By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy

wilderness, stand the little huts of the officers, vigilant on every

road or by-way to wring the wretched soldi from toilsome hands. As

became their service, I found these gentry anything but amiable; they

had commonly an air of ennui, and regarded a stranger with surly

suspicion.

When I was back again among the high new houses, my eye, wandering in

search of any smallest point of interest, fell on a fresh-painted

inscription:—

“

ALLA

MAGNA

GRAECIA

.

STABILIMENTO

IDROELETTROPATICO

.”

was well meant. At the sign of “Magna Graecia” one is willing to accept

“hydroelectropathic” as a late echo of Hellenic speech.

CHAPTER V

DULCE GALAESI FLUMEN

Taranto has a very interesting Museum. I went there with an

introduction to the curator, who spared no trouble in pointing out to

me all that was best worth seeing. He and I were alone in the little

galleries; at a second or third visit I had the Museum to myself, save

for an attendant who seemed to regard a visitor as a pleasant novelty,

and bestirred himself for my comfort when I wanted to make sketches.

Nothing is charged for admission, yet no one enters. Presumably, all

the Tarentines who care for archaeology have already been here, and

strangers are few.

Upon the shelves are seen innumerable miniature busts, carved in some

kind of stone; thought to be simply portraits of private persons. One

peers into the faces of men, women, and children, vaguely conjecturing

their date, their circumstances; some of them may have dwelt in the old

time on this very spot of ground now covered by the Museum. Like other

people who grow too rich and comfortable, the citizens of Tarentum

loved mirth and mockery; their Greek theatre was remarkable for

irreverent farce, for parodies of the great drama of Athens. And here

is testimony to the fact: all manner of comic masks, of grotesque

visages; mouths distorted into impossible grins, eyes leering and

goggling, noses extravagant. I sketched a caricature of Medusa, the

anguished features and snaky locks travestied with satiric grimness.

You remember a story which illustrates this scoffing habit: how the

Roman Ambassador, whose Greek left something to be desired, excited the

uproarious derision of the assembled Tarentines—with results that were

no laughing matter.

I used the opportunity of my conversation with the Director of the

Museum to ask his aid in discovering the river Galaesus. Who could find

himself at Taranto without turning in thought to the Galaesus, and

wishing to walk along its banks? Unhappily, one cannot be quite sure of