Pottery for commonest use
among Calabrian peasants has a grace of line, a charm of colour, far
beyond anything native to our most pretentious china-shops. Here
still lingers a trace of the old civilization. There must be a great
good in a people which has preserved this need of beauty through
ages of servitude and suffering. Compare such domestic utensils -
these oil-jugs and water-jars - with those in the house of an
English labourer. Is it really so certain that all virtues of race
dwell with those who can rest amid the ugly and know it not for
ugliness?
The new age declares itself here and there at Cosenza. A squalid
railway station, a hideous railway bridge, have brought the town
into the European network; and the craze for building, which has
disfigured and half ruined Italy, shows itself in an immense new
theatre - Teatro Garibaldi - just being finished. The old one,
which stands ruinous close by, struck me as, if anything, too large
for the town; possibly it had been damaged by an earthquake, the
commonest sort of disaster at Cosenza. On the front of the new
edifice I found two inscriptions, both exulting over the fall of the
papal power; one was interesting enough to copy: -
"20 SEPT., 1870.
QUESTA DATA POLITICA
DICE FINITA LA TEOCRAZIA
NEGLI ORDINAMENTI CIVILI.
IL DI CHE LA DIRA FINITA
MORALMENTE
SARA LA DATA UMANA."
which signifies: "This political date marks the end of theocracy in
civil life. The day which ends its moral rule will begin the epoch
of humanity." A remarkable utterance anywhere; not least so within
the hearing of the stream which flows over the grave of Alaric.
One goes to bed early at Cosenza; the night air is dangerous, and -
Teatro Garibaldi still incomplete - darkness brings with it no sort
of pastime. I did manage to read a little in my miserable room by an
antique lamp, but the effort was dispiriting; better to lie in the
dark and think of Goth and Roman.
Do the rivers Busento and Crati still keep the secret of that "royal
sepulchre, adorned with the splendid spoils and trophies of Rome"?
It seems improbable that the grave was ever disturbed; to this day
there exists somewhere near Cosenza a treasure-house more alluring
than any pictured in Arabian tale. It is not easy to conjecture what
"spoils and trophies" the Goths buried with their king; if they
sacrificed masses of precious metal, then perchance there still lies
in the river-bed some portion of that golden statue of Virtus,
which the Romans melted down to eke out the ransom claimed by
Alaric. The year 410 A.D. was no unfitting moment to break into
bullion the figure personifying Manly Worth. "After that," says an
old historian, "all bravery and honour perished out of Rome."
CHAPTER IV
TARANTO
Cosenza is on a line of railway which runs northward up the Crati
valley, and joins the long seashore line from Taranto to Reggio.
