”

“ I said, and he at once leaned out of the window, and there he remained intently gazing till its Duomo, Leaning Tower, and Baptistery, could be seen no more. Then he turned to me, and said, “I thank you, sir, for showing me Pisa. I should not have liked to return to the States without having seen Pisa.” I beg of you not to take my fellow-traveller as a national type, for Americans are as various, and differ from each other as much, as the people of other countries. But I cannot think he had seen Pisa. ”