(It Occurs In Some Old
Charts, However, As Paleparto.) An Instructive Map Of Italy Could Be
Drawn Up, Showing The Sites And Cities Wrongly Named From Corrupt
Etymology Or Falsified Inscriptions, And Those Deliberately Miscalled
Out Of Principles Of Local Patriotism.
The whole country is full of
these inventions of litterati which date, for the most part, from the
enthusiastic but undisciplined Cinque-Cento.
The minute geographical triangle comprised between Cosenza, Longobucco
and San Demetrio which I was now traversing is one of the least known
corners of Italy, and full of dim Hellenic memories. The streamlet
"Calamo" flows through the valley I ascended from Acri, and at its side,
a little way out of the town, stands the fountain "Pompeio" where the
brigands, not long ago, used to lie in wait for women and children
coming to fetch water, and snatch them away for ransom. 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. The god Pan was
figured on some of its coins, and appropriately enough, considering its
sylvan surroundings; others bear the head of the nymph Pandosia with her
name and that of the river Crathis, under the guise of a young shepherd:
they who wish to learn his improper legend will find it in the pages of
Aelian, or in chapter xxxii of the twenty-fifth book of Rhodiginus,
beginning Quae sit brutorum affectio, etc. [Footnote: Brunii a
brutis moribus: so say certain spiteful writers, an accusation which
Strabo and Horace extend to all Calabrians. As to the site of Pandosia,
a good number of scholars, such as old Prosper Parisius and Luigi Maria
Greco, locate it at the village of Mendicino on the river Merenzata,
which was called Arconte (? Acheron) in the Middle Ages. So the Trionto
is not unquestionably the Traeis, and in Marincola Pistoia's good little
"Cose di Sibari" (1845) the distinction is claimed for one of four
rivers - the Lipuda, Colognati, Trionto, or Fiuminica.]
We have here not the Greece of mediaeval Byzantine times, much less that
of the Albanians, but the sunny Hellas of the days when the world was
young, when these ardent colonists sailed westwards to perpetuate their
names and legends in the alien soil of Italy.
The Mucone has always been known as a ferocious and pitiless torrent,
and maintains to this day its Tartarean reputation. Twenty persons a
year, they tell me, are devoured by its angry waters: mangia venti
cristiani all' anno! This is as bad as the Amendolea near Reggio.
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