figures, in much the same garb, gathering their sea-harvest. When
Hannibal, beset by the Romans, drew his ships across the peninsula and
so escaped from the inner sea, fishermen of Tarentum went forth as
ever, seeking their daily food. A thousand years passed, and the fury
of the Saracens, when it had laid the city low, spared some humble
Tarentine and the net by which he lived. To-day the fisher-folk form a
colony apart; they speak a dialect which retains many Greek words
unknown to the rest of the population. I could not gaze at them long
enough; their lithe limbs, their attitudes at work or in repose, their
wild, black hair, perpetually reminded me of shapes pictured on a
classic vase.
Later in the day I came upon a figure scarcely less impressive. Beyond
the new quarter of the town, on the ragged edge of its wide,
half-peopled streets, lies a tract of olive orchards and of seed-land;
there, alone amid great bare fields, a countryman was ploughing. The
wooden plough, as regards its form, might have been thousands of years
old; it was drawn by a little donkey, and traced in the soil—the
generous southern soil—the merest scratch of a furrow. I could not but
approach the man and exchange words with him; his rude but gentle face,
his gnarled hands, his rough and scanty vesture, moved me to a deep
respect, and when his speech fell upon my ear, it was as though I
listened to one of the ancestors of our kind. Stopping in his work, he
answered my inquiries with careful civility; certain phrases escaped
me, but on the whole he made himself quite intelligible, and was glad,
I could see, when my words proved that I understood him. I drew apart,
and watched him again. Never have I seen man so utterly patient, so
primaevally deliberate. The donkey’s method of ploughing was to pull
for one minute, and then rest for two; it excited in the ploughman not
the least surprise or resentment. Though he held a long stick in his
hand, he never made use of it; at each stoppage he contemplated the
ass, and then gave utterance to a long “Ah-h-h!” in a note of the most
affectionate remonstrance. They were not driver and beast, but comrades
in labour. It reposed the mind to look upon them.
Walking onward in the same direction, one approaches a great wall, with
gateway sentry-guarded; it is the new Arsenal, the pride of Taranto,
and the source of its prosperity. On special as well as on general
grounds, I have a grudge against this mass of ugly masonry. I had
learnt from Lenormant that at a certain spot, Fontanella, by the shore
of the Little Sea, were observable great ancient heaps of murex
shells—the murex precious for its purple, that of Tarentum yielding in
glory only to the purple of Tyre. I hoped to see these shells, perhaps
to carry one away. But Fontanella had vanished, swallowed up, with all
remnants of antiquity, by the graceless Arsenal. It matters to no one
save the few fantastics who hold a memory of the ancient world dearer
than any mechanic triumph of to-day. If only one could believe that the
Arsenal signified substantial good to Italy! Too plainly it means
nothing but the exhaustion of her people in the service of a base ideal.
The confines of this new town being so vague, much trouble is given to
that noble institution, the
