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 FLORENCE PAST AND PRESENT
 
 FLORENCE 
 
 PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 BY 
 
 The Rev. J. WOOD BROWN, M.A. 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' THK HUII.DHRS OF FLORENXE' 
 
 WITH MAPS AXD ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
 19 I I
 
 
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 TTAUAN
 
 PREFACE 
 
 This and the following pages are to stand between 
 the Title and the Book itself; they may well be 
 used to explain the one by w^ay of preparing for the 
 other. Now, in a word, the ' Past and Present ' 
 here are not two but one thing. To have spoken 
 of the latent past, to have called the present its 
 vehicle, had more nearly expressed what we are to 
 seek and find in the following chapters. Let me 
 make place here for two examples of what I mean. 
 
 Ten years ago, in the heat of a Tuscan summer, I 
 made one of a party that drove to see a famous 
 park. The villa belonging to it, we found, was not 
 shown ; it was then, and is now, the residence of a 
 man of great title, but insane, for whom it had been 
 chosen as a residence at once suitable to his high 
 rank, and remote enough to give him the quiet 
 retreat his state requires. 
 
 Our guide to the beauties of the place was very 
 willing to speak of the invalid, nor is there now any 
 reason why I should not repeat what I then heard. 
 One of the principal Italian newspapers has just 
 told the story of this madness without making any
 
 viii Florence Past and Present 
 
 mystery of the name and residence of the sufferer.^ 
 This recent report, in its agreement with that given 
 to me, may be taken to show that here is no passing 
 freak of a disordered brain, but something which has 
 become a recurrent and established habit under the 
 madness that has provoked it. Let us come to the 
 reputed facts of the case. 
 
 The sufferer has fits of restlessness which repeat 
 themselves every few weeks. At these times his 
 attendants humour his wish to be alone, but still 
 keep him under observation in his wanderings 
 among the trees of the park. As they thus watch 
 unseen, what they see is strange enough. Their 
 charge seats himself on the ground and seeks for 
 stones. If he does not find what he wants — for he 
 is particular in the choice — he will chip one pebble 
 on another till he has got what suits his purpose. 
 Then, holding a stone in each hand, and using quick 
 strokes of edge upon edge, he accomplishes with 
 incredible dexterity the trimming of his beard and 
 hair. 
 
 I am told that many of the most exact thinkers in 
 science deny the transmission of acquired habits by 
 sheer inheritance from father to son. Still less, one 
 sees, would they then allow that such an inheritance 
 could lie dormant through countless generations to 
 revive at last in a remc^te descendant. Yet it might 
 be difficult to explain this story unless in a way 
 
 ^ Corricre dclla Sera, Milan, 4lh June 1910.
 
 Preface ix 
 
 involving that scientific heresy. Was it invented? 
 Was a mere tale twice told at an interval of ten 
 years so as to tally in all important particulars? 
 Hardly. 
 
 What have we then ? Surely it was thus that 
 men worked stones and used them in the prehistoric 
 past. The particular present might be explained 
 were we free to suppose that insanity had here 
 discovered and developed inherited brain impres- 
 sions connecting with his countless ancestors of the 
 Stone Age the late scion of one of the most ultra- 
 civilised European stocks. 
 
 To me at any rate this story, which I cannot but 
 believe, has been a revelation of the present as a 
 possible vehicle of the remotest past. As such it 
 not only illustrates the title I have chosen for this 
 book, but has been in a ver}' real way a determinant 
 of my thought in producing it. 
 
 Take another example — and it shall be one which 
 involves less disputable elements. In the beginnings 
 of Italian commercial life, long before our era 
 opened, the first figure impressed on Italian coinage 
 was one which is variously interpreted as the back- 
 bone of a fish, or the branch of a tree with its twigs. 
 This is found on the earliest examples of the ors 
 sigjiatinn, and Professor Pais has, with much plausi- 
 bility, supposed it the canting sign of Spina ; that 
 northern emporium of trade set in the marshes by 
 the mouth of the Po and busy with ships in the days
 
 X Florence Past and Present 
 
 when Italy and Greece were bound by commercial 
 relations which made them effectively one from the 
 Alps and the Balkans to Sicily and Crete. ^ 
 
 Now go to Naples and come into touch with the 
 Camorra. You have only to hire a cab there, and a 
 hundred to one some percentage of what you pay 
 will pass into the hands of the contabilc of the great 
 secret society. This officer, like all in charge of the 
 Camorra, wears a distinctive sign of his office 
 tattooed on his arm.- It is the present we are 
 dealing with, remember : vouched for by the blood 
 that flowed when the mark was pricked and 
 pounced ; the blood that beats under it still. 
 Yet the mark is the old sign of the spina, the 
 branch with its twigs ; used in the old sense 
 too, for it distinguishes the man who takes the 
 money and keeps the accounts. By what succes- 
 sion has this hieroglyph found its way from the 
 times of its first invention to our own? We cannot 
 tell in this case an\' more than in the last ; in 
 this as in the other it is as if intervening ages had 
 simply disappeared, for what lies latent in the facts 
 of the present is the remote past of forgotten time. 
 
 So then from the following chapters the whole 
 Florentine Middle Age will be found to drop out. 
 Here there will be no question of the rise of the 
 
 ^ E. Pais, ' L'Origine dcgli Klnisclii,' \n S/iidii S/orici, W. pp. 49- 
 87^(I'i.sa, 1893). 
 
 - See article in I. a Lcttiira (.Milan, 1907), p. J09.
 
 Preface xi 
 
 Commune, the progress of the Arti. or the splendid, 
 fateful days of the Medici. Such periods and 
 movements have emploj'ed other and abler pens, 
 and the great picture the\' compose must be sought 
 elsewhere, for this book makes no pretence to 
 furnish anything, in its ' Past and Present,' but the 
 frame to that masterpiece. Its writer feels happy 
 in the thought that many a man who cannot paint a 
 picture may yet help to make the frame for it. The 
 reader, if here and there he be tempted to condemn 
 details as trivial, and to call fanciful the use made of 
 them, may remember that it is just this kind of 
 work — the commonest material in a fanciful design 
 — which makes a frame truly Florentine. 
 
 Florentine or not, the frame must fit ; the picture 
 cannot be forgotten by the framemaker, even though 
 it is not his business to meddle directly with it. 
 Now, leaving the figure, this is as much as to say 
 that the great period of Florence cannot even here 
 be altogether neglected ; it is in time the middle 
 term, and in effect the touchstone of truth, as regards 
 the ' Past and Present ' of this book. May I point 
 out then a crucial case in which this test speaks in 
 favour of the following chapters? They will show 
 that it was not left for the days of a Christianity 
 already corrupt to pretend for the first time a debt 
 of Florence to Rome rather than to Greece ; that 
 the Church in thus reversing the truth by her tradi- 
 tion only continued what had been the polic)' of the
 
 xii Florence Past and Present 
 
 ' Urbs' from pagan days, and that in reality Florence 
 was Greek rather than Roman ; Greek from the first 
 and Greek still in her essential spirit. Thus the 
 wonder of her greatest movement — the Renaissance 
 — gains new meaning in this new setting. The 
 passion for Greek in the fifteenth century, the 
 sudden success of such study, these were not so 
 much a 'new birth ' as an awakening in which the 
 city arose to the memory of her own past. Or, if we 
 still keep the word that has become classic, this was 
 a birth that proved on the grand scale how much 
 may lie latent in man through dark ages and yet 
 surely pass to future generations to find in them the 
 moment of its new appearance. 
 
 I cannot close this preface better than by a word 
 of heartfelt thanks to all who have helped me in my 
 difficult work. To name them separately is impos- 
 sible, but I must mention with special gratitude the 
 librarian of the Biblioteca Marucelliana, Cav. A. 
 Bruschi, whose kindness has been unwearied as his 
 skill is invaluable, and the authorities of the Biblio- 
 teca Nazionale, who, with great courtesy, have given 
 me special facilities in their splendid establishment. 
 To the keepers of the .Xrcha-ological Museum in Via 
 Colonna, to Cav. G. Carocci of the Museo di S. 
 Marco, and Cav. C. Nardini of the l^iblioteca Ric- 
 cardiana, I would also express my warmest thanks. 
 Nor must I forget the kindness of relatives and of 
 personal friends — especially Mr. Walter Ashburner
 
 Preface xiii 
 
 — who have been good enough to read my book in 
 typescript and proof, and to improve it materially 
 by the corrections and suggestions they have made. 
 Comm. V. Alinari and Sig. V. Jacquier of Florence 
 have also a claim on the gratitude of my readers as 
 well as on mine ; the\' have most kindly allowed the 
 reproduction of the two excellent photographs which 
 appear at pages iii and 321, 
 
 16 CoRso Regina Elena, 
 Florence, 15/// October 1910.
 
 CONTENTS 
 PART I 
 
 THE LIVING PAST 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. The Val d'Arno, ..... 
 
 Structure of the Apennine — which rivers follow. Vol- 
 canic upheaval : how responsible for course of lower 
 Arno. Water and wood make fishers and hunters — a 
 scattered population, which grows fast, and seeks anew 
 outlet. 
 
 II. F"ooD AND Magic, ..... 
 
 How hunting trains to abstinence — which survives in 
 Florentine habit of parsimony. Value of the chestnut 
 and persistence of the taste for this simple food. 
 Modern superstitions a survival of the magic of the 
 woods — derived from the hunter's peculiar skill. The 
 were -wolf. 
 
 III. Early Trade, ..... 
 
 Ti)e great change — how it came about — on the borders 
 and then inland. The horse as an instrument of trade — 
 with the road as a consequence. The river as a deter- 
 minant of the trade routes. The fisher as a partner in 
 the venture. The Golfolina and Gnone attract trade 
 and the road. Foreign traders drawn hither. Evidence 
 of their presence in the Val d'Arno, alike in deposits 
 and surviving place-names.
 
 xvi Florence Past and Present 
 
 CHAl'. PAGE 
 
 IV. Thk Site and its Power, .... 57 
 
 Trade encourages common life in village and city. 
 The sinking lake and rising deposits of Arno and Mug- 
 none provide a site — how favourable to trade — traces of 
 early occupation. Exact position of first settlement. 
 How the main roads fell in here. iVltafronte the 
 original centre. 
 
 V. The Double Inheritance, .... 84 
 
 The Florentines were traders who had been hunters. 
 The woodland family — how it appears in the local 
 building-form — and in proverbs regarding youth and 
 age — and in language generally. The Tuscan tongue 
 prepared in the woods, and developed and sharpened 
 Ijy trade. The Jriszo. 
 
 VI. The Ville and their Reliciox, ... 97 
 
 The new life of the trader — how it brought as a 
 necessary consequence the Matriarchate. Independ- 
 ence of the women — reaction — and consequent develop- 
 ment of manufactures. First culture of the ground — 
 obliges community to divide. New kind and value of 
 property. Arnina and Camarte. Survivals — of primi- 
 tive manufactures — of the original division of lands 
 between these villages. The east and the west line in 
 Florence. The compila where this meets the trade 
 routes. Human rights, and religion as their ultimate 
 sanction. The goddess and the god at the two cross- 
 ways. The genicidiim, and what it meant — Janus— the 
 beating of the bounds. The stone of San Tommaso— 
 pillar and tree — the sacred marriage. 
 
 VII. TiiR Development ok Fi.ORENtE, . . . 126 
 
 The boundary line becomes a road, and directs growth 
 of city from Mercatino to Mercato. The Etruscans — 
 at Fiesole — -How trade developed under their rule. 
 Mming for copper — felling of wood —wider agriculture 
 — engineering —draining— bridge building — hydiaulics 
 at Florence. Centre of city moves west at the coming 
 of wheeled traffic on the roads. Decunianus and Cardo, 
 Decline of Etruscan and rise of Roman power.
 
 A 
 
 Contents xvii 
 
 PART II 
 
 MATERIAL SURVIVALS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 VIII. Boats and Boatmen, .... 157 
 
 The building of the l)oat — its parts and their names. 
 Sand gathering by boat and on the bank — conditions of 
 the industry — its antiquity. Fishing — different nets — 
 how worked. Fishing by night — kinds of fish. The 
 fisherman's gourd — different uses — how he forms it. 
 This art very old — older than pottery itself. 
 
 IX. The River Trade, ..... 190 
 
 Traced back — from i860 — to gondohis of Grand Duke 
 — to transport of Column of Justice. Boats of fifteenth 
 century — Cathedral marbles brought by river. Freedom 
 of Arno secured bylaw — Norman pirates at Florence — 
 Gothic legislation — Roman water-routes in Tuscany. 
 Reason of decline to present state. Remaining trade 
 of lower Arno. Limite and its building-yards. Trans- 
 port of timber on Arno — the life of the raftsmen — 
 primitive wood -trade. The raft as the origin of the 
 boat — its development at the ferry — and in the bridge. 
 
 X. On the Road, ..... 232 
 
 Florentine carts— studied in the detail of their parts and 
 material. The team as a survival of earlier conditions 
 — harness and trimming of the cart — beasts of burden— 
 the barrel derives from the same past — and helps to 
 shape the cart. 
 
 XI. Amulets, ...... 258 
 
 Ornaments of the harness —the ' eye ' as an amulet — 
 gives meaning to the whole. Fascination and ways of 
 defeating it — by brightness — intricacy — and sound. 
 Theory of magic transference. How this fear and these 
 amulets alike point to a woodland past. The corbezzolo 
 as a charm.
 
 xviii Florence Past and Present 
 
 PART III 
 
 THE FEASTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XII. Ceppo and Befana, ..... 285 
 
 Vule-log — antiquity of rite — ceppo in Greece — covers 
 twelve days of danger. Tiie Callicantzaros, were-wolf 
 and vampire. Fire the remedy. The Roman Compi- 
 talia — at Florence — nay Roman only under Tuscan 
 teaching. Mania — perhaps Egyptian — Demeter of 
 Phigalia — how the horse comes in — the centaurs of the 
 Tuscan Eryx. The infernal Diana — Befana — the 
 equivalent of Mania. Noise in Greece and Italy as a 
 defence. Masking. The bean as a means of imitative 
 and protective magic. Witchcraft. Imitative magic 
 borrowed from hunter through ceremonies of initiation 
 and totemisni. 
 
 XIII. Mid-Lent and Easter, .... 314 
 
 Day of 'ladders' at Florence. Full form of rite — and 
 its meaning. Spring equinox probably the true date of 
 this rite and of the Easter Fire. The fire-ceremony in 
 its present form — tradition of origin — at simplest a fall 
 of fire by gravity from pyre to pyre. Fire by per- 
 cussion and friction. Fire in the tree. Decumanus a 
 sun-line. Needs of season. Fire-birds — the dove of 
 Florence one of them. The mother-goddess as Cybele 
 — the boundary. Stretched cord points to ceremony in 
 which division by Decumanus was repeated ritually 
 every year. Name-day of Florence. Mother-goddess as 
 the Arna of Arnina — and as Fortuna. Cyprian and 
 Sicilian rites. Conjunction of goddess and god — 
 harvest cakes and hopes of harvest.
 
 Contents xix 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 XIV. The Grillo and Midsummer, . . . 352 
 
 The Cascine on Ascension day — mystic meaning of the 
 grillo — connection with solstice. Feast of Saa Gio- 
 vanni described — correspondence with Greek Kronia. 
 . The Baptist as a representative of Helios. Day of 
 Fortune at Rome. Kronos becomes Sosipolis at Elis. 
 The Fortune of the Roman Janiculum. The goddess 
 of Crete and of Fiesole — lives in Santa Verdiana. 
 Hercules stands behind ' St. John.' Seal of Florence 
 — and Marzocco. Hercules, Fortune and Mars. 
 Baptistery and its Gnomon. The eastern Bacchus 
 represents the secret sun — supposed to rise in water. 
 The Nile and its lotus — the giglio of Florence — ritual 
 bathing in river. The horse-race on the Decumanus 
 confirms the meaning of the feast. 
 
 XV. The Feast of September, . . . 39S 
 
 Fierucolone described — the ancient fair — older than the 
 Feast of the Virgin's birthday. Probability of a feast 
 at or near Equinox — a feast of the seed-time — with 
 Demeter and Dionysus as the goddess and the god. 
 Proofs — the Coiiata of Naples — correspondence with 
 greater Eleusinia. Janus the Genius of Florence — here 
 obviously Consivus — the eastern Bacchus. Ritual 
 marriage at Eleusis — at Florence, in San Piero. Hint 
 of its meaning in Antella coin. Doctrine must touch 
 state of dead— did so in Greece, at Eleusis. Seen 
 at Florence by early tombs — but above all in floral 
 crowns used at Bishop's ' marriage ' — and in Rifi- 
 colone. Double fire in tree— transferred to 'bride- 
 groom.' The truth that lay behind the rite. 
 
 Index, ....... 431
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Arno near the Madonnone, .... Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Rock and river at the Golfolina, .... 7 
 
 In the Tuscan woodland, 12 
 
 Near Borgunto ; the Girone road rising to the pass, 48 
 
 Etruscan wall of Fiesole akove Borgunto, . . 54 
 
 The plain that was a lake ; seen fro.m Bellosguardo, 60 
 
 Borgunto and Mugnone valley; Etruscan pavement 
 
 IN foreground, 61 
 
 Gorge of Mugnone above Badia di Fiesole, . . 65 
 
 Florence, with hill of .'^. Giorgio, seen from Bellos- 
 guardo, 68 
 
 Piazza dei Peruzzi ; curve of amphitheatre on right, 74 
 
 Piazza dell' Arno ; seen across river on line of 
 
 ancient ferry, ........ 79 
 
 Mercato Vecchio and Pillar of Abundance 
 
 (Photo, by Alinari), Ill 
 
 Mercato Nuovo ; north-west corner, with lemonade 
 
 stall, .......... 147 
 
 Sand-pits near Varlungo, 163 
 
 Piaggiaiuoli at work under Lung' Arno Vespucci, . 165
 
 xxii Florence Past and Present 
 
 Barcaiuolo likting a scoopful of sand, 
 Boats at work under Ponte Sospeso, . 
 Fisherman's house, wrrn giacchio hung out to dry 
 
 BlLAXCIA at a balcony IN BORGO SaN JaCOPO, 
 
 Engraving done by hand on a wine-gourd. 
 
 Fisherman's gourd lined with pitch, . 
 
 Earthenware jar glazed within, .... 
 
 Arno bank, with boats, near the 1'ignone, 
 
 Ancient will on the Arno at Rovezzano, . 
 
 Cargo-boat in the Medicean port, Pisa, 
 
 Tower of the Frescobaldi on the Arno, 
 near montelupo, 
 
 The pool at Limite, with newly launched craft, 
 
 In the yard of the Fratelli Picciiio 
 
 THEiV-jTi-oF Rovezzano,. 
 
 The Tuscan cart; a wayside halt, 
 
 a cart-horse at rest, 
 
 At Galluzzo ; a cart in the making, 
 
 A Tuscan saddle, .... 
 
 Carters and their team, 
 
 A I'AiR OK OXEN ; Siena iskeed, 
 
 Mule-tassels and bell, . 
 
 The wise wives of Tuscany, . 
 
 The cimaruta 
 
 PTi AT Limite 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 66 
 167 
 173 
 175 
 184 
 186 
 187 
 191 
 194 
 199 
 
 203 
 207 
 209 
 229 
 233 
 235 
 238 
 246 
 247 
 251 
 259 
 263 
 270
 
 List of Illustrations xxiii 
 
 I'AGE 
 
 Figurine from S. Giovanni ai.i.a Vena 
 
 (In the background an ancient clay toy of the same type 
 
 from Cyprus), 297 
 
 Bells, whistle, and trumpet of glass used on night 
 
 OF Befana, 303 
 
 Easter-car in its house on the Prato, . . . 319 
 
 The fire-rite of Easter Saturday (Photo, by Jacquier), 321 
 
 The wings of the ass of Empoli, 325 
 
 Country prockssion, with axgioletto, entering Signa, 333 
 
 Procession from Pieve crosses Piazza of Signa ; 
 
 fortune-teller and her table in foreground, . 336 
 
 Trees, natural and ritual, at Madonna del Sasso, 340 
 
 Stone of Madonna in sanctuary altar, . . . 341 
 
 Florentine Easter-cakes ; eggs in baskets, and dove, 350 
 
 The Oak of the Cascine in its three generations, 352 
 
 The Cascine on Ascension Day ; crickets for sale 
 
 IN cages, 353 
 
 Cai;!': for a cricket in buckwhkat stem ; traditional 
 
 form, .......... 356 
 
 Rustic restaurants of the Cascine on Ascension Day, 357 
 
 Coin of Thezli with serpent-goddess 
 
 (By kind permission of the Delegates of the Clarendon 
 Press), .......... 369 
 
 Lion from the cippus of San Tommaso 
 
 (Kindly photographed for this book by the experts of 
 
 the Museo Archeologico, Florence), .... 375
 
 xxiv Florence Past and Present 
 
 PAGE 
 
 S. Verdiana, as she appears on her house at Castel- 
 
 FIORENTINO, 379 
 
 GiGLIO FROM LIN PEL OK RiGATTIERI IN MUSEO DI S. MaRCO, 389 
 
 Tree from which crickets are sold on Ascension Day, 395 
 
 Pai'fr lanterns from Fierucolone of 1910, . . 399 
 
 Piazza of S. Piero, with portico of church 
 
 (The arch on the left leads to Borgo Pinti), . . . 404 
 
 Ilex and sacred well near Monte Murlo, . . 425 
 
 MAPS 
 
 I. The Val d'Arno as it once w^as, .... 8-9 
 
 11. The Trade Routes, . 44-5 
 
 III. Florence in her Elements 76-7 
 
 Note. — Except those oiherwise specified, all the above 
 illustrations are from photographs taken by the author. 
 The three maps have also been reproduced from his drawings.
 
 I 
 
 THE LIVING PAST 
 
 A
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE VAL D'ARNO 
 
 Two great elements, the one natural, the other 
 more or less artificial, have gone to the making of 
 Florence : the river and the road. Of these the 
 former is the more important, as it distinguishes the 
 capital of Tuscany from the neighbouring cities, 
 and has given it a permanent and prevailing 
 advantage over these. With the river, therefore, 
 we begin, asking how the Arno came to flow as it 
 does in its lower course, and thus to determine 
 here the site, the being, and the prosperity of 
 Florence. 
 
 Everywhere water is the constant sculptor of 
 the valley in which it moves, but to move at all it 
 must find the falling gradient which the mountain 
 supplies. Its course to the sea will thus depend, 
 one sees, on the direction already given by nature 
 to the main lines of the land which it drains. Thus 
 the problem of the Arno at Florence can only 
 be attacked in a reference to the structure of the 
 Tuscan Apennine.
 
 4 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Any good relief map of the country will show at 
 a glance that the main ridges of these hills are 
 laid obliquely ; running from north-west to south- 
 east. We should thus expect to find the rivers 
 flowing in the same direction ; as following this 
 general trend and confined to it by these impassable 
 boundaries. In a measure it is so; the upper Magra 
 and Serchio, the Sieve too, still obey this natural 
 rule, as does the Tiber throughout its course. It is 
 the same with the Arno so long as it flows in the 
 Casentino, but under Arezzo a sudden change affects 
 the stream. It sweeps round to the right, almost 
 exactly reversing its earlier course, and runs north- 
 west, past Montevarchi and Figline, to Pontassieve. 
 Here it turns again, now to the left, and commences 
 that general westward flow which brings it at last 
 to Pisa and the sea. Now it is here that Florence 
 lies, on the westward-running Arno, and the being 
 of the city is therefore bound up with the question 
 of how the Arno came to be thus diverted from 
 what must have been its original course. For the 
 Florentine Val d'Arno is clearly but a substitute 
 that acts now in place of the Val di Chiana, by 
 which our river must once have found its way to 
 the Tiber and the southern sea. 
 
 h'ire as well as water has played no small part 
 in fashioning the earth as we find it, and the geology 
 of Tuscany acquaints us with a volcanic eruption 
 which took place after the lines of the Apennine
 
 The Val d'Arno 5 
 
 had been laid down ; interfering with some of these, 
 and widely changing the levels of the inner land 
 they enclose. The focus of this explosion would 
 seem to have lain south of Siena, and we may take 
 the Monte Amiata, with its volcanic rocks, as fixing 
 the site of one of the principal craters. This, then, 
 was the upheaval which lifted the whole inner 
 hill-country of Tuscany to its present level, and 
 created the new drainage lines we now observe. It 
 broke the valleys across their backs on a line of 
 depression now marked by the course of the middle 
 and lower Arno from Pontassieve to the sea, and 
 on the other hand lifted a new watershed near 
 Arezzo, barring the ancient southern escape, divid- 
 ing the Chiane, and turning the Arno northward 
 down the new slope till the river found the great 
 line of depression in which it still flows westward 
 under the walls of Florence. So, too, it may be 
 observed, the Serchio turns westward above Lucca, 
 and, in a lesser degree, the Magra from Aulla ; for 
 these effects, in their relative positions and decreas- 
 ing series, show plainly whence proceeded the force 
 that caused them. Thus Magra, Serchio, and Arno 
 point in a new evidence to the country south of 
 Siena as the focus of this wide tectonic movement 
 of the Tuscan land. 
 
 Here it is necessary to notice more closely the 
 effects of the great change on the Val d'Arno itself 
 If the present westward line of the river represent
 
 6 Florence Past and Present 
 
 what may be called the hinge of the movement — 
 the line along which the original north-west by 
 south-east valleys were broken when the lower 
 southern end of each was lifted to a new watershed 
 in the present hills of the Chianti and Volterra — 
 then it is plain that these valleys, no longer able to 
 drain to the south-east, must have become lakes ; 
 the new reservoirs of waters that rose in each till 
 they found the lowest points of escape. As such 
 outlets lay, of course, along the line of depression 
 where the ridges had been broken across, and as 
 this line was itself inclined, falling from ridge to 
 lower ridge till it lay on the plain and touched the 
 sea of Pisa, we are to think of a series of parallel 
 lakes, each higher than the last, if it lie more east- 
 ward, joined to each other by as many short, steep 
 rivers, rapids, and falls. These already begin to 
 trace in broken fashion the western course of the 
 Arno as we know it to-day. 
 
 So when the Arno turned at Arezzo it fell at once 
 into a lake fed from the Sieve, and which its stream 
 helped to fill at the Imbuto. At Pontassieve lay 
 the point of escape, whence the stream began to run 
 down to the Girone. Merc it met another lake, 
 much wider and larger, that must have covered the 
 site of Florence and reached as far as Pistoia and 
 Signa. The line of depression passed the latter 
 place, and here, then, the water again found its 
 escape by the strait of the Golfolina to Montelupo
 
 The Val d'Arno 7 
 
 and the sea, or salt lagoon, which must then have 
 covered so much of the Pisan plain. One begins to 
 see it all : the short, rapid reaches that ran from 
 
 ROCK AND KI\ER AT THE GOEFUI.INA 
 
 lake to lake, as it were from lock to lock, and the 
 descending valley staircase on the steps of which 
 these waters lay, or plunged from level to level by 
 their western line of descent to find at last the sea. 
 Now this was a state of things which could not
 
 TYRRHENIAN 
 
 SEA ti 
 
 .IW.Hrown ,lol. 
 
 ]
 
 I 
 
 THE VAL D'ARNO 
 as it once was 
 
 ^ 
 
 S e 
 
 ESS ION 
 
 V 
 
 O K 
 
 UPHEAVAL 
 
 A mo 
 
 Emery Walker sc.
 
 lo Florence Past and Present 
 
 last, for a certain change was bound up in its very 
 being. Born of eruption, it brought erosion ; a 
 necessary consequence as the waters moved in 
 volume and force on their new line. The rock of 
 the Golfolina lies high on the hill to-day, yet who 
 can doubt, seeing it so plainly waterworn, that the 
 river was once at work in this place and at this 
 level. If it flows lower now, that can only be 
 because it has cut the gorge in which its waters still 
 move. And the work done below Signa is only a 
 sample of what the new Arno was busy about as 
 soon as it found by force this line of fall from lake 
 to lake ; between Pontassieve and the Girone, there- 
 fore, not less than from Signa to Montelupo. 
 
 The result of such river action can only have been 
 the disappearance of the lakes through which the 
 Arno once found its way to the sea. There was a 
 double reason for this change. On the one hand, as 
 the depth of the lakes was from the first determined 
 by the height of their lowest points of escape, so of 
 necessity, as the gorges between them were cut down 
 and ever deeper by the moving, falling waters, the 
 lakes tended to drain away with the stream, and 
 became shallower and ever more shallow, losing in 
 extent too as they lost in depth. Ikit the cutting 
 of the gorges implies the transport downstream of 
 the material — the rocks, stones, and sand — that once 
 filled them. These will settle where the river loses 
 speed in the lake, and thus the lakes will tend to
 
 The Val d'Arno 1 1 
 
 shallow and disappear under a double action, since, 
 as their waters drain away, a rising alluvial plain is 
 ever lifting the lake bed and making the escape 
 easier and more complete. Thus at last the river 
 emerges as a line of water movement united through- 
 out its whole extent, for, while it now runs steadier 
 in the gorges it has deepened, these are no longer 
 its only reaches. The lakes have disappeared ; 
 only swamps remain in the deeper depressions of 
 their former beds ; and through alluvial plains, now 
 comparatively dry, the Arno finds a wayward and 
 changeful course from gorge to gorge, its shallows, 
 its digressions, and its returns occupying the ground 
 where each lake once lay. This new feature is 
 particularly noticeable at and below the site of 
 Florence, for, with the disappearance of the lake into 
 which the Arno once fell at the Girone, dry ground 
 at last emerged here, and the city stands to-day on 
 gravel and sand that the falling, flowing waters have 
 brought and left to be its site. This, in its briefest 
 terms, is the first contribution of geology and physics 
 to the long history of the place. 
 
 The artificial, as distinguished from the natural, 
 appears always and everywhere with the advent of 
 man, nor can the Val d'Arno offer any exception to 
 the rule. Yet at first man is passive rather than 
 active, acted on rather than acting, and here then 
 our first concern will be to see what effect this land 
 must have had on the men who first reached it
 
 1 2 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Whence they came is, as yet, of no importance, and 
 the changes they ultimately wrought here may be 
 left for after consideration ; it is the action of the 
 land on its first colonists that must now be deter- 
 
 IN THE TUSCAN WOODLAND 
 
 mined ; the rest will follow as a natural conse- 
 quence. 
 
 The middle Val d'Arno, when man first saw it, 
 must have been nearly, if not quite, what it is now, 
 with this considerable difference, however, that then 
 it was all wood and water. The oak and stone 
 pine, the chestnut and cypress, with all the lesser 
 trees, covered every yard of dry ground in the close
 
 The Val d'Arno 13 
 
 ranks that nature had set, and climbed the hills to 
 flourish on their crests. Below, wherever it could 
 lie or move in valley or plain, lay water, spreading 
 in swamps among tufts of coarse marsh grasses or 
 tall reeds, finding its way across these wet levels in 
 a hundred shallow and changeful channels to pour 
 presently in volume and speed down the falling 
 passage that the gorge opened to it. And all this 
 life, of moving water and of growing, waving wood, 
 was fulfilled by the other higher life it came to 
 contain in abundance : the fish that moved quicker 
 than the stream, the birds and beasts that made 
 the woods their home. When man at last appeared 
 in the Val d'Arno it was not a land either naked 
 or dead to which he came, but one quick and 
 clothed upon with life, and able therefore to in- 
 fluence profoundly its latest living guest. 
 
 In general, it may be said that a country acts on 
 its inhabitants by sifting them out. This it does by 
 the conditions of life it offers, which its inhabitants 
 must needs accept if they are to live there at all. 
 Now in the Val d'Arno these primitive conditions 
 are plain, and the action of the place upon its 
 first human inhabitants obvious. The land is all 
 wood and water, therefore the hunter and the fisher 
 are the only men it can maintain. Farmers may 
 live and thrive in the valley of the Po with its great 
 alluvial plains ; here such fields still lie sodden in 
 marsh water, or lost under the salt of the dying
 
 14 Florence Past and Present 
 
 lagoon. Shepherds may feed their flocks in the 
 Campagna by the Tiber, for the grasslands of 
 Latium are wide and ready for such life. But here, 
 by the Arno, only the hunter and fisher can as yet 
 live ; others, if they come, must pass on or die, 
 acted on or driven by the local conditions. Every 
 land deals thus with its immigrants, and the result 
 of such natural selection in the valley we are study- 
 ing is too plain to need further proof. The first 
 men here will be hunters and fishers. 
 
 This fact assured, it is easy to find in it a fresh 
 point of departure ; so obvious are the consequences 
 it involves. Unlike the shepherd or farmer, the 
 hunter and fisher marry early, under a natural 
 human impulse which in their case is not checked 
 by artificial obstacles. The farmer must have land 
 and house, or at least his plough and yoke of oxen, 
 before he can take a wife ; and the shepherd must 
 wait, like Jacob, till he has gathered a flock; but 
 the skill of the hunter and fisher is born with them, 
 and sufficiently developed in boyhood, and the bow 
 and arrow, the snare and net, even the dugout 
 canoe, are theirs at the price of a few days', perhaps 
 of a few hours', work only ; with this consequence, 
 that they marry as soon as their wishes meet a 
 suitable occasion and response. Now, large families 
 are the consequence-of early marriages, and when 
 one remembers that much more land is needed to 
 support the hunter than suffices for the shepherd
 
 The Val d'Arno 15 
 
 or farmer, it is easy to see that this form of human 
 life spreads quicker than the others, covers all the 
 ground available to it, and soon reaches the limits 
 set by nature to its further progress on these 
 lines. In the case of Tuscany such limits will lie 
 at the Lombard plain on the north, and, on the 
 south, at the first levels of the Roman Campagna. 
 The hunters and fishers we have found by the 
 Arno will spread, and spread quickly, as far as 
 there are woods to beat or waters to drag. They 
 will climb the Apennine, and reach the last trees 
 on the farther slope. They will press south through 
 the great Ciminian forest, till the heights that 
 harbour it drop to the valley of the Tiber. In a 
 word, they will not pause till stopped on the edge 
 of lands occupied by men of another way of life, 
 and offering little or nothing of that which they 
 seek. 
 
 Thus lands of wood and water only, sift their 
 inhabitants, but scatter them too ; and this not only 
 as we have seen — separating the one from the other 
 by spaces of woodland, and river reaches that are 
 necessarily long and wide — but sending them far 
 afield in their chase, and encouraging them to 
 follow the game in its migrations, or the movement 
 of the fish up or down stream. This then is not 
 the place, nor are these the people, for close famih- 
 life on the pattern of the patriarchal household. 
 Such nearer society the hunter and fisher leave to
 
 1 6 Florence Past and Present 
 
 the shepherd and farmer, and instead they multiply 
 in these wilds and subdue them in a succession of 
 scattered families, that ever part and move on till 
 the limits of their common possession in wood and 
 stream are reached, and further progress on these 
 lines becomes impossible. As multiplication, how- 
 ever, still goes on without corresponding increase 
 in the means of subsistence, some change is clearly 
 imminent. The hunter and fisher are now at the 
 point when, under the pressure of stern necessity, 
 they must become other than they have been. Let 
 us try to see in what direction this inevitable change 
 is likely to carry them. 
 
 When they have gone as far as they can across 
 country, these men are in contact at last with others 
 of a different way of life, with the farmers of 
 Lombardy on the north, and the shepherds of 
 Latium on the south ; for not the woodland and 
 stream alone, but the alluvial plain and the grass- 
 lands too, have power to shape by their own nature 
 the lives of their inhabitants. Will, then, the woods 
 and the streams of Tuscany that lie between yield 
 their surplus population to the farms of the north 
 or the pastures of the south ? Will the hunter and the 
 fisher find new worlds to conquer by simply imitat- 
 ing the men who live just beyond their borders? 
 Not so, for all experience teaches us that such a 
 change, on any large scale, is unnatural. The 
 difference between these ways of life is too great to
 
 The Val d'Arno 17 
 
 be easily overcome. The hunter and fisher must 
 and will develop, but their progress will move along 
 lines of its own. They will find some outlet, some 
 new occupation, but it will be one for which their 
 situation, their trained faculties, and acquired experi- 
 ence, alike fit them ; not theirs then the labour of 
 the plough or the care of the flock, where they have 
 everything to learn and everything to forget. 
 
 The new way that opens before them is that of 
 trade, but before we follow them in it let us pause 
 to see what we have gained. The hunter and fisher, 
 in adopting a life of commerce, are not going to 
 leave their past behind ; they will carry it along 
 with them. The story of Florence acquaints us 
 with a city founded on trade and growing in its 
 expansion. But, if we are right, these traders set 
 by the Arno were hunters and fishers first of all. 
 Hence a new reason why we should break off" here 
 to study afresh this primitive life of the woodland 
 and the stream. For if it have left traces of itself 
 in the life of to-day as we find it in the Tuscan 
 capital, all the more reason will there be to conclude 
 that the hunter and the fisher were indeed the first 
 ancestors of the modern Florentine.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 FOOD AND MAGIC 
 
 The prime necessity of the hunter and fisher, as of all 
 men in all circumstances, is food ; but what distin- 
 guishes him from others is the kind of food on which 
 he lives, and the way he procures it. Be sure that 
 this manner of life, like every other, has its own 
 conditions which, perforce and constantly obeyed, 
 end by leaving a deep impression on the race. Now 
 among these the first to be noticed is that of the 
 enforced fast, with its consequence in the acquisition 
 of an extraordinary power of voluntary abstinence. 
 The descendants of the hunter and the fisher are 
 likely to show a marked self-restraint in these 
 matters, and, while ready to feast on occasion, will 
 practise economy as the general rule of their eating 
 and drinking. 
 
 In the Tuscany we think of, a game preserve was 
 unknown, and the breeding of fish unheard of; and 
 men followed the chase under absolutely natural 
 conditions. When the fish moved upstream, or the 
 quails came over from Africa, there would be plenty;
 
 Food and Magic 19 
 
 but when the hunter missed the trail, or the fisher 
 threw his net in vain, when the boar hid himself 
 from the heat in inaccessible swamps, or the birds 
 and deer migrated, those that depended on them 
 must go without such provend, and stay their hunger 
 as best they could ; happy if wild fruit were still on 
 the trees, or earth nuts to be had for the digging. 
 More and more must the uncertainty of their sub- 
 sistence have pressed on these men as their numbers 
 grew, and they filled the land. It was a stern 
 discipline, then, under which they lived, and one 
 which fitted them to bear extreme changes, from 
 want to sudden plenty and then again to want, 
 without flinching. But ever, as time went on and 
 the tribes multiplied, it was hunger rather than 
 excess that formed the rule, and moulded the temper 
 of the race to self-restraint: a quality fit to pass by 
 inheritance, and to appear as the ruling character of 
 distant generations. The flint arrow-heads used by 
 these people in the chase are still turned up here 
 and there where the Tuscan earth is moved, but 
 these, after all, might be held as onl}- the relics of 
 a race that had passed on. An acquired racial 
 characteristic, on the other hand, is the fruit of ages 
 spent in one way of life under certain conditions. 
 If, therefore, the restraint natural to the first 
 dwellers in the Arno valley be found to distinguish 
 their successors to-day, this suggests that they 
 are not only successors but descendants ; that the
 
 20 Florence Past and Present 
 
 race is one, and has kept and carried its primitive 
 stamp past all the changes that have happened 
 since. 
 
 Now, in a hundred signs, this temperance in food 
 and drink may be seen to-day at Florence. The 
 market and its habits surprise the stranger, and if 
 he analyse the matter he will find that a wise and 
 convenient economy is the principle that accounts 
 for what he wonders at. One example of this, 
 trivial though it be, may suffice to prove the case. 
 The Florentine chicken, having regard to its size, 
 is now probably no cheaper than such a fowl would 
 be anywhere else. But small as it is, the bird is 
 dealt with as if it were a sheep : cut up, joint by 
 joint ; decomposed into the elements of wings and 
 legs and breast and body, which are each sold 
 separately. Even the combs of the cocks are clipped 
 off, and the gizzards and livers laid apart ; with the 
 result that the buyer can consult his taste, and com- 
 pose dishes that, if not substantial, are at least 
 dainty in their nice economy. So far is the matter 
 pushed, that I have heard of a stranger to Tuscan 
 ways whose ignorance of market usage led to his 
 disappointment at dinner-time. He had told his 
 servant to buy and prepare him a dish of fowls' legs, 
 and found, when it came to table, that these 'legs' 
 were only drumsticks. On complaint, he was told 
 the mistake had been his own, as, if he wished the 
 thighs as well, he should have said so ! To such
 
 Food and Magic 21 
 
 lengths does the Florentine still go in the careful 
 economy of the table. 
 
 It might be thought, indeed, that these habits were 
 comparatively modern, and rather the result of 
 decaying trade here than survivals from any more 
 remote past. But that this is not so appears from 
 the fact that even in her greatest days, when 
 Florence sat queen and wanted for nothing, she 
 followed the same rule of self-restraint and wise 
 parsimony. A Bull of Eugenius IV. (1431-39) speaks 
 of the 'frugalitas Florentina,' which indeed was and 
 is proverbial : — 
 
 ' II Fiorentino mangia si poco, e si pulito, 
 Che sempre si conserva Tappetito.' 
 
 Doni, who lived and wrote a century later, tells the 
 same story. In his Zucca (Ramo, ch. v.) he de- 
 scribes a banquet given at Venice by a rich 
 Lombard : how the talk at table fell on Florence, 
 and how the company, full-fed, mocked at the 
 ' onciate di carne che gl'usano di comprare (cosa 
 favolosa da plebei a dirla) per il viver della famiglia 
 di casa.' He was himself present, and, being a 
 Florentine, found the situation awkward. If the 
 charge had been false, be sure he would have said 
 so, yet, when he spoke, it was but to declare with 
 national pride : ' I Fiorentini insegnano la tem- 
 peranza nel vivere.' Florence, too, could feast, as 
 she still does on occasion, but her rule has always
 
 2 2 Florence Past and Present 
 
 been that of temperance ; born, we may be sure, in 
 the earliest days of all, when the long hunter's fast 
 divided his brief and occasional days of plenty, and 
 formed a lasting habit of self-restraint that persists 
 even under the changed conditions of later and 
 modern life. 
 
 In the absence of game or fish the first Tuscans 
 must have fallen back on the fruits of the earth for 
 a scanty subsistence : nor only then, for at all times 
 the natural harvest of the wood must have given 
 them what man needs, the mixed diet, not wholly 
 animal but vegetable as well. Be sure they gathered 
 acorns, and chestnuts too, in autumn, and found this 
 advantage in the harvest, that such provision, unlike 
 that of fish or game, could be kept for months and 
 consumed carefully as required. If the uncertainty 
 of the chase taught the hunter self-restraint in the 
 use of food, it was in great measure here that he 
 could, and did, practise parsimony ; living on rations 
 of nut meal till fortune met him again in the wood 
 or on the river. 
 
 Here, too, there is distinct survival of early habits. 
 It is hardly necessary to quote Pliny for the primitive 
 use of the acorn ; ^ Procopius, however, is more to 
 our purpose, telling of what happened in 539 A.D., 
 when the Goths were in the Val d'Arno : how the 
 wretched people were reduced to eat bread made of 
 acorns, for thus, under stress of circumstances, men 
 
 ' See, however, N.H., vii. 56 and xvi. proctm.
 
 Food and Magic 23 
 
 are seen returning to their first habits of life.^ Nay, 
 if we pass from the oak to the chestnut, the matter 
 is surer still, and may safely and evidently be 
 connected with what Florence and its neighbour- 
 hood can still show. 
 
 The taste for chestnuts here is very strong, and 
 these, prepared in many different ways, form to-day 
 no small part of the sustenance of the people. At 
 the street corners in winter the chestnut stalls spread 
 the ruddy glow of their fires, and the tempting 
 odour of their hot ware : the arrostitc that perfume 
 the air around. Often you will see the passer-by 
 become the purchaser ; the quilted cover is lifted, the 
 handful of hot chestnuts measured, and the buyer 
 moves on, munching cheerfully what has already 
 served to warm his frost-bitten hands. These stalls 
 are picturesque but peripatetic ; they lead up to the 
 regular shop in this kind, which stands open in the 
 poorer streets, and caters for their inhabitants on a 
 larger scale and with more variety. Here are not 
 only roast chestnuts, but chestnuts boiled, with just 
 that spice of fennel in the water which meets the 
 Florentine taste, and tempers the natural quality of 
 this somewhat heavy food. The bollitc lie here in 
 the huge coppers that have served to cook them, 
 and on a wooden board stands the ereat round 
 
 ^ Procopius, De Bella Gothico, ii. 20. See, however, Cini, 
 Monlagiia Pistoiese (Firenze, 1737), p. 16, who points out ih.it the 
 ' glans ' of the ancients as often meant a chestnut as an acorn.
 
 24 Florence Past and Present 
 
 polcnda, smoking hot. This, too, is made of chestnut 
 flour, and must be very popular, to judge by the rate 
 at which it disappears as the string cuts into its 
 chocolate-coloured mass, and it goes off slice by 
 slice : a cheap and comforting morsel in cold days. 
 There is the castagnaccio , too, also made of chestnut 
 flour, but prepared differently, and in its way a 
 triumph of the art. For it a large round copper 
 tray with a shallow border is used. This is oiled, 
 filled with a wide thin cake of dough sprinkled with 
 pine nuts, and set to cook over the fire. The copper 
 retains the heat well, and when the cooking is done 
 many a cake of castagnaccio is sent in its tray to the 
 bridges, where, as you cross the Arno, you may see 
 it sold at a half-penny a slice. There was — is still 
 — a dark shop under the arch of San Piero, as you 
 come into the market from the Via dell' Orivolo, 
 which had a great reputation for this dainty, nor is 
 it so long since an authentic count and countess 
 might be seen eating castagnaccio in the streets as 
 they walked ; people of such ancient descent and 
 acknowledged position that they could laugh at the 
 prejudices of their class as they followed the old 
 Florentine habit. It may be added that most of 
 the btirjrjurri, as the chestnut sellers are called here, 
 come from the Italian foothills of the Alps: a sign 
 of the strong demand at Florence for their art and 
 wares. 
 
 Not, observe, that the Val d'Arno does not grow
 
 Food and Magic 25 
 
 chestnuts of its own. These fine trees are common 
 in the hills above Pistoia, where their fruit is 
 anxiously expected and gathered as the principal 
 harvest of the year, and where the hill people 
 depend chiefly on chestnuts still as their main 
 sustenance. The form this food takes with them 
 is, in the main, the same polcuda dolcc we have 
 already met at Florence, but instead of the 
 broad, rich Florentine castagnaccio they have the 
 necci, smaller cakes of the same kind. Here, in 
 the cooking of the nccci, a further survival may be 
 seen, and one that seems to make our whole con- 
 tention plain. Each kitchen in the hills has by the 
 jamb of its great fireplace a pile of flat round stones 
 laid one on top of the other. These are heated 
 betimes in the fire, and then, when the chestnut 
 dough has been mixed, and the pine nuts added, and 
 the whole formed into thin round cakes, a hot stone 
 by the fire forms the foundation on which a cake, 
 wrapped in chestnut leaves, is laid. This is covered 
 by another hot stone, and so on till the pile is built 
 complete, of cakes and stones alternately. Thus, as 
 will be seen, the chestnut and the pine furnish the 
 whole material of this food, and the cooking, being 
 done by hot stones applied to the cakes in this 
 ingenious way, is primitive too ; only to be paralleled 
 by savage ways of baking and boiling, which, if used 
 to-day, are yet known as a direct inheritance from 
 the earliest times. Not only the continued use of
 
 26 Florence Past and Present 
 
 the chestnut then, but the manner of its preparation 
 as food in the wilder hills, suggest strongly that the 
 present inhabitants of the Val d'Arno are the direct 
 descendants of the first woodmen in this valley. 
 
 Such trivial details, though important in the con- 
 clusions to which they lead, are in themselves of 
 little consequence. Not so, however, the greater 
 subject of Florentine superstition and magic in all 
 its forms. Superstition, as its very name indicates, 
 is what has survived of ancient thought and practice. 
 In Italy it means the persistence of early beliefs and 
 rites, even after the coming of Christianity. And 
 magic is a name to conjure with still. It will not 
 indeed be possible to do more here than touch so 
 wide a subject; enough if we can see that, most 
 remotely and essentially, superstition and magic are 
 the heritage left by the woodmen to their successors 
 in the Val d'Arno ; this done, such things m.ay be 
 trusted of themselves to declare their own importance, 
 if not the value of the legacy. 
 
 If one were asked to find a point of direct con- 
 nection between superstition and the woodland 
 habits just discussed, it would perhaps be enough to 
 recall our point of departure in the enforced fasts of 
 the hunter. Fasting has always played a great 
 part, for good or evil, in all religious systems, and 
 its physical and mental effects are so well known 
 that there is no need to insist on them. In certain 
 savage tribes boys are made to fast at their entry on
 
 Food and Magic 27 
 
 manhood^ with a very practical purpose. In this 
 state it is found they readily see visions, and the 
 first animal they thus visualise becomes their 
 personal totem for life ; a thing to be regarded with 
 superstitious reverence. Now whether or not there 
 was ever totemism in the Arno valley, it is quite 
 certain that the first inhabitants here followed a life 
 not unlike that of those savages who still practise 
 this peculiar custom. And here loo there must then 
 have been dreaming of strange da}'-dreams, for the 
 power of fasting to produce these does not in the 
 least degree depend upon will or design. 
 
 The background of this phantasmagoria was, of 
 course, nature itself: the woods and waters of the 
 Val d'Arno seen under the veil of night, when the 
 hunter is on foot after his quarry hoping to surprise 
 it at rest, and when torches are lit on the river to 
 attract the fish. If you have ever walked late in 
 this country during early summer when the fire- 
 flies are out, you do not need to be told how it still 
 lends itself to illusion ; how, between the fixed lights 
 above and those that move below, the heavens seem 
 doubled ; how this spangled orb above and beneath 
 seems to make the earth with its solidity sink away, 
 till only the dark woods of the horizon, dividing the 
 upper from the under world, remain as a refuge for 
 retreating reality : themselves but the shadow of a 
 
 ^ See Frazer, Totnuiiiit (1887), p. 53 ct seq. ; also Golden 
 Bougli (1900), iii. p. 430.
 
 28 Florence Past and Present 
 
 shade. i\t such moments a man clings to his self- 
 consciousness as his surest hold on the everyday 
 world, and what then if fasting have weakened him 
 in his own being? Anything will then be possible 
 in the way of illusion and of vision. 
 
 Thus the woods and the waters became peopled 
 with wood and with water spirits, always present 
 and sometimes visible, especially at night. It was, 
 as it were, a transference that took place, wherein 
 man, his vitality enfeebled by fasting, recognised 
 what he had lost in whatever met his eye at 
 moments like these, and gave the tree and the 
 stream a soul and spirit of their own. Yet, in 
 reality, these were not theirs but his ; a projection 
 of himself upon nature. The miracle lay in 
 humanity, with fasting as the means to it, and some 
 lingering sense of this fact is perhaps the true 
 explanation of totemism. For the doctrine of the 
 totem proclaims that in it man has found a spirit 
 of kin to his own, or has even learned to transfer 
 his soul elsewhere. 
 
 There will yet be time and opportunity to enlarge 
 on this matter, and to point out the various forms 
 and actual instances in which the dreams of early 
 time have survived to our own. For the moment it 
 is enough to say that the belief in wood and water 
 spirits is not dead to-day. The girls of the Mugello 
 are still careful when they sit down with their backs 
 to a tree, lest the tree spirit, like an ' old man of the
 
 Food and Magic 29 
 
 sea,' should surprise them. The spring that rises 
 among the roots of an ancient ilex near Monte 
 Murlo is still visited with religious reverence, nor is 
 the oak of Ginestra forgotten at Signa. An un- 
 published folk-tale, collected of late at Florence,^ 
 makes a tree speak when the woodman cuts it, and 
 in the Volterra hills I found 'the ladies of the 
 laurel ' very present to popular fancy not more than 
 two years ago. These are all clear survivals of the 
 time when Tuscany was covered throughout with 
 natural wood, and when the inhabitants were 
 hunters and fishers, with all the mental habits that 
 such a life implies. 
 
 As to magic, the matter is not less plain, if a little 
 more complicated. There are two theories, on one 
 or other of which all magic is built : the theory of 
 sympathy and that of i})iitation. Under the first, it 
 is supposed that when a connection can be traced or 
 established between one thing and another, or rather 
 between a person and a thing, then through the one 
 it is possible to reach and affect the other. Thus, in 
 magic of the present day, nothing is commoner than 
 the belief, often acted on still at Florence and in its 
 neighbourhood, that a witch may be put in pain, and 
 forced to declare herself for further punishment till 
 she lift the spell, simply by boiling the clothes of 
 the person bewitched. She feels intolerable heat, 
 and hastens to knock at the door of the house 
 ^ By Mr. C. G. Leland. The MS. is now in my possession.
 
 30 Florence Past and Present 
 
 where the boiling goes on. It is true that the con- 
 nection in this case is far from direct or immediate, 
 for the clothes so treated do not belong to the witch 
 herself. But it is no less plain that she must be 
 thought to have made them her own by the spell 
 and sickness she has cast on the wearer in a kind of 
 jettatiira : a self-projection in an evil sense. Thus 
 the counter-spell depends for its supposed efficacy 
 on the theor}- of sympathy, and in it the witch is as 
 it were ' hoist with her own petard,' for by her witch- 
 craft she has put herself in some degree under the 
 power of those she has injured.^ 
 
 An instance of magical practice at once clearer 
 and more significant will be found in \h^ pcdga taja, 
 the. pi an til tagliata, or cut footstep, of the Florentine 
 Romagna : the wild hill-country towards Forli, where 
 life is still primitive and much superstition lingers." 
 This magic prescribes the cutting of earth or grass 
 from the footprint left by a passer-by. What is 
 cut is put in a bag, and ma\' then be used to cast a 
 spell on the person who left the footprint. It v/ill be 
 seen that we are here on the same ground of sym- 
 pathy, though now the relation between the person 
 and the thing is more direct. Were this all, however, 
 the instance need hardly have been cited ; what 
 makes it interesting is the promise it holds out of 
 
 ^ For English instances, see (Jlanvill, Sadd. Triumph., 4th ed. 
 pp. 327. 363- 
 
 - See rilre, Arch, per Trad. Pop., vfil. i. p. 50.
 
 Food and Magic 31 
 
 clearing up the matter so as to make plain the basis 
 of fact on which this part of the magical theory- 
 rests : the fundamental truth to which it owes its 
 remarkable persistence. 
 
 What one wants and seeks is clearly a case in 
 which connection, more or less close, between a 
 person and a thing does lead to distinct and import- 
 ant results ; does put the person more or less in the 
 power of any one who can gain possession of the 
 thing. Now the value of the pedga taja magic lies 
 here that, in its dependence on the footstep, it sug- 
 gests the real case we want. If the foot sink deep 
 enough, it leaves a trail that the enemy can follow, 
 with certain consequence to the fugitive when the 
 pursuer gains on him. Even if the keenest eye can 
 see nothing where the man has passed, a dog will 
 know, and, when laid on the trail, will lead his master 
 to the same great moment when hatred finds its 
 object and wreaks its will as far as strength and 
 weapons will serve. Here is the occasion too when 
 the least belonging of a man — any trifle he has 
 touched or worn — becomes of dread importance, 
 serving to complete the connection, telling the hound 
 what he has to do, acting as a conductor towards the 
 final discharge in which human passion breaks loose 
 to wound and to kill. 
 
 Can it be doubtful that these facts are the founda- 
 tion of the magic which depends on a theory of 
 sympathy between persons and things.? But if this
 
 J- 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 be so, then one sees no less distinctly the kind of life 
 in which such magic is born. Who is it that lives 
 by following the trail ? Who gains experience by 
 generations of hunger-sharpened pursuit of game, 
 till his insight as a tracker becomes almost 
 miraculous — at least magical — to the onlookers? 
 Who first tames and trains the wild dog with its 
 faculties ready to be improved beyond those of man ? 
 There can, of course, be only one answer; it is the 
 dweller in the woods, the hunter, whom we have 
 thus reached again. His neighbours, untrained in 
 his school, think him a sorcerer as he performs these 
 wonders. He begins to accept the suggestion, and 
 magic is born, in the exaggeration of mere fact and 
 truth. But from the first this magic of sympathy is 
 the magic of the woods. 
 
 The other magical theory is the complement of 
 this. It gives rise to what has been called honuvo- 
 patJiic magic or, more simply, the magic of hnitation, 
 practised by those who believe that to imitate any 
 desired effect is to create a cause quite capable of 
 producing it. We have seen this at work already 
 when the clothes are boiled to bring the witch to 
 justice ; the boiling of the clothes is supposed to be 
 equivalent to the boiling of the woman herself. The 
 fattura della morte, or death spell, is but another 
 application of the same principle, and it will be best 
 understood from an actual case which happened in 
 Tuscany a few years ago. Two policemen on their
 
 Food and Magic 2>3 
 
 nightly beat passed the gate of a cemetery and 
 heard suspicious sounds. Entering, they found a 
 pair of old women at work by a new-made grave, 
 burying what, on examination, proved to be a lemon 
 skin stuffed with human hair. The hair was that of 
 the victim, who, his enemies hoped, would waste as 
 the fruit decayed, and whom the buried dead would 
 draw to death. The widespread magic of envoute- 
 jnent, which hurts or kills by wounding or melting 
 a wax image, is a capital case under the same 
 theory. Yet here, too, the wax should contain iiair or 
 nail-parings of the subject ; for the magic of imita- 
 tion ultimately depends on that of sympathy or 
 association, and can do nothing, it is thought, till 
 first a true rapport be established. 
 
 Now if it be asked, Where does imitation play a 
 real and undeniable part ; when does it first become 
 of real use to man ? the answer still points to the wood, 
 and to the woodland life of the hunter and fisher. No 
 one can touch the secret, or win the profit, of such 
 life save in the way that teaches him to become 
 what he pursues. He studies his quarry, keeps its 
 hours and mimics its voice and habits ; often forced 
 to crawl like a beast on all-fours, or to cover himself 
 with the skin of the animal he hunts. If he is bird- 
 ing he finds the use of a decoy; the first taxidermist 
 worked to this end that a stuffed skin might take 
 the place of the animal that once wore it. The 
 fisher learns the same lesson of the lure ; learns to 
 
 C
 
 34 Florence Past and Present 
 
 imitate in one way or another that on which the fish 
 feed. All this, then, is the doctrine of the image ; 
 as yet confined to the world of real fact and proved 
 experience, but ready, once the magical idea enters, 
 to pass these limits and to become the working 
 theory of the strange practices we have just noticed. 
 
 There is an intermediate stage which connects the 
 real with all such developments, and it is to be 
 found in the magic dances of certain savage tribes. 
 These often imitate the gestures and movements of 
 the bird or beast on which the tribe chiefly depends 
 for nourishment. Thus the Gilyaks of Siberia use 
 a bear-dance,i and in Australia the black men at 
 their feast act a pantomime in which they imitate 
 the birth and first movements of the insect that 
 supplies them with food.- It seems, on the whole, 
 pretty plain that such dances must at first have been 
 merely the school of practice in which boys learnt, 
 in company with experienced men, the movements 
 of the wild game — the secret of an approach that 
 would not disturb the quarry — and that only there- 
 after did the matter develop under the magical 
 doctrine into a supposed means of securing success 
 by mere imitation without further trouble. 
 
 We have visited Siberia and Australia only 
 because the stage these countries still represent has 
 dropped out in Tuscany, but even here there is a 
 surviving superstition — that of the lupo mannaro, or 
 
 ' Fra/.er, Golden Bougli, ii. j). 3S1. " Ibid., i. p. 24.
 
 Food and Magic 35 
 
 were-vvolf — which can hardly be explained without 
 viewing it in the way to which these foreign facts 
 lead up. The lupo mannaro, one must explain, is a 
 man like any other, who is subject, however, to 
 occasional fits of sheer and dangerous madness, in 
 which he wanders by night and attacks with savage 
 cries those whom he meets. I have known 
 of one who confessed to thus becoming 'a wolf 
 from time to time, and asked that the door should 
 be kept shut against him if he appeared in this 
 abnormal state. Such would probably be described 
 by an alienist as a case oi folic circidairc in which 
 sanity alternates periodically with a state of delu- 
 sion, followed by one of violent mania. When sane 
 the lupo mannaro is as other men ; when delusion 
 comes he imagines himself a wolf, while the acute 
 mania at once impresses others, and, perhaps, may 
 partly persist in his own memory to give strength 
 to the delusion when it recurs. 
 
 Still, when all this is said, there is some difficulty 
 in accounting for the number of cases in which delu- 
 sion takes this particular form, and even, it would 
 seem, remains, so as to influence the succeeding 
 violence and give it bestial character ; unless, indeed, 
 the solution now to be proposed approve itself as 
 likely. Insanity sometimes has the effect of undo- 
 ing generations of civilisation and setting the 
 madman back for the moment where his primitive 
 ancestors once stood ; it may even awaken inherited
 
 J 
 
 6 Florence Past and Present 
 
 habits no one could have suspected.^ As the lupo 
 mannaro is confessedly insane, may it not be that 
 something of this has happened in his case? In his 
 madness, then, he would simply ' play the wolf as 
 his remote kind once did in the woods, and his 
 violence awaken and use the same skill that they 
 learned in some deliberate and concerted wolf-dance. 
 It may be so; if it be so, then the lupo mannaro 
 repeats in our own day, unconsciously and involun- 
 tarily, one of the earliest devices of the hunter's 
 magic, the wood-magic of imitation ; and, so doing, 
 carries us back to the life and habits of the first 
 inhabitants of the Val d'Arno. 
 
 ^ See Preface, p. vii-i\.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 EARLY TRADE 
 
 Taking up once more the thread of histor}-, we find 
 the hunters and fishermen of Tuscany at the point 
 where they are about to become something else. 
 They have covered and exhausted the country of 
 the woods and the streams ; it can yield them no 
 more, and still they multiply and increase. The 
 inevitable change, one sees, when it comes, will 
 take place under the pressure of actual want. 
 
 Whither will they turn ? On the north are the 
 farmers of Lombardy, on the south the shepherds of 
 Latium. This neighbourhood will not tempt the 
 hunter or the fisherman to become a farmer or a 
 shepherd, but it will do better, for it opens to the 
 men of the woods and the streams a new way of life 
 in which their past need not be forgotten : a true 
 development where their knowledge and faculty will 
 have full play. Remaining themselves, they will 
 gain fresh occupation and new prosperity by becom- 
 ing what nature and history have destined them 
 to be. 
 
 37
 
 J 
 
 8 Florence Past and Present 
 
 They are henceforth to be traders, nor is it diffi- 
 cult to see how easily and naturally they must have 
 passed into the new life that alone lay open to them. 
 The process of change began on the border-line 
 where the hunter and fisher were in contact with the 
 farmer and shepherd ; began in the barter to which 
 such a situation easily lent itself. The winters are 
 cold in Latium as in Lombardy, and fur is the 
 warmest winter wear, lighter and warmer even than 
 sheepskin. Though the summers are hot, the 
 climate does not suit the sugar-cane, and were it 
 not for the honey that the wild bees have stored in 
 the trees, man, with his sweet tooth, would never 
 know the taste of sweetness. But so, it is the 
 men of the woods alone who have the secret of 
 both: this delicate warmth and no less delicious 
 sweetness. They track the wild bee to the robbing 
 of his honey, and when they have killed and skinned 
 the fox or the badger their wives know the cunning 
 art of preparing the peltry till the skin of these furs 
 is as soft as their pile is light and warm. Envy, 
 then, on the part of the farmer and shepherd, and 
 offers of much grain and cheese in exchange for 
 such clothes and dainties ; with the result that the 
 hunter along the border begins to follow the game 
 not entirely on his own account, and so enlarges his 
 ideas of life. 
 
 Another stage in the process of evolution soon 
 follows. On the one hand, game thus pursued
 
 Early Trade 39 
 
 with new meaning and keenness becomes scarcer all 
 along the border-line ; retreats before these hunters 
 already half-traders. On the other, their kin in the 
 heart of the country begin to envy those who, 
 through barter with the farmer and shepherd, are no 
 longer entirely dependent on the flesh of game for 
 food, but can vary their diet with grain and cheese. 
 Hence an arrangement useful to both, whereby the 
 skins, honey, and chestnuts of the interior come 
 down to the border-line where barter goes on, and 
 from it, correspondingly, the grain and cheese of the 
 lowlands move up from hand to hand through the 
 forests and along the river banks. Thus the process 
 of transformation comes to affect the whole forest 
 people, and Tuscany is again one at the higher level 
 of life which the movement of commencing trade 
 has established here. 
 
 One more step completes the process. These 
 forest-dwellers are in touch and friendly relation 
 with the farmers of the north and the shepherds 
 of the south. The idea of exchange has taken 
 possession of their minds. The moment cannot, 
 then, be long delayed when barter will become trade 
 in its higher stages. The Tuscans will see a new 
 future open before them as a link-people, the agents 
 of communication, and of the transfer of goods, 
 between the south and the north and back again. 
 Thus shepherds and farmers will exchange their 
 surplus cheese and grain with each other across
 
 40 Flortence Past and Present 
 
 country, and the Tuscan will act as the carrier in 
 this true commerce. 
 
 Observe the exact nature of this further change. 
 The Tuscan, we suppose, is still paid in kind as in 
 the days of mere barter, but what he now sells is 
 not this fur or that honeycomb but his skill and 
 pains as a carrier. His past as a mere hunter or 
 fisher is now bearing its highest fruit. The Tuscan 
 hill-country is not an easy one, but these are the 
 men who know it like the palm of their hand. 
 Their hunting paths run everywhere among the 
 thickest woods, and even pass the Apennine, joining 
 one valley to another across the great watershed. 
 The fishers know the streams in drought as in 
 flood : their easy and difficult reaches ; and, where 
 transport by water will help, the fisherman's canoe 
 is at the service of the new traffic. Thus hunter 
 and fisher alike become traders and carriers, without, 
 as one might say, ceasing to be themselves. This 
 change, in short, is a true development in which 
 commerce and all its consequences keep hold still 
 of a remoter and ruder past. 
 
 One of the first of these consequences must have 
 been the domestication of the animal best able to 
 help the new venture. The farmer, one supposes, had 
 already his ox, without which any deep cultivation of 
 the rich Lombard plain must have been impossible. 
 The shepherd of Latium, to exist at all, must have his 
 flock and herd. The Tuscan himself, even as a
 
 Early Trade 41 
 
 hunter, probably knew and used the trained faculty 
 of the dog in following game. It was only natural, 
 then, that, become a carrier and man of commerce, he 
 should seek in a like direction the help he now needed, 
 and furnish himself with the horse as a beast of 
 burden. 
 
 The process was probably a gradual one, and 
 there is even some little evidence of the lines on 
 which it moved. Wild horses of a small and hardy 
 breed may be supposed indigenous in the Maremma, 
 where, small and hardy, they run half-wild still. 
 But, according to good authority, mules were the 
 earlier beast employed in carriage.^ We are thus 
 obliged to think of domestication as beginning with 
 the ass, and proceeding in some custom of spring 
 freedom, in which these animals were turned out to 
 graze by the sea, with, as its result, the mingling 
 of the two races in a state of nature. The final 
 step would thus be the domestication of the horse, 
 with, probably, an intermediate stage in which he 
 was already caught and kept, but only that he 
 might more conveniently serve as a sire. And 
 the end was that the trader had an animal, whether 
 mule or horse, fit to answer his need and do the 
 heavy work of transport under his guidance. 
 
 At this point is born, of the beating of these 
 hoofs, the road ; the second great element in the 
 
 ^ Ft;s(i/s (ed. Miiller), p. 148. SeeW. W. Fowlei's /Cowan FesiiTa/s, 
 p. 208, to which I am indebted for this reference.
 
 42 Florence Past and Present 
 
 being and prosperity of Florence. To study this 
 is to find oneself sensibly advanced in the long way 
 that leads to the first foundation and later prosperity 
 of the place with which we are chiefly concerned. 
 Florence lived by the road no less than by the 
 river ; it is in the combination of these two elements 
 that we shall find her seat determined and her 
 prosperity assured. 
 
 It is not difficult to see along what line this 
 combination will chiefly occur in Tuscany. The 
 roads will run, speaking roughly, north and south, 
 for the traffic that creates them is that between 
 Lombardy and Latium. But the river of Tuscany, 
 the Arno, flows across country from east to west 
 in its lower course ; why, we have already seen. 
 Thus the brown roads lie parallel like the warp 
 threads in some mighty loom, and across these 
 nature's shuttle has drawn a single weft in the 
 line of the lower Arno — yellow when it flows in 
 flood, and green again as soon as the river rains 
 are over. It is here then, by the Arno bank, where, 
 point below point, the roads meet the river at right 
 angles, that the combination of these two great 
 elements, the land and the water-way, arises inevit- 
 ably, ready to be the cause of further change and 
 development. 
 
 Can these important points be more closely de- 
 fined and determined ? They are crossing-places, 
 and we may therefore feel sure that they will lie
 
 Early Trade 43 
 
 in each case just where the passage of the river is 
 easiest. Now we know enough of the lower Arno 
 to say something about the distribution of such 
 conveniences. The river course is not uniform or 
 regular here. It is interrupted by the gorges which 
 the water has cut through the ridges of the hills, 
 and where the stream flows narrowly and steadily, 
 while between gorge and gorge the Arno slackens 
 and spreads, wandering in many divided and re- 
 current channels over the level of the marshy plains 
 that were once wide lakes. 
 
 So, after all, it is nature itself that determines 
 the crossing-places, which, in their turn, attract the 
 roads and fix the lines by which they will approach 
 and pass the stream. There is no attraction on 
 the level where the Arno runs, shallow indeed but 
 uncertainly, here to-day, elsewhere to-morrow, and 
 where, besides, the approach to it must lie over 
 marshy and impossible ground. Passage will be 
 rather sought and found at the gorges, where the 
 sure ground of the hills falls steeply to the stream, 
 confining it to a constant bed. Here the Arno 
 runs at its narrowest without wandering ; and its 
 depth and force need not hinder, for here the fisher 
 with his boat is ready and anxious to act as ferry- 
 man, and so take part in the new enterprise. Thus, 
 to him above all, the gorge became of the first 
 importance ; the river gates were those by which 
 he passed into his new and higher life as a partner
 
 II 
 
 THE TRADE ROUTES 
 
 _ Roads 
 
 Rivers 
 
 ._. Coast lines 
 
 1. Aniina (Florence) 
 
 2. Golfolina 
 
 3. Gil-one and Candeli 
 
 Aulla 
 
 TYRRHENE ] 
 \ 
 
 i 
 
 \ ^- 
 
 x 
 
 \ 
 
 SEA \ 
 
 , Lucca 
 
 
 
 '-'0 > 
 
 '^Artimiiio 
 
 Pisa 
 
 
 
 Fucecchio 
 
 
 -'^v 
 
 ■p,,iio'" ■•■ '■■■., 
 
 
 
 ) 
 
 oVolterra 
 
 J.W. Brnwii del.
 
 Spina ! 
 
 
 
 Emerj' Walker sc.
 
 46 Florence Past and Present 
 
 in the great trade movement that had aheady trans- 
 formed his neighbour of the wood and chase into 
 an efficient carrier. Like the hunter, he may have 
 begun by dreaming dreams about the tree ; he had 
 his own reasons to do so, for it was the tree that 
 gave him his boat. But now in the magical change 
 that transformed his Hfe, the river gates, the gorge, 
 surely played the principal part ; strong as the death 
 that waited him in their dark stream, yet on the 
 whole beneficent and altogether wonderful. We 
 shall meet later, and in several forms, this sure 
 passage of the Gorgo into mythology, and trace its 
 long survival in the valley of the Arno ; for the 
 moment, it is enough to have seen how early and 
 how naturally the superstition arose, and with how 
 great a moment its birth was connected. 
 
 Returning then to the road, one sees that nature 
 here not only laid down in the gorges the places 
 where it might most easily pass the river, but also 
 provided on the same line the best possible approach 
 to such crossings. For the gorge lies where the 
 river cuts through a range of hills, and thus, on 
 ground both dry and high, along the hill-ridges 
 themselves, the roads will run, avoiding the soft 
 ground in the valleys, and led by the trend of the 
 hill-system to just the places where the Arno may 
 most easily be passed. Now we know that in 
 Tuscany the hills tend to run north-west by south- 
 east, and on this line, therefore, the roads will come
 
 Early Trade 47 
 
 from the south to meet the Arno. Once the river 
 is passed, however, the same roads will tend sooner 
 or later to break back, for if the lower Po is to be 
 reached from Latium the main Apennine must be 
 crossed, and this implies ultimately a north-east 
 line for the roads. 
 
 This is the moment when such a theory of the 
 traffic lines may be fitted to the country about 
 Florence with the view of seeing what actual results 
 it will give in this neighbourhood, and how far these 
 correspond with known facts. Probabilities are very 
 well in their way, one must often begin with these, 
 but their highest use lies in the light they throw on 
 the real meaning of what is certain : the facts that 
 can be adduced to prove them. 
 
 Two fixed points in the course of the Arno lie 
 near Florence, the one below and the other above 
 the city ; we know them already, for the upper is 
 the gorge of the Girone and the lower that of the 
 Golfolina, by which, respectively, the river once 
 entered and left the great lake. Of these, the latter 
 offers a natural crossing-place to traffic coming from 
 the high ground of Siena and the Chianti, for the 
 road here will pass by the hills of the Pesa to the 
 Golfolina, and thence follow the Monte Albano, 
 breaking back at Serravalle for Pracchia, and so 
 reaching the great plain at Bologna by the valley 
 of the Reno. The other suits those coming north 
 from Arezzo by the Apparita ; the)- will cross at the
 
 48 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Girone and rise to Fiesole on the same line, break- 
 ing back at this nearer point to pass the Olmo, cross 
 the Mugello, and take the pass of Casaglia for Faenza 
 and the mouth of the Po ;^ thus reaching the same 
 northern plain by another route. There is evidence 
 
 .MimA, ,„... . 
 
 
 
 
 -«.:. -^S^^^^p^r^ 
 
 
 
 ^g 
 
 
 
 Wgm'^ 
 
 
 
 ' .....^ 
 
 % 
 
 M. 
 
 . . ^m 
 
 m: 
 
 
 W 
 
 NEAR BORGUNT(J ; THE GIKONE KOAl.) RISING TO THE PASS 
 
 at hand ready to prove beyond doubt that these two 
 roads were actually used in early times, but in order 
 to appreciate its value and meaning the reader him- 
 self, like the roads he has just followed, must be 
 
 ' A (le[i()sil founil near Fiesole and represented in the collection of 
 Dolt. A. C. (jary;iolli, Florence, contained examples of the a^j marked 
 with the fish-bone sign, which seems to indicate that the Spina traffic 
 used this road. See Preface, p. ix, and R. riarnicci, /.c Moiwle, Part I., 
 (1S85), p. S (Plate X., No. 3).
 
 Early Trade 49 
 
 content to break back a little. We must, in short, 
 find here a new approach to the whole subject. 
 
 It may be supposed evident that the first men in 
 the Arno valley must have reached this seat from 
 the east. This general conclusion need not, oi' 
 course, imply that they came hither overland from 
 the Adriatic shore — a difficult and therefore unlikely 
 approach which would involve the passage of the 
 high Apennine at a point where no considerable 
 route has ever run. It is much more likely that in 
 the last stage of the journey these immigrants 
 travelled up from the Tyrrhenian sea by Pisa and 
 the river itself, )'et it can hardly be doubtful that 
 their point of departure lay somewhere to the east 
 of Italy, and that they came to the Arno in the 
 course of that general westward movement of peoples 
 which in early times carried civilisation with the 
 moving sun from shore to shore of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Now this human movement was not continuous 
 nor at once complete ; it proceeded by successive 
 waves as population rose in distant centres and 
 demanded from time to time a fresh outlet ; it sent 
 westward swarms of a different kind too, with an 
 ever higher culture, as civilisation matured in the 
 great eastern fuciiuu gentinui. And ever, as before, 
 Italy, like all the western lands, sifted out these 
 swarms according to the varying opportunities she 
 offered here and there in her long peninsula. 
 
 The first arrivals here must have been those of 
 D
 
 50 Florence Past and Present 
 
 mere explorers, on the outlook for new lands to 
 shelter and support them. As time went on, how- 
 ever, trade between settlement and settlement, be- 
 tween the eastern home of the race and its colonies 
 that spread ever westward, became the moving power 
 that prompted wandering, and made these scattered 
 nations one along every sounding shore ; binding 
 them in a new unity of Mediterranean peoples and 
 culture. 
 
 So one sees the effect that must have been pro- 
 duced at this stage by what had taken place in the 
 central Italy we are chiefly studying. In Tuscany 
 the first arrivals had of necessity lived the life of 
 hunters and fishers, but later, at the call of a new- 
 need, had become cross-country traders. So when 
 new arrivals on the outlook for commercial oppor- 
 tunities reached Italy, whether they touched its 
 shores at the mouth of the Po or on the opposite 
 Tyrrhenian coast, they found a cross-country trade 
 already on foot fit to pass on their sea-borne goods 
 from one harbour to the other, and from sea to sea, 
 by way of Tuscany. Nay, they found people here 
 at the same stage of culture as themselves, who 
 could understand their ideas and forward them, who 
 would even perhaps accept their persons and find 
 a place for them up country on the trade routes, or 
 at least admit their passage on what was rapidly 
 becoming a highway of commerce. For remember 
 that the shape given by nature to Italy, and
 
 Early Trade 5 1 
 
 especially the length of this peninsula, was not 
 without its meaning here. Even the twin extremes 
 of Calabria and Apulia made themselves favour- 
 ably felt in Tuscany ; their southward reach in the 
 Ionian sea making the periplits, and still more the 
 conveyance of goods all the way by water, a lengthy 
 and doubtful affair as compared with their trans- 
 port by the shorter overland route. But this route 
 crossed Tuscany, and Tuscans as carriers and traders 
 were the gainers by such a natural advantage. 
 
 Now of this stage in the commercial development 
 of the country the roads we have noticed, and 
 roughly traced, present certain evidence. Taking 
 first that which crossed at the Golfolina, coming 
 from Siena towards Pistoia, we find that, here and 
 there, it is marked by stations yielding deposits of 
 high antiquity and interest. Castellina in Chianti 
 is one of these, so is Argiano near San Casciano. 
 Artimino, which commands the crossing, seems, as 
 one would expect, to have been a place of consider- 
 able importance ; it was here that, in 175 i, accident 
 led to the discovery of certain ancient urns sealed 
 with pitch and supposed to have contained gold ; as 
 the like good fortune had already brought to light 
 near the same place a large deposit of small figures 
 thought to be idols, and a bull in bronze finely 
 modelled.^ But Colle di Val d'Elsa — a point easily 
 connected with the same route — has the distinction 
 
 ^ G. Lami, Lezioiii, p. 438.
 
 52 Florence Past and Present 
 
 of furnishing the highest proof at once of its import- 
 ance and of the race and dawning culture of those 
 that moved in it. On a site now uncertain, but near 
 the Badia all' I sola, there was found in 1698 a shaft 
 tomb, since closed and lost. It contained ashes of 
 the dead, and, on three sides of the shaft, a painted 
 alphabet and syllabary which Lepsius has pronounced 
 to be Greek, or early Pelasgic.^ Now as a school- 
 boy trick is not to be thought of in so solemn a 
 situation, only one moment can be conceived to have 
 produced such a record ; that of the first invention 
 of letters, or rather the time when the miraculous 
 discovery was new to Tuscany and still surrounded 
 by a halo of divine mystery. Then, and then only, 
 could the bare alphabet have seemed a iit decora- 
 tion for the tombs of the dead : the great victory 
 written over against the great defeat. It would 
 seem, too, that trade had directed the discovery 
 and the course of commerce brought it hither from 
 the East. The alphabet of Colle with its eastern 
 analogies seems to prove what we have already seen 
 reason to suspect ; the presence, movement, and 
 settlement of foreigners from Greece and the Levant 
 on these Tuscan trade routes. 
 
 One might draw further and wider conclusions 
 from the tusks of ivory found in early dwellings near 
 Fucecchio ; ^ they seem to show that some trade 
 
 ' .///;/. hi. Cory. Arch. (Roma, 1836), vol. viii. p[). 186-203. 
 ■^ Laini, op. cit., p. 328.
 
 Early Trade 53 
 
 across the Sahara was already on foot, and that the 
 moving commerce in the Mediterranean basin had 
 begun to pick up such things at Tunis or Tripoli, 
 where the caravan routes touched the sea, and to 
 carry them still farther north and westward. But 
 this is of less importance than the signs that await 
 notice on the second road, and at the crossing just 
 above Florence. We have seen how this route came 
 from Arezzo and climbed by a point not far from 
 Fiesole to the pass of Casaglia in the high Apennine, 
 and are now to ask what traces it may show of early 
 occupation and use. 
 
 Here there is no need to dig, or to seek treasures 
 underground ; the signs, though ancient and eloquent 
 as those of ihe Golfolina road, lie in spoken language 
 and are to be found in the place-names that still dis- 
 tinguish the line we have just traced. The passage 
 of the Arno, for instance, where this road crosses it at 
 the Girone, shows the name of Candeli, still given 
 to a village by the stream. Now Candeli is pure 
 Greek, and corresponds to the Kanyteldeis of Cilicia, 
 meaning, in the one case as in the other, the town 
 of the river gorge — a name that describes the natural 
 characteristics of both sites, and that is derived from 
 the root-words XA, XAA, XAXA, to open or gape. 
 Colle taught us that the alphabet came hither from 
 Greece, but Candeli does more, for it tells that in 
 early times there must have been settlers on this 
 trade route who spoke Greek as their mother tongue,
 
 54 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 and who lived long enough here to name their settle- 
 ment as Greek-speaking people would naturally do. 
 
 It is even possible to trace the matter further yet. 
 Scholars tell us of a tongue older still, which is only 
 
 KTRUSCAN VVALI, OF FIKSOI.F. ABOVF. BOROUNTO 
 
 preserved in certain scattered words contained in 
 Greek, as fossils are found embedded in later rock.^ 
 The distinguishing mark by wliich these pre-Greek 
 words are known is, they say, the occurrence in them 
 of the combination )tt or ;////, as in the names of 
 Corinth and Zacynthus, or the words viintha, mint, 
 ox plintJios, a brick. Now sucli names, showing this 
 
 ' See Kretschmer, I'linlnilimg (Gottingen, 1896), pp. 305-31 1, and 
 the Annual vi{ \\\ti liritish School, Athens, viii. ji. 155.
 
 Early Trade 55 
 
 very combination, are found at intervals alon^ the 
 road we are studying; which indeed they serve to 
 define very exactly. Just below the pass of the 
 Apparita lies Antclla, and just beside Fiesole, where 
 the road finds a natural gap in the hill, and com- 
 mences its north-eastern course, is Borguiito, while 
 near the highest point of all, in the Apennine of 
 Casaglia, it passes Ronta, to reach the summit level 
 and the last watershed between the Arno and 
 the Po. 
 
 Thus it would seem that the road had been known 
 and long used by the people that spoke the iit lan- 
 guage. It is not yet sure who these were, but it may 
 be possible to see something of the western move- 
 ment under which for a time they found their dwell- 
 ing and occupation here. Zacynthus (Zante) is an 
 island whose very name brings evidence that such 
 men once dwelt there. Now both PHn\'^ and Strabo 
 tell us that Zacynthus was the mother-land of a 
 great and famous colony in Spain ; that Saguntum 
 (Murviedro) whose name not only shows the signifi- 
 cant ///, but corresponds so closely in form with our 
 Borgunto by Fiesole. There is thus a high proba- 
 bility that the nt names found on the trade route 
 near Florence mark a distinct stage in the western 
 migration from Zante to Spain, when the emigrants 
 sojourned and traded here. But Pliny and Strabo 
 both refer the foundation of Saguntum to the 
 
 ' Natural History, xvi. 40.
 
 56 Florence Past and Present 
 
 fourteenth century B.C., and thus for the first time 
 we are able to relate the early life of the Val d'Arno 
 to histor\-, and establish, roughly, the date 1500 B.C. 
 as that of the nt names here, and of the international 
 commerce to which they bear such important 
 witness.^ 
 
 ^ The Rutuli seem to have taken part in tliis movement, though in 
 a way not easy to tlefine. It is said they were later arrivals at Sagun- 
 tum from their seat at Ardea on the coast of Latium. Lanzi, Sagi^io, 
 ii. p. 374, cites the form Rnthle from a rude urn preserved at Siena, 
 which, if applicable, would give the sign of the 7ith to this people, and 
 would suggest that Ardea may have been the halting-place of one 
 swarm from Zacynlhus, just as Borgunto surely was of another. It is 
 worth notice, too, that the Rutuli have left their name not far from 
 Florence, at Fonte Rutoli, on the high ground between the Chianti 
 and the \'al d'EIsa, near Castelliiia.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SITE AND ITS POWER 
 
 Between the roads just described, a little lower 
 than Candeli, a good deal higher than the Golfolina, 
 lies the site of Florence, and the relation here is 
 not merely local or geographical ; Florence enters 
 at once and deeply into the earl)- commercial 
 system of which these neighbouring lines of traffic 
 speak so eloquently. No study of details is needed 
 to show this, and these we may therefore defer 
 considering for the moment. The very being of 
 Florence as a city, its bare beginning as a village, 
 is enough to prove the connection ; for the gathering 
 of men in such community is a new fact which 
 clearly belongs to human life in its commercial 
 stage and development. 
 
 The hunter and fisher live, as we have seen, in 
 scattered huts set here and there among the woods 
 and by the streams ; constrained by the life they 
 lead to this natural separation. But alread\- in 
 Tuscany a change has come, and a large part of 
 the population has ceased to hunt or fish, forced
 
 58 Florence Past and Present 
 
 by its own increase to take to the road, and to earn 
 a new livelihood as the conductors of cross-country 
 traffic. Not of set purpose then, but in obedience 
 to a new necessity, their once scattered homes now 
 assemble themselves in villages set on the trade 
 routes ; which villages, when the conditions are 
 favourable, tend to increase by the attractions they 
 offer, and so to become towns, and at last true 
 cities : the centres and capitals of the new com- 
 merce. 
 
 Consider the conditions of the case. The trader 
 trades by travel ; his first capital is not the goods 
 he carries but liis own knowledge of the country, 
 and of the best and quickest routes of passage 
 from one frontier to the other : the knowledge 
 he gained when he was still a hunter. But the 
 country is wild, and what he carries is tempting, 
 so he will not travel alone but in company, for de- 
 fence and safety. The new life, in short, leads to a 
 co-operation unknown to the hunter or fisher, save in 
 the smallest measure and on the rarest occasions ; it 
 begets the caravmi, the company of men armed for 
 defence, who in numbers lead loaded beasts along 
 the new highroads of trade. 
 
 This combination is not without consequence. 
 If men are thus to act together for common defence 
 time gains a new value, as it gives the signal for such 
 co-operation, sounding the hours of departure and 
 of arrival. The railway would be an impossibility
 
 y 
 
 The Site and its Power 59 
 
 without the time-table, and the caravan imph'es 
 something at least of the same order and regulation, 
 if those who compose it are to meet and start 
 together. 
 
 But clearly place is nearly as important as time in 
 the new order of things. Convenience dictates that 
 if men are to start in numbers, and travel together, 
 they shall group their homes about the starting- 
 point, and build lodgings along the route, where at 
 the end of each day's march they may spend the 
 night. The average rate of the caravan en route will 
 determine the distance at which these halting-places 
 will lie, the one from the other. Thus, as the rail- 
 way has its termini and intermediate stations, so the 
 road, as the earlier instrument of commerce, calls 
 villages into being. And as to-day the occurrence 
 of a junction implies a station of greater size and 
 importance, so we may be sure that from the begin- 
 nings of trade the stations set where they belonged 
 to two or more systems of roads would soon have 
 the advantage. Here, above all, population would 
 gather, and the village soon become a town or even 
 a city under the operation of mere natural conveni- 
 ence. Such was the case and such the fortune of 
 Florence. She owed her being and prosperity to 
 the place she occupied, and it is now time to ex- 
 amine that singular site with new attention. 
 
 At first, as we have seen, there was no place for 
 man here ; the site was covered by the water that
 
 6o 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 lay in the eastern gulf of a wide lake. But the very 
 upheaval which brought the lake into being deter- 
 mined its disappearance by laying a new drainage 
 line across it from the Girone to the Golfolina, and 
 as the infant Arno cut down the latter strait the 
 lake drained away with the course of the stream, 
 
 THE PLAIN THAT WAS A LAKE; SEEN FROM BELLOSGUARDO 
 
 leaving wide marshes that in their turn tended still 
 to disappear. It may be that the last stages of this 
 long process were witnessed by man, and even that 
 human effort may have hastened their accomplish- 
 ment. To suppose so would help one to understand 
 the tradition registered by Villani, that art had once 
 aided nature here, as again in the days of Castruccio 
 art promised to undo the past, and destroy Florence
 
 BORGUNTO AND MUGNONE VALLEY; liTKUSCAN PAVEMENT IN FOREGROUND
 
 The Site and its Power 63 
 
 by creating the old lake anew against an artificial 
 barrier to be built at Signa. 
 
 However this may be, the natural process is cer- 
 tain, and no less sure is the double part played in it 
 by the Arno, which not only cut a way of escape for 
 the falling lake, but by the alluvium of its constant 
 deposits laid firm ground where Florence should 
 stand and spread. These deposits, in any river, 
 consist of lighter and heavier particles, the latter 
 tending to travel less and fall first. Thus the eastern 
 gulf, at the mouth of which the city stands, must 
 already have emerged, dry and firm, while as yet, 
 westward, wide marshes still encumbered the way- 
 ward stream. 
 
 In this process of building the site the Arno did 
 not act alone. Behind Fiesole, as every visitor 
 knows, the ground falls steeply to the Mugnone, and 
 the hollow valley of that stream has a tale to tell 
 that must not be neglected. Many have found it an 
 admirable background for the stage of the ancient 
 theatre on the hill ; few have considered that it lies 
 behind a wider stage, that on which the great drama 
 of Florence was plajed, age after age, on ground 
 that the Mugnone had helped to lay and prepare. 
 Yet standing at San Gallo, and noting how along 
 each viale, as well as in front, the ground falls gradu- 
 ally and gently to the Arno, who does not see that 
 Florence is built on the Mugnone delta, and that the 
 deep hollow of that valley behind Fiesole is empty
 
 64 Florence Past and Present 
 
 to-day only because of what it has yielded in the 
 remote past to the stream that drains it : the sands 
 and gravels that, mingled with those of the greater 
 stream, now form the foundation of the city. 
 
 This tributary of the Arno had another effect 
 which must not be overlooked. Issuing, then as 
 now, from the gorge at the Badia of San Domenico, 
 it once flowed untouched by art, and on a course 
 which seems, speaking generally, to have brought it, 
 by the site of San Marco and the Canto alle Macine, 
 to skirt the little hill on which San Lorenzo is built. 
 So, by the Borgo and past Santa Maria Maggiore. 
 the Mugnone found the line of Via Tornabuoni and 
 kept it till it fell into the Arno at the Ponte Trinita.^ 
 Signs of this natural course have been found here 
 from time to time: in 1565, when water broke out 
 as they were digging the foundation for the column 
 of Piazza Trinita ; in 1567, when a strong spring 
 hindered the building of the north pier of the bridge; 
 and still more lately in 1H94, when the old river bed 
 itself was laid bare in front of the Church of Santa 
 Trinita." Now such a confluence could not take 
 place without the tributary having an influence on 
 the course of the main stream, and, as we know the 
 old course of the Mugnone, we arc now prepared to 
 see what its force and burden brought about where 
 it fell into the Arno. 
 
 1 Laiiii, Lezioni, ji. 377- 
 
 ^ Gaye, Carteggio, iii. pp. 62, 27 1 ; and Milani, Rcliqiiic (1895), p. 55.
 
 The Site and its Power 67 
 
 The greater river was here pushed southward by 
 the stream that came from the north. In the upper 
 angle between them, their mingled deposits tended 
 to gather and rise high, and this bank of gravel, 
 which remained untouched till it was dug away in 
 1368/ pinned the Arno against the opposite hill of 
 San Giorgio, as in a narrow strait where it must pass, 
 and from which it could not wander. One thinks of 
 the snake caught and held down in the cleft stick of 
 the charmer, for while, above and below, the Arno 
 flowed free, ever changing its course under the law 
 of river movement — witness the many Bisariii in 
 the upper and lower plain which appear in docu- 
 ments and in maps of the district — here the river 
 was held fast between the more ancient barrier of 
 the hill behind the Via dei Bardi on the south, and 
 that nearer wall of deposit on the north which the 
 Mugnone had brought about and helped to build. 
 
 Thus then, under the hill of San Giorgio, we meet 
 the natural fact which more than any other has 
 determined the site of Florence. We have seen 
 already the value of a fixed point in the course of 
 the Arno, and how, as at Candeli and the Golfolina, 
 it determines a crossing, and draws the road to 
 itself along the ridges of approach. Shall it not 
 then be the same where Florence stands, and with 
 a new advantage? For while a true mountain 
 gorge must always offer difficulty to the builder, 
 ^ Gaye, op. cit., i. p. 521.
 
 68 Florence Past and Present 
 
 affording only a scanty site on a steep slope or, if 
 that slope be overpassed, as in the case of Artimino, 
 forcing him to build on a hill-top far from the 
 stream, and only reached with difficulty, here on the 
 contrary is a fixed point with a wide and well- 
 drained site ready to hand, where the river has 
 heaped its gravels on the plain, and the tributary 
 
 FLORENCK, WITH HILL OK S. GIORGIO, SICKN FROM BKLLOSGUARDO 
 
 has poured them far and near over a gently sloping 
 delta, fit, as time and history prove, to form the site 
 of a great city. 
 
 The more one studies the place, the more distinct 
 and convincing does its advantage seem. The 
 Mugnone at its confluence with the Arno does 
 more than bring alluvium with it ; it pours water
 
 The Site and its Power 69 
 
 into the greater stream, and to such purpose that 
 this is the point at which the navigable course of the 
 Arno may be held to begin. Thus the town if set 
 here commands a water-way, very important in early 
 times when the river ran much fuller than it now 
 does, and one that joins the place easily with Pisa 
 and with the open sea. A iew years ago they found 
 under the earth and the modern pavement of 
 ^^lorence the remains of a Roman water-tank, with 
 the statue of a river god held to represent the 
 Arno. But the tank had a second niche for another 
 statue, and this may well have represented the 
 Mugnone. One hopes it did, for the tributary had 
 clearly as much to say as the main stream in fixing 
 the site, and determining the prosperity of the 
 place. 
 
 From water to land is but a short step, and when 
 we turn from the river to the road the advantage of 
 Florence in her site becomes still more apparent. 
 The ridges of Bellosguardo and Arcetri lead roads 
 easily and on firm ground to the fixed point of the 
 crossing under San Giorgio, so that the southern 
 approach is wide and sure. From the opposite, 
 northern, bank of the Arno, nothing is simpler than 
 to make a straight and short connection with the 
 Candeli route at Borgunto — you may still see just 
 how it was done by tracing the old road down from 
 Fiesole to San Domenico, and thence by the ridge of 
 Camerata to the Ouerce, the Via degli Artisti, the
 
 yo Florence Past and Present 
 
 Borgo Pinti, the Via del Mercatino, and the Via dei 
 Rustici. Hence, though later building now inter- 
 venes, the distance to the Piazza dell' Arno is so 
 short and the direction of the road so well assured, 
 that the Piazza may be taken as fixing the place 
 where it once joined the river. But this is just the 
 fixed point in the Arno we have already found, and 
 if a boat launches to leave it for the other side, it 
 will fall with the current, and will land goods and 
 passengers just where the south roads — the Via dei 
 Bardi in both branches, and the Costa San Giorgio 
 — join to meet the river and open the way to the 
 south. Thus the site and crossing are easily in 
 touch with the Chianti on the one hand and with 
 Borgunto on the other ; not to speak of the Mugello 
 and far Faenza, to which the road from Arezzo by 
 Candeli and Borgunto ultimately leads over the 
 pass of Casaglia. 
 
 The most important pass in the neighbouring 
 Apennine, however, was not perhaps that of 
 Casaglia, but rather the Futa, which opens the road 
 to Bologna; for near the site of this city stood in 
 very early times the great settlement of Villanova, 
 which must have been one of the chief places where 
 the cross-country trader dealt with the dwellers in 
 the basin of the Po. A glance at the map will 
 show how well placed is the site of Florence for 
 direct communication with this northern trade centre. 
 The massif of Monte Morello offers no real
 
 The -Site and its Power 71 
 
 obstacle. -One road rises to the right of the hiJi, 
 alo|ig the ridge of the Pietra, and ^nds T3arl>eriTio 
 di Mugello by way of Vaglia and San Piero a Sieve. 
 The other keeps to the left and the Ipw ground, by 
 Quarto Ouinto and Sesto, and reaches Barberino 
 through the valley of the M^-ina above Calenzano. 
 From Barberino to the Futa pass, and thence by 
 Pietramala and Loj^o, the road runs to Villanova 
 almost as straight as it can be drawn, though the main 
 watershed pf the Apennine lies between. Thus the 
 easy crossing at San Giorgio gathered and directed 
 Ti>ads that joined the Lombard plain with the heights 
 of the south, and ultimately with the lower valley 
 of the Tiber itself. And when we remember that 
 here the Arno offered its own western water-way 
 to Pisa and the sea, the result of all these advan- 
 tages cannot be doubtful. There is room here, by 
 the crossing, for a village, a town, even a great city. 
 And the city will be great, for no other site in the 
 neighbourhood commands and combines so many 
 trade routes and opportunities. 
 
 These theoretical advantages of the San Giorgio 
 crossing are seen to be real when one comes to 
 examine the proofs of early settlement on the 
 Mugnone delta, and to trace the history of the city 
 thus set by the Arno. In 1895, when foundations 
 were being laid for the buildings of the new centre, 
 a group of early graves came to light where the 
 Gaffe Gambrinus now stands. The cinerarv urns
 
 72 Florence Past and Present 
 
 then discovered, and now preserved in the Museum 
 of Via della Colonna, were of distinct Villanovan 
 type, and beside them lay a bronze fibula that spoke 
 of Greece and the East, so clearly ^gaean was the 
 art it showed.^ Here then must have lain a 
 cemetery of the earliest Florence, not without proof 
 that the town itself was in touch by the Futa road 
 with Villanova, and that south and seaward it lay 
 open to the same eastern influence that we have 
 already remarked in the neighbourhood : at Candeli 
 and at Colle. The story is consistent then, nor 
 does it want for further confirmation, but ere we 
 proceed in it we must determine more accurately 
 the site of the first settlement here. The ' Gam- 
 brinus ' graves have given us the cemetery, but 
 where was the village of those who here buried 
 their dead ? 
 
 The fixed point in the Arno. and the easy cross- 
 ing under San Giorgio, mark the place of greatest 
 advantage, near which the village must stand if it 
 is to be in touch with the ferry and command the 
 traffic downstream to and from the sea. The one 
 danger the river brings to human habitation on this 
 site is that of its floods, and if there be a point less 
 exposed than another to the inroads of water, that 
 point will be chosen for the settlement. Now we 
 know that there was high ground close by, in the 
 angle between the Mugnone and the Arno, just 
 
 ' See, for tliis Villanovan (le[)osit, Milaiii, Reliqiiic (1S95).
 
 The Site and its Power 73 
 
 where the Via dei Rustici runs towards the river.^ 
 If we suppose then that the first village stood on 
 this bank of gravel behind the Piazza dell' Arno, it 
 will be easy to show that no other situation fits so 
 well the known circumstances of the case. 
 
 This site lies at the very centre and meeting-place 
 of all the lines of communication we have already 
 traced. To it falls and runs, in a line all the more 
 impressive because so straight, the road from Bor- 
 gunto. In its direct approach to the river careless 
 of aught but speed, this road would seem to have 
 found its line before a building of any kind had risen 
 here to preoccupy the trader, or cause him to change 
 route even by a hair's-breadth. It is true that as 
 now seen in the Via Torcicoda, between the Via del 
 Mercatino and the Via dei Rustici, the road does 
 bend before returning to resume its original line, but 
 this diversion is easily explained ; it has occurred 
 by the intrusion here of the Roman Amphitheatre. 
 Now, as it is certain that, had this building been 
 already raised, the road would have run clear of 
 it, we must suppose rather that the road is the 
 older of the two, and that it dates from pre-Roman 
 days. This impression is confirmed when, remem- 
 bering that it connects the Arno crossing with Bor- 
 gunto, we notice that part of the road still bears 
 the name of Pinti. For thus again, as on the 
 Candeli route, we come across the tracks of the 
 
 ' See above, p. 67.
 
 74 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 strange and early people who used the ;// language. 
 Plainly they were busy here.^ Theirs may have 
 been the /Egaean brooch found in the cemetery near 
 by, and certainly we cannot do wrong in taking the 
 line of the Borgo Pinti, and of the lower streets that 
 carry it down to the Piazza dell' Arno and the riv-er, 
 as the original trade route _abDjj± -the "foot of which, 
 
 PIAZ/.A DKl PKRUZZI ; CUKV|-. OF AMPHITHI-ATRK ON RIGHT 
 
 on her high bank, Florence first began to live and 
 grow. 
 
 What is perhaps less obvious, but certainly not 
 less remarkable when observed, is that the road 
 from Sesto tells nearly the same story if we study 
 it carefully. Here the first matter to be noticed 
 
 ' II is worlh iioiicc iluit Siiiiulliiiis occurs early as a [>i()per name in 
 Florence. See Lanii, op. c/t., p. 257.
 
 The Site and its Power 75 
 
 is that of direction in this second approach. As 
 the road runs in the remoter country it does so 
 under a natural preoccupation : that which would 
 lead the traveller to seek firm ground on the first 
 slopes of Monte Morello, and so to avoid the 
 marshes on his right as he draws near the river. 
 This accounts for the windings of the road all 
 the way from Colonnata to the Romito. Taking 
 it up now from the other end, we find an altered 
 direction, from the Piazza Madonna by the Via della 
 Forca, very natural and explicable as leading to the 
 main north gate of Roman Florence, but just on 
 that account to be held as a later diversion. There 
 remains the Via Faenza from the Fortezza da Basso 
 to the Piazza Madonna, and as we are here on plain 
 ground, and within sight of the journey's end, this 
 street may be taken as evidence of the direction in 
 which early travellers chose to reach the Arno from 
 Sesto. Prolong the Via Faenza, then, in a line that 
 cuts straight across the present centre of Florence,^ 
 and what is the result ? The Sesto road reaches the 
 river at a place only a very little lower than that 
 found by the road from Borgunto, Between these 
 two points then, the one in the Piazza dell' Arno, the 
 other in the Lung' Arno della Borsa near the Piazza 
 dei Giudici, lies the probable site of the first settle- 
 ment, on the high ground near the river. 
 
 ^ Further warrant for this bold conjecture will be found below, 
 on p. 1 10.
 
 Ill 
 
 FLORENCE 
 
 in her elements 
 
 I. Piazza dell' Anio 
 
 z. Altafronte 
 
 3. Piazza del Vino and 
 Loggia del Graiio 
 
 4. Mercatiiw 
 
 5. Geniculum 
 
 6. Mercato Vecchio 
 
 7. Piazza V. Emainicle 
 
 8. Piazza deliolio 
 
 9. Amphitlieatie 

 
 C A M A R T E 
 
 
 
 I'MiieryM'alkcr bc.
 
 78 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Observe that the indication furnished by the Sesto 
 road is as ancient and authoritative as that which 
 Borgunto has already given, and that these two 
 routes not only point to the same crossing-place by 
 the river, but tell a like story of forgotten time. On 
 the Sesto road, as it passes Ouinto, stands a villa 
 called La Mula, and for a reason. The Tuscan 
 people of this neighbourhood have long said : — 
 
 ' Tra Quinto, Sesto e Colonnata, 
 Giace una mula d'oro sotterrata ' ; 
 
 and, in fact, the villa is built on a tumulus^ that 
 covers an ancient tomb whose spoils of gold, when 
 it was first robbed, live no doubt in the local rhyme. 
 This tomb is very remarkable, and has been the 
 subject of expert study which assigns it to the sixth 
 century before Christ. For our present purpose it 
 is enough to note that it reproduces the singular 
 architecture of the Treasury of Atreus in Greece, 
 and on a scale of size which may fairly compare 
 with that of the better known monument. The road 
 must be older than the monumental tomb that thus 
 relates itself to it, and the traders who passed on 
 this line to and from Villanova were at one time 
 surely in touch with the far life and famous art of 
 Mycenae. 
 
 The near coincidence of the roads from Borgunto 
 and Sesto where they run to meet the Arno at so 
 convenient a crossing-place might seem enough to 
 
 ^ La Alula may be a corruption of this mole.
 
 The Site and its Power 8 1 
 
 fix the apex of this V as the true centre from which 
 Florence developed. But there are other reasons 
 which make the conclusion still more certain. One 
 of these may be found in the relation of the sub- 
 stantial markets — those of corn and wine and oil — to 
 the system these roads describe. P'or the Piazza 
 deir Olio — still so called — lies just off the line we 
 have traced for the Sesto road through the city, 
 while the Piazza del Vino and the Loggia del Grano 
 lie about its lower end where it reaches the river. 
 
 Another confirmation may be found by crossing 
 the Arno to the south. We have already seen how 
 such a passage, under the power of the river, brings 
 a boat and its load to the very point where the three 
 south roads draw nearest to the water as if in com- 
 petition for the arriving cargo. But this is not all. 
 Study the long street which comes up-stream from 
 Bellosguardo and the west, and reaches the river 
 here by way of the Borghi of San Frediano, Santo 
 Spirito and San Jacopo. One would fancy that the 
 Ponte Vecchio would be its object, but plainly it is 
 not so. For all the age of the bridge here, which 
 has taken the place of one built by the Romans, 
 perhaps by the Etruscans, on the same site, it is 
 not in correspondence with the bridge that the 
 road runs. It gives the bridge a clear go-by and 
 reaches the river bank somewhat higher up, at the 
 very place so often in question, where the Costa 
 begins to mount the hill of San Giorgio, and the Via 
 
 F
 
 82 Florence Past and Present 
 
 dei Bardi draws away again from the Arno to seek 
 the farther slopes. Here, indeed, on the south bank, 
 is no place for a city. The ground is too narrow, 
 steep, and uncertain ; so treacherous, in fact, that one 
 half of the Via dei Bardi is gone where it meets 
 the hill, and the blank retaining wall bears the 
 
 words : — 
 
 ' Hiiius Montis aedes soli 
 vitio ter coUapsas ne 
 quis denuo restitueret 
 Cosmus Med. Florentin. 
 ac Senens. Dux ii vetuit 
 Octohri ciD. D. Lxv.' ^ 
 
 Not here, then, but across the Arno at that point 
 of departure with which this landing-place so well 
 corresponds, are we to seek the site of the first 
 houses of the city. 
 
 One more corroboration may be added to what 
 is already sufficiently plain. The castle of Altafronte 
 stood in the Middle Ages on the high ground — as 
 its name indicates — where Florence first rose. Now 
 we know from the chronicle of Villani that there 
 were still some in the historian's day who held that 
 Altafronte marked the site of the Capitol of Florence. 
 Villani himself will not have it so, but says the 
 Capitol stood westward, at the Via del Campidoglio, 
 where indeed its ruins were found in the late ex- 
 
 ' Kuin is kniiwn lo have taken place here in 1 2S4 and again in 
 1547. See Aniinirato, S/or. I'lor.^ xxxiii. ; Manni, Sigilli, xxi. ; 
 ami Tyastri, Cvf. Fim-.. viii.
 
 The Site and its Power 83 
 
 cavations for the new Centre. Yet both he and 
 those he reports were probably right. ^ Altafronte 
 stood on the high ground where Florence began, 
 and if her Centre shifted so that the Roman Capitol 
 came to stand elsewhere, these are matters which 
 concern the later development of the cit}- and not 
 her original site. Those who gave such importance 
 to Altafronte had the tradition of an older truth, 
 and to recover this to-day, and find the first seat of 
 Florence by the river that brought her life, at the 
 crossing where the roads met, is to begin well. The 
 rest is but the long story of a growth, age after 
 age, which carried the city north and westward from 
 this her original site and sure point of departure. 
 
 ^ Certainly worth notice too in this connection is the significant 
 manner in which Malispini, recording the dwelling-places of the most 
 ancient Florentine families, begins, not from Mercato Vecchio, but 
 from San Piero Scheraggio and Borgo dei Greci. See R. e G. 
 Malispini, Storia. cap. lii.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE DOUBLE INHERITANCE 
 
 It is plain that the crossing-place made Florence, 
 and that its advantages were ready to secure the 
 development and progress of any town which rose 
 here. Of this later history much remains to be 
 said, but before entering on it another matter de- 
 mands some attention. Is it possible, one asks, to 
 know anything of the people who first lived here, 
 and to trace in the Florentines of later times and 
 of the present day any of the characteristics of 
 these early ancestors ? 
 
 Something is already sure: that Florence rose 
 on the trade route, and therefore had her being from 
 the first as a town begotten of commerce. To the 
 truth of this succeeding time has borne abundant 
 witness, for Florence has never forgotten her origin, 
 and her greatest days have ever been those when 
 her trade most freely flourished. This is the sense 
 of the magniloquent inscription you may still read 
 in the choir of Santa Maria Novella: — 
 
 84
 
 The Double Inheritance 85 
 
 ' An. MCCCCLXXXX, quo pulcherrima Civitas, 
 opibus, victoriis, artibus, aedificiisque nobilis, 
 copia, salubritate, pace perfruebatur,' 
 
 nor is it less legible in the decline than in the pro- 
 sperity of the place. The history of Florence thus 
 appears an evident unity, but we have yet to relate 
 it to the stor}' of the Florentines. 
 
 These first trailers here had not been always 
 such ; they were hunters and fishers who had turned 
 by a natural necessity to the ways of commerce. 
 Their characteristics will therefore be in a measure 
 mixed, for the oldest life of all will not die in these 
 men because it has come to assume a new form. 
 The survivals we are to expect will not then be 
 pure, but will bear clear traces of their mingled 
 origin in the woodland life that had become the 
 life of the road. 
 
 Take first, as truly fundamental, the matter of 
 the family. With hunters the family is a narrow 
 group, early formed and quickl)' dissolved, as the 
 children grow up and scatter to find game for 
 themselves without poaching on their parents' pre- 
 serves. Trade, to which the hunter has now turned, 
 will call these lonely households together, and group 
 them afresh in villages on the trade route, but 
 cannot be expected to abolish altogether the primi- 
 tive instinct of separation derived from the wood- 
 land life. Florence will not show then, at least in 
 early times, the patriarchal family, where several
 
 86 Florence I'ast and Present 
 
 generations inhabit with wives and children the 
 same home. This is the type of life proper to the 
 shepherd, and, in a measure, to the born agriculturist. 
 You may find it at Rome then, or among the 
 farmers of the Po valley, hardly by the Arno, till 
 times late indeed, when communications have become 
 easy and have worn away the sharpness of original 
 characteristics. The Florentine will live close to 
 his neighbours and his kin, for trade demands this 
 change, but he is still himself, and will live his own 
 life apart from theirs in a house of his own, which, 
 if near, is yet distinct and private, the peculiar 
 dwelling of the single family that owns and occupies 
 it. Thus Florence rose then, a town indeed, but 
 one built of small and separate houses : of wood 
 and thatch no doubt, that in their very material 
 they might recall the hut of the hunter, constrained 
 to no such neighbourhood but set alone among the 
 wide spaces of the forest. 
 
 Even when the Florentines had come to build 
 in stone, the manner of that later building shows 
 to a wonder the same characteristic, and, here 
 and there, remains to-day to prove it. The first 
 Florentine palazzi were not, as those of Rome, 
 the vast dwellings of patriarchal households gather- 
 ing many branches and generations within the 
 same four walls of massive brick or stone. At 
 Florence they built differently. Each family had 
 its house; each house was a self-contained tower
 
 The Double Inheritance 87 
 
 in several stories ; more or fewer according to the 
 means of the builders. There was grouping indeed 
 of such towers as the kindred grew and occupied 
 a whole plot of ground, tower beside tower, till 
 the whole was girdled about, and the free space in 
 the centre alone remained unoccupied within that 
 singular defence. The law of the city might and 
 did interfere, cutting down the towers to a uniform 
 height above, and causing their owners to cover 
 the whole block with a single roof.^ Thus the 
 group of towers became a palazzo, but who does not 
 see that it was still a palazzo after the manner of 
 Florence and not of Rome? Under that roof the 
 towers still stand distinct, as you may see three 
 of them, even to-day, at the east end of Via delle 
 Terme ; so close that they present but one wall to 
 the street, and indeed seem one till you notice the 
 lines of perpendicular division between them that 
 a knife-blade could hardly find, yet clear enough to 
 give the Florentine what he wanted ever since he lived 
 alone in the woods: a house of his own shut within 
 its own four walls. The early palazzi of Florence 
 were cities in miniature, built up of separate homes 
 as the city is, but of homes in still closer juxtaposi- 
 tion ; her palazzi are the city in the essence of it, 
 bearing sure witness to the remote history and funda- 
 mental character of those who made the place. 
 
 ^ Under tlie law of 1251. See my Builders of Florence {l^ondon: 
 Methuen, 1907), pp. 70-1:2, for a fuller discussion of this mailer.
 
 88 Florence Past and Present 
 
 As one thinks of the change that took place 
 when the hunter became the trader, it appears that 
 such a new venture must have altered and extended 
 the value of human life in no small degree. The 
 hunter who marries early ages soon, and in a life 
 where children scatter betimes and the family tie 
 is loose, the ageing find themselves at a great dis- 
 advantage, as, with dulled senses and enfeebled 
 strength, they compete with the young in the pursuit 
 of game. To the trader, on the other hand, a new 
 prospect opens, for a man may ride the road when 
 he can no longer walk it ; and even if in age he 
 choose to stay at home, he may abide there as the 
 useful and honoured master of counsel and director 
 of trade ventures, whose past experience in this 
 way of life has a value that years and the decay of 
 bodily strength cannot touch. 
 
 So it would certainly seem that the Florentine, 
 originally a hunter and now turned to the way of 
 trade, must look at old age from a double point 
 of view. As he yields to the suggestion of his 
 remoter past, he will fear the coming years, and 
 rudely cheer his heart in scorn of all who are yet 
 older than himself. As a trader again, and in 
 another mood, he will find gentler comfort in the 
 praise of age, its wisdom, and the counsel it draws 
 from a ripe experience. 
 
 Now these are just the contrasted moods we find 
 reflected to-day in the current proverbs of Tuscany.
 
 The Double Inheritance 89 
 
 ' Onora il senno antico ' belongs to the later and 
 gentler class, and other examples of this attitude 
 are such as these : ' Tutto cala in vecchiezza, fuorche 
 avarizia prudenza e saviezza ' ; ' un asin di vent'anni 
 e pill vecchio di un uomo di sessanta' and ' chi 
 barba non ha e barba tocca, si merita uno schiaffo 
 nella bocca,' while the earlier and ruder lives in the 
 sad and bitter sayings: 'Chi piu vive piu muore ' ; 
 'e piu facile arrovesciare un pozzo, che riformare un 
 vecchio,' and, worst of all, ' a testa bianca spesso 
 cervello manca,' or, 'nella vecchiaia la vita pesa, e 
 la morte spaventa.' Proverbs like these may be 
 and are world-wide, but at Florence they take a 
 deeper meaning than ordinary experience can 
 account for : they represent, in their sharp contrast 
 of expression, the two phases of life through which 
 the Tuscan has passed. 
 
 From proverbs to language in general is no great 
 journey, and it may be worth while to see what 
 effect his life had upon the Tuscan's speech, and 
 what survivals of the remote past ma}' be found 
 registered still in its peculiarity. The life of the 
 hunter and fisher, as we have viewed it, will surely 
 tend to break up language into an uncommon 
 variety of dialect. Everywhere the family easily 
 invents and adopts a ' little language ' of its own. 
 This is the first step to dialect, and if, in our modern 
 experience, the matter goes no further than such 
 private slang for home consumption, that is only
 
 QO Florence Past and Present 
 
 because families — even those who never open a book 
 — now live in such close intercourse and society that 
 together they form a standard of speech and keep 
 each other true to it. 
 
 But in the forests of Tuscany things were very 
 different. Not only was there no literature — the 
 great check to dialect — but there was no society 
 either, in the modern sense of the word. It has 
 been said that among the Indians who hunt and fish 
 in the vast forests of the Amazon, there is a dialect 
 for every hundred members of the tribe. One has 
 the right to suppose it was the same in the woods of 
 Tuscany and by its streams, and for the same rea- 
 son ; the hunters and fishers were so scattered and 
 saw so little of each other tliat there was the least 
 possible check on these natural varieties of speech. 
 The matter may be proved and studied to-day by 
 the curious, for it has left a direct survival at Flor- 
 ence. The fishers of the Arno will tell you, not 
 only that their talk is technical and peculiar to 
 themselves, but that within the limits of the city, in 
 the short distance that separates the Ponte di Ferro 
 from the Ponte Sospeso - not more than a mile and 
 a quarter — a trained ear can distinguish two or three 
 dialects, where not only the accent but even some of 
 the words will be found to vary from point to point 
 on the river. If it is so still, under the shadow of a 
 great city, how much more must dialect have varied 
 and tltnn'ishcd here in prehistoric days, when as yet
 
 The Double Inheritance 91 
 
 there was neither road nor town, only the river, the 
 hill, and the wood held by the scattered famiHes 
 they harboured and fed ? ^ 
 
 Now if, from the hunter he had been, the Floren- 
 tine was become the trader, grouped as never before, 
 alike at home and on the road, this can only mean a 
 victory won over dialect by a new unity of common 
 speech. Nay more ; if the trader here is to prosper 
 by learning the talk of Lombardy and I.atium, 
 between which he moves, he must begin by reform- 
 ing his own language. Towards this linguistic pro- 
 gress, then, each age brought its own contribution. 
 The hunter's life was responsible, no doubt, for the 
 breaking up of language into dialect among the 
 loneliness of the woods, but, on the other hand, it 
 laid a foundation for the opposite process that was 
 ready to commence when the time should be ripe. 
 For, by necessity, the hunter is a man whose ear 
 and voice are shrewdly trained by the life he follows. 
 There is a language of the woods, inarticulate 
 indeed, but all-important to those who follow the 
 chase. The notes of the birds, and the voice of the 
 deer when they breed, mean much to the hunter. 
 They not onl}- lead him where game lies, but his 
 chief art is found by imitating them, training his 
 throat to the liquid trill or whistle, calling reeds to 
 
 ^ There may have l)cen a leasun for this survival: 'Among some 
 tribes of Western \'icloria a man was actually forbidden to marry a 
 vfiie who spoke the same dialect as himself.' — J. Dawson, Aborigi)ics, 
 quoted by Frazer, Golden Bough, vol. i. p. 420 (2nd ed.).
 
 92 Florence Past and Present 
 
 help his birding, or setting a blade of grass between 
 his hands to mimic the bleat of the fawn. Thus he 
 spares himself many a weary step, not content 
 merely to follow what flies, but ambitious rather to 
 call the game and find it come to his feet. Yet who 
 does not see that such art is substantially the same 
 as that in which men teach themselves to speak a 
 strange language as well as their neighbours : by 
 listening keenly, remembering long and exactly, 
 and imitating constantly? If, as we must suppose, 
 the Tuscan trader lived by learning to talk well, it 
 is plain that his training as a hunter laid the foun- 
 dation for that excellence ; he came to his great 
 change well prepared to take advantage of it. 
 
 And the new way of life he found not only put 
 him under the necessity of using a common lan- 
 guage with his kin, and learning the speech of his 
 neighbours ; it gave him direct help to both. The 
 great agency at work to-day for the suppression of 
 dialect is the conscript army : the meeting-place of 
 men from every province who must live and work 
 together, and whose society and service give promise 
 of an Italy not merely politically one, but that shall 
 yet be united more closely than ever by the bond of 
 a common speech and understanding. So must it 
 have been in Tuscany when the hunter turned 
 trader. These men, once scattered, now lived and 
 worked together, and in their caravan was born 
 almost at once — was it not the condition of tlieir
 
 The Double Inheritance 93 
 
 life now? — a common speech in the suppression of 
 the dialects that had hitherto divided it. So Urdu 
 arose in India as the language of the eastern camp. 
 
 We have seen how this victory over dialect had 
 been prepared for, and may be sure that the trained 
 faculty of ready imitation that secured it was still 
 ready to serve the trader in more distant fields. 
 The talk of the borders thus came up country not 
 less surely than the grain of Lombardy or the 
 cheese of Latium. When the trade routes pierced 
 these provinces, and the traders reached the eastern 
 or western sea, the new world of language that every 
 port opened was but another opportunity for their 
 formed and triumphant facility. The strange names 
 we have found left by strangers on the Candeli 
 route — Borgunto and the rest — prove that these 
 sojourners by the Arno, and at Florence, had no 
 need here to forget their own tongue, but might use 
 it freely as in their native seat. This can have only 
 one meaning, that the people of the place had 
 learned to speak it as well as they. 
 
 Now, on the whole, it will be difficult to find any- 
 thing that more clearly and wonderful!}' represents 
 the past in the Florence of to-day than just this 
 matter of language. Not the survival of strange 
 place-names, or of any particular foreign tongue the 
 Tuscans may at one time or other have learned to 
 speak, but something deeper and greater than these: 
 the sheer faculty of speech, the delight in its skilful
 
 94 Florence Past and Present 
 
 use, that distinguish the Tuscan, and especially the 
 Florentine, from other men.^ There is much inter- 
 provincial jealousy in Italy, and the Tuscan has at 
 least his share of abuse for this or that in him that 
 his neighbours find unpleasing, but if the talk fall on 
 language it is still the lingua Toscana that all unite 
 to praise, and, if possible, to imitate, conquered in 
 spite of themselves by the rich subtlety which fears 
 no rival in the art of fitting words to things and 
 expressing the thought in the phrase. 
 
 The great Florentine poet did much for the lan- 
 guage, but it were a deep mistake to suppose that 
 Tuscan before Dante's day was a mere dialect like 
 any other form of Italian, which only the happy 
 accident of his birth and Muse raised to the place 
 it holds among the great languages of the world. 
 Tuscan, like any other tongue, was what it was 
 because of those who spoke it, and was therefore 
 originally, inevitably, richer than its neighbours as 
 being the talk of men whose whole training and 
 hope made them masters of sound and of speech in 
 a sense hardly known to the rest of Italy. Quite 
 apart from any author, even the greatest, who ever 
 used it, Tuscan was thus sure of the supreme place ; 
 born to it from the remotest {^ast in the early history, 
 training, and faculty of the Tuscans themselves. 
 
 ' Cf. Taine, of the Enyii-sli : 'lis ne savent pas s'amuser avoc la 
 parole,' and the confession of F. Co])j)ola, ' L'artc di nudrirsi di parole, 
 di appas^arsi di parole, di incbriaisi di parole, c arte senza dubhio 
 italiana.' — 7V//;////(?, I4lh .Vprile 1910.
 
 The Double Inheritance 95 
 
 It is difficult to put into English words the real 
 nature and singular effects of this pre-eminence as 
 they appear in the common talk of modern Florence. 
 To speak of the Florentine's delight in language is 
 but an approach to the central truth. This delight 
 is born of a sense of mastery over words, and joy- 
 fully inspires their further use and refinement. 
 Strangers have sometimes wondered that there is no 
 game proper to Tuscany unless it be Pallone, and 
 that even here the people only watch and bet while 
 professionals play. It may be truly said of the 
 country in general that the real Italian game is that 
 of word-play, and that none is so expert on this 
 ground, or takes such delight in the botta e risposta. 
 as the Tuscan : the Florentine. It gives him all the 
 sensations of keen expectation, watchful interest, 
 and joyful, successful, entry and victory that others 
 find in contests of physical strength and skill ; he 
 feels it all, but finds his exercise and delight on the 
 higher, the mental, plane. 
 
 Here, then, lies the genesis and perpetual renewal 
 of the /rz's^^, the peculiarly Florentine jest. Hum- 
 our is proverbially untranslatable, and Florentine 
 wit is the least likely to form an exception to the 
 rule. To describe its form is nearl)' as difficult, 
 though here something may perhaps be done by an 
 analogy. The double stopping of the expert vio- 
 linist, and his art of creating harmonics that are 
 heard above, below, and behind the principal notes
 
 96 Florence Past and Present 
 
 he plays, to their indescribable enrichment, may 
 serve as figures of what you hear — or, if you are 
 inexpert, more frequently miss — in this Florentine 
 speech. Every phrase, almost every word, has a 
 meaning beyond the common and the obvious, so 
 that seeming rudeness may be real flattery, or, 
 more frequently, the apparent compliment cover a 
 real and atrocious attack. 
 
 Some of these /"rz'c:^/ are stereotyped ; they live in 
 the memory of all, and become, as it were, the cards 
 used in the game : phrases and replies framed of 
 old to follow each other in a common sequence. 
 But just as the shuffling of the cards implies new 
 combinations, and makes the game one of oppor- 
 tunity, so the accidents of life and intercourse lend 
 themselves to new applications of the old material 
 of language. Word-play at Florence is never stale, 
 ever full of fresh excitement and interest, to these 
 masters of the phrase. The victory of the Tuscan 
 tongue has been won, age after age, on these playing 
 fields, and the faculty which enjoys itself there still 
 is agelong ; it looks back to the life of the wood- 
 lands, and to the new necessity brought by early 
 trade where first that art of vocal mimicry found its 
 higher application and more enduring fame.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE VILLE AND THEIR RELIGION 
 
 As one thinks of what early Florence must have 
 been, there are several characteristics so probable 
 here that they deserve notice, quite apart from any 
 question of their survival in our own day. If they 
 existed and made themselves felt, however early, 
 they must, of course, in their consequences, have 
 influenced the whole succeeding history, though to 
 trace their effects may be difficult, if not impossible. 
 For the present purpose, however, it is enough that 
 we see them in their relation to the first growth of 
 the place, encouraging development, and even laying 
 down the main line which brought Florence from 
 the village she was, to the town and city she 
 became. 
 
 In opening this study it is necessary to examine 
 more closely than before the Florentine family. The 
 foundation of future development must have been 
 laid in the new society that Florence saw : in the 
 family therefore, transferred from the woods to its 
 new seat where the roads met, and, one cannot but 
 
 G
 
 98 Florence Past and Present 
 
 believe, profoundly influenced by this change of 
 place and of occupation. Let us try to conjecture 
 what such change must have implied, and how it 
 made itself felt. Florence itself was from the first 
 a result of the new grouping that drew men together 
 in an altered way of life, nor is it likely that this 
 should not have affected the units involved in it ; 
 those lesser ultimate groups which were the families 
 gathered here. How did they differ from the family 
 of the hunter or the fisher ? 
 
 To say that they were traders is to imply more 
 than we have yet observed. The way is long from 
 Lombardy to Latium, and the roads steep and rough 
 that lead across Tuscany from the eastern to the 
 western sea by the Apennine passes. If we add 
 that the passage was not altogether safe ; that it lay 
 through the woods, where wild men lingered armed 
 with arrows and spears in the fashion of the former 
 age ; and that the hunters who had taken to the road 
 and its trade were therefore forced to travel in com- 
 pany, and use their old weapons in a new defence, it 
 becomes plain that these journeys could not fail to 
 produce their natural effect at home — that is, in the 
 families of Florence. 
 
 Time, much time, is necessary for such expedi- 
 tions. The way is long, and the caravan moves 
 slowly, constrained to the pace of the weakest mule 
 and the worst man. Weeks if not months will pass 
 before it returns, and it does so only to set out again
 
 The Ville and their Rehgion 99 
 
 on a new venture. As the caravan is composed of 
 men only, the conditions imply that in the trading 
 community of Florence there is a sharp separation 
 of the sexes. The men are on the road most of the 
 time, while the women stay at home in the society 
 of their own sex, and those of the other who are too 
 young or too old to travel. 
 
 Now this is the situation which, wherever it 
 occurs in the world, has alwa}'s and naturally 
 brought about that constitution of the family and 
 of society which is known as the Matriarchaie. 
 Where the husband is absent from his wife most of 
 the year, she can hardly be expected, on marriage, 
 to go to live with her husband's relations, who are 
 comparative strangers ; she will naturally stay with 
 her own people, whom she has always known, and 
 the children will be reckoned as belonging to the 
 family of the mother and not to that of the father. 
 If the hunters come to combine forces in the chase, 
 and are absent from home much of the time in 
 organised bands, the Matriarchate will develop even 
 in the woods. This is the reason of its occurrence 
 among American Indians. It may, therefore, have 
 been known in Tuscany even in the first period, and 
 in that case the association of the hunter in com- 
 panies would precede and suggest the caravans in 
 which, later, he began to travel the roads in pursuit 
 of trade. However this may be, it is certain that 
 such organised absence of the men, whenever it came
 
 lOO Florence Past and Present 
 
 about — and therefore in the period of trade, if not 
 already in that of the chase — could only result in 
 the constitution of the family on the basis of the 
 Matriarchate. 
 
 It is evident that such a society, where descent is 
 traced through the mother rather than the father, 
 must give woman a position of uncommon import- 
 ance. But the case of Florence is such that we can 
 see further reason why she should here have enjoyed 
 a peculiar independence and consideration. In the 
 woods, the wife of the hunter had spent her spare 
 time in such simple tasks as the curing of furs, the 
 clearing of honey, and the plaiting of baskets, and 
 hers therefore were the products that passed from 
 hand to hand in that first barter on the border that 
 led up to true trade, and changed the life of the tribe. 
 Now, as the trader's wife, and settled at Florence, she 
 has more time still on her hands. When the men 
 are absent, for weeks or months at a time, the women 
 form perforce a society apart, ply their tasks in 
 common, and learn the secrets of co-operation. 
 Rivalry between these workers is to be expected, and 
 leads to improved results in the output. The 
 curing of skins becomes the tanning of hides, the 
 plaiting of willow or reed the weaving of flax, and 
 pottery, once made casually and for home consump- 
 tion only, is now turned out with new art, and in the 
 quantities that trade demands. For trade rules all 
 at Florence, and woman, who cannot enter it
 
 The Ville and their Religion loi 
 
 directly, or travel the roads as men do, works 
 by supplying the market still in a new industry. 
 Her co-operation and organisation at home answers 
 exactly to that of the men on the road and in the 
 market. She has an assured position in the common 
 venture ; may acquire property in right of her contri- 
 bution to it ; and, if her produce come to form any 
 considerable part of what the caravan carries, the 
 man will soon appear as the inferior partner in the 
 concern : the servant who carries goods to market 
 and sells them for his mistress the producer. 
 
 Hence a probable reaction, tending to restore the 
 threatened equilibrium between the sexes. Children 
 trim the balance, for a child, whatever its sex, may 
 as readily take after the mother as after the father. 
 The boys who take after their mothers will despise 
 the road and show aptitude for industry at home. 
 Manufacture will enter on a new life with the appear- 
 ance of these stronger hands in the workshop, and 
 Florence, beginning as a mere trading centre, will 
 develop as the seat of true and balanced industry 
 in which both sexes find due employment. 
 
 Hitherto we have seen trade transform the hunter 
 into the carrier of goods, and industry rise in a very 
 natural way to meet the demands of the market ; it 
 only remains that we should touch on agriculture. 
 For farming on the large scale, such as Lombardy 
 knew, there was neither room nor need in the 
 neighbourhood of early Morence ; her life was
 
 I02 Florence Past and Present 
 
 nearly if not quite as alien from that of the fields as 
 from the flocks and pastures that formed the riches 
 of Latium. Yet one must suppose that the ground 
 here was not quite left to itself, and in trying to see 
 how culture of a slight sort may have come about 
 near Florence, we gain a valuable clue to the distri- 
 bution of the population here, and the consequent 
 direction in which the town began to spread 
 onwards and outwards from its first seat by the 
 Arno ferry. 
 
 The climate of this valley is far from tropical, 
 and though hot in summer is quite cold enough in 
 winter to make fires necessary. The hunter had 
 built them of old by his hut in the woods, and the 
 trader will not be content in his new home without 
 the comfort of a hearth in the cold season. Thus 
 quite apart from the wood used all the year round in 
 cooking, house and boat building, and the operations 
 of industry, there will be a demand for winter fuel at 
 Florence which the neighbouring woods must be 
 sought to supply. But the cutting of the woods 
 means the clearing of the ground about the town, 
 and even, one may say, the ploughing of these town- 
 lands — thinking of the pack-mules yoked to the 
 felled tree to bring it home, the weight of the trunk, 
 and the furrow its butt must have left all the way 
 from the wood to the house. Had the Florentines 
 known nothing of field labour before, one sees that 
 this might easily have been their introduction to it.
 
 The Ville and their ReHgion 103 
 
 In any case, the town must soon have stood in a 
 clearing, and the natural use of such ground must 
 have been found in its culture. 
 
 As tree-felling proceeds, however, a difficulty 
 emerges, for the woodland is always moving farther 
 away, and the transport of fuel becoming more 
 troublesome. This difficulty may be supposed to 
 act in the following way. Under it there will 
 clearly be the temptation to extend Florence per 
 saltum, by dividing it — that is, by planting a new 
 settlement nearer the retreating woods. Thus, as 
 abandonment of the ferry is not to be thought of 
 since its trade advantages are so great, we get the 
 probability of a double community here, one still 
 clinging to the old seat at the Piazza dell' Arno, the 
 other set towards the first hill-slopes on the north, 
 and between them nothing but the clearing : once 
 woodland and now arable ground. One may pause 
 to remember that this is just the stage where 
 Villani takes up his tale of Florence : in the twin 
 Vzlle of Arnina and Camarte. Arnina one supposes 
 the original village by the ferry, and Camarte may 
 have lain at the slopes still called Camerata, or on 
 some height of that plain which was still known as 
 Camarte in the Middle Ages, where the Baptistery 
 and the Church of San Marco both stand to-day. In 
 any case, the second village must have lain well to 
 the north of the Villa Arnina. 
 
 Now with the cultivation of the ground there
 
 I04 Florence Past and Present 
 
 comes by necessity a new conception of property in 
 it. The dwellers in the woods had regarded their 
 solitudes as free, the common hunting-ground of the 
 scattered tribe. But where the trees have fallen and 
 the ground is given to culture men will not spend 
 their labour on it unless it be declared their own. 
 Hence the necessity of division and appropriation, 
 and, in the particular case of the twin village here, 
 of a border-line traced by art, and itself the expres- 
 sion of some new law that gave in just proportion 
 to Arnina and Camarte the whole arable ground 
 that lay between. 
 
 Arrived at this point of probability, some proof of 
 what has been reached in theory now becomes an 
 urgent need, and must, of course, be sought in the 
 region of survivals. As to the Matriarchate, one 
 might point to the case of a great Florentine family, 
 the Adimari, called Nepotumcose, Nepotecose, or 
 Nipotecosa, as the descendants of a certain Cosa di 
 Litri ; for here a woman appears plainly as the head 
 of the house, and descent is reckoned from her.^ As 
 to the rise of industry in the co-operation of women 
 left to themselves, the state of the first convents at 
 Florence is not without interest and significance. It 
 has been said of them by a very competent author- 
 ity that they were erected 'solely in the material 
 interests of the founder's family,' and that ' they 
 assumed a religious character only that they might 
 
 ' Sec Cosinu) dclla Kcna, Sc-r/i' (Hrenzc, 1690), p. 33.
 
 The Ville and their Reh'orion 105 
 
 enjoy a greater security and higher consideration,'^ 
 Now, in the ninth century A.D., two of these, the 
 convents of Sant' Andrea and of San Michele, were 
 the seat of industry, where women Hving in the close 
 society of their own sex, worked at the loom. The 
 material here was goats' hair or the wool of sheep, 
 and we know that the wool came to San Michele 
 from the mother-house of Nonantola on the other 
 side of the Apennine. See then how much these 
 facts confirm. Tuscany affords little or no pasture- 
 land; the wool wrought here must come from abroad. 
 Florence is set on the trade routes ; her people are 
 carriers; nothing is more natural and easy than the 
 transport which brings the wool from Nonantola 
 and returns it by the same hill-road wrought into 
 cloth. The authority who brings these facts to our 
 notice is no doubt right in saying^ that here we 
 have the beginning of that great wool trade which 
 was later to build the best fortune of Florence. But 
 clearly there is more to be said, for the matter looks 
 back as well as forward. This convent life, religious 
 only by accident and in an afterthought, is, one may 
 believe, the sure survival of the necessary segrega- 
 tion of the women under the conditions of prehistoric 
 trade here. And this industry the convents sheltered 
 was a survival, too, of the earlier looms and natural 
 
 ^ Davidsohn, .SVor/a (Firenze : Sansoni, 1907), vol. i. p. 131; see also 
 pp. 102, 133. 
 
 - Ibid., pp. 134-135-
 
 io6 Florence Past and Present 
 
 co-operation which raised household tasks till they 
 became a true manufacture for which trade began to 
 act as the carrying and distributing agency. 
 
 Now the Church of Sant' Andrea remained to 
 mark the seat of this remarkable survival till a few 
 years since, when the Centre of Florence was de- 
 stroyed and rebuilt. San Michele, fortunately, is 
 still with us, and, as Or San Michele, is one of the 
 chief attractions of the city. May we not look then, 
 near these sites, for another survival in equally 
 substantial form ? What of the border-line that has 
 seemed so likely? May not Florence be expected 
 to show some sign still of a yet more significant 
 survival in the persistence of the old division which 
 once separated north from south here : the lands of 
 Camarte from those of Villa Arnina? 
 
 In what form may we expect to find it? The 
 doctrine of land measurement is very old. It comes 
 to us from the Romans as the work of the ' Agri- 
 mensores,' but the Romans say they had it from the 
 Etruscans, and indeed the matter may be more 
 ancient still. Now amid much that is perplexing 
 and uncertain two things surely emerge from the 
 confusion found in the Rei Agrariae Auctores, and 
 these are, first, the dependence of the whole art upon 
 the sun, which in his rising, southing, and setting, 
 fixes the cardinal points for men who have no other 
 compass. And next, the constant tendency of 
 every border-line, whether it run north and south
 
 The Ville and their Religion 107 
 
 or east and west, to affirm itself in a road ; the 
 limes is always becoming the semita or the via 
 puilica} 
 
 Now in the case of Florence — that is, of the Villa 
 Camarte and the Villa Arnina, which lay north and 
 south of each other — the dividing line must run east 
 and west between them. Wherever Camarte may 
 have stood, Arnina, one may feel sure, lay at the 
 Arno ferry; about, therefore, and behind the Piazza 
 deir Arno. Thus it follows that the border will lie 
 to the north of this point, and that it must have run 
 east and west. Is there any sign of it to-day ; any 
 street in Florence which fulfils these conditions, and 
 which may be held as the survival of the old divi- 
 sion } If any, it must be the line of the Via Strozzi, 
 the Via Speziali, the Corso, the Borgo degli Albizzi, 
 and the Via Pietra Plana, for no other bears the 
 signs of which we are in search. 
 
 The line in question clearly belongs to a new 
 order of things. The roads already examined — the 
 Via Faenza with its ideal prolongation across Flor- 
 ence to the Lung' Arno della Borsa, and the other 
 member of the V, the line of the Borgo Pinti, the 
 Via del Mercatino, and the Via dei Rustici — are 
 simply, one may well believe, the approaches to the 
 river ferry found by ancient travellers, careless of 
 aught but speed, convenience, and the natural con- 
 
 ^ See the yvt/.-i^rar/ize ,-:/?<t/c7r<rj, edited by W. Goesius (Amst., 1674), 
 p. 151 (Hyginus) ; ed. Lachmann, Berlin, 1S48, i. p. 16S.
 
 io8 Florence Past and Present 
 
 ditions of the ground over which they must move. 
 But the new h'ne which crosses these, making the V 
 an V> is not natural but clearly artificial, and the art 
 betrayed here is that of the Agrimensor in its rudi- 
 ments ; the land measurer whose first preoccupation 
 lay in the use of the sun to find and trace an east 
 and west line. No such east and west line, for truth 
 and length together, is to be found at Florence, as 
 may be still seen in the streets just named. 
 
 As soon as this first great correspondence is 
 recognised, many details crowd to corroborate it, 
 and many facts show themselves in quite a new 
 light. It appears that the boundary road ran from 
 water to water, for, as the first course of the Mugnone 
 followed Via Tornabuoni, so in old times the Affrico 
 — still called a 'river' on account of its former 
 importance — reached a point marked by the Church 
 of Sant' Ambrogio, at the end of the Via Pietra- 
 piana, before it fell into the Arno.^ Thus the artifi- 
 cial combined exactly with the natural boundaries 
 of the territory here. 
 
 Then the earliest trace of human occupation at 
 Florence relates itself naturally to the line in ques- 
 tion. The six urn-burials were found in sand 
 on the bank of the Mugnone a little north of the 
 west end of this road. If one is right in taking it as 
 
 ^ In this neighbourhood too, between S. Ambrogio and the Port' alia 
 Croce, lay land called ihc ^^ori^'o, perhaps because the Affrico once fell 
 into the Arno at this place. See d. Lanii, Memorabilia, pp. 1098, 
 1099, 1 100, and Leziotii, pp. 70, 105, no, 384, 387.
 
 The Ville and their Religion 109 
 
 the boundary, then these graves were part of the 
 cemetery of Camarte. 
 
 The possession of property has always drawn 
 men to invoke religion as a sanction and defence of 
 their rights. The compita of old times, perpetuated 
 in the wayside shrines of to-day, served a double 
 purpose: as boundary marks they defined property, 
 and as temples they invited worship and assembled 
 the neighbourhood at stated times for its perform- 
 ance. The fact that the common boundary mark 
 to-day, as in ancient documents, is the tree — the 
 cypress or other — strengthens this contention rather 
 than weakens it. For the tree had beyond all ques- 
 tion its place in primitive life as the home of the tree 
 spirit, and the use made of the cypress still, alike in 
 cemeteries or where lands meet in Italy, is but one 
 more proof that though the woods are gone the life 
 they once saw, and the belief they once inspired, 
 have left their traces down to our own day. 
 
 So then the Florentine boundary road, if really 
 such, would surely attract and fix the religious 
 thought of the twin community it divided ; would 
 be marked by shrines and hallowed by religious 
 observances from the day when it was first traced. 
 On the west, the cemetery fixed it so that it could 
 not be changed without violating the graves of the 
 dead. By what further sanctions, in what concourse 
 and worship of the living, was this important line 
 secured ?
 
 iio Florence Past and Present 
 
 Two points in this east and west line are evidently 
 of singular importance : the crossing-j^laces where it 
 meets the roads that come from Sesto and Borgunto 
 respectively. These, as conipita, may be expected to 
 gather to themselves the religious sanctions invoked 
 to hallow and preserve the boundary line. As to 
 the first, it may be well to observe that, as yet, it is 
 for us merely ideal ; the situation we give it depends 
 on our being allowed to project the line of the Via 
 Faenza across the city to the Arno. Now here a 
 singular circumstance comes to confirm the boldness 
 of that conjecture, For the compituvi thus deter- 
 mined coincides exactly with the situation of the 
 pillar which, till the Centre was emptied a few years 
 ago of its antiquities, stood at the corner of the old 
 market-place, and carried the statue with its cornu- 
 copia called the 'Abundance' of Florence.^ Through 
 the centre of this column the east and west line we 
 follow certainly passed, and our right to prolong the 
 line of the Via Faenza as we have done is strangely 
 
 ^ Vasari says of it : ' In Mercato Vecchio, sopia una colonna di 
 granito, e di mano di Donato una Dovizia di macigno forte, tutta iso- 
 lata ; tanto ben fatta che dagli artefici, e da tutli gli eomini intendenli, 
 e lodata sommamente. La qual colonna, sopra cui e questa statua 
 collocata, era gia in San Giovanni, dove .sono I'altre di granito che 
 sostengono I'ordine di dentro ; e ne fu levata, ed in suo cambio poslovi 
 un'altra colonna accanalala, sopra la quale stava gia nel mezzo di (juel 
 tempio la statua di Marte, che ne fu levata quando i Fiorentini furono 
 alia fede di Gesu Cristo convertiti.' It would thus seem that the 
 tradition of Florence carried the matter back to the first centuries of 
 our era, and associated this column with still earlier pagan worshij). 
 See furtiicr below, ])[). 145-149, 382.
 
 MEKC'ATU VECCHIU AND PILl.AK OF AHUNDANCE ( I'holo Aliiuui)
 
 The Ville and their Rehgion 113 
 
 justified v/hen we find that the two Hnes coincide at 
 the very point where the pillar stood. 
 
 Thus the first religious sanction begins to appear 
 on the boundary line, and the religious history of 
 the place to unfold itself. If the society of early 
 Florence was constituted, as seems likely, under 
 the principle of the Matriarchate, then these people, 
 like those of the East who followed the same way, 
 would share the eastern worship of the mother 
 goddess, the Ishtar or Cybele as she was called in 
 Babylon and in Asia Minor. We shall yet find 
 other proof that this was so ; for the moment it is 
 enough to notice how naturally the form given by 
 man to his deity depended on the conditions of his 
 own life, and how much reason there is to think 
 that at this compitmn we have found a true trace 
 of the worship proper to such people as the first 
 Florentines probably were. The column here no 
 doubt represents the tree, as we know it does not 
 far off, by the Baptistery. The cornucopia which 
 the ' Abundance ' held is equally significant of 
 Fortuna, whom we know to have been the equiva- 
 lent of the eastern mother goddess. Her place on 
 the symbol of the tree enables one easily to identify 
 her with the ' donne degli alberi ' still heard of in 
 Tuscany. Her name, the )iia!n)iiola, or ' mother 
 dear,' is given to-day at Florence to her flower, the 
 violet,^ and her sex, surviving the greatest religious 
 
 ' Cf. Dioscoridcs, iv. 122, who calls the blue violet kvjUXlov. 
 H
 
 1 14 Florence Past and Present 
 
 change the city has ever seen, has remained ob- 
 stinately attached to this site. For this compituni, 
 marked of old by the goddess on her pillar, came, 
 under Christianity, to bear the shrine and figure 
 of the Madonna della Tromba, once set at the 
 corner of the market here, and now seen in the 
 Arte della Lana where it looks to Or San Michele. 
 So much for the primitive Matriarchate and its first 
 consequences at Florence. 
 
 It is a pleasant change to pass from the site of 
 the pillar of Abundance to that other, eastern, 
 crossing where the road from Fiesole intersects the 
 east and west line. The alterations carried out 
 twenty years ago in the Centre have made of the 
 first conipituvi a mere street corner such as you 
 may see anywhere ; while the other is still worth 
 a visit for its obvious antiquity, quite apart from 
 the interest that longer and closer study may dis- 
 cover here. The way thither leads eastward, and 
 entering the Corso where once stood the ancient 
 Church of Santa Maria Nipotecosa — with its far 
 memories of the Matriarchate — you find what the 
 Centre has lost, the Florence of the past. The 
 street runs narrow and straight between high houses 
 shaded by broad eaves. Passing the intersection 
 of the Via del Proconsolo, it becomes the l^orgo 
 degli Albizzi, once called the Borgo San Piero, and 
 takes a still deeper tint of the past and of departed 
 splendours in the shadow of its great palaces, long
 
 The Ville and their ReHgion 1 1 5 
 
 the homes of the Albizzi, the Alessandri, and the 
 Altoviti. A few more steps and you stand in a 
 wider space, the Piazza of the Mercatino di San 
 Piero. On the left a deep dark archway brings 
 hither the ancient road from Fiesole by the Borgo 
 Pint!. On the right the same road leaves the Piazza 
 for the river under the shadow of an old tower at 
 the corner of the Via del Mercatino. In front, as 
 it were to mark and hallow the crossing, stands 
 a great portico, the atrium built in 1628 for the 
 Church of San Piero Maggiore, and now the only 
 relic of that very ancient building which time has 
 spared. The Piazza is a busy place, with its shops 
 and smoking stalls that offer hot dainties to the 
 crowd ; its traffic of loaded carts, bright with the 
 trappings of their teams, that still find this a con- 
 venient road to the hills and the north. By day 
 the place is loud with market cries, and when night 
 falls you may find the cantastoric chalking the orb 
 of the world on these stones and gathering a silent 
 crowd about that circle, spellbound to hear him as 
 he recites from the page of Serdonati the battle of 
 Gavinana and the fall of Ferruccio. But the deepest 
 interest of the place lies further back than these 
 fitfully remembered wars. We are still on the 
 boundary road, in search of its early religious 
 sanctions, and may expect to find these localised 
 in no common way at this second conipitn})i. 
 
 To begin with what is certain, this church had
 
 ii6 Florence Past and Present 
 
 extraordinary importance in the Florentine religion 
 of the Middle Ages. The ritual of the See pre- 
 served in the Bullettone — a manuscript of the early 
 fourteenth century — prescribed that each new bishop 
 should take possession here. San Piero Maggiore 
 thus took precedence of Santa Reparata, or even 
 San Giovanni, and was, if we accept the implied 
 evidence of this ritual, the religious centre of the 
 city. 
 
 Nor only under Christianity, for there is some 
 reason to think that a like importance attached 
 to this conipitiini in still earlier times. In the 
 neighbourhood — one does not know exactly where 
 — lay a street called the Via Gentilis, which we 
 may provisionally translate ' the street of the 
 pagans.'^ Thus rendered, the name would probably 
 belong to the days when Christianity was new, 
 before it had quite won its victory over heathenism, 
 and if so, it surely points to this quarter of Florence 
 as the place where the older religion gathered its 
 last forces in the great conflict. Thus each bishop's 
 progress hither assumes the character of a demon- 
 stration, ordered in memory of the final victory, 
 and brings indirect evidence of the earlier sanctity 
 which had first attached to the cross-roads here. 
 
 This established in a certain probability, it may 
 be possible to go further, and even to ascertain the 
 manner of worship practised here in pagan days. 
 
 ' .See below, p. 41 1.
 
 The Ville and their Rehgion 1 17 
 
 The ritual of the bishop's entry prescribes^ that, 
 after enthronement in this church, he should walk 
 barefoot westwards along the Borgo, and pause in 
 his progress to the cathedral to say certain prayers 
 at a place called the Ge7ticiihii)i. The place is still 
 marked by a stone and inscription under a window 
 of the Palazzo Altoviti in the Borgo, and the reason 
 of the ritual pause and prayer is given in the legend 
 which tells how, in the fifth century, San Zanobi 
 knelt here to obtain from God the life of a dead 
 child. But if the Geniculum is as old as the fifth 
 century, it falls within the limit of expiring heathen- 
 dom at Florence, and to the older religion we must 
 turn if we are to find the secret of the place and 
 its story. 
 
 At Rome, too, there is a ' Genuculum,' high on 
 the right bank of the Tiber, of which legend tells 
 that St. Peter knelt there to pray before he was 
 crucified. Now, obviously, this is only the Janiculum 
 of the pagans in a new spelling which suggests the 
 Latin word for the knee. Hence, when this corrup- 
 tion was no longer known as such, an explanatory 
 legend which brings the kneeling Apostle on the 
 scene. So then at Florence the story of San Za- 
 nobi's prayer has doubtless arisen in the same way, 
 as the explanation of a late misunderstanding. 
 
 ' In 1301 this ceremony is said to have l)een practised 'per tantum 
 tempus cuius memoria hominum nonerat.' See Bullettone, MS. in 
 Arch. Arcivescovile, Florence.
 
 ii8 Florence Past and Present 
 
 The Geniculum of the Borgo Sail Piero is indeed 
 as old as the fifth century ; nay, much older, for it 
 is the Janiculum — the lesser Janus shrine — of the 
 Tuscan city. 
 
 If this was the lesser, where was the greater 
 Janus of Florence? If we suppose it stood by 
 the Mercatino a double reason at once appears in 
 support of the conjecture : Janus shrines were com- 
 monly set in or near market-places, and San Pietro, 
 who came, as we know, to occupy the ground here, 
 is so natural a substitute that his presence at this 
 compitinn, as on the Roman Janiculum, may almost 
 be taken as itself a sign of the preceding pagan 
 worship that distinguished the place. ^ Before St. 
 Peter was thought of as the Porter, the Door had 
 long been under the custody of Janus, who seems 
 in popular fancy to have preceded the Apostle in 
 this function. Nothing so easy then, or so likely, 
 as the transition we have supposed. 
 
 Janus is one of the oldest names in Italian myth- 
 ology, and though his attributes are obscure at 
 times, there is much regarding him which seems to 
 fit well the place and purpose of such a consecra- 
 tion. He wears a double face, which a distinguished 
 Florentine has already indicated as the probable 
 sign of a double government and state." Here, on 
 
 ' Note that a column once stood here no less tlian al llie other, 
 western, cotnpituin. Sec Laslri, Oss. Fior., v. p. 89. 
 
 ^ Filippo Bonarola, Ad Moii. Etriisc. opcri Dciupiteiiaiio Addita 
 explic. et conjee t. (1724), 11. 21.
 
 The Ville and their Religion 1 19 
 
 the border-line between the men of the two Ville 
 Arnina and Camarte, concerned to keep their 
 bounds without offering or suffering intrusion, no 
 symbol would seem more significant of the situation ; 
 no god they knew more in place at these cross- 
 roads. Again, Janus is not only the god of number 
 and division — witness the statue of him set up in 
 Rome by Numa Pompilius which declared in the 
 language of the dumb how many days there are in 
 the year ^ — but, in a deeper sense, as this example 
 shows, he represents the sun, on whose course and 
 apparent motion such division ultimately depends, 
 and by which the year is measured and divided.- 
 But the sun we know to have been the compass used 
 by the Florentines to trace the east and west line of 
 the road we are studying, and if religion entered 
 into the matter at all — as how should it not? — the 
 heavenly sanction they invoked was no other than 
 that which Janus came to represent. 
 
 Returning now, westward, along the boundary 
 road in the footsteps of the bishop on his way from 
 San Piero to the Geniculum, we pause at the lesser 
 Janus to note a curious correspondence which con- 
 firms the view we have taken of this road and its 
 real meaning. The Geniculum was not only visited 
 
 ' Pliny, Ahjtic)-al History, xxxiv. 7. 
 
 - The Etruscan name of Janus, ' Ani,' gives the Latin word for the 
 year, annus, with a feminine anna as in Anna Perenna ; perhaps the 
 name of the corresponding goddess. Anna would thus be the equi- 
 valent of Diana.
 
 I 20 Florence Past and Present 
 
 when a new bishop came to the See, but yearly, and 
 in a singular fashion. On the day after the great 
 feast of Easter the clergy went in procession to San 
 Piero Maggiore : thus made the first of these urban 
 stations in sign of its religious importance. Return- 
 ing thence by the Borgo, they halted at the 
 Geniculum to sing and pray in honour of San 
 Zanobi, and, this done, broke up their assembly, 
 reaching the cathedral in a studied haste and dis- 
 order so that this was known as ' the runaway pro- 
 cession.' ^ Now the ritual flight belonged to many 
 parts of pagan practice, and was generally associated 
 with a sacrifice rather apparent than real, either 
 because the human victim was not, in fact, killed, 
 or because an animal became his substitute.- The 
 flight was part of the pretence that a heinous act of 
 murder had been committed at the altar. At Rome 
 such a flight, known as the Regifugium, took place 
 once a year, and it followed immediately on the 
 feast of the Terminalia, when the boundaries of land 
 were consecrated anew. Tiius it becomes probable 
 that the Easter Monday ceremony at Florence has 
 preserved some trace of an antecedent pagan 
 observance : a ritual flight, connected with a sacrifice 
 to the god of boundaries. Nay, it might be a ques- 
 tion whether processions in general, as a part of 
 religious ritual, have not come of the desire to use 
 
 ' Dcgli scappati. .See Cocchi, Chiese di Firenze (1903), p. 97. 
 " Fowler, Roman Festivals, pp. 324-330.
 
 The Ville and their ReHgion 121 
 
 religion in the interests of property ; whether, in 
 short, they are not all derivatives, nearer or more 
 remote, of an original beating of the bounds. The 
 various senses of the English word March are not 
 without meaning in this connection. 
 
 Passing westward still from the Geniculum, one 
 reaches, in the Via degli Speziali, a point where the 
 east and west road runs not far from the site of the 
 old Church of San Tommaso, now destroyed. Built 
 into the church wall there stood a stone much older 
 than Christianity, which may still be seen in the 
 Archaeological Museum. It is a cippus, sculptured 
 on all four sides with figures of rampant lions, and 
 of a god which has been identified as Usil-Aplu, the 
 deity of the sun.^ The art is that of Asia Minor ; it 
 speaks of a time when as yet the power of Rome 
 was unfelt at Florence, and the name of the Jani- 
 culum probably unknown. The stone, one fancies, 
 must have been brought to San Tommaso from some 
 neighbouring point on the ritual road, the Via Sacra 
 of Florence, since this was drawn by the card of the 
 sun and found its religious sanction as a boundary 
 in the primitive sun-worship practised here. If we 
 suppose the point in question to have been the 
 
 ^ I do not know on what authority this name has been given, but 
 ' Apollo ' in sucli a situation implies no idea other than those presented 
 by the 'Janus' we have already met. The Greeks had an Apollo 
 surnamed Ovpaio's, ' of the door,' and dyvLeu^, as god of the city 
 street, who is identified with Janus. See Macrobius, Saturuali- 
 orum, i. 9.
 
 122 Florence Past and Present 
 
 conipitimi formed where the road from Sesto crossed 
 the Via Sacra — which is, in fact, as near the site of 
 San Tommaso as may be on this line — then a 
 singular combination must be taken account of, 
 that in which the mother goddess and the sun 
 god are associated on the same site. The pillar of 
 stone at this conipitimi probably replaced a tree, 
 as we know that by the Baptistery did. If we im- 
 agine the stone of San Tommaso set up here under 
 the shadow of the tree — the tree representing 
 the mother goddess and the stone the sun god ^ — 
 then we have, in these twin symbols, the primitive 
 stock and stone of Florence ; the visible signs 
 of the sanctity early religion lent to this boundary 
 line. 
 
 One matter remains for consideration, the relation 
 of the goddess to the god. Whether their material 
 symbols ever stood together at the western cross- 
 roads or not, it is certain that the goddess and the 
 god shared the honours of this ritual road. Whether 
 the stone of the sun ever stood under the tree here 
 or not, to suppose it did so is to have a striking 
 symbol of how the goddess related herself to the god 
 in the minds of their worshippers. These are men 
 of the Matriarchate, and the Matriarchate means 
 that under it the man looks up to the woman as the 
 
 ' So sometimes in Syria. Kut the symbols were often reversed : 
 the tree lepresenling the male, and the pointed stone the female, 
 element. See authorities cited hy Krazer in his Adonis (1907), p. 14, 
 note 6.
 
 The Ville and their Religion 123 
 
 original and head of his race, as the Adimari, hard 
 by this crossing, looked to Cosa, their eponymous 
 foundress. And still at Florence the race is called 
 the ceppo, the tree-trunk, from which the branches 
 break out, and the twigs still divide. Under the 
 Matriarchate, then, the tree is the mother, where 
 every branch and tv/ig belongs to the whole only in 
 right of each fresh female descent. The woman 
 is the original, and the male the derivative, in such 
 a genealogy. 
 
 As with the men so with the gods they create and 
 worship. The pillar stood for the tree ; the tree was 
 the ceppo, the stock, the original mother deity, under 
 whose shadow the god represented the male 
 principle ; necessary indeed to the generation of 
 men ; appearing, therefore, beside the mother god- 
 dess, yet certainly derivative and subordinate even 
 in such a situation. He might be, and here he cer- 
 tainly was, the sun itself, strong as a lion to run the 
 daily race of heaven. But if so, the goddess still 
 rose above and behind him as the stock surpassed 
 the stone, for she was the light itself, the dawn seen 
 before the sun appears, the twilight glow when he is 
 gone, the bright constant background to all his daily 
 splendour. /\s the pearl that grows on the shell is 
 but a gathering in one small orb of the wider 
 brightness behind that we still call the niotJicr-oi- 
 pearl, so it seemed to the old world that the sun 
 itself was derived, not original ; a gathered splendour
 
 124 Florence Past and Present 
 
 made of the mother light of heaven through which 
 he moved. ^ 
 
 There is another view of this relation so natural 
 as to be inevitable. Once admit the idea of sex in 
 such a theology, and sooner or later it will issue in 
 the doctrine of a divine marriage between the god- 
 dess and the god: a relation infinitely important to 
 man because conceived of as the fruitful source of 
 every blessing he enjoys, including and transcending 
 life itself Now it is singular that while death lies at 
 the western end of the Via Sacra in the cemetery 
 set towards the sunset, life in its source is acted at 
 the other towards the sunrising. We only know this 
 latter rite in the form in which Christianity has 
 admitted and preserved it : the ritual marriage of 
 the bishop to the abbess of San Piero." But the 
 rite has so little of Christianity about it, and agrees 
 so well with the known pagan practice of the 'Iepo<? 
 Pa/io? that under the robes of Christian Rome we 
 can easily discern those of a long series of priests 
 and priestesses, the representatives in this rite of the 
 goddess and the god respectively. If the idea of 
 property in land came with the first practice of 
 agriculture here ; if the Via Sacra was the boundary 
 drawn to divide tilth from tilth ; early beliefs not yet 
 
 ^ Even the Australian aborigines call llie planet \'eniis the ' Mother 
 of the Sun.' See F. T. Elworthy, The Evil Eye (London : Murray, 
 1895), p. 439, who quotes J. Dawson, Australian Aborigines (Mel- 
 bourne, 1881), pp. 49, 100. 
 
 - See below, p. 413, for a full discussion of this ceremony.
 
 The Ville and their ReHgion 125 
 
 extinct in some parts of the world assure us that 
 this ritual marriage arose naturally in such a situa- 
 tion as the act of sympathetic magic relied on to 
 secure the fruitfulness of these adjoining fields. 
 
 So, then, it may well have been, but a yet higher 
 certainty is within reach if we turn from all that is 
 doubtful in these details to the general ideas the 
 road represented and the roots of religion that first 
 sanctified it. The Via Sacra runs from stream to 
 stream guided by the sun. Fire and water, or if 
 you please, heaven and earth, are what the men of 
 Arnina and Camarte call to witness by their border. 
 So long, they say, as Mugnone and Affrico flow, so 
 long as the sun rises, souths and sets, shall our 
 bargain last, and our border be sure. By our dead 
 we swear it.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FLORENCE 
 
 It is probable that the east and west road from the 
 Affrico to the Mugnone was originally a boundary ; 
 its undoubted religious importance as, so to say, the 
 Via Sacra of Florence, is best explained on such a 
 supposition. But this was not its only character and 
 use. Amid much that must be always matter of 
 inference and conjecture only, one fact emerges both 
 sure and significant : this road, as it runs from east 
 to west, is the directive line along which the develop- 
 ment of the city has proceeded. Where it cuts the 
 vital lines of the roads that come to the Arno ferry 
 from Sesto and Borgunto respectively, it forms the 
 two co^inpita of which the last chapter has taken 
 account. These we must now look at from another 
 point of view. They are markets — the Mercatino 
 and the Mercato — and draw population about them 
 in varying degrees from age to age. The cause of 
 that variety and, in particular, of the westward 
 movement of Florence, which in the end gave the 
 Mercato its advantage over the Mercatino, and 
 
 120
 
 The Development of Florence 127 
 
 established it as the ultimate centre, is worth investi- 
 gation, and our study of it must begin in the 
 simplicity of the thing itself; the force that obliged 
 development and progress here. That force, though 
 a real benefit, appeared in unfriendly shape, and was 
 felt with the coming of the Etruscan invader and 
 conqueror. 
 
 As far as one can see in the dim light that falls on 
 this people from early times, the Etruscans were a 
 race of pirates settled in the northern islands of the 
 /Egean sea — Lemnos and the others — and in part 
 on the coasts of Greece — at Mount Athos — and of 
 Asia, in Caria and Lycia. If, as seems likely, they 
 are the ' Turscha ' of the Egyptian monuments, who 
 had a colony by the Nile, then one must suppose 
 that they were essentially traders, who, because 
 their seat was by the sea, and their lawful opportuni- 
 ties insufficient, eked out their living by piracy as 
 occasion served. This combination of sea trade and 
 robbery is one that the Mediterranean has often 
 seen, nor is it yet completely suppressed among the 
 Greek islands where the Etruscans had their early 
 seat.^ 
 
 ^ ' There was no hard and fast line between the marine: and the 
 pirate. In the Mediterranean, piracy . . . was the resource of the 
 young, active, and resolute among the seafaring population. The 
 merchant service was manned, to a great extent, by pirates who were 
 getting too old for that honourable calling.'— W. Ashburner, The 
 Rhodian Sea Law (Oxford, 1909), p. cclxii. This for the Middle 
 Ages, while for modern times — 1898-1900 — see J. C. Lawson, Modern 
 Greek /•ij/^'-Zorc (Cambridge, 1910), p. 162.
 
 128 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Possessed, then, of ships, accustomed to the sea, 
 strong and unscrupulous, the Etruscans came west 
 and northward, landed on the Mediterranean coast 
 of Italy, and conquered the country they had 
 reached. It is, above all, important to notice, how- 
 ever, that these conquerors were men of war here, 
 just as they had been pirates in the ^gean, by the 
 mere force of circumstances and as a means to an 
 end. Essentially they were traders, and here this 
 invasion shows a marked difference from many 
 others under which Italy has from time to time 
 suffered. The people who held Tuscany were now 
 subdued by invaders whose habit and purpose in life 
 was closely of kin to their own ; conquerors who 
 understood the country, and found it worth taking and 
 keeping because its nature gave them just the seat 
 and wide commercial opportunity of which they were 
 in search. That the Etruscans were as we have sup- 
 posed them appears plainly in the fact that, though 
 in time they overran Italy, and have left traces of 
 their occupation in Lombardy, in Latium, and in 
 Campania, when their power sank it was upon 
 Etruria they retreated, and that Tuscany alone of all 
 the Italian provinces still bears their name. For 
 Tuscany, as by its ver\' nature a link-land, is made 
 for commerce, and those who choose and hold it as 
 their chief seat may come as conquerors, but can 
 only remain here as masters of trade and of 
 exchamie.
 
 The Development of Florence 129 
 
 Etruscan Fiesole is in itself an object-lesson of 
 this invasion and its consequences. The city set 
 on the hill, with its great walls of massive stone, is 
 nothing if not a fortress, built here to occupy and 
 overawe the country. But if the place speaks of 
 war and of armed occupation, its situation should 
 be enough to reveal something deeper and more 
 permanent ; the underlying purpose of the invader. 
 Two trade routes pass here, one rising from Candeli 
 to the high saddle of the hill where Borgunto is 
 set, and running thence to the Olmo ; the other 
 reaching the same point from the Arno by the 
 gorge and valley of the Mugnone. Between these 
 stands Fiesole, so placed that the higher route runs 
 under its eastern wall, and Borgunto becomes as it 
 were a suburb of the new city, which, on the west, 
 looks down on the lower road where it threads the 
 narrow pass between Monte Rinaldi and the hill 
 that the Etruscans had chosen and crowned. Fiesole 
 occupies a strategic position then, but the strategy 
 expressed in this station is that which pretends 
 to the control of all commerce that passes north 
 from the ferry of the Arno where Florence is set, 
 or from Arezzo by way of Candeli. The attitude 
 of the invaders is thus clearly defined : they come 
 not to destroy but to control, to develop, and to 
 extend the trade they find on foot here. Traders 
 themselves essentially, their arms and power are 
 directed by a feeling for commerce and a knowledge 
 
 I
 
 130 Florence Past and Present 
 
 of it. They will use force only to find their own 
 place in the sun, and to turn existing Tuscan trade 
 to their own advantage. 
 
 The details of the Etruscan commercial policy 
 lie beyond our reach and may be for ever irrecover- 
 able ; what seems certain is that, in one form or 
 other, the conquerors took toll of the country they 
 held, as those in commerce always do in every 
 exchange where they have a hand. If they were 
 themselves traders with an inborn commercial 
 capacity and inherited experience, this might be 
 expected to show itself in their moderation and 
 co-operation ; they would not pretend to a profit that 
 might crush the trade they controlled, and would 
 rather increase their gains by bringing all their 
 resources to bear upon its development and ex- 
 tension. The known prosperity of Tuscany under 
 their rule seems to show that such was, in fact, the 
 policy of the Etruscans in the country they had 
 made their own. 
 
 It may be worth while to examine in some detail 
 the development of Tuscan trade under its new 
 masters. These were the last arrivals from the 
 East, and they put Tuscan}', therefore, in a new 
 and closer relation with the great eastern markets, 
 and with the movcnients of overseas trade. The 
 ships that had brought their warlike expedition 
 remained to come and go on peaceful rather than 
 piratical errands. Possessed of their new and
 
 The Development of Florence 131 
 
 commanding commercial seat, the Etruscans made 
 common cause with Phocaea, Phoenicia and Carth- 
 age in a Mediterranean trade that touched Crete 
 and Cyprus and many a coast beside. The /Egaean 
 brooch^ shows that Plorence was in touch with 
 the East long before the Etruscans came, and the 
 tusks of Cappiano probably tell the same story, but 
 with the coming of these conquerors the old trade 
 surely found new doors and a wider development. 
 The ruling race were a luxurious people, and their 
 Tuscan subjects and carriers had more to do than 
 ever as the incense, the ivory, the perfumed oils, 
 and painted pottery of the south and east reached 
 the coast and came under their handling for cross- 
 country transport. 
 
 There was more than mere mercantile advantage 
 in these imports ; they could not but stimulate 
 existing manufactures and inspire local art in its 
 first manifestations. Pottery came west, not only 
 to be handled by Tuscan carriers, but copied on 
 Tuscan wheels, till the vases of Arezzo came at 
 last to vie with the best that the sea could bring.- 
 Modelling in clay became sculpture in stone, and the 
 series of «}>/•/ wrought here under the Etruscan rule 
 show plainly that this art drew its inspiration from 
 the East, and was a consequence of the bonds that 
 expanding commerce had drawn still closer between 
 Tuscany and the lands of the rising sun. The lions 
 
 ' See above, p. 72. ' In late Roman times, however.
 
 I 'X2 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 of Usil ^ recall those found at many an ancient site 
 in Asia Minor, and the finials of the other cippi 
 repeat a 7notif covaxnon to Minoan art and to that 
 of Mycenae alike. To study the series of these 
 stones in the Museum of Florence is to see the new 
 outlook of that city on the east, and the new im- 
 pulse she received from her growing trade. 
 
 These imports were necessarily paid for, and at 
 a price which rose with their rarity, and the distance 
 which separated Tuscany from the countries that 
 produced them. Now imports can only be paid 
 for in one way, by exports of corresponding moment 
 and value. Hence the growth of Tuscan commerce 
 necessarily implies the development of local re- 
 sources in Tuscany, and the Etruscan rule, under 
 which such development took place, distinguished 
 itself eminently here : in the application of new art 
 and energy to the improvement of the country so 
 as to secure a new productiveness answerable to 
 the demands of the wider market. 
 
 No small part of the riches of Tuscany lay under- 
 cfround in the mineral wealth of the Maremma, her 
 maritime province, and copper, abundant in these 
 hills, had a place and a price in early markets 
 which made it a standard of value. The cm's rude, 
 the earliest Italian currency, was of copper, and 
 passed from hand to hand in the form of rough 
 ingots unmarked at first by any device ; carrying 
 J See above, p. 121.
 
 The Development of Florence i 
 
 Ov3 
 
 their own guarantee in the weight of metal they 
 offered to the balance. Analysis of metal instru- 
 ments, implements of the Bronze Age found in 
 Italian tombs, seems to show that the copper used 
 to form them was found locally and came from the 
 mines of the Tuscan Maremma.^ Mining, then, was 
 practised here in all probability before the Etruscans 
 came, but gained a new importance and was pursued 
 with new energy under their rule. If, as seems 
 likely, they made their first settlements at Caere, 
 Vulci, and Vetulonia, and moved gradually up 
 country from thence, then from the beginning of 
 their enterprise they were acquainted with these 
 riches of the sea-board, and, as shrewd merchants, 
 did not forget their value. Here at hand was the 
 means of paying imports in the export of the then 
 precious metal, and thus of competing in far Phoeni- 
 cian markets with Cyprus itself, hitherto the chief 
 source of supply ; for this island, as its very name 
 indicates, had long furnished copper to the coasts 
 of the Mediterranean. As a matter of fact, we know 
 that copper in the form of bronze was one of the 
 chief exports in the I'^truscan trade, and the precious 
 art that still shines in the bronzes of many a Tuscan 
 museum shows how far trade and manufacture 
 stimulated each other. Under the Etruscan rule 
 commerce and art rose hand in hand, just as they 
 
 ^ See A. Mosso, On'gini dclla Civilta J/(?(rV/'c-;7-a;;trt (Milano : Treves, 
 I910), pp. 301-7.
 
 134 Florence Past and Present 
 
 did two thousand years later in the days of the 
 Florentine Renaissance. For at Florence the highest 
 developments of the human spirit are fatally, inevit- 
 ably, bound up with commercial enterprise and 
 success. The Genius loci here is Janus, the god of 
 the portico and of the market. 
 
 Another source of riches lay above ground in the 
 forests of Tuscany, hardly touched as yet, covering 
 all the hills, and ready to yield almost inexhaustible 
 supplies of timber. These tall and solid trees must 
 have appealed at once to the Etruscans, who had 
 reached the coast in ships and saw their value for 
 the construction of sea-going vessels. Thenceforth 
 each trading voyage, accomplished in craft built 
 here, became an advertisement in every port of the 
 quality of Tuscan timber. To the Etruscan period, 
 then, may be attributed the first serious felling of 
 trees in the Val d'Arno, and the use of the river 
 and the sea to carry logs abroad in rafts as an 
 article of commerce. What Tuscan copper was in 
 the overseas market Tuscan timber became in the 
 nearer Italian ports, and Florence, set by the stream, 
 could not remain unaffected by the new venture. 
 She was now a principal gate through which the 
 neighbouring woods sent their trees downstream to 
 Pisa and the sea. The Piazza d'Arno, her original 
 seat and centre, has an alternative name — the Piazza 
 delle Travi — derived from this traffic. As the name 
 indicates, the timber trade lasted down to our own
 
 The Development of Florence 135 
 
 day, with this Piazza as one of its principal seats. 
 There is much evidence to show that it was busy 
 in Roman times, but we may safely hold that the 
 Etruscans were the first to develop the timber trade 
 in serious sort, as a ready and natural means of 
 paying for the imports that their high civilisation 
 demanded. 
 
 The trade in wood implied, of course, the clearing 
 of the land, with, as its consequence, a new and 
 wider agriculture. It is said that the Etruscans 
 used the labour of slaves in this larger and intenser 
 cultivation. It may be so ; what seems certain is 
 the passion with which they promoted this further 
 conquest of the earth. We have already noticed 
 how naturally religion is stimulated and developed 
 by the sense of property in arable land, and may 
 here remember as not without significance how the 
 Etruscan legend made Tages, the mysterious author 
 of their supernatural discipline, rise from the fields 
 of Tarquinii. A contadiito following the plough 
 was the first witness of the birth in which his 
 furrow brought forth the god, under the appearance 
 of a child, but venerable with all the wisdom of the 
 ages. By their own confession the Etruscans learned 
 this mystery after they reached Italy ; it was the 
 Genius loci that taught them what they came to 
 know. If we suppose that the tree, which was the 
 first plough, turned up a strange stone in the furrow, 
 we are probably as near the ultimate material fact
 
 o 
 
 6 Florence Past and Present 
 
 of this mystery as may be. Yet so, we but find 
 again the tree and the stone, the goddess and the 
 god, in a new discovery. This was what Italy 
 taught the Etruscans; their developed discipline 
 depended on beHefs they found rooted in the Tuscan 
 soil, and firmly established here before their arrival. 
 The legend that what Tages left unsaid was told 
 by the nymph Begoe, expounder of the lore of 
 heaven and of the lightning, but lays the emphasis 
 again where we have found it fall naturally among 
 people living under a Matriarchate. Nor need it 
 seem strange that the new-comers were so teachable ; 
 fell so easily under the spell of the western land 
 they had made their own. For the Etruscans knew 
 the Matriarchate already in their eastern seat, and 
 brought it with them when they came west. Traders 
 and pirates, they had fallen into the way of life and 
 of society natural to men who spend their time from 
 home in the expeditions of commerce or of war. 
 They were formed for Tuscany before ever they 
 saw it, as the Tuscans were formed against the day 
 of their conquest. Conquerors and conquered alike 
 learned from each other in a mutual understanding 
 which made of the first armed occupation a stable 
 commonwealth in Tuscany. 
 
 In the neighbourhood of Florence the progress of 
 agriculture had its own local problem to solve. The 
 passion of which we have spoken could not but 
 direct the eyes of the new masters to the plain that
 
 The Development of Florence 137 
 
 stretched above, but still more widely below, the city. 
 Here lay the alluvial lands that the river had formed 
 and the lake left, deep and rich, promising large 
 reward to the labour of the plough. But the work 
 and power of the waters were not yet spent ; in part 
 the plain was a mere marsh, the shallow survival of 
 what had once been deep water. In part the stream 
 still claimed it, wandering widely and threatening 
 anew with each fresh flood. If this ground was to 
 become arable and profitable it must be drained, 
 secured, and reclaimed. 
 
 How, when, and where the Etruscans learned their 
 skill as civil engineers must remain uncertain, though 
 possibly the colony of the ' Turscha ' by the Nile 
 may have had something to say in the matter. It is 
 certain at any rate that this skill was theirs, and that 
 they accomplished important hydraulic works in 
 Italy. Pliny tells us that they were busy in the 
 Italian delta, that of the Po, bringing new order 
 among its scattered streams, turning the river into 
 the marshes by Adria that this city of theirs might 
 stand safe and rule fertile fields where water had 
 spread before.^ But surely if the Tyrrhenian coast 
 was the point of departure in the Etruscan conquest, 
 this people must have looked down on the marshes 
 of the Arno from Fiesole before they saw those of 
 the Po from Adria. So when Villani says, 'We are 
 assured, nay can see with our own eyes, that the 
 
 ^ Natural History, iii. i6.
 
 138 Florence Past and Present 
 
 said stone of the Golfolina was attacked by skilled 
 workmen, who with pick and chisel laboured its 
 cutting so that the level of the Arno was lowered, 
 and the stream so sunk that the said marshes drained 
 away and left fertile soil,' the natural conclusion is 
 that his words register a tradition of I^truscan times 
 when engineering was first applied to the service of 
 Florentine agriculture. If we further suppose that 
 the irregular and uncertain Arno was embanked and 
 directed in these plains — from the Girone to San 
 Giorgio, and from that Florentine ferry to the Gol- 
 folina — ^just as Pliny says the Etruscans handled 
 and constrained the Po at Adria — we see the sure 
 emergence of the F'lorentine anitado, with all the 
 possibilities it offered of a wide and profitable cul- 
 ture in the close neighbourhood of the city. These 
 were the lands that filled the Piazze of Florence 
 with corn and wine and oil, and this the agriculture 
 that supported, as it still does, her weekly market. 
 Villani must again be quoted here, as he says: ' It 
 is true indeed that the site of 1^'lorence held some- 
 thing of a village . . . for the men of h'iesole kept 
 market here once a week. This suburb was called 
 by its old name Campo Marti, since there was ever 
 a marlvct here even before Fiesole was founded, and 
 this was its name before it became a city and bore 
 the name of Florence.' Both the pre-Ktruscan com- 
 merce here and its development under the new 
 regiuic are clearly indicated in this passage, and very
 
 The Development of Florence 139 
 
 much as we have already conceived them ; nay, there 
 is indirect evidence in this tradition of the site occu- 
 pied by the Villa of Camarte. We have supposed 
 this to lie well to the north of the Villa Arnina and 
 the ferry ; and, in fact, it must have done so if it, 
 rather than the other, was chosen as the seat of the 
 market to which the men of Fiesole came so often 
 and so regularly. 
 
 If Etruscan engineers were busy on the Arno, 
 cutting a deeper course for the river at the Golfolina, 
 and embanking its wandering streams in the plain of 
 Florence, there is some reason to think they did not 
 leave the passage of the Girone untouched by their 
 art. Villani is again our authority for the tradition 
 that the first Arno bridge was built, not at the 
 Florentine ferry, but at Candeli. For if a bridge 
 stood here before the Ponte Vecchio was thought of, 
 such precedence implies much. It speaks of a time 
 not merely remote, but such that Fiesole and not 
 Florence was then the place of chief importance. 
 Hither rose the road from Candeli ; the bridge had 
 its meaning only as a convenience for the traffic 
 between south and north on the line that passed 
 through Borgunto. Unless, therefore, we bring the 
 tradition down to times late indeed, and suppose it 
 no older than the sixth or seventh century of our 
 era when Fiesole seems again to have flourished at 
 the expense of Florence, there is no escape from the 
 conclusion that the bridge in question must have
 
 140 Florence Past and Present 
 
 been contrived by the Etruscans in correspondence 
 with their seat at Fiesole, and for the convenience of 
 the trade it was their chief interest to promote. 
 
 The same may be said of the hydraulic system by 
 which Florence was flushed and periodically cleansed 
 in the admission of water from the river which 
 entered and left the town by subterranean channels. 
 It is true that the chronicles ascribe this device to 
 the Romans ; but Fiesole itself, like many an ancient 
 Tuscan seat, shows that in all such matters of drain- 
 age, and of the application of engineering to civic 
 needs, the Etruscans led the way. Those who had 
 cut the Golfolina channel and bridged that of Can- 
 deli, under whose skill and energy the contado began 
 to emerge, and to supply the Florentine market, are 
 here seen applying their art still more closely for the 
 improvement of the town itself. Arrived thus once 
 more at Florence, we may resume the story of her 
 local development under the Etruscan power and in 
 the days that followed its decline and fall. 
 
 Let it be repeated, then, that the Via Sacra formed 
 the boundary between the two settlements of which 
 Florence originally consisted : the Villa Arnina by 
 the river ferry at the I'iazza delle Travi, and the 
 Villa Camarte towards Fiesole. Two points of chief 
 importance lay on this ritual road, and these were 
 the crossings where it met the western and eastern 
 branches of the V respectively. The history of 
 Florentine development in a material sense lies at
 
 The Development of Florence 141 
 
 these crossings, and lives in the markets which came 
 to distinguish them. The progress of the place 
 moves westward, carrying the Centre from the one 
 crossing to the other. Once the heart of Florence 
 lay at the Mercatino, as the late importance of the 
 church there still testified down to the end of the 
 Middle Ages. But that diminutive had its meaning; 
 betimes the Centre moved west to the Mercato at 
 the western crossing, making this the market par 
 excelle7ice, and in this transition Florence came to 
 find her Centre where it lies still, though late changes 
 have swept the market away. Clearly, then, to 
 understand the forces that lay behind this westward 
 movement of the Centre is to read the secret of the 
 long story of the place ; so far at least as the history 
 of Florence is bound up in her material development 
 and expressed in her gradual occupation of the wide 
 site she holds. 
 
 When Fiesole was young, if not during the whole 
 period of the Etruscan power, the neighbourhood of 
 the city on the hill must have given new importance 
 to the road that joined it to the Villa Arnina and to 
 the river at the Piazza delle Travi. But this was 
 the road that formed the eastern crossing with the 
 Via Sacra, and these then were the conditions under 
 which the market here, now called the Mercatino, 
 naturally took the lead and won a pre-eminence 
 which, in one form or other, in a civil or religious 
 sense, lasted so long. Population must have gathered
 
 142 Florence Past and Present 
 
 at the crossing, not only to attend the weekly 
 market, but to settle and build in its neighbourhood 
 in the four irregular quarters which the roads defined 
 and divided. Hither must the houses have crept 
 upwards from the Villa Arnina, and the attraction 
 of the market-town would be felt at Fiesole, which 
 probably sent down some of its Etruscan population 
 to live and trade at the cross-roads. When one 
 remembers how much the dominant class had in 
 common with the people they subdued, and how, in 
 fact, one commonwealth came to comprehend victors 
 and vanquished in Tuscany, Florence, gathering at 
 this her earU' Centre, begins to ajjpear as probably 
 one of the chief points where a mutual understand- 
 ing was arrived at on the material basis of a com- 
 mon interest in trade. The Genius loci, in short, 
 again appears on his own ground as Janus — Ani the 
 Etruscans called him — the power that lies at and 
 behind the market-place, ready to make of twain 
 one new people, as his twofold image sufficiently 
 declares. 
 
 The transference of the Centre westward from the 
 Mercatino to the Mercato implies a change of condi- 
 tions in Florence. If the Mercatino is to lose its old 
 importance, this can only be because traffic on the 
 north and south road here is no longer what it was. 
 Nor can that traffic fail as long as Fiesole, which 
 had encouraged it, continues to flourish. The de- 
 cline of the Etruscan wealth and power at this its
 
 The Development of Florence 143 
 
 chief local seat is, therefore, the first condition of the 
 transference that moved the Centre of Florence from 
 the eastern to the western cross-roads. 
 
 Something more is needed, however, to account 
 fully for such a change. The failing traffic at the 
 Mercatino must find a new direction, and one that 
 leads it to the Mercato. Under what power would 
 such a transference take place, and what was the 
 attraction which finally set the Centre of Florence 
 where it stands to-day? 
 
 Hitherto we have thought of traffic as conducted 
 solely by the help of beasts of burden : the mule 
 or the pack-horse. But an innovation is on the way 
 whereby the strength of these animals becomes still 
 more serviceable in the transport of merchandise. 
 The chariot, long known in war, becomes the market 
 cart, and with that change the wheel enters on a 
 new period of usefulness as a mechanical power 
 applied to the needs, and for the advantage, of 
 commerce. 
 
 This great moment was long delayed ; not because 
 the wheel awaited discovery — every potter knew it, 
 and, as an ornament, it is found in Italian deposits 
 of the Bronze Age — but because, as an aid to traffic, 
 the wheel is useless without the road ; nay, without 
 roads that have been traced and built afresh with 
 conscious regard to the new means of transport. 
 Gradients that are possible, if not easy, to the horse 
 that carries a pack, are too steep for him when he
 
 144 Florence Past and Present 
 
 must pull a loaded cart. Thus, if the power of the 
 wheel is to be utilised, this means, at least in a hilly 
 country like Tuscany, a duplication of almost the 
 whole system of roads : a change comparable only 
 to that seen in the last century when the rail came 
 seeking easier gradients still at the bidding and for 
 the convenience of the steam-dri\'en wheel. Thus 
 at the com.ing of the cart the physical contours and 
 levels of the country once more imposed themselves 
 as the ultimate conditions with which man must 
 make a new reckoning. Inevitably, under natural 
 law, these determined the place and passage of the 
 roads that were destined to prevail ; the only roads 
 admitting the advantage of that swifter and cheaper 
 traffic which the wheel made possible. 
 
 Now at Florence the road to be abandoned in the 
 new age was clearly that eastern member of the 
 V which had brought the principal traffic to the 
 Mercatino under the old regime ; what condemned 
 it was the steep ascent by which it climbed from 
 San Domenico to Fiesole, and what took its place was 
 the alternative route which reached the Olmo from 
 Florence by the easier slope of the Mugnonc valle)'. 
 Thus the first, and perhaps most remarkable, effect 
 of the altered conditions of transport is the pre- 
 valence of Florence over Fiesole. The town by the 
 stream must always have had an advantage in the 
 immediate command of river trade, but now, with 
 the coming of wheeled traffic, this advantage is
 
 The Development of Florence 145 
 
 doubled in the command of the new road as well. 
 Fiesole is left out of the new system, and sinks, as 
 we ourselves have seen towns do when the railway 
 has given them the go-by and has absorbed the 
 traffic of their roads. Florence is more than ever 
 at the centre of things ; in full command of the 
 carriage roads that run to the north and west. 
 
 Nay, further ; within Florence itself, the new 
 Centre, as determined by the new conditions, can 
 only be that of the Mercato : the cross-roads that 
 lie so near the Mugnone. Here the carriage road 
 to and from Faenza arrives by the line of the Via 
 San Gallo and the Borgo San Lorenzo, and hence 
 departs the ancient route, equally easy for wheels, 
 which leads by the Via Faenza and Rifredi to the 
 Val di Marina for Barberino and Bologna. This is 
 the compitiini which was marked, till lately, by the 
 pillar that bore the goddess of the cornucopia. She 
 can hardly have been other than the Fortune — Nortia 
 the Etruscans called her — whose most constant attri- 
 bute is the horn of plenty. Her Roman name 
 seems to mean 'the bringer' of good things, and 
 she is often seen with the ship and its guiding helm 
 at her feet, or standing on the wheel, as if to indicate 
 the means by which plenty blessed the land from 
 overseas, or came up country from port to market. 
 She is essentially Tuscan — Servius Tullius, the 
 Etruscan, introduced her to Rome — and she must be 
 interpreted by Etruscan trade life and thought. Her 
 
 K
 
 146 Florence Past and Present 
 
 wheel is not merely such, then, as in early Rome led 
 the sheaves home in the wain, or carried the corn to 
 market. Her good things are those of a wide com- 
 merce by land and sea, and here, in the new Centre 
 of Florence, if anywhere, she is at home and may 
 claim a place. For if Florence rose as Fiesole fell, 
 and if her Centre moved westward to the cross-roads 
 where the goddess had her seat, what wrought this 
 change and secured this prosperity was, beyond all 
 question, nothing but Nature herself guiding the 
 veritable magic of the wheel. 
 
 The new Centre, once it was determined at the 
 Mercato, became in its turn a determinant of the 
 traffic line which should put it in connection with the 
 roads which left the opposite bank of the Arno for 
 the south. But as the western cross-roads had a dis- 
 tinctly religious character, it is still on ritual lines 
 that this later link is laid. The former age had traced 
 with the sun a true dcciinianus, an cast and west 
 road, in the Via Sacra. Here and now comes the 
 Cardo, the absolute north and south road, to com- 
 plete at this point the practice, if not the doctrine, 
 of the Agrimensores ; you may trace it still in the 
 Via deir Arcivescovado and the Via Calimara — the 
 Cardo Major or Calle Mayor — of Florence.^ In 
 obedience to this doctrine of the heavens, the road 
 that comes down from the Mugnone, on a line nearly 
 
 ' The derivation of the name Calimara — often in dispute — is thus 
 simply and naturally found.
 
 MERCATO XUOVO; NOKTH-UEST CORNKK, WITH LKMONADE STAI
 
 The Development of Florence 149 
 
 parallel with that which reached the Mercatino from 
 Fiesole, becomes at the Arcivescovado a true 
 meridian, and, as such, crosses the decnmanus of 
 the more ancient Via Sacra at right angles, form- 
 ing a new and now perfectly regular aviipituvi 
 where Fortune has her seat ; a place doubly sacred 
 under this fresh ritual consecration. The line of 
 the Cardo obeys the direction that religion has 
 given it as far as the corner of what is now the 
 Mercato Nuovo, where natural conditions resume 
 their sway. It is a link ready to bind the north 
 roads to those that leave the left bank of the Arno 
 for the south. 
 
 If this union is to be accomplished the river must 
 be crossed, must be bridged indeed, since Candeli 
 has set the fashion. A bridge, then, is built in corre- 
 spondence with the Cardo ; yet not exactl}% for the 
 bridge must cross the water at right angles to its 
 course, and here the Arno does not flow due east 
 and west. Thus, where the Cardo ceases to be 
 strictly such at the corner of the Mercato Nuovo, it 
 is the line of the bridge — Ponte Vecchio, Florence 
 calls its late successor now — which the road assumes, 
 ready to pass over these arches, and to make, when 
 it has crossed them, that junction with the southern 
 trade routes which obviously meant so much to the 
 new Centre that Florence had found. ' Nature sup- 
 planting religion,' one says ; yet this is a distinction 
 too superficial. The religion of those days and of
 
 150 Florence Past and Present 
 
 this place was nothing if not nature-worship ; its 
 rites the acknowledgment of the powers that were, 
 and are, in heaven and earth. The Cardo was deter- 
 mined by the sun itself, just as the Decumanus had 
 been. Yet where the Cardo changed in its southern 
 course, the new determinant was but that other line 
 and power of the stream of which the Pontifex was 
 the high priest. Fire and water are successively at 
 work here ; nay, as water is powerless till it move, and 
 depends in its motion on the sun, it is still the force 
 of heaven, directly or indirectly, gathered in the sun 
 or moving in the stream, that rules the earth and 
 commands the obedience of men. They may spell 
 strangely and variously the Name in which the com- 
 mand issues, but none the less do they feel the 
 necessity of acknowledgment and of submission, 
 and, thus moved, they draw the main lines about 
 which Florence has ever since gathered her houses 
 and her hearths. 
 
 This Centre, with its symmetrical cross-roads, and 
 this bridge, connecting it with the farther bank of 
 the stream, are the main determinants of the city as 
 it spreads north and south of the Arno ; all the rest 
 is a mere matter of development along these lines. 
 Such development cannot here be traced in detail ; 
 rather may we spend a moment in fixing, as far 
 as may be, the chronology of the movements and 
 changes that led up to it. The middle of the second 
 millennium i\.C. has seemed a [probable date for the
 
 The Development of Florence 151 
 
 immigration and trade that left their traces in Pinti 
 and the other )it names on the route to Faenza.^ 
 How the Villanovan graves of the Centre are to be 
 related to that epoch and commerce is yet uncertain; 
 they may be earlier, or contemporaneous, but can 
 hardly be supposed later than the coming of the 
 people from Zante. The Ouinto tomb is clearly 
 Mycenaean. Helbig dates it in the sixth century 
 B.C., but remarks that its construction is peculiarly 
 primitive. The great period of Mycenae lay four or 
 five centuries earlier, and there is no apparent reason 
 why this sure example of her art in Italy should be 
 brought down later than 1000 B.C. It would thus 
 fall outside the Etruscan period, and be a product of 
 that still earlier intercourse with Greece and the 
 East of which the yEgaean brooch of the Centre and 
 the nt names are already a sufficient proof 
 
 The coming of the Etruscans to Italy is now 
 tentatively ascribed to the eighth century,- and a 
 certain time is further allowed for their full conquest 
 of Tuscany. The building and occupation of Fiesole 
 would thus fall considerably later than the above 
 date, and the great walls that defended it later still. 
 The commercial impulse communicated to Florence 
 by this conquest and neighbourhood — the rise of the 
 timber trade on the river, of agriculture in the contado, 
 and the new activity on the roads — can hardly be 
 
 ' See above, p. 56. 
 
 '■^ See the dictionary of I'auly-Wissowa, s.v. ' Etrusker. '
 
 152 Florence Past and Present 
 
 supposed earlier than 500 B.C., probably later. Thus, 
 were the Ouinto tomb Etruscan, we must suppose 
 it even less ancient than the date given by Helbig. 
 To this Etruscan period, however, one may safely 
 ascribe the building of the bridge at Candeli. 
 
 The decline of the Etruscan power in Italy is 
 dated with certainty from 396 B.C. ; its last vain 
 effort against the advance of Rome took place in 
 the year 283 at Falerii. The Romans secured their 
 conquest in a period of road-building which fell 
 between 218 and 163 B.C., closing with the construc- 
 tion of the Via Cassia, in which Florence was directly 
 interested. This, then, was the all-important epoch 
 of the coming of the wheel which gave Florence her 
 definite superiority over Fiesole, leaving the latter 
 town nothing but the strategic value which had first 
 drawn attention to the site on the hill. The first 
 bridge at Florence — the original Ponte Vecchio — 
 was probably as Roman as the road it served, being 
 the Roman answer to the bridge at Candeli, which 
 belonged to the earlier, Etruscan, order of things. 
 
 A hundred years later, the effect of the road 
 and of the new Centre it set had become evident. 
 The bridge had superseded the ferry, the Mercato 
 the Mercatino, and the Pinti road, once the chief 
 line of trade as connecting Fiesole with the Arno, 
 was become so unimportant that I'lorence built her 
 Amphitheatre right across it. On the other hand, 
 the new western Centre fully justified the change that
 
 The Development of Florence 153 
 
 had drawn the town thither. In 82 B.C. Florence 
 was a ' municipium splendidissimum,' ^ and, though 
 poHtical rancour then decreed her destruction, so 
 definite was the advantage of her seat that no other 
 could be found, or was thought of, when she rose 
 again as a Colony of the Triumvirs in 59. Of the 
 earlier Municipium and the later Colony remains 
 have been found at different subterranean levels 
 higher and lower, but ever in such a disposition as 
 shows that both rose in obedience to the same 
 directives : the Cardo that put the bridge in connec- 
 tion with the north road by the Mugnone, and the 
 still more ancient Decumanus b}' which the Centre 
 had come westward from the Mercatino to the 
 Mercato : from the arch of Janus to the pillar of 
 Fortune. When one describes it thus, this change — 
 the greatest Florence has ever known — becomes 
 symbolic. Henceforth she may see a narrower 
 Colony come to replace a wider Municipium, or, 
 otherwise, a new city rise on the ruins left by 
 barbarian inroads, but her waxing and waning is 
 only the contraction and expansion of a heart that 
 may beat but moves not ; she has found her seat, 
 and all the Fortune that such a situation implies. 
 
 1 Floius, Kcr. A'oTi!., iii. 21.
 
 II 
 
 MATERIAL SURVIVALS
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 BOATS AND BOATMEN 
 
 In seeking present survivals of the past in Florence 
 one naturally recurs to the two great elements which 
 determined the place and prosperity of the city. The 
 first of these, — the river — is flowing still, and, though 
 the life and traffic of the Arno are sadly fallen, some- 
 thing is left even to-day ; there are still boats on the 
 stream, moored below the bridges on the green jade 
 floor the flowing water lays : moored in the purple 
 shadows of wall or pier, or moving up and down as 
 the boatmen punt them through the rippling eddies 
 with their long poles. Singular, even at first sight, 
 in their ancient build and high sheer, these Arno 
 boats are well worth a particular study. They have 
 a long history behind them, and gather to-day what 
 poor remains are left of the life that once peopled 
 the stream and kept it busy. 
 
 As befits a survival, the type of the Florentine 
 boat is traditional, and is reached in practice not b}- 
 the preparation of working drawings but by rule of 
 thumb. Occasionally, though rarely, a boat is still 
 
 157
 
 158 Florence Past and Present 
 
 built in the outskirts of the cit)-, and if }'ou chance 
 on such a case, as I have done — at the Anconella or 
 elsewhere — you may see for yourself the rough and 
 ready method that still }-ields, as of old, the fine 
 result. The working practice of the yard is as 
 follows. 
 
 A centre-line is set up in a series of blocks of 
 stone. The boat is to be flat-bottomed, and the first 
 timber laid is therefore a plank — the tavolo maestro — 
 to which others are added on each side till the whole 
 bottom takes shape on the stones in the form of a 
 long oval, pointed, and sometimes tilted, at each end. 
 This bottom is called \\\q fondo. The high stem and 
 stern-posts — the rota da priia and rota da poppa — are 
 then keyed-in at each end, and the boat begins to 
 take shape, ready for the ribs, the thwarts and the 
 sheathing which are to complete it. 
 
 The rib, or palacanna as it is called at Florence, 
 not only speaks of the remote past in its name, which 
 is purely Greek,^ but is so peculiar and character- 
 istic a part of the boat that it calls for particular 
 description. In the craft to which we are accustomed 
 the rib consists of two symmetrical halves set in to 
 the central line of the keel from the one side and the 
 other. The Florentine boat has no keel but a flat 
 floor, and the rib adapts itself to these altered circum- 
 stances. It has two parts, but these are not equal, 
 
 ' ElsL'wlicie the word palacanna, (jr paraic/ialiiia, is used of the 
 boat itself: the part for the whole, as \vc call a boat a keel.
 
 Boats and Boatmen 159 
 
 though they combine in a symmetrical form. The 
 longer is straight, with a curve at one end like a 
 hockey club. The straight part — called the viadile — 
 is fixed firmly to the upper side of the boat's bottom, 
 which it completely crosses at right-angles. At the 
 edge of the/oudo the rib curves outwards and upwards 
 at one side, in what is properly \\\q. palacarvia. To 
 balance this rising curve a corresponding piece, but 
 now a curve onl\', is ke\-ed-in to the opposite end of 
 the viadilc at the other edge of \}L\&fondo. Thus each 
 rib consists of a short and a long, and while their 
 joints always lie along the edges oi \.\\Qfondo, the ribs 
 are set so that their shorts and longs alternate, giving 
 alternately a joint and a solid rib right and left along 
 each side of the boat's bottom. There is a reason for 
 this singularity. The system of alternate joints 
 secures, as perhaps no other could do, the combined 
 stiffness and flexibility so useful in a craft that is 
 designed for the Arno, and that must be able to face 
 shallows as well as deeps, when the boatmen drag it 
 over the gravel-bars that summer has left between 
 one pool and another. Before leaving the ribs it may 
 be well to add that the pair next the stem are allowed 
 to project above the gunwale, and are joined head to 
 head by a curved wooden brace. These ribs are 
 called monadicttc, and the brace the forcaccio, and 
 the arrangement is contrived to hold turns of the 
 mooring rope when the boat lies at the bank or 
 river wall.
 
 i6o Florence Past and Present 
 
 When the ribs are in place, and trimmed to the 
 sheer the builder designs for his boat, he binds them 
 together from stem to stern outside by the qiiadrati — 
 the upper streak — to which corresponds, within, a 
 similar strip of planking : the barganello. These are 
 joined, the one to the other, over the rib-heads by the 
 palchetta, which is the gunwale proper. Outside, the 
 qiiadratt are continued downwards, about the ribs to 
 the fondo, in the fascianie, or lower streaks, which 
 form the shell of the boat from the floor upwards. 
 Within, where the ribs are still largely visible, a lining 
 of movable boards — the palco, or false floor — is laid 
 over the madili, and rises on each side some wa}' up 
 the palacarme, serving to distribute weight and pres- 
 sure, and save ribs and bottom when the boat carries 
 cargo and passengers. In the bows, under t\\Q for- 
 caccia, a small deck roofs in XhQ fruga, as it is called ; 
 the locker where the boatman keeps his sundries, or 
 sometimes his catch when he goes a-fishing. This 
 last use has given its name — \\\& pcsciahiola — to the 
 loose board with a ring which serves to close the 
 fruga. At the stern, a like space is reserved for the 
 prcddlino, a flat wooden platform hardly higher than 
 the boards of \\\^ palco. On this support the boatman 
 rests one foot as he punts, while the other — right or 
 left as may be — finds higher purchase on \hefatt07'ino, 
 a kind of round thwart which crosses the boat from 
 side to side just above the step where the prcdcllino 
 drops to the palco. Here too, the diaci, or tiller, with
 
 Boats and Boatmen i6i 
 
 its noble downward curve, puts him in touch, even if 
 he lie at ease, with the high rudder, or timone, that 
 guides the boat as it drops down-stream with the 
 current. When he punts, the boatman finds a fulcrum 
 for his pole in one or other of the two vogatoi, or row- 
 locks, which stand up in the heads of their crutches 
 from Qiih^r palchetta, right or left. The painting of 
 the boat is according to fancy, but generally includes 
 some white, in single or double streaks below the 
 gunwale fore and aft, and in a broad band on the 
 rudder. A barca, or river boat, of the size commonly 
 seen at Florence, will carry some 12-15,000 Tuscan 
 pounds of cargo, and costs when new about £\6. 
 Oak and pine are the woods used in building it, but 
 the former — the istia they call it — is preferred, and, 
 for choice, that which still grows on the heights of Le 
 Cerbaie by the marshes of Fucecchio, the famous 
 querela di padule. 
 
 It is time to pass from the boat itself to the use 
 that is made of it, which, at Florence, is mostly the 
 gathering and carrying of the river sand. The 
 boatman is generally, if not always, a reiiaiuolo, or 
 sand collector ; one who lives by finding and bringing 
 to bank what the river in flood has laid down. This 
 debris of the hills is what first filled the plain that 
 had been a lake, and so furnished — whether the 
 vehicle was Arno or Mugnone — the foundation on 
 which Florence rose. The river is flowing still, and 
 still bringing down its deposits, and the sand of the 
 
 L
 
 i62 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Arno is sought to-day as of old by those who have 
 building to do on this site. 
 
 Once, the coarser gravels were prized as material 
 for that wonderful calcistniz.zo ; the concrete, hard as 
 rock itself, which formed the heart and substance of 
 every Florentine wall, of palace or of tower. Beside 
 all its other advantages the site of the city had this 
 convenience that here the very digging of founda- 
 tions produced most of the material required for the 
 building that was to occupy them. The pietra forte 
 of the hills, the uiacigiio of Fiesole, were indeed 
 quarried and carried hither, but only to serve in 
 small pieces as the wall facing, within and without. 
 Between, the hollow heart of the wall was filled wath 
 river gravel, and among these stones was poured the 
 fluid mortar that the finer river sands helped to 
 compose and to bind. When the wall, thus built 
 and filled, had settled and set, it was as nearly 
 indestructible as building could be, and owed its 
 strength not to what the quarry yielded, but rather 
 to the skilful use of what the river had brought, the 
 gravel or sand that in cunning proportion formed the 
 wall-core. This manner of building is practised no 
 longer, but still, though the gravel is seldom sought, 
 the sand is in constant request, for Florence grows 
 in every direction, and without sand to make mortar, 
 building, even as practised to-day, cannot go on. 
 
 In the neighbourhood of the city there is no 
 eround where lake water has not Iain and left its
 
 Boats and Boatmen 
 
 t6 
 
 deposits ; hardl}' anywhere the Arno, Affrico, and 
 Mugnone, in their floods, wanderings, and constant 
 changes, have not again and again passed to lay 
 gravel and sand in alternate beds upon the blue 
 clay that once formed the lake floor. Digging will 
 find sand everywhere, as you may see in the fields 
 
 SAND-PITS NEAR VARLUNGO 
 
 beyond the Madonnone towards Varlungo, where 
 the sand-pits call the builders' carts, and the whole 
 structure of this alluvium is laid bare down to the 
 clay itself But plainly these beds are the work of 
 the river in its wanderings, and it is to the river men 
 still turn when they want sand of the finest, and 
 would have it without breaking arable land or 
 bending to the labour of the spade.
 
 164 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Not every sand-gatherer can afford the money 
 that would make him the owner of a boat ; hence 
 the renaiuoli are divided into two classes, the 
 barcainoli, or boatmen, and the piaggiaiuoli who 
 keep to the bank. Every flood brings these men 
 their fresh opportunity, for, as the Arno rises and 
 changes colour, it brings down anew the debris of 
 the hills, the gravel and sand ; at first suspended and 
 transported, then sinking as the water turns green 
 again ; at last settled in some new arrangement of 
 deposits on the river bed. 
 
 When the flood has passed it is the piaggiaiiiolo 
 who opens the work of dealing with what it has 
 brought down, for the banks he labours are the 
 first ground to stand clear of the falling waters. 
 His tools are the spade and the screen. He sets 
 his screen among the mingled sand and gravel 
 of the shore and flings against it what he digs 
 up. The gravel falls back from the screen, the 
 sand passes, and forms a heap behind, ready for 
 carriage to some larger deposit of recovered material 
 which the wheelbarrow reaches along a path of 
 planks. Meanwhile the screen and heap mark the 
 centre of operations, round which, within the shifting 
 radius that the plank path describes, the piaggiaiiiolo 
 tries for sand in every likely spot. It is hard work 
 and hot, as the sun beats white on the gravel banks, 
 and the men are apt to throw off all clothing but 
 a ragged shirt and sash, showing limbs bronzed and
 
 Boats and Boatmen 
 
 165 
 
 muscular as those of any ancient statue. You may 
 see them thus at work any fine day after flood, 
 below the river wall of the Lung' Arno Vespucci, as 
 if time had made no progress, and life at Florence 
 were still what it once was, savage and primitive. 
 
 The barcaiuoli, on the other hand, are the aristocrats 
 among these river workers ; owning craft of their 
 
 I'lAGGIAIUOLI AT WORK UNDER LUNG' ARNO VESPUCCI 
 
 own, and using their boats to seek under water the 
 last and finest sands that the falling flood deposits : 
 you will find them busy as soon as the river gives 
 sign in its change of colour that what it held 
 suspended has fallen to the bottom. They know 
 the Arno from boyhood, and punt their light craft 
 with skill till the boat lies right over the new sand- 
 bank on which they mean to work. The pole, rather
 
 1 66 Florence Past and Present 
 
 than the oar, is what they use in this progress, for 
 so they are in constant and sensitive contact with 
 the river bed ; not only moving up and down, but 
 trying the ground as they go. They stop when the 
 pole tells them ; where the river has just laid what 
 they are seeking. Then the pole is exchanged for 
 
 BARCAIUOLO LIFTING A SCOOPFUI, OF SAND 
 
 the /^ a /a, and the work of getting the sand on board 
 begins. 
 
 The /)(r/tr differs from the punting pole only in 
 having an iron scoop fixed at one end. Standing on 
 \{\Q prcdcllitio, one foot braced firmly on ih^zfattoriiio, 
 the boatman lets go his pala till the scoop touches 
 bottom and enters the sand-bed. Slowly, laboriously,
 
 Boats and Boatmen 169 
 
 with tact to skim the finest layers and strength and 
 supple skill of wrist at the upward heave and rising 
 turn and discharge, the sand is secured, a scoopful at 
 a time, and heaped on the palco amidships till the 
 boat sinks to the very water-line and limit of its 
 capacity. The sand that comes up wet and shining 
 in the scoop dulls in a flash as the water drains out 
 of it. Alike on board and on shore the heaps grow 
 slowly, like mounds of grey sugar, as load after load 
 is completed and brought to bank ; these are the 
 boatman's riches, the gains of his skill, strength, and 
 patience. 
 
 Work with the pala would be even harder than it 
 is were it not that the boatman has the art to use the 
 pole of his tool as a lever, finding a fulcrum for it 
 on the gunwale of the boat, and throwing all his 
 weight inwards on the upper end of the pole. This 
 trick has brought about the addition of four pieces 
 to the harca — the regoli — notched to take the pole 
 of the pala, and fixed to the gunwale fore and aft, 
 two on each side, to strengthen the boat at these 
 chief points of wear and strain. The regoli, as mere 
 additions, can be easily replaced as soon as they are 
 worn out. 
 
 In the disposing of the sand he has won from 
 the river, neither barcahwlo nor piaggiainolo deals 
 directly with the builder who requires it. They are 
 not his servants, nor any one else's, but master- 
 workmen free to dispose of their gains as best they
 
 lyo Florence Past and Present 
 
 may. In this liberty the renainoli turn to another 
 class and trade, that of the barocciai, the carters who 
 act as middlemen in the business. The renaiiiolo 
 sells to the barocciaio, and he again to the builder 
 at an advance which pa}'s for the carriage. At 
 present, sand is bought and sold at a price which may 
 be as much as six lire per cart load, at a time of 
 great demand ; the price tending to rise with the late 
 activity of the building trade at Florence. If you 
 ask the renaiuolo, he will allow that his working day 
 is worth anything between seven and ten lire. It 
 must be remembered, however, that the river is not 
 always in order, and the average gains in this trade 
 may therefore be taken at four lire per day, or, say, 
 £,^0 a year. Florence holds and employs about 
 one hundred and twenty renainoli, of whom eighty or 
 so may be barcaiiioli and forty piaggiainoli. This 
 means that sand is taken from the Arno to the yearly 
 value of some £6000 ; no contemptible gain, when 
 the state of the stream and the general conditions of 
 life in Florence are considered. 
 
 The freedom of the renainoli in their work may be 
 taken as a sign that their trade is not only ancient, 
 but has preserved much of its primitive character in 
 so late a liberty. For it is certain that in the evolution 
 of Florentine industries it was just this freedom, once 
 the boast of every workman, that the Guilds of the 
 Middle Age confined and destroyed ; making the 
 artisan the bondservant of the capital they repre-
 
 Boats and Boatmen 171 
 
 sented. But ask him to-day, and any reiiaiiiolo will 
 tell you that his kind and class have no trade 
 organisation ; they remain, then, what they have 
 always been, each man free to work as seems best to 
 himself and on his own account. Thus the whole 
 Middle Age has passed without changing a whit the 
 life or liberty of the river, which, flowing still, still 
 gathers on its banks and bosom men that represent 
 to-day, in the independence of their activity, another, 
 earlier, world of primitive labour. 
 
 Though unorganised, the renaiuoli form a distinct 
 class, with strong class-feeling, and a high jealousy of 
 their privilege in the common use of the river and its 
 shores. The}- will unite to defend rights here which 
 are theirs by no statute but that of immemorial use 
 and wont. If you would know it, send a servant to 
 fetch you a load of sand from the river. He must 
 either buy it from the renaiuoli, or pay his footing on 
 the shore in one form or other before they will allow 
 him to work for you on ground they claim as their 
 own. In this property one finds a survival of the 
 primitive community, which held its ground in 
 common while uniting to defend these common-rights 
 against all outsiders. The tendency of language 
 among the renaiuoli to break up into dialect has 
 already shown us ^ how nearly primitive their life still 
 is, and, as we proceed, it will still further appear that 
 early half- forgotten things, like water-spirits, haunt 
 
 ^ See above, p. 90.
 
 1 72 Florence Past and Present 
 
 to-day the banks of the Arno and the minds of the 
 men that make their home by the stream. 
 
 The roiaiuolo, whether he work on the bank or 
 afloat, is not always in search of sand ; he is a true 
 child of the Arno, ready to seek anything the river 
 may yield. When the demand for sand falls off, or 
 the supply is scanty, he does not remain idle but sets 
 at once to fishing. The Florentine is fond of fish, 
 but cannot have it from the sea save at a high price, 
 or of doubtful freshness. The Arno fishermen, who 
 are no other than the renaiuoli, cater in this kind for 
 the common people ; you will see their catch laid out 
 on the counter of the Rosticceria — that peculiarly 
 Florentine institution — or may notice the sign ' Pesci 
 d' Arno ' painted at a Trattoria door in city or country 
 to draw custom. In the good old days of a hundred 
 years ago, those who took their morning bath in the 
 river used to follow it up by a visit to ' II Dottore,' 
 the host who dispensed fried Arno fish to all comers 
 at the Piagentina. On the same spot, or near it, a 
 humble house of call at Bellariva still offers the same 
 dish, which those who fancy it consume to the accom- 
 paniment of a certain white wine not to be despised. 
 Close by live the fishermen ; their boats line the shore 
 in front, and this branch of the rcnaiuold s activity 
 may occupy our attention for a moment ; the more 
 that, being what he is, he is sure to display in this 
 craft also the manner and practice of forgotten time. 
 
 Just as when he seeks sand the renaiuolo is either
 
 Boats and Boatmen 
 
 173 
 
 2l piaggiahiolo or a barcaiuolo, so, when he suffers a 
 river change and turns fisherman, he fishes either 
 from the bank or — if he have it at command — 
 
 pp' ' 
 
 V 
 
 . ^. 
 
 -t^-Y« 
 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 ^•.. , 
 
 -i 
 
 ,■., 
 
 f 
 
 
 &^' , ;■- 
 
 \ 
 
 k 
 
 
 ^■>.& . 
 
 
 ; < 
 
 
 ^, r ■ 
 
 
 
 
 fisherman's house, with GIACCHIO HUNG OUT TO DRY 
 
 from a boat on the stream, but never with rod and 
 Hne, which he leaves in a certain contempt to the 
 amateur. His tool here is the net, in a remarkable 
 variety of size, shape, and use. Those cast from the 
 shore, set under the stream, or dipped and pushed
 
 174 Florence Past and Present 
 
 before the wader, are the common bilaiicia, which you 
 may see any day swinging from its cord and pole ; 
 the elegant giaccJiio, weighted with leads, and used 
 like a sling ; the caccia and trappoln on their frames 
 Hke shrimping nets ; the ripainolix, used to follow the 
 fish under the river bank in time of flood ; and, 
 finally, the bertaile, a bag-net stretched on rings set 
 within a frame of three osiers.^ This last net is 
 trapped at the mouth and anchored under water in 
 the fish-runs. The bilancia is sometimes used from 
 the windows of houses overlooking the river. Some 
 years ago, when looking at an apartment in Borgo 
 San Jacopo, I was bid to notice a crane and pulley 
 fixed to the wall of the house for the management of 
 such a net : ' So,' they said, 'you can draw up your 
 breakfast without pa}-ing for it.' 
 
 If, on the other hand, the fisher is a harcaiuolo — 
 one who commands a boat — his net is apt to be the 
 bertailone ; much larger and heavier than any of the 
 others, but, for that very reason, enclosing more 
 water and securing a better catch of fish if fortune 
 favour the fishers. The bcrt(nlo)ic consists of netting- 
 some sixty feet long by six feet deep, with leads be- 
 low and corks above. Two bertaili, with their traps 
 and rings, but without framework, are set in the 
 
 ^ Rigutini-Fanfani registers the forms bcrtitiUo, hcrtovcUo and fierla- 
 hello as the names of this net, and beriavello is also found. The words 
 bertaile and bertailone, unknown to the dictionaries, were taken down 
 by me with great care from a working fisherman at the Ponte di 
 Ferro. They are the Florentine variants of the others.
 
 :^4iiisiiiil 
 
 \^' 
 
 
 ■v*.' 
 
 
 ,.,-.Xt-r«---. 
 
 1 ^ 
 
 BILAXCIA AT A BALCONY IN liOKGO SAN lACOI'O
 
 Boats and Boatmen 177 
 
 bertailone at equal distance to act as pockets for the 
 catch, and in this situation are known as gole. The 
 bertailone is sometimes used without these, in which 
 case it is called the strascino. The Arno nets are all 
 home and hand-made ; the work of the men them- 
 selves, or of their women-kind, in spare hours. The 
 cord and mesh are fine, the needle remarkable, shaped 
 of wood by the workman himself with a pocket knife. 
 Square in section, hardly thicker than a lead pencil, 
 this ago, as it is called, opens towards the point in a 
 single eye, large enough to carry the cord which is 
 wound on a central spine left uncut in the axis of the 
 oblong eye itself Such refined home handicrafts 
 speak of immemorial tradition, implying as they do 
 a transmitted dexterity which the rougher labours of 
 the renaiuolo on the river have not been able to 
 destroy. 
 
 It is interesting to watch the bertailone dX work, as 
 you may often do in the neighbourhood of the Ponte 
 di Ferro. The men — two or three in number — are in 
 the boat ; the net lies heaped in a mass on the roof 
 oiAh&frnga, but a stout cord anchors one end of the 
 bertailone to the shore. As the boat moves into 
 the current and down-stream, the net is payed out, so 
 that at last, when anchored again by the other end 
 some way off, it stands in a great curve of which the 
 shore forms the chord. W^ithin the net the boat 
 moves slowly up and down, while the men stab and 
 churn with their poles to rouse the fish, which — in 
 
 M
 
 1 78 Florence Past and Present 
 
 winter especially — are apt to lie in the mud, or under 
 the stones of the river bottom. Half an hour passes 
 in this work, and then the net is carefully drawn 
 aboard again ; the men meanwhile thrashing the 
 water with the leads to drive the fish into the pockets. 
 When these come aboard, the pcsciaiuola is lifted ; 
 first one gola and then the other is untied at the 
 point, and the fish poured like a stream of silver into 
 \\\Q.frnga. I have seen fifteen pounds of fish taken 
 in this way by one cast of the bcrtaiknie on a gray day 
 in January ; mostly small fry indeed, but with them 
 lay a brown carp of three pounds weight. My friend 
 the barcaiuolo told me afterwards that he had kept 
 this fish for himself, and that it ' ate like butter,' 
 
 More picturesque, if not more profitable, is the 
 night fishing with hand-net and lantern which you 
 may see in the soft summer darkness as you look 
 from the Ponte alia Carraia towards the weir and the 
 Cascine. On the right, in the still water above the 
 weir, the lamps of the Lung' Arno shine reflected ; 
 the ripple of the river makes them look like long 
 spools on which the river-spirits are for ever winding 
 gold and silver thread. But it is beyond and below 
 the weir that other, fainter, points of fire, as they flit 
 hither and thither among the scanty streams and 
 heaped gravels, show that the fisher is on foot and at 
 work. He carries a tin lantern — the forgnolo — in his 
 left hand, and in his right the forcJietta or leister. 
 Thus he wades the water, dazzling and drawing the
 
 Boats and Boatmen 179 
 
 fish within reach, and spearing as many as come 
 under his hand. 
 
 So then, by day or night, from boat or shore, with 
 one kind of net or another, the fishers of the Arno 
 supply the humbler Florentine market. The fish 
 they bring in are of several kinds, some eight or so 
 in all. There are the lascJic {Leuciscus aula), well 
 known from Vasari's tale of the painter Buffalmacco, 
 who crowned his figure of St. Ercolano with these 
 fish at Perugia ; they are found in the Arno as well 
 as in Trasimene. There are the eels {Anguilla 
 vulgaris) too, in their season ; about which the fisher- 
 men will tell you strange tales, not forgetting the 
 congers of the sea — the grogni as they are called — how 
 they pour foam from their mouths by the sea-shore in 
 the breeding season ; how, as they move up-stream, 
 you may hear them among the gravel of the river 
 making a noise like the humming of a hundred 
 wheels. These angjtille seek the sea in autumn, and 
 mount the Arno again in the storms and floods ot 
 Januar)' and February, when they are taken at the 
 weirs in cleverly contrived traps of osier. Even 
 science confesses that there is mystery here, and that 
 a true male of this species is unknown.^ Then there 
 
 ^ Cav. V. A. Vecchi tells me that the lower Arno as far as Castel- 
 franco di Sotto is visited occasionally by the touno {Thymus vulgaris) 
 and regularly by the pilchard [Cliipea pilchardus). The latter is 
 known on the Arno as the cheppia and is thought a great delicacy ; 
 to eat which many make the journey to Castelfranco in the tishing 
 season.
 
 i8o Florence Past and Present 
 
 are the broccioli {Gohio fluviatilis^ Cuv,), and the 
 barbi {Baj'bus plebeins, Val.), but the latter is a fish to 
 be eaten cautiously as the roe is poisonous. Some- 
 times unpleasant consequences follow a meal of Arno 
 fish, and the sufferers from such an accident are apt 
 to suppose that the state of the river is to blame. As 
 a matter of fact, no sewage enters the Arno at 
 Florence, and a few barbi, carelessly cleaned, are 
 quite enough to account for the illness of a whole 
 party. The boga (Gobi us dvcniensis) is a species 
 peculiar to the Arno, and with it may be mentioned 
 various kinds of trout and pike. But the finest fish 
 got at Florence is the carp already spoken of 
 {Cj'/>ri}iiis carpio), here known as the rcina. At 
 Rome it is called, more amply and exactly, ' the dark 
 queen,' or 'the dark queen in gauze of gold,' from 
 the superb lustre of its scales, which change from 
 smoke colour to golden brown as the light catches 
 them. It runs to several pounds weight, and in 
 quality as well as beauty is a true queen of the river : 
 the best fish Florence knows. The trade of the fisher 
 is not unprofitable ; one da\- with another, he will 
 take an average of five francs' worth from the 
 river. This is not enough, as one sees, to tempt the 
 renaiuolo to forsake the sand, which pays him still 
 better ; but when the sand forsakes him, rather 
 than remain idle, he turns fisherman and thus 
 fairly maintains the average of his daily takings 
 from the Arno.
 
 Boats and Boatmen i8i 
 
 Now this change is a falHng back upon what we 
 have alread}' noted as one of the two absolutely 
 primitive and original occupations of man in the 
 Arno valley. That fishing still goes on in Florence 
 is of itself a genuine survival of the first human age 
 here, but it is possible to go further, and find in the 
 hands of the Arno fishermen to-day something that 
 connects his art in a definite and interesting way with 
 the earliest days of all. This object is the gourd, and 
 to the gourd then, in the use the fisher makes of it, 
 some particular attention is now due. 
 
 If the net serves to take the fish, it is the gourd 
 to which the catch is transferred for safe keeping ; 
 at least b)- those fishers who walk or wade afoot, 
 and who, working from the bank or the shore, have 
 no boat with its convenient y>7/i,'-^z in which to bestow 
 their catch. The gourd is carried slung to the 
 waist of the fisherman, and the swelling curves of 
 this dry and hollow fruit have their own place in 
 the picture he presents ; emphasising by contrast 
 the finer lines of his figure as he moves like some 
 antique bronze into which the spirit of the stream 
 has breathed its own life. You may meet him, too, 
 any day in the poorer streets of Florence selling 
 what he has caught, but always from the convenient 
 gourd by the help of a portable balance. His long- 
 drawn cry tells you he is coming in the crowd, and, 
 as he leaves you to try another beat, his gourd is 
 the last you see of him as he turns the corner.
 
 1 82 Florence Past and Present 
 
 The ziicca, as the gourd is called here, in all its 
 forms, long, middling, and round, is a familiar object 
 at Florence ; its deep orange flesh shows all winter 
 on the stall of the greengrocer, for, cooked secundum 
 arteni, with onion and pepper, it makes a dish not 
 to be despised. The seeds, like those of the melon, 
 are dried, salted, and sold as nuts for eating ; they 
 are the whitish seiui, with a green kernel, offered by 
 measure on the bridges and in the humbler circuses 
 as a diversion and pastime during the performance. 
 In another fashion, emptied and dried, the gourd 
 serves as a vessel, and often forms part of the 
 furniture of the kitchen in the poorer Italian houses, 
 especial!}' in the country. It is commonly used to 
 hold salt, and the Zucca da scde has become pro- 
 verbial : a phrase doubly fit, as carrying much of 
 that subtler salt which is the Florentine wit. To 
 taste this, one must remember that ' zucca,' like 
 our own ' nut,' is current slang for the head ; a bald 
 man, for instance, will often be addressed as ' zucca 
 pelata.' 'Zucca mia da sale!' How much, then, 
 does such an apostrophe not imply ? ' 'Tis easy 
 to see you come from the country — are a country 
 pumpkin — have a head indeed, but lack the wit 
 your head should hold.' Still subtler and nearer 
 our subject is the form ' hai venduto il pesce,' which 
 means 'you have nothing in your gourd — your head 
 is empty of all but air.' Such covert forms of scorn 
 are peculiarly Florentine.
 
 Boats and Boatmen 183 
 
 The gourd has long served to hold liquids as well 
 as solids. Pliny says that in his day wine was 
 often thus kept, and that there was a new fashion 
 for the gourd as a utensil in the bath : ^ no doubt 
 as a ladle for hot or cold water ; unless, indeed, 
 we should think here of the loofah. The use 
 of the gourd is thus undoubtedly ancient, and 
 at Florence to-day, in the hands of the fishermen 
 of the Arno, it represents, as we shall see, a 
 whole technique — a manner of cultivation and pre- 
 paration — which, derived from early times, is still 
 known and practised by these simple Tuscan 
 people. 
 
 Nature gives two principal shapes to this fruit, 
 the long and the round ; both useful in their different 
 ways as vessels for holding liquids or solids, even if 
 only emptied and dried in their natural form. I 
 once saw a curious instance of this at a rustic festa 
 under the chestnut-trees of Piedmont. A man came 
 on the ground with wine, carrying it on his person 
 in a long twisted gourd, which, as he was not very 
 tall, clung to his whole body from head to heel. 
 Below, the gourd was strapped to his ankle, and 
 when a thirsty soul came near he kicked up his 
 heel, opened a plug in the gourd, and filled a glass 
 for him in a moment. Such forms have, however, 
 their obvious awkwardnesses, and Pliny, who registers 
 them as the ' draconis intorti figura,' hints at some- 
 
 ' N.II., xix. 5.
 
 1 84 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 thing more handy when he says of the gourd ' crescit 
 qua cogitur forma.' ^ 
 
 Such, then, is the practice at Florence. The fisher- 
 men of the Arno scorn to buy their zticche ; they 
 
 ENGRAVING DONE BY HAND ON A WINE-GOUKI) 
 
 grow them in their gardens, and still know the art 
 of vegetable modelling by which the fruit, as it 
 swells, takes the shape they need. The old men 
 
 ' N.H., loc. cit. A trumpet-sliaped gourd dried and opened at 
 both ends is sometimes used in Tuscany as a horn to call pigs. There 
 is an example of such a horn in the Museo Etnografico, Florence.
 
 Boats and Boatmen 185 
 
 from the country whom you may see hawking small 
 gourds about the streets in autumn have nothing 
 to do with the river; ' donne, o donne' is their cry, 
 for the vessels they sell are only good to hold the 
 drysaltery of the poorer homes. Nor does the 
 fisherman sow cJiiatte in his ground : the flat gourd 
 used still as a wine flask, and often highly orna- 
 mented with elaborate graffito. The fruit for his 
 purpose is larger, and such as, if left to its natural 
 growth, would give a massive pear-shaped pumpkin. 
 
 But these gourds are not left to nature. The 
 fisherman needs them broad based that they may 
 stand upright by themselves, and secures this shape 
 by setting a board under the fruit as it ripens ; the 
 weight of the gourd as it finds the wood and settles 
 on it does what he wants. Meanwhile the neck is 
 taking shape under a tight bandage which confines 
 the gourd above, and only allows it to swell where 
 size is needed in the body of the completed vessel. 
 When the gourd is ready it is cut, emptied, and laid 
 to dry in the cottage window. 
 
 It is easy to see, however, that, even when shaped 
 and dried, the gourd is not yet ready for service. It 
 cannot be used to hold fish till it has been made 
 waterproof within, for, unprotected, the vegetable 
 matter of which it consists would quickh' take the 
 water again, would swell and rot so as to become 
 useless. The art which completes the whole process 
 is after all a very simple one. Pitch is melted over
 
 1 86 Florence Past and Present 
 
 the fire and poured into the dry gourd, which the 
 fisherman then turns about in his hands till the whole 
 is lined, to the lip and beyond it, with a black 
 resistant varnish. So prepared, you will see gourds 
 
 fisherman's gourd lined with pitch 
 
 hanging for sale at the doors of dealers in fishing 
 tackle ; they are now ready to hold safely what the 
 net brings in. 
 
 Now this art of the gourd deserves the particular 
 attention we have given it because it is a distinct 
 survival of the earliest times and explains much
 
 Boats and Boatmen 187 
 
 that might otherwise be unintelligible. When Pliny 
 tells that wine was often stored in gourds/ we 
 remember that the old world had the habit — still kept 
 up in Greece — of treating wine with pitch to make 
 
 EARTHENWARE JAR GLAZED WITHIN 
 
 it keep better, or to give it a favourite flavour. 
 But so, it seems certain that this practice was 
 derived from that we have just studied. The 
 gourd — and for that matter the amphora too, before 
 the invention of glaze — could not hold wine till 
 
 ' N.H., loc. cil.
 
 r88 Florence Past and Present 
 
 lined with pitch. ^ The liquor gained sharpness in 
 this contact ; the consumer learned to prefer such 
 wines, and so, even when pottery and vitreous 
 glaze had come to abolish the first necessity, the 
 vintner still treated his wine with pitch to meet 
 an established taste. The re.'^iiiato of Greece is a 
 survival from the times of the primitive gourd and 
 its necessary preparation as a wine vessel. So too in 
 Tuscany to-day the rough earthenware of the house- 
 hold is porous as any ancient amphora till glazed. 
 The glaze is often applied to the inside of the pot 
 only, in the very manner of the pitch whose colour it 
 so nearly imitates, and is to be seen spilt carelessly 
 over the lip, just as the pitch shows a little outside 
 the gourd ; the tecJiniquc used in the preparation of 
 this earlier vessel has clearly passed from the fisher- 
 man to the potter. 
 
 It would seem indeed that not the glaze only, but 
 the pottery itself may have come of that still earlier 
 practice in which men adapted the gourd to their use 
 as a convenient vessel. I believe that M. Goguet 
 has the credit of first suggesting that clay may 
 originally have been used to protect a gourd or 
 basket in its employment as a cooking vessel. Thus 
 the clay would be at once shaped and burned, and 
 ere long men would find that, shaped and burned, 
 it needed no other support than that of its own 
 
 ' Cato, 7^6' Kc Rust., xxv., 'dolia picaln.' See also P. K.T. 
 Aemiliani, De Ke Rust., x. i, and G. I^anii, Lezioni, p. 438, for 
 pots of this kind found at Artiniino near Siyna.
 
 Boats and Boatmen 189 
 
 strength. In such a discovery pottery would be born 
 at once, in a progress which led easily from the natural 
 form of the gourd to its unstudied reproduction in 
 the clay applied to protect it, and from the resultant 
 clay vessel, burnt but still porous, to the pot resistant 
 within, because lined with glaze that imitated exactly 
 the pitch applied to the gourd. It is easy to see 
 that this latter loan accepted by the potter from the 
 fisher is indirectly an argument for the former, and 
 goes far to establish the theory which makes the 
 gourd the original, in its shape and weakness together, 
 of the whole art of moulding and burning clay. 
 
 But if so, what shall we say of the fisherman's gourd 
 still shaped, lined, and used at Florence? The man 
 himself is a survival of the earliest human life by the 
 Arno ; he still gets his food to-day as his ancestors 
 got it who first settled here. If proof of this were 
 needed one has only to look again at what he carries 
 at his waist. The oldest trace of human occupation 
 on this site has been found in the prehistoric graves 
 of the Centre with their unglazed pots filled with the 
 ashes of the dead. But the fisherman is older than 
 the potter, and the fisherman's gourd is a present fact, 
 renewed every year, as if to assure his precedence. 
 The gourd, then, has carried down to the present day 
 in an unbroken succession and practice that earlier 
 art which uses nature without discarding it, and of 
 which the earliest ceramic was but a derivative and 
 an imitation.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE RIVER TRADE 
 
 The sand-trade and the fishing still carried on at 
 Florence are only the poor remains of a river life once 
 much fuller and more important. There is a back- 
 ground here which it is well to remember ; thinking, 
 as one sees the boats still moving on the stream, of 
 what that movement once meant to the city ; how it 
 linked her with Pisa and the sea, and how Florence 
 was great very much because of her place on this open 
 water-way . 
 
 The matter does not lie altogether beyond the 
 memory of living men. I heard of a case in which 
 the furniture of an English family moving from 
 Leghorn to Florence, as late as 1863, was brought 
 up all the way by water in a barge to the old city 
 port at the Pignone. There, indeed, a basin and 
 shelter had long been contrived for the ' gondolas ' 
 of the Grand Duke — you may still see the plans of 
 it in the Archivio^ — and thence the Court used to 
 
 ' Firenze, Arch, di Stalo, C.ipitani di Parte, Indice dclle I'iante, 
 No. xiv. 21, ' Arsenale delle Gondole al Pignone.'
 
 The River Trade 193 
 
 drop down-stream in these state barges on their way 
 to a villeggiatura at the Ambrogiana of Montelupo, 
 or some other country resort. If you would add to 
 the impression, and know what serious use was made 
 of the river in the sixteenth century, go to the Piazza 
 of Santa Trinita, and measure the great column of 
 Justice that stands in front of the Church. This 
 mighty shaft of granite, once part of the Baths of 
 Caracalla, was a gift of Pius iv. to Cosimo I., and 
 came all the way by water from Rome to Signa. 
 The journey might have been completed in the same 
 way had the season not been summer : a trial to the 
 patience of the Grand Duke and of his architect 
 Vasari, who chose to have the monument dragged 
 by road these last eight miles to Florence rather than 
 wait for the rains and the rising river. Such was the 
 capacity of the Arno and the use made of it in 1 562.^ 
 The further we pursue this matter of navigation 
 in the Val d'Arno the more important does it 
 appear, alike in the money spent on it and the 
 men of genius whose attention it attracted and 
 whose invention it stimulated. Leonardo da Vinci 
 himself plans a new water-way here,^ and leaves 
 designs which men study with fresh interest to-day, 
 in the hope of recovering something of that old 
 prosperity which came with the command of the 
 river. Already, in 1463, Florence had dredged the 
 
 ^ Gaye, Cartcggio, iii. pp. 6i, 62. 
 
 - See citations \\\ Boll. Soc. Geogr. Ital., 1905, p. 90,^, etc. 
 
 N
 
 194 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 bar below Pisa that her galleys might pass freely 
 to and from the sea.^ Earlier still, in 1422, Brunel- 
 lesco, busy as he was in designing his Dome, found 
 time to win a prize for a new barca, or iiaviglio, fit 
 to carry cargo at a cheap rate by water The city 
 
 ANCIENT MILL ON THE ARNO AT ROVEZZANO 
 
 bought his rights in this invention, meaning no 
 doubt to use it on the Arno." 
 
 It would seem as if the architect of the Dome, 
 when he designed his boat, might have been think- 
 ing of how best to bring home the material for 
 that imperishable monument. However this may 
 have been, it is certain that the building he so 
 
 ' Gaye, Carteggio, i. 565. 
 
 - Ibid., i. 547.
 
 The River Trade 195 
 
 magically crowned might itself have set his mind at 
 work on just such a plan. In the thirteenth century 
 the growing prosperity of Florence and especially of 
 her principal manufacture had brought about the 
 building of many mills and weirs on the river with 
 some clanger to the freedom of the ancient water-way. 
 In 1 33 1 and successive years legislation limited these, 
 obliging the owners to provide a passage for the river 
 trade.^ The Cathedral was then being built, and 
 the law that secured this new liberty had its chief 
 justification in the traffic that presently brought the 
 marbles of Carrara by the Arno, and the serpentine 
 of Prato by the Bisenzio, to shine where they stand 
 to-day, as the applied decoration of Church and 
 Campanile alike. 
 
 Further still ; the dim days of the earlier middle 
 age show us the barbarians leaving their mark here. 
 Once, in 825, it is the Normans who come to sack 
 the Badia at San Domenico, pushing their ' long 
 ships' up the river as far as Florence;- again, still 
 earlier, and in a wise favour, it is the great Theodoric, 
 King of the Goths, who in the fifth centur\- directs 
 the removal of obstacles to the river traffic : ^ the very 
 legislation which Florence herself re-enacted in the 
 fourteenth century. If we are to think of the circum- 
 
 ' Repelti, Diz. della Toscaim, i. p. 146. 
 
 ^ R. DavicLsohn, Storia di Firenze (Firenze: Sansoni, 1907), vol. i. 
 p. 120. 
 
 ■* Cassiodorus, Vai-iae, v. 17, 20; Aloit. Germ. Scriptores, xii. 
 I54-5-
 
 196 Florence Past and Present 
 
 stances as similar, this Gothic law would sa}- much 
 for the importance of the Arno trade in Gothic days. 
 That it was of consequence under the Romans 
 is plain from the fact that a Roman inscription 
 acquaints us with the office of the ' Curator 
 Kalendarii Florentinorum ' at Pisa, showing that 
 Florence had invested money there, and needed 
 one to take charge of the payment of interest on 
 the Kalends of each month. ^ It is a fair inference 
 that this connection between the two towns de- 
 pended ultimatel}' on the river that united them, 
 and that the Arno traffic was then considerable 
 indeed. 
 
 It is difficult to believe that the physical relation 
 of the Val d'Arno to the Val di Chiana had not a 
 commercial consequence ; the trade of the latter 
 helping to keep the former busy. Now in early 
 times the Chiana traffic was ver)- considerable ; 
 Strabo assures us of its importance,"- which appears 
 beyond question in the ancient prosperity of Cortona 
 and Chiusi, the chief cities of this valley. Pliny 
 sa\'s the Chiana was navigable in his da\','^ and how 
 long this water-wa\- remained open, and what interest 
 Florence still had in it, may be read in the record 
 that tells us how, as late as 1390. the city paid 
 for two " shii)s " to sail here for the defence of 
 Montepulciano.^ The matter seems summed up 
 
 1 C.I.L., xi. I ; 1444- -' ^^ 220, 235. ■' N.H., iii. 5. 
 
 ^ Gaye, op. cii., i. 534.
 
 The River Trade 197 
 
 significantly enough in the singular custom by 
 which, as late as the fifteenth century A.D., the 
 chief magistrate of the latter town, like another 
 Doge, yearly took barge on her lake with heralds 
 and notaries to wed these waters with a ring.^ 
 Now in realit)- the husband here was the Tiber, 
 ' quamlibet magnarum navium ex Italo mari capax ' 
 as Pliny calls it,"' and the bride the Arno, in whose 
 western course to the same sea the traffic circle 
 was complete. It is interesting to notice that the 
 last proposal to revive the Arno and the river trade 
 of Tuscany provides for a great reservoir near Arezzo, 
 and for a passage thence b\- the Chiana and Chiusi 
 to the Tiber. Thus the Arno would again find 
 its place in a commercial water-system which the 
 ancient world knew well, and which brought no 
 little prosperit}' to Florence. 
 
 This then is the great past, so poorly represented 
 to-day by the boats one sees at Florence ; cargo-boats 
 no longer ; busy onh^ in bringing their petty gains of 
 sand to shore, their poor fish to the humbler market of 
 the city. The reason of such decline ma\- lie parti}' 
 in the river itself, for, with the felling of the \^al 
 d'Arno forests, the rainfall is lessened, and w hat the 
 clouds still give runs aw a\' sooner, so that in spite of 
 floods the mean level of the Arno must be U^wer than 
 it once was. But in truth, as dates show, it is the 
 coming of the railwa\-, laid almost parallel with the 
 
 ^ Repetti, Diz. della Joscana, i. 719. - A'.H., loc. cit.
 
 198 Florence Past and Present 
 
 river from Florence — nay from Arezzo — to the sea, 
 that has chiefl}- brought the change. With the 
 appearance of the new means of transport came a 
 natural carelessness of the old, in which the towing 
 paths were neglected and allowed to fall into the 
 stream, and the great weir of Castelfranco, ro}'ally 
 built by the Medici in the sixteenth century, was 
 sold, in 1875, to a private owner, with the result that 
 it now lies in disrepair, and offers a serious danger 
 to the boats that would pass up or down b}- its 
 callone. Still, in spite of all difficulty they pass, and 
 we have only to descend the Arno to find even now, 
 though in diminished measure, the river trade still 
 moving which once reached Florence and contributed 
 so much to her prosperit\\ 
 
 The Mugnone now falls into the Arno much lower 
 than it formerly did, reaching the greater stream onh' 
 at the western end of the Cascine : a change which 
 may be reckoned with the rest as one of the causes 
 why commerce no longer comes to Florence by water. 
 Pass this confluence, however ; pass the shallow of 
 Marcignana, which the alkuium brought down b}- 
 the Mugnone has formed, and the river begins at 
 once to show what it can do still, in the manner, if 
 not the measure, of the greater {)ast. At Ugnano, 
 scarcely a mile below the Cascine, a true cargo-boat, 
 though of small size, lay waiting its load in the winter 
 of 1909 ; I suppose this is now the highest point 
 reached by the existing river trade. Such boats,
 
 The River Trade 201 
 
 however, you will find in growing number as you 
 follow the growing river ; at Signa, where it has 
 already received the Bisenzio ; at the Golfolina, where 
 the Ombrone falls in, and, definitely, at Montelupo, 
 where the Pesa joins the Arno, and where manu- 
 factures of earthenware and glass are set b}- the 
 stream and use it as a means of transport. Empoli 
 sees the confluence of Arno and Elsa, and its match 
 factories bring custom to the growing trade. It is 
 not difficult to understand that, if the river is to 
 compete with its rival the rail, its advantage will lie 
 here ; in the transport of fragile things like pottery 
 and glass, or combustibles like sulphur and hicifcrs, 
 on which the railway levies high charges for so 
 dangerous a freight. Another adxantage appears at 
 Calcinaia, between Pontedera and Pisa, in the canal 
 which runs directh' from this point in the river to 
 Leghorn, offering a shorter route thither than the rail 
 can show. Calcinaia is therefore a prosperous place, 
 and here, or at the neighbouring Fornacette, you may 
 see for the first time the realh- heav}- boats of the 
 lower Arno ; built to carr)^ bricks or grain to Leghorn, 
 and to return with loads of coal for the kiln, or 
 sulphate of copper for the vineyards. This canal is 
 called the Fosso del Arnaccio, as if the river itself 
 once followed the ver\' route the canal keeps to-day. 
 Strabo in fact speaks of the Arno as ' threefold ' ; 
 hinting at a considerable delta towards the mouth, 
 and thus it may well be that the present traffic by
 
 202 Florence Past and Present 
 
 water is not merely a survival of the past, but that, 
 in a singular persistence, it still keeps the ancient 
 line of passage, a branch of the river once followed 
 across the Pisan plain. Not that the same boats 
 may not be found at Pisa too, lying in the Medicean 
 port with its great sluice and roof, or crowding the 
 canal of the Naviglio for which that port was built 
 in 1603. They are of precisely the type we have 
 already studied at Florence, with a rather exagger- 
 ated sheer fore and aft, which, in the stern, leaves 
 room for a great earthen water-jar under the curve 
 of the tiller. The chief difference is in the size of 
 the boat, for these of the lower Arno may run to 
 twenty-five or even thirty tons as against two or 
 three at Florence. 
 
 How essentiall)' of the Arno this trade and 
 navigation are is proved by the site of the yards and 
 slips where the boats are built. You would expect 
 to find these building places at Pisa or Leghorn, or 
 at least on the lower reaches of the river, but it is not 
 so. Light boats are still occasionally built at Florence 
 itself, and from Florence but a short journe)- down- 
 stream will bring )'ou to the seat of this industr\\ It 
 is a trip worth taking. The whole matter is both 
 singular and suggestive, and is so little known that, 
 even in Tuscany, few are aware of its existence and 
 importance, or could tell you where to go to find an 
 Arno boat in building. The place is Limitc, so 
 called as markmg: the convergence of tiic three
 
 The River Trade 205 
 
 ancient dioceses of Florence, Lucca, and Pistoia. It 
 lies on the right bank of the Arno between Empoli 
 and Montelupo ; in the very centre therefore of the 
 manufactures which, above and below, begin to bring 
 trade to the growing stream. 
 
 A post-carriage runs regularly to Limite from 
 Empoli, but the pleasanter way of reaching it is by 
 walking there from Montelupo. You pass first, at 
 the west end of this town, the great Villa of the 
 Ambrogiana, now an as)'lum for criminal lunatics, 
 and so find the river at Fibbiana. Here you will 
 notice a large factory where wine-flasks are made, 
 close beside the picturesque tower of the Frescobaldi 
 — the ' Torre-Lunga ' as it is called. Hence the 
 path leads down-stream along the river embankment, 
 and below, on the right, you will see long plantations 
 of the giant reed, the canna, that lends its leaves for 
 the wrapping of the flasks that Fibbiana turns out. 
 The women do the work of covering, and this 
 industry is as characteristic of the lower Val d'Arno 
 as is the straw-plaiting you may see in the countr}^ 
 round Florence. The reed -beds lie between the 
 embankment and the river on ground periodically 
 flooded by the Arno, for the canna is a plant which 
 needs wet soil if it is to live and reach the perfection 
 it shows here. So you reach Limite, passing from 
 the left to the right bank of the Arno by a ferry, 
 which, as you cross, makes you aware of the deep 
 pool in the river here. This convenience has no
 
 2o6 Florence Past and Present 
 
 doubt fixed the site of the village and its industry, 
 for to the pool the slips of the building-yards all lead 
 down, as there is plent)' of water here even in the 
 droughts of summer. Floating craft of all sizes lie 
 anchored b\' the banks, and as you land and enter 
 Limite itself, skeleton boats, and builders that move 
 about their work, betray the occupation of the place. 
 
 There is a singularity in the scene that stimulates 
 curiosity. Here we have a village — or town rather, 
 for it holds some two thousand inhabitants — lying 
 fifty miles from the sea, _\'et building not only the 
 lighter and heax'ier craft that still ply on the Arno 
 but sea-going vessels as well, and these in some 
 number and size. When built they pass to the 
 Mediterranean clown the river, and the fact that this 
 water-way still bears them to-day is enough to show, 
 and even to set in a new light, the existing possi- 
 bilities of this neglected stream. The details of 
 the industry when examined only confirm the first 
 impression, which may well be one of surprise. 
 
 The principal )'ard at Limite, which ma)' serve as an 
 example of the rest, belongs to the Fratelli Picchiotti, 
 representatives of a family which has built boats 
 here for at least three centuries. A hundred men 
 find regular employment in this \-ard, some of them 
 veterans of fifty or sixty \'ears' experience of the 
 craft. The boats they build for the river are just 
 those we have already described in detail. For such 
 no drawings are needed ; the type is fixed by
 
 The River Trade 211 
 
 tradition. ' They will not have it clianged,' sa}- the 
 Picchiotti of their customers the Arno boatmen, \\'ho 
 are wise in a conservatism which the ages have 
 taught; the temper of mind which, having found 
 what is reall\- needed here, is determined to abide 
 by it. The }ard obe)'s, in a traditional and corre- 
 spondent knowledge of the old tccluiiquc ; hears the 
 order, and turns out by rule of thumb a boat of the 
 tonnage required. These river craft are built with 
 ribs and understrakes of oak, for the Paduli of 
 Fucecchio, which }M'eld the best quality of this 
 timber, are not far off. The rest of the boat is apt 
 to be of pine, and the price ma}' run as high as ^120 
 for one carrying 25 tons. Those sent to Florence 
 are much cheaper than the boats that go down- 
 stream ; costing from £\2 to ^16 apiece. 
 
 In the two hundred )'ears from 1600 to iSoo the 
 books of the Picchiotti show that the ward worked 
 for the river alone, turning out in that time about 
 three hundred Arno craft, greater and smaller.^ Only 
 in the last century did they begin to build for the 
 sea, but the record runs that from 1805 onwards they 
 launched about two hundred ships — bilanccllc, 
 tartane, and even brigantiiii ; the least measuring 
 20, and the largest 450 tons. Of late, the firm 
 has secured several Government contracts, and has 
 
 ^ See Rclazioiie alia Giuria Jell' Espos. Inteniaz. di Alilaiio, San 
 Casciano, Stianti, 1906. For the communication of this publication, 
 and for much courtesy, I am indebted to the Fratelli Picchiotti.
 
 2 1 2 Florence Past and Present 
 
 supplied the Italian Navy with two wooden torpedo 
 boats, besides executing smaller orders. One of its 
 last feats was the launching of a yacht with a motor- 
 engine of a hundred horse-power for a private 
 customer. The larger work at Limite is all in the 
 hands of the Picchiotti, but theirs is b}- no means the 
 only yard, and the )'early tonnage the place turns out 
 must be considerable indeed, when a single firm is 
 able to show such a record. 
 
 The Picchiotti have a curious family tradition 
 which is worth reporting here. The name commonly 
 given on the river to an Arno boat is bccolino, which, 
 the Picchiotti sa}', comes from that of an ancestor 
 of theirs, a certain Domenico or Bcco, who, accord- 
 ing to the story, first invented the peculiar design of 
 these river craft. To speak frankly, I do not believe 
 the tale, and for the following reason. The word 
 becoliiio is not registered in Rigutini-P'anfani,^ but 
 in the gergo — the thieves' cant of Italy — tlie word 
 beccola occurs, and is explained to mean the timber 
 carried down by river floods.- The connection here 
 is obvious, and I am inclined to think that \.\\q. gcrgo 
 — often very valuable philologically — here presents 
 the root of the matter. Bcccoliiio, as the derivative 
 from beccola, would be properly so spelt, and the 
 form bccoliiio would thus appear as the result of the 
 story just reported, and of the false etymology on 
 
 ' Vocalwlario Italiano della Lingua Parlala, Fiienze, Barbera. 
 - Mirabella, Mala Vita (Napoli : Perella, 1910), p. 299.
 
 The River Trade 213 
 
 which the tale depends. Etymology and tale alike 
 would arise on the disappearance of the word 
 beccola from ordinary language, nor would this be 
 the first time that a lost word has been found again in 
 \}i\Q gergo. Trivial in itself, this matter has its own 
 importance as holding a suggestion full of conse- 
 quence for the history of the Arno boat and of the 
 industry that produces it. 
 
 The Arno in its great days was famous for just 
 this beccola — if one may borrow the slang word — the 
 trees it had uprooted in its high valley and brought 
 down singly, or in masses, when it rose in flood. 
 Leonardo da Vinci says of the Golfolina, in study- 
 ing the problem of the river navigation, ' it opens 
 no free passage, as the channel is apt to be choked 
 by trees,' and it is well known that the ruin of the 
 Ponte Vecchio in the great flood of 1333 was due to 
 the timber the river then brought down. One might 
 quote Fancelli also to the same purpose, were it 
 necessary to multiply testimony in support of a point 
 so plain. Rather is it worth while to notice that 
 this river action had an important consequence for 
 man ; it suggested to him the artificial building of 
 floating wood into rafts, and thus lay behind all the 
 consequences of that once novel operation. The 
 matter comes about as naturally indeed as any other 
 great discovery. Flood-borne trees are like the rough 
 hairs that unite to form felt ; their branches easily 
 lock together as the stream brings them into con-
 
 2 14 Florence Past and Present 
 
 tact, and they thus float d<nvn, no longer singly, but 
 in pairs and masses. As the case of the Golfolina 
 shows, the river gorge is aboxe all the place where 
 trees tend thus to group themselves as they float, 
 and the gorge again appears, then, as a place where 
 the river power acts on man and raises his spirit and 
 state. It was here, one remembers, that the fisher- 
 man joined the hunter in his new enterprise of trade, 
 but, earlier still, it was here that the matted trees 
 the river assembled taught man to commence raft 
 building on his own account, and to use the stream 
 for the deliberate and profitable transport of timber. 
 
 When the great, though simple, discover}- was 
 made we shall never know, nor is it necessarj' ; more 
 or less, the transport of wood in rafts has occupied 
 the Arno ever since man came to this valley, and it 
 is only in our own times that the river has ceased to 
 carr\- timber. Men are still living at h'lorence who, 
 in their strength, took an active part in this traffic, 
 and from their memories it is possible to recover 
 something of the last days of the Arno raft, and of 
 a life and trade which i)erpetuates its name in that 
 of the Piazza delle Travi,^ while its commencement 
 lies be\-ond the beginnings of historx . 
 
 If you are given to that waterside idling which 
 R. L. Stevenson found so rich and rewarding an 
 
 ' TIrtc was also a gale in the livcr wall here called the porticcUa dt 
 fodari, the poslern of the rafts. See Ciaye, CarU'ggio, i. ji. 510 ad 
 annum 1358.
 
 The River Trade 215 
 
 occupation, patience, combined with dul)- directed 
 curiosity, may bring \'ou to speech with one of these 
 men. This has been my good fortune, and what I 
 learned shah here be set down as a curious rehc of 
 the past. But first I must keep faith with my 
 informants. They are jealous of the traditions of 
 their craft, and what I heard was told me under 
 pledge of a promised record in this book. To 
 perform my promise to the letter I begin with what 
 is of little c(insequence for our purpose, a roll of the 
 chief names heard on the Arno these last hundred 
 years ; the muster-roll of the dead raftsmen called 
 for the last time by the few who still know and 
 survive. Hear then and note that in the past 
 century the chief of the craft were Beco, il Vecchio, 
 Pirole, Morino, Stefano, Giacomino, Drea and Brogio, 
 all of Rignano ; while to the Casentino belonged the 
 family of the Pignotti ; Giovacchino, Luigi, Giuseppe 
 and Giovanni, with Leopoldo son of Giovanni, and 
 Oreste and Grisanti sons of Giuseppe, all strong men 
 and famous in their day, skilled in the building and 
 guiding of rafts on the river, which is not by any 
 means the simple matter it might seem. What 
 it meant and was — this craft and life of the river 
 raftsmen — these ancients rather know than tell : here 
 are my gatherings from their unstudied speech. 
 
 The principal forest from which these men drew 
 their material lay about Camaldoli, and was 
 skilfully administered by the monks of the great
 
 2i6 Florence Past and Present 
 
 House it surrounded and sheltered in the Apennine 
 of Stia and Pratovecchio. The word secular^ often 
 loosely used of any trees beyond a certain age and 
 size, had here its strict and proper application. 
 Felling was done in the grand manner, and was 
 ordered by epochs of a hundred }'ears. Planting 
 followed the same rule, so that giant beeches and 
 pines at least a century old were never wanting, ever 
 falling, under the axes of the men of Moggiona who 
 served the Abbe\^ as foresters from generation to 
 generation.^ The same hands built the wood on 
 sledges which white oxen drew down forest paths 
 and rough hill roads to the river at Pratovecchio. 
 
 Here the raftsmen took up their work. The unit 
 of the river train was \\\^fodero, or raft built of pine- 
 trees in the round, fit for ships' masts or yards, or 
 composed of squared timber trimmed from the 
 larger hard-wood. Much skill went to the building. 
 Only the f ode r a tore who had known the upper Arno 
 from boyhood, and inherited his craft from his 
 ancestors, could tell just how the work should be 
 done ; how much wood, and no more, he could safely 
 steer over the Arno shallows ; how the fodcro should 
 be built so as to float clear in the frequent narrows 
 and safely turn the sharp corners of the rock-girt 
 stream. The work of building was complicated by 
 the fact that, to save men and labour, the fodero did 
 not float down-stream alone, but travelled in 
 
 ^ See Kepetti, op. cit., iii. pp. 242-3.
 
 The River Trade 217 
 
 company of its kind ; three or {our foderi wqvq joined 
 to each other by chains, just as waggons are coupled 
 together on the raihvay. This train of rafts was 
 called the madiata} and might consist, say, of two 
 or three foderi of beams, followed by one or two 
 others each made up of ten or twelve pine-trees in 
 the round. The arrangement, one sees, suited the 
 conditions of water transport on a river like the Arno, 
 often narrow enough, and apt to turn awkward 
 corners, especially in its higher course. Such 
 difficulties were what the /oderatore kept in mind as 
 he built, conscious that a pound overweight would 
 mean the stranding of his raft on some river bar, 
 or an inch of excess in beam its ruin at the narrows. 
 He worked as a skilled craftsman then, and solved 
 the problem as we have seen, dividing the long 
 niadiata into a number of distinct yet united foderi 
 that it might be at once light, narrow, and flexible, 
 while still carrying a large measure of wood to the sea. 
 The Camaldoli timber was dressed and built at 
 Pratovecchio, the starting point of the inadiatc in 
 their long journe}'. Three days brought them 
 thence to Florence, and in as many more the)' 
 reached Leghorn ; some of the chief halting places 
 on the river route being Rignano, San Romano, and 
 Pisa. But all the wood did not come from 
 
 ■* The root »iad is a frequent element in Italian words that name 
 articles made of wood. We have met it already in the niadile of the 
 boat-rib, and may remember the Latin materia.
 
 2 1 8 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Camaldoli ; Vallombrosa too sent its supplies, and 
 a still more notable forest was that of Vallombrosa's 
 daughter House, the Badia of Montepiano in 
 the Apennine of Vernio above Prato. Here the 
 Bisenzio was pressed into service, and carried the 
 timber to Signa, where it found the full current of 
 the Arno ready to bear it down with the rest. 
 
 As one listens to \\\q. fodcratorc, it is not so much 
 
 the art of his raft building as the skill and bravura 
 
 of his wild voyage and adventure down-stream that 
 
 seem characteristic of the trade. The madiata was 
 
 managed on the water with long poles or sweeps, one 
 
 worked from the bows of the leading /cic/^r^, the other 
 
 acting as a helm from the last. The men stood naked, 
 
 or nearly so, to their work, and no wonder, for at 
 
 every rapid, and chiefly at the river-weirs, the stress 
 
 on the coupling chains was apt to become a parting 
 
 strain, when men and logs together leapt the fall, 
 
 lashing the pool below to foam in a fierce and 
 
 dangerous confusion. These risks and accidents 
 
 were indeed so much ' in the clay's work ' of the 
 
 fodcratore that our ancients of the river, reminiscent, 
 
 will jest of it to-day with broken laughter. ' Che bclla 
 
 frullata,' they will say, as if tall pines dancing on end 
 
 were no more than whisks, and the deeps of brown 
 
 Bisenzio or Arno in flood only the chocolate that 
 
 foams in the cup. Vet not always ; their dim eyes 
 
 will look far, and their faces harden as they tell you 
 
 of the Bozzo della Botta, where the Bisenzio finds its
 
 The River Trade 219 
 
 way down the rocks below Vernio, and they will 
 confess, if pressed to it, that none of their craft would 
 ride down these jaws of death till he had first signed 
 himself with the river water ^ and called on the name 
 of San Gorgone. Hope clearly lay in the appeal, and 
 the rapids held more than the risk to life that 
 prompted it. The religious feelings of the Italian are 
 strongly local ; who can doubt that the fodcratori 
 thought of these clanger points as the place watched 
 for them by the protecting power ? But so the gorge 
 again asserts its importance, and Gorgone appears in 
 his true light as the genijis loci, with a ' San ' prefixed 
 as a concession to altered religious circumstance. 
 ' San Gorgone ' is not the peculiar protector of the 
 raftsman ; it was from a renahiolo and fisher I first 
 heard of him, and he is known to and invoked by all 
 of the river craft. ' San Gorgone ci mandi la plena,' 
 they say when the river runs low ; or ' ci tratta male, 
 San Gorgone,' when they are waiting for the rains 
 and a fresh supply of fish and sand. This ' Gorgon ' 
 is the river spirit, with a special habitat in the gorge.- 
 Descending from unreckoned time, he still haunts 
 the old shores, and still lives in the minds of those 
 who look to the Arno for their occupation. 
 
 Once fairly in the main stream and safely below 
 
 ^ Cf. Hesiod, IVorks and Days, 737-41, who registers tlie precept 
 that hands must be dipped at the crossing of a stream. This rite 
 would thus generally be performed at the gorge. See above, p. 46. 
 
 - T- C Lawson, Modern Greek Folk-Lore (Cambridge, lyio), 
 pp. 1S9-90, 259.
 
 2 20 Florence Past and Present 
 
 the Golfolina — not without a fresh appeal to the 
 spirit of the gorge — matters went more smoothly 
 for the raftsman. Empoli, it seems, was the place 
 where the wood was measured for duty, and here the 
 fodcratori did their best — generall}- with success — to 
 come to an understanding with the Customs. A 
 hundred of wood would pass as sixty, and, if let off 
 thus easily, the men would, on their return, bring a 
 present of coffee and sugar to the complacent officers. 
 Leghorn, as we have said, was the goal of the wood 
 trade, and in those days that city was a free port, 
 where all goods were sold as it were in bond, and 
 whence they might with a little address be smuggled 
 out of the gates into the country. 
 
 From Pisa, the wood often travelled to Leghorn by 
 the river mouth and the open sea, but this true, 
 though brief voyage, was so much at the mercy of the 
 weather that a halt was often called at Bocca d'Arno, 
 and a night spent on the beach to prepare for it. 
 ' We had kindled our fires of driftwood '■ — it is the 
 old raftsman who speaks — 'and all was calm. The 
 men sang by the sea as they smelt their supper cook- 
 ing, for we had meat that night, and ^^■ine and bread 
 in plent)'. Suddenly the wind rose, and the storm 
 was on us, with rain that tjucnched our fires, and 
 waves that wet us to the skin as wc struggled to save 
 our floating wood.' How often, one wonders, by 
 Arno mouth, since men first found and used the river, 
 has just that simple, almost savage, scene been re-
 
 The River Trade 221 
 
 peated : the camp on the beach, the supper, the song, 
 the storm, the ' rates quassas ' ? Here are words of 
 to-day which convincingly relate some Florentines at 
 least to the primitive times of Italy and of the world. 
 Old and broken, the last foderatori linger still, and 
 may still be found in humble houses by the river. 
 Soon they must go, and then the long past they 
 represent will die with them, as the woods where they 
 worked have now disappeared from the Apennine. 
 So the Florentine proverb ' come i foderi ; senza 
 ritorno ' — the ' no more, Lochaber ' of Tuscan}^ — 
 will find its fulfilment, and only the raftless river will 
 remain to remind men of the great days of the wood- 
 trade here. 
 
 The river, and, one may add, a few obscure 
 records, such as only the specialist in these things 
 remembers. For Strabo in his geograph}- mentions 
 this \\ood-trade, and tells how Rome depended for 
 at least some of her timber on what the Tuscan 
 Arno brought to the sea.^ A tombstone found at 
 Antella in 1586, but dating from Roman days, was 
 raised to the memor)- of a wood merchant there. 
 It bears the figures of his adze, saw, and square to 
 tell us that timber was sometimes dressed near 
 Florence before it was bound in rafts for the longer 
 voyage.- An inscription from Fiesole shows that 
 the carpenter's craft was early organised in one of 
 the guilds of that city. Last, and most remarkable 
 ^ E. 2 C.I.L., xi. I, 1620.
 
 222 Florence Past and Present 
 
 of all these ancient records, is the stone still standing, 
 and in part legible to-day by those who climb to 
 the lower gallery of the Baptistery at Florence. 
 This slab of marble forms the sculptured parapet 
 to one of the window openings, but, seen from 
 within, it shows a mutilated inscription of the second 
 century A.D., which speaks of the guild of the wood- 
 merchants at Florence as then associated with a like 
 corporation at Ostia. So, to-day, through the FratelH 
 Picchiotti, Limite has a trade connection with another 
 shipbuilding yard by the sea at Civita Vecchia. 
 Just what has happened in these eighteen centuries 
 is thus clearly shown. Contraction, not extinction, 
 is what has affected the trade ; such contraction as 
 may be measured by the miles between Ostia and 
 Civita Vecchia in Latium, and in Tuscany between 
 Florence and Limite. The Arno is flowing still, 
 and still carrying, if not rafts, boats and even ships ; 
 which, after all, are only rafts in a higher and final 
 development. The origin of the boat, however, is 
 a matter too obscure, and at the same time too 
 interesting, to be dismissed thus in a simple assertion. 
 The flood that brings down floating timber would 
 seem the origin of the whole matter. Impossible 
 that the men who watch from the bank sliould not 
 come to attempt the salvage of w hat the river brings 
 them ; equally impossible that the moment can be 
 long delayed of an accident, in which one of the 
 waders loses footing, pulled out !))• the log he has
 
 The River Trade 223 
 
 grasped, and, in the same fateful instant, finds a new 
 power : that of the wood itself, buoyant, and able to 
 support his weight. Clinging to his log, he struggles ; 
 for he is still afraid, and finds he can direct what is 
 supporting him. Some trick of the current, combin- 
 ing with these instinctive efforts, brings him to land 
 on the opposite bank, and the discovery is made : 
 that the floating tree is a safe means of crossing the 
 river. 
 
 From this natural float to the dug-out and the 
 canoe the progress is easy and must have been 
 early made. The passenger from bank to bank, who 
 strips to enter the water, finds it convenient that the 
 log he leans on in swimming should have a hollow 
 where he can stow his clothes, and whatever he 
 carries, to keep them dr3\ He burns or chips the 
 log accordingly, and, b}' burning and chipping with 
 fire and flint, he reaches at last his ideal, the craft 
 that is long enough and deep enough to carr\^ a man, 
 or even a party and their goods, upon the water 
 without putting them to the trouble of undressing 
 or of swimming. The teacher in this tccJiiiiqiic was, 
 obviously, Vesta, or, as the Greeks said, Hestia, the 
 primitive savage hearth, kindled in the root of the 
 white oak, and burning its own chimney upwards 
 in the trunk of the tree by the power of a fire ever 
 smouldering and never allowed to die out. In a new 
 and studied application of fire, art now gave for 
 the standing hollow tree a canoe, which the same
 
 2 24 Florence Past and Present 
 
 useful element had prepared, and this discovery, one 
 supposes, brought about the strange ritual of May 
 15th at Rome, when the Pontifices carried rush dolls 
 to the Sublician bridge, and the Vestal virgins cast 
 them into the Tiber.^ For these dolls, at such a 
 date, may well have been an offering to the spirit 
 of the stream, ever eager for human victims, at the 
 opening of the boating season ; and what goddess 
 had more right to be represented when the boat was 
 in question than Vesta, whose fire underla\- the 
 whole craft ? As for Florence, istia, as we have 
 seen, is still the Tuscan name for the tree and timber 
 that are most valued and employed in the boat 
 building of the Arno yards. 
 
 Thus the canoe and the process of preparing it ex- 
 plain much, yet not quite all we want. In the boat 
 there are two things to be considered ; the form, and 
 the structure by which that form is attained. If one 
 thinks only of the first of these, then, fine as the 
 Arno craft are, and full of the character that comes 
 of perfect adaptation to the end they are meant to 
 serve, the canoe may well have been the model from 
 which they were derived ; but structure is another 
 matter, the explanation of which is yet to seek. 
 The canoe is made by destruction — the removal of 
 superfluous wood — just as the sculptor finds his 
 statue in the marble by force of chiselling it away. 
 The boat on the other hand is shaped by a process 
 1 See Fowler, Roman Festivals {luOnAon : Macmillan, 1899), p. 112.
 
 The River Trade 225 
 
 exactly the reverse of this ; it grows by the adding 
 of part to part and plank to plank. It is easy to 
 see that the first boat-builder had a canoe in mind, 
 and worked to reproduce the form it offered, but 
 whence did he borrow the new process of building 
 he used to attain his end ? 
 
 Now, just as to find the origin of the canoe we 
 had to begin with the floating timber of the river 
 flood, the same natural fact, viewed as the starting 
 point of another progress, will give the element 
 still lacking to the complete explanation of the 
 boat. Trees come together as the river carries them ; 
 men learn the art of raft-building, and it is this in a 
 new application — used to realise constructiveh' the 
 form attained otherwise in the canoe — that gives 
 man at last the true boat ; as long and light as its 
 model, with a new flexibility precious to the river 
 boatman, and offering the additional advantage of 
 a distinct economy in material. Pliny tells us that 
 the raft preceded the boat ; ^ how the latter was 
 recognised as a development of the former may be 
 inferred from the fact that, in Latin, ratis means 
 both the one and the other ; while on the Arno 
 it is not without significance that hccoliuo — the 
 specific local name of the Arno boat — is so easily 
 derived from bcccoLu the slang word for flood -borne 
 wood. 
 
 The process of development here is easily imagined 
 1 N.H.. vii. 56. 
 P
 
 2 26 Florence Past and Present 
 
 and followed. Where the road met the river, as soon 
 as commerce was on foot, the canoe would be in 
 request to carry merchants and their goods across ; 
 it was thus that the fisher became a partner with the 
 hunter in the new trade enterprise. But for such a 
 purpose the raft has obvious advantages over the 
 canoe ; it at once supports a heavier load and 
 draws less water, and as soon as beasts of burden 
 came to carry the growing commerce the use of the 
 raft would become a necessit}-. Yet if the raft was 
 to pass easily and surely between the two fixed points 
 where the road met the river on either bank, it must 
 be steadied by means of a stretched rope along which 
 it might travel. Now, as soon as the raft is thus 
 made to move across current rather than float down-' 
 stream, its inherent weakness appears ; it becomes an 
 obstacle over which the water rises in its flow, 
 threatening to swamjj it. Hence a corresponding 
 modification and new invention, whereb)- the raft is 
 no longer built foursquare but oblong, and its timbers 
 tilted and brought to a point at one end, that which 
 faces up-stream. Set now diagonal)}-, alike to the 
 stream and the rope by which it travels across, the 
 pointed and tilted raft divides the current and makes 
 the journey safel}' from bank to bank, keeping its 
 contents dr}'. Such rafts arc actual 1}- to be seen still 
 at river ferries in the Archipelago of Asia. The long 
 bamboos of which they are built are flexible enough 
 to make the raising of the boat's bow an easy matter ;
 
 The River Trade 227 
 
 it is in fact done by a tight brace of rope stretched 
 between the bow and a midships mast, which also 
 serves to keep the raft in touch with the restraining 
 and directing rope of the passage. One may suppose 
 that where bamboowas not available — as in Tuscan}- — 
 the same tilt was still gained, if less easily, by the 
 choice of timber naturally crooked, or by sheer shaping 
 and bending in the use of flint or fire. Yet so, at last, 
 the workman is a boat-builder, as busy on such a 
 modified raft, and when the last step is taken — when 
 such a raft is set free from the guiding rope of the 
 river ferry and pointed at both ends instead of one — 
 it is a boat indeed, and fit for any service on the 
 stream to which it owes its being. Yet not to the 
 stream in general ; rather must the discovery be 
 localised at those specific points where the roads met 
 it. Thus again, on the Arno, the gofgc we have so 
 often met asserts a new importance, and the genius 
 loci is seen in a new association. No wonder that the 
 boatmen, as well as those who guide rafts, are apt to 
 call on San Gorgone. 
 
 It is not necessary to visit the Far East and the 
 Archipelago to find examples of the raft on its way 
 to become the boat. The progress we have ven- 
 tured to imagine is so real that it has left traces still 
 visible near Florence wherever, above or below the 
 city, ferries cross the Arno. The ferry-boat of to-day 
 is enough to prove the matter ; it supplies the inter- 
 mediate form which is all we need to feel sure that the
 
 2 28 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Arno boat has at one time or another been evolved 
 from the Arno raft. At Badia a Settimo, Ugnano, 
 Peretola, Rovezzano, Anchetto and Compiobbi — to 
 name no more of these points of convenience- — -you 
 will find the nave, as it is locally called, sometimes 
 worked with a rope, sometimes without, but always 
 itself; the Arno boat in all essentials of structure — 
 madili, palacaniic, and palco — yet in an arrested de- 
 velopment that betra\\s plainly the original raft from 
 which that structure came. It is the persistence of 
 traffic at these points which has there preserved, in the 
 absence of bridges, something trul}- of the past ; the 
 raft, ready to become the boat which the road called 
 into being of old as it met the river. 
 
 Even were there bridges where these navi now cross 
 the Arno, the past would not be dead nor the line of 
 development broken. For so surely as the boat has 
 come of the raft, the bridge stands but at a later 
 point in the same succession. The travelling rope of 
 the ferry easily becomes a mooring to which boats are 
 fastened at just intervals, their bows up-stream ; the 
 fiat raft a platform, laid between boat and boat, so 
 that men and carts can cross easily on these floating 
 supports. I'lightly was the Pont if ex — the bridge- 
 builder — associated with the \'estals at Rome on the 
 15th of May, and naturally was the bridge itself the 
 altar wliere sacrifice was then offered, for boat and 
 bridge bcjth belong to the same order of things, which 
 early times must have thought of as the good gifts of
 
 The River Trade 231 
 
 the guardian spirits of fire and water, of the tree and 
 of the gorge. So bridges first rose at Candeh', at 
 Florence, and at Signa. They are built in stone to- 
 day, but still, if you look, )'ou will see the sign of the 
 past in every pointed pier, set bow and stern to the 
 stream like their original the river-boat. It is the 
 river, flowing still, that has kept us something of what 
 it once created.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 ON THE ROAD 
 
 If the boat took shape at the ferry, its development 
 was certainly due in no small degree to the appear- 
 ance there of the road, the second great element in 
 the being and prosperity of Florence. As one turns 
 to this new subject, it presents several distinctions that 
 are sharply marked. The road is artificial ; the work 
 of man rather than the child of nature, as the 
 river is. One may speak of it as a unity, yet in 
 realit}' it is not so ; there is but one Arno, while the 
 roads are man\'. Even in Florence, and at the single 
 point of her primitive ferry, from which the whole 
 cit)' developed, how many were the lines of land 
 traffic that here fell in from either side of the stream, 
 ready to serve as the directives along which the 
 growing city grouped her houses ? And these 
 dififerences, present from the first, are here completed 
 in another, which has emerged w ith the progress of 
 time and the change of circumstance. The road, like 
 the river, has seen its old traffic slacken, but this 
 decline is less complete by land than on the stream ;
 
 On the Road 
 
 235 
 
 trade by water is now all but unknown at Florence, 
 while her roads still have something to show, and 
 remain comparatively busy. This last difference 
 relates itself closely to that just mentioned, as effect 
 to cause. Because the river is single, the competing 
 railwa}' can follow its course, and rob its trade. 
 
 A CART HORSE AT REST 
 
 Because the roads are many, some of them at least are 
 sure to remain untouched by the dangerous rivalr}' 
 of the steam-driven wheel. Very naturally then, what 
 is left of Florentine commerce movies to-da\' by land, 
 and is found on the one road or the other ; either the 
 ancient trade routes, or the modern railway lines that 
 begin, here and there, to supplant them.
 
 236 Florence Past and Present 
 
 As the river has its boats, so the road shows its 
 carts ; and the Florentine cart is as characteristic a 
 piece of human handicraft as the Arno boat itself. 
 These carts are the means b}- which the remaining 
 trade is carried on : a more picturesque vehicle it 
 would be difficult to find. You will see them in the 
 city, unloading at the doors of wine shops ; the cart 
 propped in the sun amid a litter of packing straw ; 
 the horses out, and standing in the shade, well 
 muffled in their scarlet cloths against a chill. As you 
 look, you will remember the ancient palio of which 
 Villani speaks, and will wonder whether, in the be- 
 ginning, when that famous race was first run, the 
 prize of the scarlet was not just this : the horsecloth 
 that keeps its splendid colour to-da\-, and, who knows, 
 its ancient use. The whole cart is a triumph of con- 
 servatism over the forces of change ; one of the best 
 survivals that Florence can show. The carter stands 
 in the old ways, and, better perhaps than any other 
 here, save only the fisher, represents his ancestor, the 
 early i^lorentine just turned to trade, the first to 
 change the hunting path for the traffic route. Such 
 a man, one feels, may well keep the tradition of the 
 palio. Proud of his team, no wonder he still chooses 
 the scarlet as a housing ; it means that e\cry horse 
 he drives, little as }'ou might think it, is fit in his 
 opinion to win the race. 
 
 Notable anywhere, the cart is never so j)ictures(]ue 
 as in movement, whether in the street or on the road.
 
 On the Road 237 
 
 In the cit}', where it is constantly busy, the cart 
 contrasts finely with other vehicles — the carriage, the 
 tram-car, and the motor — and brings something still 
 of the old world with it as it threads the modern 
 traffic. But outside, on some countr}- road, it is 
 striking in another sense, not by contrast but by 
 correspondence ; for all around, as it moves, lie the 
 unchanged conditions that have given it being, so 
 that here it is like a picture found in the ver\' frame 
 for which it was painted. Walk out then, till your 
 shoes are thick with the dust that clings grey even to 
 the lower green of the dark cypress beside the road. 
 Stay there a moment in the shade of the stone pine 
 while the sky blazes blue ; \'Ou will not have long to 
 wait. Sound comes first ; the music of the chiming 
 bells ; then colour, in the cloths and trappings, the 
 bright brass and gay tassels of the moving team. If 
 you have caught it where the rising road begins to 
 dip again, you will see the cart well in the breathing 
 pause, when the carter slips behind to tighten the 
 brake on the wheels. At his cr\' the team moves on, 
 the brake grinding and shrilling with the bells, the 
 carter pulling back on the brake-cord, his lash about 
 his shoulders, the butt of the whip trailing behind in the 
 rising dust that is the first and last note of the Tuscan 
 road. So the vision vanishes in a cloud ; it is an im- 
 pression and no more, but one that surely remains. 
 
 These carts are inade in country workshops for 
 the most part ; such as \ou may find open and busy
 
 238 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 by the highroad not far from the gates of Florence ; 
 at Galluzzo, for instance, or near the bridge over the 
 Greve on the Pisan road. The local name for the 
 cart is baroccio, a ' tw'O-vvheeler,' as in fact it is. If 
 you would know its structure in more detail you 
 
 V i . r 
 
 'ID? 
 
 wmm>^^:.-^--''- ■ 
 
 
 AT (.ALLUZZO ; A i AK 1 IN THE MAKING 
 
 must go to the cavradore w ho makes it. Like the 
 boat, the cart of Florence only reveals its quality and 
 specific character when thus studied, and the time 
 one spends on it is repaid b}' the disco\ery that the 
 first strong impression it makes is full\- borne out by 
 the facts ; that it has a real and demonstrable relation 
 to the remote past, and may be considered one of the 
 most remarkable of Florentine survivals.
 
 On the Road 239 
 
 The baroccio is a long open cart, narrow and flat ; 
 its body balanced on a pair of high, light but exceed- 
 ingly strong wheels, and so hung that, when it 
 travels, the back is never far above the ground. Its 
 principal members are the shafts, which not only serve 
 as such in front, but run backwards unbroken to 
 form the sides of the long cart-frame : they are 
 known as the stangJie. Six or seven cross-pieces — 
 the traverse — run from one shaft to the other at 
 regular intervals, and support W\q picmoni \ the planks 
 laid lengthwise — three to five in number according to 
 their width — to form the cart floor. Two of the 
 pianoni are longer than the others, and project a good 
 deal behind, where they are braced together by the 
 last and shorter pair of traverse. This projection is 
 of course much narrower than the body of the baroccio ; 
 it thus forms a kind of tail, which bears no load but 
 considerably lengthens the cart behind. The use of 
 such a projection will presently appear. 
 
 In front, the shafts are sometimes seen connected 
 by a cross-piece, slightly curved so as to clear the 
 haunches of the beast that draws the cart. Some 
 way behind this brace, but still in front of the first 
 traversa, a flat board called the ponticello crosses the 
 shafts. It is at once fastened to, and raised above, 
 the shafts on a pair of small brackets, and may be 
 doubled or trebled ; in which case the whole comes 
 to resemble a flight of shallow wooden steps, as each 
 member of the ponticello rises higher than the one
 
 240 Florence Past and Present 
 
 immediately behind it. Such a poiticello is, as it 
 were, the prow of the cart forward ; set here as if to 
 balance the projecting stern it carries behind. 
 
 Below the cart-frame are several attachments which 
 deserve notice. The baroccio has two wheels only, 
 and if it is to stand level when the horse is not in the 
 shafts some support must be provided. This is 
 permanentK' fixed to the front of the cart frame 
 below, and takes the form of a curved triangle of 
 wood, not unlike the breast-bone of a fowl, with a 
 small solid wheel at the apex. It travels clear of the 
 ground as the cart moves, and comes to rest there as 
 a prop for the cart as soon as the horse is taken out 
 of the shafts, its wheel allowing the cart to be then 
 moved easily backwards and forwards by hand. 
 This capra, as it is called, consists of three pieces, 
 and between these the carter often sets an oblong 
 basket to serve as a ' boot," and to hold his sundries. 
 Here also hangs, by chain or cord, a tin lantern, in a 
 round basket frame of its own, to light the road as 
 the cart travels at night. 
 
 Passing from side to side below the centre of the 
 cart-frame stands the salic, as the carradore of 
 Florence calls it — the iron axle of the wheels — shut 
 in its wooden box, the cassa dclla sallc. Just behind 
 this comes a singular attachment, the vcricello. To 
 see it you must imagine a wooden mallet, like those 
 used for croquet, with a c}-lindrical head and short 
 flat siiaft carr\'ing in its ti^j a double pullc}' of brass.
 
 On the Road 241 
 
 The head of the vericello has a pivot at each end 
 working in a socket dropped from the cart floor. 
 Thus the shaft is free to describe an arc below the 
 cart with its pulley, and the purpose of the arrange- 
 ment is to give a shifting point (tappiii for the long 
 cords that control the drag ; a matter which, in the 
 case of a heavy load carried on two wheels only, is 
 of great importance. 
 
 The drag itself, or viartinicca as the Florentines 
 call it, consists of a strong wooden bar set transversely 
 below the cart just behind the wheels. Irons hold the 
 bar in contact with the cart-frame, yet are wide enough 
 to give it some play, allowing it to slide backwards 
 and forwards. At each end this bar carries, in the plane 
 of the wheel, a great wooden ' shoe,' which, when the bar 
 slides forward, presses on the wheel and acts as a power- 
 ful drag. This action is controlled by a double cord 
 fastened first to the drag-bar, then brought forward and 
 threaded in the pulley of the movable vericello, then 
 back to find a similar pulle}' set in the cart-tail. The 
 first pulley alone comes into play when the harocciaio 
 follows his cart on foot ; he sets the drag on b)' 
 simpl)- pulling the cords from behind. The second 
 serves him when he chooses to go down-hill riding on 
 the front of the cart, for the long cords then come to 
 his hand over the whole load, and by this pulley 
 keep him still in touch with the whole complicated 
 mechanism of the vericello and the inartiiiicca ; he 
 has but to pull them and the drag acts at once. 
 
 Q
 
 242 Florence Past and Present 
 
 The wheels of the baroccio are, as the name indicates, 
 its essential feature. High and slim, they measure 
 well over five feet in diameter with a tyre breadth 
 of barel)' two inches and a half. The nave projects 
 considerably, and tapers outwards from the wheel, 
 which is scarcely ' dished ' at all. The nave is 
 known as the inor;f:o ; the spokes are the razze in the 
 common talk of the carradore ; the felloes quarti, 
 and the iron tyre the cerchioue. The linch-pin, or 
 acciaierino, made of steel as the name indicates, as it 
 rises from the axle is bent sharply back and inwards 
 over the nave. This return is beaten out flat in the 
 shape of a pointed leaf ; it serves well as a step when 
 the carter would climb his cart as it moves, for so the 
 acciaierino gives him a steady if slight toe-hold above 
 the revolving nave. 
 
 In the parts just described, the baroccio is complete 
 as regards its essentials. But the habit — probably 
 comparatively recent — of using it to convey wine in 
 flasks has brought about the invention and addition 
 of a fitting meant to adapt the cart to this difficult 
 load. The flask, as every one knows, is of glass, and 
 though the glass is singularl}' tough, and is protected 
 from shocks by a close wrapping of twisted reed 
 leaves worked about the body, two hundred or so of 
 these vessels, full of wine, form a load that requires 
 careful packing and adjustment if it is to travel safely. 
 Stability is here the prime necessity, and to secure it 
 the flasks are built on the cart in a kind of pyramid,
 
 On the Road 243 
 
 narrow above and broad below, with plenty of straw 
 between flask and flask. Yet even so there is danger 
 of the fragile load shifting on the cart and so falling 
 to ruin, for the cart itself has no sides to hinder such 
 movement. Hence the cart is completed for the 
 purpose in question by the ccsta, a long shallow tray 
 formed within a double frame of strong wood by the 
 interlacing of many flat and flexible wooden strips. 
 The cesta, when in use, is laid on the cart floor, with 
 which its size corresponds, and is held firml}' in 
 position there by the ritti, short wooden uprights set 
 in iron sockets attached to the outside of the cart- 
 frame. The effect of this addition is to give the cart 
 sides when the nature of the load requires them. If 
 the cart is to be used to carry sand, it is boxed-in for 
 this purpose by simple boards set on edge and 
 supported b\' the ii'tti, but these sand carts are 
 barocci of a degenerate type with which we have little 
 concern here. The ccsta reduced, deepened, and set 
 by itself on a pair of small wheels, forms a hand-cart 
 often seen in the streets of Florence. 
 
 Except the axle and linch-pins, the t)Tes, pulleys, 
 and a few external fittings, the whole baroccio is made 
 of wood, but in a singular variety of this material. 
 Beech is chosen for the shafts ; the traverse and 
 ponticelli ^.re oi &\ra \ cypress is taken for the planks 
 of the floor ; the capra, the drag, and the axle-box are 
 made of acacia, the spokes and vericello of ilex, and 
 the wheel-naves and felloes of walnut. As to the
 
 244 Florence Past and Present 
 
 ccsta, its double frame — the tclaio a'.id coiitrotclaio — is 
 of elm, but the rest is woven of strips — stecche they 
 are called — made of chestnut. Thus no less than 
 seven kinds of wood are used before the cart is 
 complete. These barocci are finished by painting, 
 which is done in one colour, generally crimson, but 
 sometimes dark blue. 
 
 The Florentine cart belongs, of course, to the 
 later world of the wheel, and of the easier road which 
 the wheel made necessary and brought into fashion. 
 Yet when one studies it further, it is seen to preserve 
 not a little of the remoter past ; it has carried more 
 than the load for which it was designed, and has 
 brought down to our own day distinct traces of the 
 still simpler traffic it supplanted. To recognise the 
 first and most important of these, it will be necessary 
 to say something of the team, and of the harness 
 which attaches it to the baroccio. 
 
 Rarely is a baroccio of full size seen moving behind 
 a single horse or mule ; the team consists of two or 
 three beasts, ill matched according to our ideas, but 
 curiously picturesque in their variet}- of height and 
 strength. The largest walks between the shafts ; he 
 may be a horse or a heavily built mule. The others 
 — smaller mules, or a mule and a pony — are set to 
 draw from swingle-bars, one on each side, pulling on 
 chains hung diagonally between the shafts and the 
 cart-body. The team is known as the gubbia, or 
 batteria^ and the arrangement described is local, or at
 
 On the Road 245 
 
 least peculiarly Tuscan, being known in common 
 carters' talk as the ' attacco alia Maremmana,' to 
 distinguish it from the tandem, or 'attacco alia 
 Lombarda,' rarely seen south of the Apennine, It is 
 evident that the use of a light team rather than a 
 single draught animal depends on the fact that heavy 
 horses are not commonly bred in Tuscany, and this 
 qualit)' of the race has another consequence ; it in- 
 fluences curiously the method of harnessing, which 
 must now be examined. 
 
 The essential parts of the Tuscan harness are the 
 head-piece or briglie, the breast-strap or petto, the 
 breeching or iinbraco, and the saddle. The briglie 
 carry blinkers, and, generally, a bit ; if not, the reins 
 are so attached as to close the animal's nostrils when 
 pulled. T\\Q. petto is a wide strap of leather — it takes 
 the place of the horse-collar we are accustomed to 
 see — which runs back in a rope trace on each side to 
 find the rings set at each end of the tirante, or 
 swingle-bar. The saddle is very curious. From a 
 wooden foundation — Xh^fitsto — it rises to a horn in 
 front covered with sheet brass or studded with brass 
 nails. This/c?' /////(? drila sella, as it is called, has two 
 main forms, one cut scjuare at top, the other curved, but 
 both pointing forward. The square form is tradition- 
 ally that proper to a mule saddle, the other to that of 
 a horse, but I have not found this distinction much 
 observed in practice. The nails arc more commonly 
 seen on pallinioi the first form, and the sheet brass on
 
 246 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 the others. In either case ihe. palliuo forms one piece 
 with the wooden foundation of the saddle. More 
 interesting than such details is the mechanical problem 
 of traction, and the way it is solved in the Florentine 
 cart. 
 
 The principal draught animal is harnessed so that 
 
 A TUSCAN SADDLE 
 
 the ends of the shafts hardlx' reach further forward 
 th.an the saddle, where, when tlic cart is loaded, they 
 are kept very high ; t>ften rising ahoNc tlic saddle 
 itself, acnxss which they are braced strongly by many 
 plies of strapping or of cord. This bracing lies in 
 the crutches of two wooden bridges — the bastoni, or
 
 On the Road 249 
 
 arcioni — fastened obliquely to the saddle itself, one 
 on each side. The bracing;, if simple, would tend to 
 sag ; it is theref<jre twisted, and kept tight in the 
 manner of a tourniquet by an inserted stick, which 
 the recoil of the twist brings to rest against the 
 curved piece of wood already mentioned, that which 
 connects the shafts over the haunches of the horse. 
 The whole scheme evidently depends on the cart 
 being so trimmed as to throw the weight behind and 
 lift the shafts high ; with the effect that the load, 
 however heav}', hardly presses at all on the back of 
 the animal between the shafts ; he carries little more 
 than his saddle, and draws straight from the swingle- 
 bar which the level traces connect with his breast- 
 piece. Thus in the Tuscan team ever\' animal, even 
 the one between the shafts, works free, in a device 
 perfectly suited to local circumstances, and to a 
 breed of horse which must make up by numbers for 
 what it lacks in weight and strength. 
 
 Now, when one comes to think of it, here, in the 
 persistence of their race and use, the mule and the 
 light horse are a remarkable survival of the first 
 days of Tuscan trade, when just such animals walked 
 the roads and climbed the hills as beasts of burden 
 before the cart was heard of Logically, a change 
 should have come with the appearance of the wheel, 
 and thenceforward, \\ith new care, horses should have 
 been bred for size, weight, and strength. Yet it is 
 not so ; the heavy work of Tuscany in this kind is
 
 250 Florence Past and Present 
 
 done by the slow white oxen that pull the plough, 
 and the breed of horse is still pretty much what it 
 has always been ; drawing its original, its points and 
 its defects, from the half-wild Maremmano. ' Non 
 appetta bene' says the Italian groom; the Tuscan 
 breed has a narrow chest and falling stern, with all 
 his hardihood and fire. Little or no care is taken of 
 the native horse, and the introduciion of foreign 
 blood is not favoured, as it is thought to make the 
 progen)^ less hardy. The barocciaio prefers to work 
 with what he has, setting three to do the task of one, 
 and gathering to-day in his battcria, gay with tinkling 
 bells and scarlet housings, the very material once 
 used on the road as pack animals by his remote 
 ancestors. 
 
 Returning then to the horse in the cart, one sees 
 that the persistence of his race is responsible for 
 certain peculiarities which betray the unchanged 
 habits of an earlier age. If you go to the Val di 
 Marina, perhaps the road nearest to Florence where 
 pack animals are still working, you will notice that 
 the sacks of charcoal or faggots of wood, tied in pairs 
 to the basto or pack-saddle, are trimmed so as to 
 hang long and low behind, and high and short in front. 
 The reason seems to be that the beast of burden 
 may have his shoulders and chest free. Thus the 
 very trimming of the cart, which repeats in its rising 
 shafts the same line in the same situation, is a relic 
 of the past. The barocciaio still uses a beast whose
 
 On the Road 253 
 
 shoulders and chest are his weak point, and saves 
 him there by a device that leads straight back to the 
 still older arrangement of the soma, or double load, 
 slung to the saddle. One might add that the bastoni, 
 or saddle-bridges, are derived et\'mologically from 
 the basto, and have been probably developed and 
 modified from some fitting invented first for that 
 primitive pack-saddle. 
 
 Even when considered in itself, the Florentine 
 baroccio shows more than one feature connecting it 
 with the habits of the earlier trade it supplanted. 
 When the nature of the load demanded it, the pack- 
 horse or mule carried a pair of cestc — wide, deep 
 baskets — one on each side of the saddle. Ccste or 
 corbclli — for the names are synonjanous — of this 
 shape are still to be seen, and their structure, a 
 wicker-work of flat wooden strips, exactly corre- 
 sponds with what has already been described. It is 
 thus prett)' sure that the ccsta of the baroccio is a 
 mere adaptation to the cart of a device used before 
 carts were thought of here ; the more that the long 
 flat cesta laid on the baroccio, and at first sight so 
 unlike the others, resembles them in consisting of a 
 pair, enclosed in its single frame. 
 
 The load to be carried, however, was not alwa}'s 
 such as the pair of cestc could hold. It might be 
 wine or oil, and for the transport of these licjuids the 
 ceste were replaced by a pair of barrels slung like 
 them, one on each side of the pack-saddle. It is
 
 2 54 Florence Past and Present 
 
 easy to see that the Tuscan barrel, like many 
 another convenience, has been e\olvecl gradually 
 under pressure of inevitable circumstances. As the 
 dug-out canoe preceded the boat proper, so the 
 barrel in its original must have been a simple thing : 
 the mere section of a tree-trunk, hollowed out as the 
 canoe was ; fitted with ends, and pierced with a 
 bung-hole. This stage of invention has left traces of 
 itself in language, for the word fusto means alike the 
 trunk of a tree and a small keg. So too, Ramsay 
 the poet talks, in his Scots tongue, of barrels as 
 ' nine-gallon trees ' ; ^ the matter indeed is simple 
 enough to be world-wide in its use and survival 
 alike. 
 
 The final stage, that of the true barrel, was gained 
 in a development which exactl}- corresponded to 
 what we have already seen in the case of the boat. 
 The boat found the form of the canoe and imitated it 
 by true structure. So the barrel took \\\q fiisto — the 
 hollow tree-trunk — for a model, and reproduced it in 
 the crafty combination of a cunning carpentry. The 
 Tuscan barrel, like the Arno boat, has risen naturally, 
 and gives proof of this origin in details which speak 
 not so much of the present as of the past, and of the 
 early conditions of that simpler traffic to which it was 
 exactly adapted. 
 
 The body of the barrel consists of staves — called 
 doghe — made of pine wood, gathered and held in place 
 
 1 Elegy on Lucky /Fwrt' (Edinburgh, 1721), p. 34.
 
 On the Road 255 
 
 by hoops — cerchi — of bent chestnut, and themselves 
 including the flat heads — the fondi — also cut from 
 pine planks. One of the staves, however, differs from 
 the rest both in material and in form. It is made of 
 beech-wood, and cut out of the solid in such a way as 
 to leave a block projecting in the middle. 7~his block 
 is some two and a half inches thick, and through it 
 the bung-hole is bored so that a cork fills it as tightly 
 as if the hole were the neck of a bottle. In these 
 details there is nothing very remarkable ; the interest 
 comes rather when one observes the resultant form to 
 which their combination gives rise. 
 
 A glance at the barrel itself will do more than pages 
 of description to make its peculiarity plain. It is 
 small, yet differs from the kegs used elsewhere, 
 being longer in proportion to its girth than these. 
 The sides are curiousl)' flattened too, so that, if cut 
 across, the barrel in section would give the form of an 
 oblong with rounded corners ; yet an oblong defined 
 everywhere by curves, bolder or flatter, rather than by 
 straight lines. One notices too that at each end the 
 head of the barrel is set deeph', and that the staves 
 project a good deal be\'ond it. 
 
 Now none of these peculiarities is without signifi- 
 cance. To begin with the last : the projecting ring of 
 staves is meant to give a good hand-grip to the man 
 who lifts the barrel, and its length — one may add — is 
 calculated not to exceed the spread of his arms, just 
 as its weight when full is not too heavy for his strength.
 
 256 Florence Past and Present 
 
 It is to a place at the side of the pack-saddle he raises 
 it, and this is the reason of the strange flattening in 
 the form of the barrel ; it is made to fit the place 
 where it is to hang and travel. Finally, it is to be 
 balanced there by another of the same shape and size 
 hung on the opposite side of the saddle, and therefore, 
 just as the single barrel must not be too heavy for a 
 man to lift, so the pair must not be too much for the 
 animal that is to carry them. The Tuscan barrel, 
 then, not only belongs in form and size to the earlier 
 epoch of trade carried on b\' the help of the pack- 
 horse, but has a definite relation in these peculiarities 
 to two dominant factors in nature : the local breed 
 of burden-bearing animals, and the lie of the country 
 to be crossed in this traffic. The barrel, in short, 
 represents exactly half the fair load of such a beast on 
 the average Tuscan trade route, taking the plain and 
 the hill together. As a matter of fact such a load — 
 the soma, or pair of barrels — is still a known unit of 
 commerce in the local market, and corresponds in 
 quantity to about one hundred litres of wine. It is 
 a clear survival of early methods of transport. 
 
 It would be easy to carr\' the matter into further 
 detail, and to bring it still nearer daily experience. 
 The wine-flask, which the waiter sets on your table at 
 the restaurant even if you do not call for it, belongs to 
 the same order of things, and owes its definite capacity 
 to the same ultimate factors. It is blown to hold the 
 twentieth part of a Tuscan barrel ; that is, two litres
 
 On the Road 257 
 
 and a half. Next time you admire its simple perfect 
 form as it stands wrapped in its covering of sa/a, you 
 may remember that the far background of the flask, 
 as of the barrel whose contents it brings so well to 
 your hand, is indeed the Tuscan country making itself 
 felt here through the beasts of burden it breeds and 
 the roads it admits. It is no figure of speech that 
 describes the flask as ' racy of the soil ' ; it is so, as 
 much or more than the wine it holds. 
 
 Coming back for a moment to the barrel from which 
 the flask is filled, we find in it another power ; it not 
 only determines the size of the flask but, in another 
 relation, that of the cart as well ; the new means of 
 carriage now used for barrels and flasks alike. The 
 Tuscan barrel holds its fifty litres within a definite 
 compass, narrow rather than broad because of the 
 flattening of its sides, which were so made to meet 
 the sides of the pack-saddle. In the cart they still, 
 because of this peculiarity, have the advantage of fit- 
 ting nicely together, so that the barrels laid lengthwise 
 fill the space well and do not easiU- shift, as they 
 might were their section circular. Three barrels laid 
 side by side are enough ; not indeed to form a load, 
 but to fill the cart from side to side. Thus the barrel 
 is the unit of the cart measurement, and as the barrel 
 itself is determined as we have seen, the primitive 
 conditions of traffic are evidently still operative in the 
 sense of limiting, through the shape they have given 
 to the barrel, the later vehicle that now carries it. 
 
 R
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 AMULETS 
 
 The harness of the Tuscan cart is ornamental as 
 well as useful ; it is indeed the decorative value of 
 the whole that first strikes the eye of the observer. 
 It has bells, greater and lesser, for sound, and much 
 polished brass about it for brightness, while wool and 
 fur add their own charms of texture and notes of 
 colour. Even the least details of these trappings are 
 worth study, for they not only confirm the first im- 
 pression, but enforce it in another ; that of the 
 strangeness which seems to hold a hidden meaning 
 behind what is merely bright and gay. The bells are 
 of two kinds, and the carter is proud to have them 
 ring in harmony. The brass of the saddle often 
 takes the form of a seri)ent, or bears a crescent moon 
 swinging from the knob of the palliuo. Sometimes 
 this pommel carries a standard — the vcntamola — 
 rising through two or more flat plates of brass hung 
 round with small bells, and crowned with a turning 
 flag or vane of the same metal. Sometimes the 
 
 •258
 
 Amulets 
 
 259 
 
 standard is shorter, and bears only a highly polished 
 metal ball ; as it were a universal mirror that the 
 sun cannot miss. Mirrors of silvered glass too, — the 
 sperine, or little spheres — oblong or round, in various 
 settings, may be seen hung between the horses' eyes, 
 or dangling from a tufted strap in front of their 
 
 MULE-TASSELS AND HELL 
 
 chests. Foxes' tails are apt to swing at the cheek 
 straps, sometimes wnth a wild boar's tusk beside them. 
 A realK' fine set of harness is bordered throughout 
 with badger-fur set at the seam between leather and 
 lining, and coloured wool shows everywhere, in great 
 tassels of red and blue, ball and fringe and plait 
 work, hung from the headstalls chiefly, but mixed
 
 26o Florence Past and Present 
 
 too with the shining, chiming standard above the 
 saddle. These coloured wools, tufted and clipped 
 close, often replace badger-fur as an alternative 
 border and setting for the bright glass of the swing- 
 ing mirrors, and are always to be found sewn to a 
 flap of cloth in front of the gabbia ; the great nose- 
 bag of plaited cord carried by cart horse and mule 
 alike. 
 
 Such variety and complexity of ornament, com- 
 bined with such insistence on certain constantly 
 recurring details, suggest that there may be a mean- 
 ing here more than meets the eye. The poorest, 
 humblest barocciaio with his sand cart, if he can afford 
 nothing better, will plant a bright tuft of sala — the 
 dyed flower of the great reed — at his horse's ear, or 
 will mimic cheaply the brass saddle-vane with a 
 whirligig of coloured paper set in the same place. 
 There is a passion for this adornment of the labour- 
 ing beast, and a tradition of form in the horse trap- 
 pings of Tuscany, which suggest that the common 
 distinction is inapplicable here : that the ornamental 
 must be, to those who thus demand and procure it, 
 the useful as well. What use it is supposed to have 
 we must now try to see. 
 
 Take the whole as a hieroglyphic, of which the 
 determinative must be found if the true sense is to 
 appear. More primitive and central than any other 
 part of the harness is the saddle, and if you look 
 past its obvious brightness, and under the strapping
 
 Amulets 261 
 
 or twisted cord that connects it with the shafts, }'ou 
 will find carved and painted on the bastoiii the sign 
 that gives the key to the decorative system. It is an 
 eye, cut in the wood by simple gouge work, or out- 
 lined there b)- the painter, and often coloured too, 
 as if to enhance its modest importance ; the ball 
 tinted blue, and the gouge cuts that define it red. 
 If there is any meaning here at all, the sense 
 cannot be doubtful. This is a counter-charm 
 against the evil eye, for the eye itself, as many a 
 relic of antiquity — Egyptian and other — proves, has 
 been used b}^ man from the earliest times in this 
 prophylactic magic. Were there the least doubt of 
 its meaning where we have found it, the blue colour 
 often given to the ball would put the matter beyond 
 question. To this day in Syria the people suppose 
 that men or women with blue eyes have, in a high 
 degree, the fatal power of fascination, and to avert 
 it they form and hang — to children, horses, or fruit- 
 trees — discs of blue paste marked with the figure of 
 an eye.^ So too, and for the same purpose, horses 
 and mules are hung with blue beads in Greece.- One 
 
 ' Folk-Loie, xiii. 2 (June, 1902), p. 202. 
 
 ^ J. C. Lawson, Greek Folk-Lore (Cambridge, 1910), p. 12. In 
 the second room of the Vetulonia collections at the Museo Archeo- 
 logico, Florence, such eyes may be seen modelled in blue and 
 white paste. As they accompany a statuette of the Egyptian god- 
 dess Mut, their origin is certain. In this early importation by sea 
 the circle of diffusion is complete. For blue beads found in ' Roman 
 Tombs,' see G. Bellucci, // Fcticisino priiiiitivo (Perugia, 1907)7 
 p. 52.
 
 262 Florence Past and Present 
 
 more step westward and we are in Tuscany, where 
 the same sign must be surely taken to have the 
 same meaning. But if this is sure a high proba- 
 bility follows ; that this eye on the saddle-bridges 
 is a determinant which gives the key to the hidden 
 meaning of the whole ornament lavished on the 
 harness about it. The sign tells us that the supersti- 
 tion of the evil eye is known in Tuscany; may 
 not the other singularities the harness shows prove 
 to be developments of the same system of magical 
 defence ? 
 
 Those who believe in fatal fascination trust much, 
 and naturally, to distraction as a means of averting 
 what they dread. If the glance of the envious and 
 evil can be turned aside, it will spread itself harm- 
 lessly, as an arrow or stone that the shield has 
 deflected. So, in general, the whole bright decoration 
 of the labouring horse or mule would clearly have 
 this advantage ; would belong, even as mere ornament, 
 to the very system that the sign on the saddle has 
 made so probable. The accent here falls of course 
 on the colour— red or blue — of the tufted wool, and 
 even more definitely on the light reflected from the 
 harness studs, the pallino with its shining ball, and 
 the swinging mirrors that form part of the trappings ; 
 these details draw and fix the eye of the observer so 
 that he hardly notices the animal for whose protection 
 the whole has been contrived. 
 
 This superstition has elaborated, on the same line
 
 THE WISE WIVES OF TUSCANY
 
 Amulets 265 
 
 of thought, a still deeper and more crafty diversion 
 of the eye. Objects are found or contrived whose 
 appeal is to the sense of number and order. When 
 presented to it, these attract the ' eye,' and at the 
 same time baffle it ; entangling the envious glance 
 in a vain attempt to count and sum up their intricacies. 
 The magic of all countries is full of this device, which 
 has been recognised in the broken patterns of eastern 
 carpets, and might be found, who knows, even in the 
 studied irregularities of mediaeval architecture. As 
 regards Tuscany, a simple art, still followed in the 
 straw industry near Florence, has been considered 
 important as a means of magical defence. ' Twist 
 and plait everything you make,' says the Tuscan 
 wise-woman, ' let it take the form of two or three 
 serpents interlaced . . . and when you sew clothes 
 for man or woman let your stitch be such that the 
 threads cross ; the stitch that shoemakers use . . . 
 for so the witches can do nothing, as they cannot 
 count either twisted thread or crossed stitch ; their 
 eye is confused by what they see. It is well to plait 
 cotton, silk or wool seven or eight-fold for this purpose, 
 and to carry the plait in one's pocket as a charm. 
 You may even find such things ready made in the 
 shops, and in several colours, for they are a protection 
 against the malocchio.' ^ So when, among the bright 
 colour of the nappe, the woollen tassels, red, blue and 
 
 ' Unpublished MS. of a Tuscan witch collected by C. G. Leland 
 and now in my possession.
 
 266 Florence Past and Present 
 
 yellow, that hang at the horses' heads, plaited work 
 appears as it often does — strands of twisted and 
 crossed threads that connect the upper to the lower 
 bunches of balls in the tassel — we do not pass the 
 matter as trivial, or merely ornamental, for it has a 
 meaning of its own. The coloured tresses here 
 combine with their magic surroundings ; belong to 
 the same world of mystery, and have been doubtless 
 contrived to add their own peculiar power to the 
 general system of defence. 
 
 There is some reason to think that the same result 
 was sought in sound, or at least that the tinkling of 
 the bells attached to the harness had a definite magic 
 value for those who first hung them there. These 
 bells are of two kinds ; the hnbholi, or hollow globes of 
 metal with a solid metal ball left loose within to ring 
 them at every movement, and an eyed slit by which 
 the sound escapes ; and the squillc, oblong or conical, 
 with open mouth and the usual clapper hung within. 
 The former are large bells, generally fastened to 
 the traces of the cart, the latter are quite small, and 
 may be seen, four or six together, sewn to a loose 
 strap about the horse's neck, where they swing and 
 tinkle gaily. 
 
 The same authority that has given us the hidden 
 meaning of the tress or plait, reports that in popular 
 Tuscan belief the bell has like efficacy and for a 
 similar reason. It is to be carried in the pocket, she 
 says, because so ' the witches cannot count the
 
 Amulets 267 
 
 strokes of the clapper '—quantc volte il pallino battc} 
 There ma}' indeed be doubt how far this explanation 
 is applicable to horse-bells unmuffled and ringing 
 freely on the road, but at least the main fact is sure, 
 that the bell has a magic meaning, and is constantly 
 used to dispel and defeat by its chime the influences 
 of evil. How often, in summers spent near Siena, I 
 have heard, as the hail clouds darkened over the 
 Chianti, church after church take up the flying peal, 
 ringing to break the cloud and avert the danger ! 
 The direct, unmistakable claim of the church-bells 
 themselves, the fnlgiira fraiigo so often fused with 
 them as a bell-inscription, shows that in no secondary 
 sense as a call to prayer, but in itself, the sound of 
 the bell is relied on as a true defence. Nor is any 
 ritual consecration by the Church thought necessary 
 to secure this effect. In the days of danger, between 
 Christmas and Epiphany at the opening of the year,^ 
 I have met in a Tuscan country town masked dancers 
 in white, ringing bells at nightfall in the principal 
 street. And these were precisely horse-bells which 
 the maskers had hung about their necks, strap and all, 
 just as they came from the harness. It would seem, 
 in fact, that what brightness and colour are trusted 
 to do by day is secured b}- night when the bells are 
 heard ; the baroccio and its driver travel safely in the 
 darkness under cover of that cheerful chime. 
 
 ^ C. G. Leland, Etruscan Rei)iaiits (London : Unwin, 1892), p. 357. 
 ^ See below, p. 304.
 
 2 68 Florence Past and Present 
 
 The fox-tail and badger fur found among the 
 Tuscan horse trappings may be treated as belonging 
 to a distinct, though alHed, department of the same 
 defensive magic. For defence ma}- be indirect, and 
 like the physician's tonic, may help by conferring 
 strength to meet and defeat danger, no less than 
 by averting its onset ; the antiseptic is not the only 
 possible treatment. Tonic magic depends on a 
 theory of transference, and under it valuable qualities 
 of strength or subtlety are supposed to pass from 
 their natural possessors to the man who knows the 
 secret. Sometimes the practice consists in eating 
 the flesh of the animal whose powers seem desirable ; 
 sometimes the mere wearing of its spoils is thought 
 enough to secure the result. Thus beaters in the 
 Indian jungle will often beg the claws or whiskers 
 of the dead tiger from the hunter that has killed it 
 because they wish to wear them as amulets. In the 
 case before us there are several animals in question ; 
 the fox, the badger, and — one may add — the boar 
 and the serpent ; all of them distinguished by a 
 mixture of strength and cunning which men have 
 always admired and coveted. The fox and the 
 serpent have become proverbial in this matter, but 
 swine, according to Pliny, have the advantage even 
 over snakes, and devour them greedily in spite of 
 their poison.^ As to the badger, the same author 
 
 ^ N.H., xi. 53. So the hams of Montanches in Spain are said to be 
 finer than others, because there the swine find vipers to eat. See 
 Ford's Guide (1S55), P. n., p. 489.
 
 Amulets 269 
 
 says he is not less wily tiian strong ; ' badgers show 
 another skill when threatened ; inflating their skin 
 they airily defeat the jaws and blows of dogs and 
 men." ^ Thus the probability is that, in borrowing 
 the form of the serpent for the pommel of his saddle, 
 and the boar's tusk, the fox's tail, and the badger's 
 fur for the further decoration of the harness, the 
 carter repeats to-day the old magic. Safety, it was 
 once thought, and sure escape from danger might 
 be had in this close association with such typical 
 examples of wisdom and of strength. 
 
 So men may once have fancied, but this theory 
 of protective magic must be sharply distinguished 
 from its practice, and is not at all necessary to the 
 matter in hand. Whatever we may think of such 
 an explanation, the fact remains that most, if not all, 
 of the harness ornaments just described are actually 
 used as personal amulets to-day in one or other 
 Italian province. This has been already established 
 as regards the eye itself, the plait, and the bell, nor 
 is present superstitious practice less doubtful in the 
 case of the rest. The mirror not only draws the 
 ' eye,' but directly opposes and defeats its fascina- 
 tion ' par endardement reciproque.' - The boar's 
 tusk is often found set in silver and worn for a like 
 purpose.^ The same ma\' be said of the badger's 
 
 1 N.H., viii. 38. See a curious modern instance of the badger's 
 cunning as reported in the weekly Spectator for March 12, 19 10, 
 
 P- 415- 
 
 - Leland, op. cit., p. 93. ^ Belhicci, op. cit., p. 35.
 
 270 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 hair.i In a jeweller's shop at the Forum of Trajan 
 in Rome, I found on sale, some years since, tassels 
 of this hair set in silver for the watch chain : they 
 were said to be useful against the evil eye. The 
 serpent is a common charm. Paired as for a 
 
 1 HK ChMARU J A 
 
 caduceus, it has been found cut in bone at Siena.- 
 I have an example of the cii/ianita, the compound 
 amulet worn by children at Naples ; where the serpent 
 appears enfolding in its coils the crescent moon ; ^ 
 and these are just the twin symbols of the mother 
 goddess which so often appear, separately indeed 
 
 ' Bellucci, op. cit., pp. 41, 47. - Elwoithy, op. cii., p. 316. 
 
 •'//;/</., p. 345.
 
 Amulets 271 
 
 yet distinctly, in the brasses of the pommel at 
 Florence. With regard to the whole, it may surely 
 be said that such correspondences strengthen each 
 other, and that the theory which would regard the 
 Tuscan harness ornaments as amulets against fascina- 
 tion — whatever may have been the underlying reason 
 for this use — has been fairly made out. 
 
 At this point a natural question occurs : why 
 such fear for the team, prompting such elaborate and 
 multiplied means of protection? If we are right, 
 those who devised it must have travelled the road 
 in a constant superstitious terror of foes unseen. 
 What time then, and what circumstance, can have 
 given rise to such an obsession ? 
 
 It will be found that, to recover the natural facts 
 here, it is necessary to go back to the days when 
 the woodmen and hunters of Tuscany first changed 
 their life and took to the new business of trade. 
 This change occurred under pressure of necessity, 
 and it is therefore probable that it was gradual, and 
 did not at once affect the whole population. The 
 game, which could no longer support a nation, was 
 still plentiful enough to feed many. Some, the more 
 progressive and adaptable, would become traders, the 
 rest in diminishing number would long follow in 
 the woods what had once been the life of the whole 
 people. 
 
 Yet even the hunter who remained such could not 
 be just what he was before trade came his way and
 
 272 Florence Past and Present 
 
 claimed part of his kin. A contrast was now forced 
 on his attention ; that between the old life to which 
 he still clung and the new that was moving near 
 him on the widening road. Comparison too was 
 inevitable ; the trader was in the van of human 
 progress, and, as he profited in the new venture, his 
 neighbour of the old way must often have been stung 
 to envy. We have thought already of the woodland 
 life, and can understand therefore how every re- 
 curring period of scarcity would sharpen the hunter's 
 feelings as he saw the comparative regularity of 
 trade, and the steady supply of the necessities and 
 even the luxuries of life it had begun to ensure. 
 One or other of two results was inevitable. Some 
 would leave their hunting, tempted by what they 
 saw of trading success. The rest, to whom for one 
 reason or other this escape was closed, would act, 
 at least occasionally, under impulse of their envy, 
 turning to the caccia grossa, the pursuit of their 
 fellow men, and so becoming the terror of the 
 road. Hunters of wild game for the most part as 
 their fathers had been, they would now, especially 
 when game was scarce, and hunger pressed, occa- 
 sionally prey on the passing trader to possess them- 
 selves of his tempting load of Lombard grain or 
 Latin cheese. Thus the bow and arrow, the sling 
 and the skilful ambush, had a new value for the 
 enterprising hunter, and the woods and hills through 
 whicli his way wound, and the night that darkened
 
 Amulets 273 
 
 over it as the sun set, a definite terror and undeniable 
 danger for the Tuscan trader. To meet this he 
 organised his caravan, and, travelling in numbers, 
 resumed the woodland weapons of his fathers as the 
 instruments of a new defence against their direct 
 successors. 
 
 Thus the trader found himself in a new situation ; 
 enmity had grown up between him and the kind from 
 which he came, while ever}' reason of interest 
 begotten of continued contact and intimacy allied him 
 rather to the pastoral and agricultural populations, 
 his neighbours on either side, with whom he dealt. 
 The result must have been that he began to think of 
 the men of the forest as an outsider would, and to 
 adopt in this matter the opinions of his new allies, the 
 shepherd and the farmer. What these opinions were 
 we have already seen. To the dwellers in the open 
 plains of the north or south the woods that intervened 
 were a wild and mysterious place, and the forest 
 people skilled in a strange sorcery of their own. 
 These knew the language of the beasts and birds, the 
 secret of the plants, and how to use a footprint, or 
 some least rag of dress, with fatal force against the 
 careless intruder on their preserves. We may be sure 
 that strange tales were told round the evening fires in 
 Lombardy and Latium ; that facts lost nothing in the 
 telling, and that of such natural exaggeration was 
 easily born a firm belief in the truth of the woodland 
 magic. 
 
 S
 
 2 74 Florence Past and Present 
 
 This then was the superstition to which the trader 
 succeeded in his separation from his own kin and his 
 association with those who first conceived it. Nay, 
 one may fancy that his own experience may well have 
 led him to contribute a new element to the growing 
 body of magical doctrine. He sadly knew the skill 
 with which the hunter could waylay him, and set an 
 ambush in the woods for his passing caravan ; the 
 sure aim of the silent death that smote man or beast 
 from the thicket. Yet so, the eye was everything 
 here ; the eye, that aimed arrow, spear, or sling-stone 
 with such diabolical precision. His own was nothing 
 to it, for in becoming a trader he had lost much of the 
 old skill that his enemy still preserved by daily 
 practice. Rather than acknowledge his natural 
 inferiority he would exaggerate the forces he must 
 meet (jn the trade route. Strange powers, he begins 
 to suspect and to protest, are leagued against him. 
 The envy that directs the aim may act of itself even 
 in the absence of arrow, dart, or stone ; the eye of the 
 envious is itself a fatal engine fit to project death 
 where it fixes its terrible glance. Jettatura is still the 
 word for such fascination, and in what it involves, of 
 direction and projection, it points to the original idea 
 that gave rise to the superstition of the evil eye. 
 
 So the amulet follows as a natural consequence of 
 such belief and fear. If the arrow, the dart, and the 
 sling-stone are not all, if the envious eye that aims 
 these is able of itself to work mischief, tlie caravan
 
 Amulets 275 
 
 must find a corresponding defence. It will travel the 
 roads, then, not only armed in the ordinary sense, but 
 protected, horse and man together, by whatever may 
 serve to defeat the power of evil fascination. 
 
 Now where are such charms to be found 7 The 
 object here is to defeat the power of the hunter, and 
 help may therefore well be sought in amulets derived 
 from the animals that do, in fact, most often escape 
 his toils. The fox, the boar, and the badger effect 
 this b}' their strength or cunning, the serpent too 
 because he is slippery and poisonous, and, as a matter 
 of fact, these animals have all, as we know, lent either 
 their form or their spoils to the horse harness. In 
 this artificial connection magical rapport is designed, 
 in the plain hope that such escape may also be the 
 good fortune of the travelling merchant, as he and his 
 team run the gauntlet of the hunter's ambuscade. 
 
 But there is another decoration of the harness, as 
 yet unnoticed, which seems even more significant, and 
 which lends itself to a like interpretation. The tassels 
 of the head-stall, and the red wool hung in bunches 
 from the standard of the saddle pommel, both tend to 
 take the form of balls which, in form, size, and colour 
 alike, mimic very exactly the bright yellow or red 
 fruit of the arbutus : the corbcz::olc seen on every 
 Florentine fruit-stall in the later autumn. If this also 
 be an amulet, and if the resemblance we have traced be 
 intentional, defence is again sought from the woods as 
 before, though its secret now lies not in the wild life
 
 276 Florence Past and Present 
 
 they shelter but in the trees themselves. What 
 thought can have prompted such a belief and such an 
 artifice ? 
 
 One thing is plain, that antiquity recognised in the 
 arbutus the power of averting evil influences. Ovid, 
 speaking of the nymph Cardea, says : — 
 
 ' Protinus arbutca postes ter in ordine tangit 
 Fronde, ter arbutea limina fronde notat ' ; ' 
 
 and as the same poet introduces Cardea as the 
 protegee of Janus, there can be little doubt that the 
 arbutus, thus applied to the door, must share with 
 the white-thorn the prophylactic virtue supposed to 
 reside in the virga Jaiialis. It is no modern fancy 
 then, but an ancient tradition and use, that we must 
 try to understand. 
 
 Far behind Roman times, the worship of trees was 
 commonly practised in Italy as in ever\' other land 
 where they grow. This cult depended, of course, on 
 the belief that the tree harboured a spiritual presence, 
 which might indeed be evil if neglected or offended, 
 but which, duly regarded and called forth, was ready 
 to help man in his need. Now there is no natural 
 fact so likely to have suggested this superstition as 
 that which comes under man's notice with the dis- 
 covery of fire. For fire can be rubbed from wood 
 almost as easily as it is struck from flint, and as the 
 latter process suggests the worship of stones, so the 
 
 ^ Faiti, vi. 155-6.
 
 Amulets 277 
 
 former may probably have begot the cult of the 
 corresponding stock — the tree — not less evidently 
 the dwelling-place of this power, bright, mysterious 
 and helpful to man ; only waiting his summons to 
 appear and to do him good. From the cold and 
 darkness of the night, from the wild beasts seeking 
 their prey, man sat safe in the sacred circle of the 
 hearth. No wonder he worshipped the tree as the 
 dwelling-place of that protective power. 
 
 There were some trees too which seemed to claim 
 this reverence in a higher degree than the rest, as 
 putting forth visible signs of the indwelling fire. It 
 is probably for this reason that trees bearing bright 
 red fruit have always had a certain magic importance. 
 Thus the rowan of the north has served in many a 
 spell ; one may believe the reason lies in the colour 
 it shows in autumn. So too in spring the same 
 colour appears with the fresh shoots of the oak — 
 noticed there by Chaucer — and in the buds of certain 
 kinds of ash. The mystic fame of the oak is too 
 plain to need proof, and as to the other, it used to be 
 said in Oldenburg that ash-trees lost their red buds 
 before midsummer because the witches ate them up 
 on their way to the Sabbat lest the power of the 
 beneficent tree should be used against them.^ In 
 our own Forest of Dean, the ' King o' the Rose,' the 
 rough red rose-gall, was used as a charm.- It would 
 
 ' R. Folkard, Plant Lore (London, 1884), p. 96. 
 - Folk Lore, xiii. (June, 1902), p. 173.
 
 lyS Florence Past and Present 
 
 seem, indeed, that just as the flag on the castle is a 
 sign of residence and of power, so this colour on bush 
 or tree was taken as a proof that, where it showed, 
 there men should recognise and pay court to the 
 spirit of the woods and of indwelling fire. 
 
 Now by its rough and brilliant fruit, yellow that 
 changes to fiery red in ripening, the arbutus plainly 
 belongs to this mystic order ; the fire-trees that have 
 furnished men with so many protective charms. One 
 is not surprised then to find that the Greeks called 
 this tree by a name which means a brazier, and is 
 derived from the word for a burning coal ; ^ or that 
 the Latins knew it as a defence against the powers 
 of evil. The Latin name for the arbutus — iinedo — 
 must have some meaning other than the trivial 
 explanation of Pliny would suggest.- May it not, 
 one asks, preserve that of Uni, the Etruscan Juno? 
 Thus Aid or Janus would hand on to Cardea only 
 what he had himself received from Uni, and, in 
 goddess and nymph alike, would appear something 
 of their original ; the mother-goddess discovered in 
 the grove, the tree-mother, propitious to woodland 
 men. 
 
 The amulet from a fire-tree might be, and no 
 doubt often was, simple and direct ; the branch with 
 its colour, plucked and worn as a protective charm. 
 But spring and autumn pass ; trees are not always 
 budding or bearing their fruit, and therefore art must 
 
 ^ di'5/)dxX'? from dvdpa^. - N.//., xv. 24.
 
 Amulets 279 
 
 supplement nature if the protection they seem to 
 promise is to be always available. The art here was 
 that of imitation, which replaced the natural red by 
 the corresponding colour in dyed wool. Thus, in the 
 north, branches of the rowan were bound to the 
 horns of the herd with red wool to disarm the evil 
 eye ; ^ the wool replacing the scarlet berry char- 
 acteristic of the tree. A development of the same 
 device is seen at Florence in the habit of binding red 
 threads about pots of rue to complete their charm. 
 Here art no longer imitates nature, but assumes a 
 power of its own, fit, it is thought, to reinforce what 
 nature supplies. Midwa\' between these two comes 
 the case of the Florentine harness with its balls of 
 red wool. As with the rue, art here stands alone ; 
 able of itself to provide an amulet without help from 
 nature. Yet the art of these nappe is imitative as 
 no mere thread or binding can be, and what it 
 presents is the fruit of the fire-tree, the sacred arbutus 
 that protects from evil fascination. 
 
 Evidently the whole matter rests here, in the 
 imitation we have supposed, and therefore nothing, 
 however trivial, must be neglected which tends in the 
 least to show that there is a known connection 
 between the arbutus and the cart of the Tuscan 
 roads. The authorit}' already more than once quoted 
 
 ' The popular rhyme runs : — 
 
 ' Rowan tree and red thread 
 Will drive the witches a' wud.'
 
 28o Florence Past and Present 
 
 in this chapter gives a traditional version, apparently 
 current still at Florence, of the story of Cardea.^ In 
 it the main elements of Ovid's tale are all present : 
 the pining child, the witch that brings the evil, and 
 the arbutus berries that act as a counter-charm, but 
 the white-witch, or good fairy, that uses the arbutus 
 to cure the child is no longer Cardea but Carradora ; 
 as it were the preserver of the cart and its team, just 
 as the Carradore is the cart-maker.- Suppose this 
 name a pure invention ; yet it could only occur to 
 one who had seen in the harness tassels a direct 
 imitation of the arbutus berries they so much resemble. 
 We may take it then that this is the traditional 
 Florentine way of looking at these details, and that 
 they were meant to protect the team as representing 
 the fruit of a tree peculiarly sacred to the mother of 
 the woods. 
 
 Thus the present decoration of the Florentine 
 harness is derived from a past that lies beyond the 
 reach of history. Its many amulets date from the 
 time when the hunter became the trader on the first 
 cross-country roads. This at least was the moment 
 when their application to the horse seemed necessary, 
 but they themselves, or many of them, derive from a 
 past still more remote. The change that put enmity 
 between the trader and his kin who still followed the 
 chase could not entirely cut him off from his inheri- 
 
 ' C. G. Leland, Etruscan Komaii Kcinaiiis, pp. 107-9. 
 - See above, p. 238.
 
 Amulets 281 
 
 tance. He, as well as they, came from the forest, and 
 when he sought protection from what were still forest- 
 fears, the amulets he chose were such as the ancient 
 beliefs of the race pointed to ; they represented the 
 magic learned in the woods by the common ancestors 
 of a people that the coming of trade had so sharply 
 divided. Among all Florentine survivals there is 
 none perhaps so distinct and remarkable as this ; 
 which, under colour of mere ornament, and by 
 obstinate tradition rather than living superstition — 
 though superstition is not dead — preserves in the 
 cart harness to-day a witness to the thoughts, the 
 fears, and the hopes of remotest time.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE FEASTS
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 CEPPO AND PEFANA 
 
 Christmas at Florence, as elsewhere, is the season 
 when presents are made by persons of means to their 
 servants, tradesmen, and dependants of every kind. 
 These ' boxes,' as we call them, are known in 
 Tuscany as ceppi or ' logs,' and the name shows that 
 the Yule-log is a reality here, far deeper and more 
 ancient than the show of seasonable holly and 
 mistletoe laid out for the foreigner on the Lung' Arno 
 would lead one to suspect. These greens are a dis- 
 play unknown till recent years, but the Ceppo is an 
 ancient local usage which deserves consideration. 
 
 The name of the Ceppo is derived, almost without 
 change, from the Latin cippiis, the tree-trunk, and the 
 log was great indeed which used to burn on every 
 Tuscan hearth as each 24th of December came round. 
 Boccaccio, condescending for a moment from mytho- 
 logy to describe the habits of his own country and 
 people, tells what was done at Christmas in Florence : 
 how the house-father laid the great log on the Lari, 
 as the fire-dogs of the hearth were called in his day ; 
 
 286
 
 2 86 Florence Past and Present 
 
 how the family gathered about it, while their head 
 called for wine, drank, and poured a libation from his 
 cup on the glowing wood, after which the others 
 drank in turn as the cup went round. ^ Later 
 authorities enable us to complete the scene, telling 
 how the log was beaten to make the sparks fly up the 
 chimney, and that the Florentines liked it large, so 
 that when kindled it might burn long, even for days, 
 without going out.- 
 
 Here then are all the signs which show the 
 antiquity of a rite. The house itself, without further 
 consecration than the presence there of the family, is 
 the temple ; the hearth the altar, and the father the 
 priest. The Lari, or fire-dogs, are the Dii Lares of 
 Roman household religion. The ccppo itself is a true 
 and huge tree-trunk ; it must be so if, as we shall 
 presently see, it is to burn continuously for twelve 
 days. One thinks of it as set on end, reaching high 
 in the chimney and sinking gradually to the hearth 
 day by day as it burns awa\' from the root. Thus, 
 behind Roman religion, we find what preceded it. 
 The Ceppo is a yearl}- return to the original life of the 
 woods, when the hunter's fire smouldered from day to 
 day in the root of the standing tree, and when that 
 hearth, blown betimes to a leaping flame, gathered 
 about it all the mystery and comfort that might 
 belong to forest nights in winter : their encompassing 
 
 ^ G. lioccaccio, Gcucaloi^ia dc ii!t Dei {XcncUa., 1564), p. 204. 
 ^ See the Kiiiic uf Fayiuoli, and I'ilre, Archh'io, xii. 205.
 
 Ceppo and Befana 287 
 
 fear and its sure, if narrow remedy. What we know 
 of how this primitive religion developed in the 
 definite worship of the Lares shows that the libation 
 of wine at Ceppo, still used at Florence in the 
 fourteenth century if no later, represents an offering 
 .to the spirits of darkness and of the underworld ; 
 perhaps to those of the dead. 
 
 From Florence to Greece is a step we have already 
 found natural ; it is Greece rather than Rome that is 
 likely to throw light on Florentine peculiarities, and 
 therefore on the Ceppo and its real meaning. The 
 Ceppo is still a Greek usage, and is found in the very 
 form we have supposed likel}' : that of a long log 
 reaching up the chimney and burning gradually from 
 the lower end.^ The reason given for the practice is 
 that the chimney is the place where evil dwells, or at 
 least the passage b)- which it may enter the house 
 to work mischief, and Greek fancy has been busy in 
 giving this dread a definite form ; dividing, classing, 
 and naming the enemies it fears. Children born 
 between December 25th and January 6th are called 
 'feast-stricken ' or possessed of a devil. '-^ The evil spirit 
 may, it is thought, materialise in one or other of three 
 forms; as a callicantzaros^ a werewolf, or a vampire; 
 all more or less connected and interchangeable. 
 The first is a bestial demon, shaggy, black, and wild, 
 in whose name some vestige has been found of the 
 
 ' J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folk-Lore (Cambridge, 1910), p. 200. 
 - eopTOTTido'fj.ara, ibid., p. 20S.
 
 288 Florence Past and Present 
 
 classic centaur. The second is at once more and 
 less human : a man who can change himself into a 
 wolf at will, and work death as such. The third, 
 and most dreadful of all, is a human corpse possessed 
 by an evil spirit which drives it from the grave to 
 make havoc among the living. 
 
 Against these horrors the Greek uses fire as the 
 first remedy. Children suspected of the fatal birth- 
 gift have the soles of their feet burnt, or are roasted 
 in a hot oven to drive out the spirit that would make 
 them wolves by night.^ The corpse found in an 
 unnatural fullness and freshness is consumed by fire 
 lest it should work mischief as a vampire.- The 
 yule-log is set in the chimney and kept burning all 
 the twelve days of danger against any entry by that 
 dark road, and especially against the coming and 
 attempts of the ca/licantzaros, the black and evil 
 horseman.-^ Handfuls of herbs and other matters 
 are thrown too from time to time on the fire to make 
 it crackle, just as the log is beaten in Tuscany that 
 it may sparkle ; a warning then, in either case, that 
 the flaming sword has been set in the chimney, and 
 an assurance that the house is safe.'* Torches are 
 waved outside for the same reason, and the whole 
 is an evident development, wherein the ancient forest 
 fears are still recognisable under their altered shapes, 
 and the natural forest defence, the fire, reappears in 
 
 ' Lawson, op. cit. " //;/(/., pp. 374, 411, 488. 
 
 ^ Ibid., p. 200. "* //;/(/., pp. 201-2.
 
 Ceppo and Befana 289 
 
 its old use and almost in its primitive form. On this 
 Tuscany and Greece are agreed, and even share the 
 custom which adds noise of all kinds to fire as a 
 means of dispelling evil.^ At Florence such noise is 
 peculiar to the close of the fatal period, and dis- 
 tinguishes the feast of the Befana, which, though 
 it belongs to the same order of things as Ceppo, 
 may well, when we reach it, open a new view of the 
 ' twelve days ' its timel)' clamour brings to a close. 
 
 An ancient inscription shows that in Fiesole it 
 not in Florence, a society was early formed to 
 promote the Roman observance of the Coinpitaliar 
 This was a movable feast, but it always fell in the 
 opening da\-s of the year, and came to be generally 
 held between the second and the sixth of January ; 
 days noted in the calendar as of evil omen.^ It thus 
 corresponds with the period we are studying, and 
 there is the more reason to seek light from the 
 Compitalia that it is said to have been instituted by 
 a Tuscan — Servius Tullius — who may be supposed 
 to have embodied in this feast the customs of his 
 own country and race.^ It is to be noted too that 
 Servius Tullius was said to have been the son of 
 a hill-girl '' — Ocrisia — by a spark from the hearth, 
 or domestic Lar ; '^ a paternity which agrees well 
 
 ' Lawson, op. n't., pp. 224-30. - C.I L., xi. i. 1550. 
 
 ^ Fowler, op. cit., pp. 279-80. •* Ibid., op. cit., p. 171. 
 
 ^ E. Pais, Ancient Italy (Chicago, 1908), p. 1 13, note. 
 " Pliny, N.H., xxxvi. 27. There is a Scottish tale of the same kind 
 which makes the father of the child an ancestral spirit. 
 
 T
 
 290 Florence Past and Present 
 
 with the rehgioLis character of the feast he 
 introduced. 
 
 The CompitaHa then, as one would expect, was 
 the feast of the Lares, and in a special sense of their 
 mother Mania, the ancient and terrible Larva, whose 
 name nurses used to frighten children ; just as the 
 Befana is the bugbear of Tuscany to-day. But in 
 the old time these fears had a sad foundation in fact, 
 for time was when children were offered up at the 
 feast as a sacrifice to secure the peace of the family. 
 Later, these sacrifices were replaced by images of 
 wool or wax called Maniac. These were hung at the 
 house door, one for each soul in the house.^ At the 
 cross-roads — ihe^Compita from which the feast had 
 its name — the Lares were set up and honoured by 
 the shed blood of a dog : a rare sacrifice which they 
 shared with Proserj^ine, the infernal Ceres, goddess 
 of the shades and of the underworld. The purpose 
 of the rite is stated to be propitiation ; lest any one 
 should become manes, and with this view it was 
 offered to Genita Mana.-' It will be seen how this 
 corresponds with the Greek fear for children born 
 during the fatal period, and what reason therefore 
 there is to suppose that the ancient niancs survives 
 in the adjective of the Tuscan name hipo n/annaro. 
 What men feared then, as now, was that their 
 children should be ])ossesscd from birth, and should 
 
 ^ Macrob., Sa/., i. 7- 
 
 - Plut., Q.A'., Hi. cxi. Sec also Darenibcrg et Saglio, Diction- 
 naire, s. v. 'Manes, Mania.'
 
 Ceppo and Befana 291 
 
 grow up the victims of a fatal lycanthropy. For 
 this at least of the old fears lives in Tuscany to-day, 
 and to such purpose that, in the gci'go, mannara has 
 survived as the slang word for a festival of any 
 kind ; ^ as if the day sacred to Mania had left an 
 impression in Italy never to be effaced. 
 
 That the dog was sacrificed to Mania and to Pro- 
 serpine alike, is not the only reason why these two 
 names should appear together in this chapter. Many 
 details occur at this season, and in its rites, which 
 suggest that the two goddesses are substantially one ; 
 being only different aspects of the same chthonic 
 power. The time of the Compitalia is appropriate to 
 Proserpine, for it is the season of deep winter, when 
 the corn lies buried in the earth. Dalmatia, the half- 
 way house between Florence and Greece, still adds 
 grain to the Florentine libation, scattering it on the 
 burning Yule-log.- Pork, the flesh of the animal 
 which the ancients gave to Demeter and her daughter, 
 is laid out in Greece during the twelve days as an 
 offering to the Callicantzari.^ To this day, in Tuscany, 
 if you wish to call a man a pig, \'ou may sa\' norciiio ; 
 a derivative, by way of her town in the Umbrian 
 hills, of that Nortia, the Etruscan alias of the Roman 
 Fortuna, herself a corn-goddess, to whom Servius 
 Tullius w^as so devoted."* But, as we ha\-e seen, 
 
 ^ Mirabella, Mala Vila (Napoli, 19 lo), p. 347. 
 
 " F. H. Jackson, Shores of Ihe Adriatic (London: Murray, 1908) 
 pp. 12-13. 
 
 ^ Lawson, op. cil., p. 209. ^ Fowler, op. cil., p. 171,
 
 292 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Servius set up the Compitalia, and here is reason to 
 think that the Mania then named and worshipped 
 was only the Fortune of the harvest, or Nortia, under 
 another name ; as the goddess of the hidden corn, 
 and, perchance, of other buried things thought of with 
 that, and feared as well as hoped for in their springing. 
 It is in strict accordance with this idea that the feast 
 of the Compitalia was chief!}' observed by farm 
 labourers, who hung ox-\'okes that day on the shrine 
 of Mania and the Lares.^ The ploughman's wife is 
 still the LarcUa in Italian gcrgo'^ and even now in 
 Tuscany the rhymed prayer, sung by children while 
 the ccppo burns, closes with an appeal for sunshine 
 and plenty of it \-' the answering heavenly fire to 
 warm the earth and bring the buried grain to hght 
 and fruitfulness. For the 25th of December was the 
 Dies Invicti Solis,the winter solstice according to the 
 Julian Calendar; the opening of a period of danger 
 when the sun, new-born and still weak, might seem to 
 need helj) in meeting and mastering the cold that 
 grew stronger with the growing day. At this moment 
 too the sun stood in the ' gate ' by which souls 
 returned from earth to the spirit world."* 
 
 Egypt once called to what slept in her fields I\Iaa- 
 ne-hra, 'come tiiou back again,' and, lest you should 
 think she had onl)' the corn in mind, w rfite the mystic 
 
 - Fowler, op. rit., p. 279. - Mirabella, op. cit., p. 341. 
 
 2 L. Duff Gordon, Home Life in Italy, p. 314. 
 * See Macrob., Somn. Scip., i. 12.
 
 Ceppo and Befana 293 
 
 appeal in that Book of the Dead which she buried 
 with every mummy.^ This Maa-ne is possibly the 
 first form of the Greek and Roman Mania, and, in 
 any case, it is prett}- sure that Mania is Demeter or 
 Proserpine ; thought of more speciall}- in relation 
 with human death and burial,- perhaps with human 
 resurrection. 
 
 A like connection between men themselves and 
 the corn the\' sow appears, one must think, in Venus, 
 who was originally a corn-goddess, the alias in this 
 respect of Demeter and Fortuna.^ For man thought 
 himself one with the corn in life as well as in 
 death, and believed in a connection between his own 
 fruitfulness and that of his fields.^ Balanced evenly 
 in early times, this regard lost its first meaning and 
 original reverence by falling more and more on 
 the human side of the correspondence, till Venus 
 became what we find her in the literature of Greece 
 and of Rome ; no better than she should be. She is 
 worth notice here only because of what she once 
 meant, and as leading to a further discovery in the 
 strange field of superstition that lies between the 
 limits of Ceppo and the Befana. 
 
 The wild m}'th of the black Demeter of Phigalia 
 
 ' Brugsch, quoted by Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. p. 223 (2nd ed.). 
 
 -The Athenians called their dead ' Demeter's folk,' Si]/x-qTpeioL. 
 See Plutarch, quoted by Lawson, o/> cit., p. 579. 
 
 •* Fowler, op. cit., pp. 67, 68. See also, on relation of Venus and 
 Proserpine, Macrob., Sat,, i. 21. 
 
 ' See Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. pp. 205 -S.
 
 294 Florence Past and Present 
 
 with a human body but the head of a horse,^ has a 
 gentler parallel in that of Venus Erycina. Poseidon 
 belongs to both, though in Sicily his place is some- 
 times taken by Butes. In the one case he becomes 
 the father of Hera, in the other of Eryx.- That 
 Venus Erycina is the equivalent of Demeter appears 
 in the account of her Sicilian temple, given by Aelian, 
 who says a perpetual dew fell on the sacred spot, 
 causing the grass to grow there in a spring that every 
 night renewed.^ Originally these stories came from 
 Arcadia, where the goddess was called Demeter at 
 Phigalia, and Venus at Psophis ; a neighbouring 
 town, which had its name from that Psophis, daughter 
 of Eryx, who chose the site and built the temple of 
 Venus Erycina beside the river Aroanius."* Now it 
 was the town of Psophis which colonised the island of 
 Zacynthus, and gave its own name to the ancient 
 citadel there ; no doubt Zacynthus shared with the 
 mother country the worship of this verdant Venus of 
 the spring. But Zacynthus in its turn sent out a 
 swarm that reached and founded Saguntum in Spain. 
 We have seen the probability that this westward 
 
 ' I'ausanias, viii. 25, 42. " ApoUodoiiis, 3. 
 
 ■' The miraculous picture of Custonaci seems to assure tliis fact ; 
 continuing today the memory, if not the cult, of Venus Erycina as a 
 corn-goddess. The picture is periodically carried to Monte San 
 Giuliano — the ancient Eryx — for worship. It shows the Madonna 
 and Cliild holding three ears of corn. See G. Pitre, FfsiL' Patronali 
 in Sicilia, and the Corriere della Sera, Milan, 16 August 191c. 
 
 ■* For the Demeter of Phigalia and Venus Erycina at Psophis, see 
 i'ausanias, viii.
 
 Ceppo and Befana 295 
 
 movement may have touched, and for a time held, 
 the valley of the Arno, and new proof of this 
 temporary settlement is now at hand. The Verruca 
 of Pisa is, even etymologically, the Eryx of Psophis, 
 and of Lilybceum.^ Near b)' is the village of Buti, 
 and from their hills both these Tuscan sites look 
 down on the course of the Arno, as Psophis in 
 Arcadia does on the Aroanius. To these streams we 
 shall }'et return, for there is reason to think then- 
 names embody that of Arna, the alias of the very 
 Flora, or Venus, we are discussing. The immediate 
 question, however, rather concerns Phigalia and the 
 black Demeter. If she too appear b}- the Arno, the 
 practical identity of these goddesses may be held for 
 certain ; the one will represent the winter, the other 
 the spring, and the corn, buried or sprouting, will be 
 the bond of union between them. 
 
 The horse counts for much in the Arcadian myth. 
 Poseidon assumes this form because Demeter alread)' 
 has it : as she sits in her cave above Phigalia the 
 moody goddess retains her horse's head, though for 
 the rest a very woman. The god on the other hand, 
 though his images express a human form, is 
 worshipped as the father of the horse, the teacher of 
 horsemanship, and the patron of horse races. It 
 would seem then that this myth cannot but have 
 some connection with that of the centaurs, whether 
 on the side of the goddess or that of the god. and in 
 ' E. Pais, of', fit., pp. in- 15.
 
 296 Florence Past and Present 
 
 fact the story goes on to say that when the centaurs, 
 fleeing from the Lapithi, reached the caves of Malea, 
 Poseidon took under his protection those whom 
 slaughter had spared:^ clearly he who had "l-TrTrev^ 
 as his surname could do no less. And his consort — 
 Demeter with the horse's head, herself a kind of 
 centaur, though by transposition of parts — does she 
 deny her kind ? Perhaps in Greece, though even 
 there the argument is but that of silence. But 
 suppose her the darker form of Venus Er\xina,"- and 
 follow her in this character to the Tuscan Er\'x at the 
 Verruca. Below that singular hill, and close to the 
 x^rno that bounds it on the south, lies the village ot 
 San Giovanni alia Vena. Here they work clay and 
 burn it in many forms, and among the toys turned 
 out from the kiln in hundreds and thousands for the 
 village markets and fairs of Tuscany, a constant t_\pe, 
 even to-day, is that of the horseman who is all horse 
 and only partly man. He does not bestride his 
 steed, for he has no legs ; he is one with his horse 
 from the waist downwards. That the horse is com- 
 plete, head and all, may indeed separate this t\-pe 
 sharply from that of the centaur as he appears in 
 classic art, yet only to bring it nearer that of the 
 
 ^ Apollodorus, 2. 
 
 - The Temple of Venus Genetiix at Rome had a votive ofleiing in 
 the form of a sini;ular eentaur : a horse with human fore-feet. Pliny, 
 N.H., viii. 42. This seems to have been an early fancy. See Dennis, 
 Cities of Etriina, ii. 164. Is it possible that in our Tuscan e.xample 
 the front feet of the horse are really meant to be human, i.e. those of 
 his rider ?
 
 Ceppo and Befana 299 
 
 Phigalian cave, the Demeter who, of the horse she 
 once was, retained alone the significant head. The 
 figures made under the Verruca are probably the 
 centaur in his local Tuscan type, and may possibl}' 
 derive from a Greek tradition more ancient and 
 persistent than that which has found expression in 
 the works of famous sculptors. These artists may 
 indeed be supposed to have selected what best suited 
 them from among the many forms which earh' fancy 
 had conceived and primitive art embodied. 
 
 Pursuing this matter of the centaur, yet another 
 alias of the black Demeter offers herself to our 
 attention in the dark Hecate, the Diana of the 
 infernal regions.^ The two are practically indis- 
 tinguishable, especiall}- at the Compitalia, for the 
 cross-roads were definitely sacred to Diana, and she 
 must certain 1\- be taken into account when we try 
 to understand all that was meant by the Mania who 
 held her place there. Is it so strange then to find 
 that when the evil spirit appears at the cross-roads of 
 Florence popular fancy gives him the form of a black 
 horse ? - For evidently, the same ideas which gave 
 birth to the callicant:::ari of Greece are here at work 
 to the same purpose ; all the more that sound, in 
 Tuscany as in Greece, is relied on to banish such 
 
 ^ The Venus of Psophis, and, presumably, of Zacynthus, became 
 Diana at the further cohmy (if Saguntuni. See Pliny, N.H., xvi. 
 40. 
 
 - In 1243 during the preaching of Peter of Verona. See E. 
 Bacciotti, Fircnze, iv. (1888), p. 172, and P'ineschi, Memorie, p. 98.
 
 300 Florence Past and Present 
 
 demons of the darkness. In the story just alluded 
 to, the voice of the saint, preaching by the pillar at 
 the cross-roads, at once summons and puts to flight 
 the opposing devil. In memor\' of this wonder a 
 shrine of the MadfMina is built at the opposite corner, 
 facing the pillar of the goddess, and she is the 
 Madonna della Trouiba. Even the clay centaurs made 
 at San Giovanni have a whistle in their tail. I have 
 heard these horse-whistles blown in a Tuscan church 
 during a religious ceremony, and it would seem likely 
 that the form given them indicates the dark horse- 
 man, or callicaiitzaros, as the specific devil their sound 
 is supposed to banish and defeat. But this matter of 
 noise as the remedy for evil recalls us to the Befana 
 feast, where it reigns indeed, }'et only in a climax, and 
 accompanied by rites that demand further attention. 
 
 Manni, the historian of the Befana, tells us that for 
 the night of January 5th each Florentine house 
 prepared a doll of rags or other matters in the form 
 of a woman. 1 This figure, called the Befana, had a 
 black face, was carried through the streets at dusk in 
 an irregular procession with rude torches and burning- 
 straw, to the music of horns, bells, and whistles, and 
 next day was set up in the windows before the pass- 
 ing crowd. About the Befana much popular supersti- 
 tion gathered. She lived all year in the chimney ; 
 hence her black face. On the night of January 5th 
 
 1 D. M. Manni, ht. Not. . . . dtUc Be/anr, Lucca, 1766. See 
 also the poems of Fagiuoli.
 
 Ceppo and Befana 301 
 
 she came out and visited the house for a double 
 purpose ; filHng the stockings of good children with 
 presents, and seeking the bad in their beds to wound 
 and perhaps kill them with the knife she carried at 
 her belt. Those who woke during her rounds might 
 see the walls of the house changed into cheese, or 
 find the sheets of the bed become the paste of which 
 maccaroni are made, for the Befana w^as powerful and 
 liberal. At such a moment, for the asking, an\' one 
 might himself be changed by the same power into 
 whatever form or person he desired. Such prayers 
 were not always happy in their results however, and, 
 on the whole, the Befana was as much dreaded as 
 desired, for her very favours brought danger with 
 them. Defence was sought parti)- by the light and 
 noise of her procession, parti)' by the last d)'ing 
 embers of the log kindled twelve days before on the 
 night of Yule, and partly by certain special precautions 
 used chiefly in the case of children. They must sup 
 heartily of beans on the night of fear, saying, as they 
 made the ancient sign of the coma with their fingers, 
 ' Befana va via ; tu e la tua Malia,' or more 
 explicitly : — 
 
 ' Befana, Befana, non mi bucare, 
 Ch'io ho mangiato pane e fave 
 Ed ho un corpo dure, duro, 
 Che mi suona come un tamburo.' 
 
 If the worst came to the worst, protection was sought 
 in the great kitchen mortar, or under the board used
 
 302 Florence Past and Present 
 
 for rolling and cutting the paste ; for beneath one or 
 other of these domestic utensils the threatened child 
 was thought quite safe. The fear of the Befana was 
 naturally used during the whole year by parents and 
 nurses as means of controlling the unruly. 
 
 Now, in all this, it is easy to see the survival of 
 ancient mythology and usage. The Befana doll with 
 the black face is the dark Mania figured at the 
 Compitalia in what, one supposes, must have been 
 nearly the same form. She fills children's stockings, 
 and thus shares the office of ' Santa Claus,' who, in 
 one country or another, on the 5th of December or 
 Christmas Eve, is busy in the same benevolent duty. 
 But Santa Claus is St. Nicolas, whom the latest 
 investigations of Greek Folk-Lore have identified 
 as the successor of Poseidon.^ Thus the Befana 
 appears as the consort of Poseidon, and may therefore 
 fairly be taken as a modern form of the black 
 Demeter ; declared as such even by her liberality. 
 Hers are the uncouth brood of the calliaDitzari that 
 haunt Greek chimneys, and she herself chooses the 
 same retreat in Tuscany, from which she issues once 
 a year for weal or woe. The mortar, or domestic mill, 
 and the rolling board on which the dough is worked, 
 both belong naturally to the corn-goddess ; hence 
 
 ' Lawson, op. cil., pp. 75-6. See L Asprontonte Occidmtalc of 
 Malvezzi and Zanotti-Bianco (Milano, 1910), p. 161, for a Calabrian 
 prayer to S. Nicola, which shows that he is regarded in Italy too as 
 the ' salvezza dei naviganti.' At (".alatro he shares the year with ' S. 
 Maria della Montagna,' ibid., p. 165.
 
 Ceppo and Befana 303 
 
 they are relied on as a means of averting her malice. 
 Of fire and noise there is hardly any need to speak 
 further; in Tuscany as in Greece they accompany 
 the period of danger and are supposed to keep at a 
 distance all that threatens. 
 
 Just here, however, a certain difference of practice 
 appears. In Greece the whole period of the twelve 
 
 BELLS, WHISTLE, AND TRUMPET OK tiLASS USED ON NIGHT OF BEFANA 
 
 days is full of clamour from Christmas to Epiphany 
 In Crete, on Mount Pelion, in Scyros and Macedonia 
 alike, the villages furnish companies of mummers in 
 wild and shaggy masks hung with many bells who 
 dance the danger away with a constant din. Their 
 hands are blackened, their faces hidden, and with 
 lights and this wild music they clef}- the powers of 
 darkness.^ At Florence, on the other hand, the 
 blowing of horns and whistles and the ringing of clay 
 bells, not unknown during the preceding week, is 
 
 ^ Lawson, op. cit., pp. 222-26.
 
 304 Florence Past and Present 
 
 heard chiefly on the night of the 5th of January : it is 
 the last remnant of a feast which the Befana herself 
 once graced visibly and in effig)'. Yet there are 
 signs that it was not always so. At Milan, even still, 
 Christmas Eve is the night chosen for a like clamour,^ 
 and in the country places of Tuscany masked dancing 
 of a wild sort has always tended to begin with the 
 year, so that in the smaller towns the sound of the 
 bubboli, thus shaken, fairl}' belongs to the twelve days 
 and not only to the vigil that closes them.- 
 
 But it is the masking rather than the music we 
 must attend to here. Those who have seen it in 
 Greece have no doubt of its meaning ; the maskers 
 have done their best to look Hke the callicantsari they 
 fear, and hope in such a disguise not only to escape 
 themselves, but t<j banish the threatened invasion 
 from their homes and town.-* Is there any trace that 
 at Florence too the same tactics are known and acted 
 upon ? 
 
 As we have seen, it iias been the Morentinc habit 
 to prepare for the moment of danger by a special 
 diet. A full meal is eaten, and children especially are 
 encouraged to partake plentifulK' of beans against 
 tlie coming of the Befana. This food, as is well 
 known, has certain physical conse(|uences, and the 
 verse the full-fed children sing shows that these are 
 counted on for the success of the matter in hand. 
 
 ' Kiv. del Toiiriiii^ Club, 1908, p. 556. 
 
 ^ See above, p. 267. •' Lavvson, op. ciL, p. 227.
 
 Ceppo and Befana 305 
 
 Only the children whose bodies are ' like drums ' are 
 those who may hope to escape. Now, turning to the 
 darkest form of the Greek superstition, it is re- 
 markable that among the characteristics of the 
 vampire men have long reckoned just this drum-like 
 appearance of the body. From Leo Allatius to the 
 Jesuit Pere Richard, the sequence of tradition is 
 complete, and the word rvjuTramio^ has ever been used 
 to describe the dreaded visitant.^ Nay more, and 
 closer still ; Richard reports that on one occasion, at 
 Amorgos, vampires were seen in broad daylight ' five 
 or six together in a field, feeding apparently on 
 green beans."- However this strange belief may be 
 accounted for, it is difficult not to suppose some 
 relation between it and the Florentine practice." The 
 meal of beans on Twelfth night seems to correspond 
 with the Greek mumming, and to imply imitation as 
 a means of defence ; it is the ' defensive mimicry,' not 
 of science but of mythology. Is there a fear ? Pre- 
 tend then to be what you fear and }'ou are safe. 
 
 ^ Lawson, o/'. cit., pp. 365, 370, 3S1, 3S5, 400. 
 
 "Ibid., p. 368. 
 
 ^ The vampire is not unknown in Tuscany, as appears from a 
 popular ballad ' Lo Stregone coi denti rossi.' See C. G. Leland, 
 Legends of Florence, i. p. 221 seq. Compare also Florentine saying 
 of burial-feast in the Contado, 'si mangiano le midolle ' (Pitre 
 Archivio, vi. p. 96). It may be that feasting was supposed to 
 hasten the corporal dissolution of the dead. In Greece this dissolution 
 is thought very important as it prevents the possibility of vampirism. 
 See Lawson, op. cit., pp. 401-538 passim. For notice taken of bodies 
 found entire and therefore ominous, see Lastri, Oss. Fior., vi. pp. 200, 
 201, and authorities there quoted. 
 
 U
 
 3o6 Florence Past and Present 
 
 whether from vampire or callicaiitaaros ! The bean 
 baked in the Twelfth-night cake of France and 
 Germany is no doubt a modified and attenuated form 
 of the full Florentine meal. 
 
 In common Tuscan talk'befana' means a witch, 
 and this by no freak of language, for whether the 
 matter be studied generally or in detail, mediaeval 
 witchcraft will be found to descend in a plain 
 succession from just that body of superstitious 
 beliefs and practices we have been examining. 
 Children are commonly the victims of these evil 
 arts, just as they suffered at the Compitalia, or as, 
 more lately, they trembled on Twelfth night. Crops 
 gave the witch another favourable opportunity, as 
 if she were indeed the black Demeter her mistress, 
 moody and bent on mischief.^ But the infernal 
 Diana is still more distinctly seen in the dark 
 succession. Hers are the cross-roads where the 
 dead might be met, and whither witch and wizard 
 repaired by night to work their spells.^ Hers is even 
 the name, ' Diana Dea Paganorum,' which appears 
 in the Dccrctuvi as that of the witches' leader and 
 queen, along with the name of her second in 
 
 1 There is another point of correspondence in tlie relation of 
 Demeter and Poseidon to each other. See Miclielet, La Sorcicre 
 (Paris, 1862), p. 166, and Leland, Legends of Florence, i. (1895), 
 pp. 248-9; ii. (1896), 209 II. 
 
 - How far this may go back it is difficult to say. Offerings at 
 cross-roads to ' the great lady and her train ' were lately made in 
 Zacynthus as to Hecate ; see Lawson, op. cit., p. 170, and remember 
 connection of Zante with Florence,
 
 Ceppo and Befana 307 
 
 command, Herodias/ whose connection with Epiphany 
 and the Befana is sufficiently obvious, even without 
 reference to the fact that, as Radodese, she has 
 become the Befana of Venice.- The dread name of 
 Mania long survived in the viauies, as some French 
 witches called the wax images used in their spells : ^ 
 the name, and we may add, the very form of the 
 classic Maniae. That the Queen of the Night could 
 be liberal — was a true, though dark, Demeter — appears 
 further when she is called Alnuidia in the doctrine of 
 sorcery.* With a start, one recognises the AbiDidantia 
 of the Florence cross-roads by the market, and knows, 
 better than before, why the evil spirit chose this place 
 for his dark appearance to hear sermon ; and why, 
 over against the goddess on her pillar, was set the 
 trumpet of the Madonna's Shrine. That pillared 
 figure is the Befana, and still, to sound, fire is added 
 for her defeat, as every oven, heated sevenfold to 
 roast a Tuscan witch, can testify, even to-day ; •'• not 
 to speak of the witch-burnings of earlier times. 
 
 What is the real meaning of it all ? The log of 
 Ceppo carries us back to the first woodland life of 
 
 ' Decrctuni, p. ii. c. xxvi. qu. 12, g i. This is the earliest document 
 bearing on the subject. The passage referred to seems to have been 
 quoted from St. Augustine, which would carry these names back to 
 the fourth century. But the treatise in question is spurious. 
 
 - Manni, op. ctt., p. 16. ^ Ducange, Glossarium, s.v. 
 
 ■• Ibid., s.v. 'Abunda' and 'Diana.' 
 
 ^ Pitre, Arckivio, xii. pp. 1 23- 5, quotes contem.porary legal 
 evidence of a terrible case which occurred at Ponte a Ema near 
 Florence as late as 1893.
 
 3o8 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Tuscany ; may it not be that there, in the woods, 
 the secret is waiting that will explain these mysteries. 
 If one is to sum up the strange rites of Ceppo and 
 Befana and the days between, in Greece and at 
 Florence alike, their substance seems to lie in the 
 defiance of death under masks and on a principle of 
 imitation. Now at first, and in the woods, this was 
 just what must have been habitually done in the 
 easiest and most natural way. Death threatened the 
 hunter in two forms ; by famine in the failure to 
 procure food — that is, game — and b\- war, in the 
 onset of hostile tribes pretending rights in the same 
 hunting ground. In either case, what we may call 
 the mask was obviously the best defence. Clothed 
 in the skins of animals, copying their stealth}' move- 
 ments, the hunter best followed and secured the game 
 on which he lived. In the same mask he eluded 
 pursuit, or chose that defence in a bolder spirit to 
 defy and intimidate his human foes. Masking for 
 these purposes was at once difficult and important. 
 It had to be learnt as a fine art, and was taught to 
 bo)'s on their entr}' on manhood by the most ex- 
 perienced hunters and warriors of the tribe. The 
 initiation ceremonies of savages in many parts of the 
 world have continued to our own time relics of what 
 must have been once the universal practice.^ To the 
 
 ' For examples, see Eraser, Golden Bough, iii. pp. 422-46. Note 
 that ludere means to imitate, and gives the Ludi Compitales, originally 
 no doubt the masked dancing of this season. So also the Ludi 
 Romani of September.
 
 Ceppo and Befana 309 
 
 masks, noise of all kinds, and lights, would naturally 
 be added when the war-dance was fairly on foot, as 
 a further means of confusing the enemy and avoiding 
 the death he threatened.^ 
 
 If the supernatural be now added to the natural, 
 we have all the elements necessary to resolve the 
 problem. The magical idea, in its discovery of a 
 false cause and reliance on it as if it were true, 
 explains sufficiently the later meaning and long 
 persistence of what we are studying. The hunter's 
 training dance in which, masked and in company, he 
 mimics the game, comes to be thought of as a spell 
 to secure abundant supplies of food in the fertility of 
 the furred and feathered tribes on which the life of 
 the hunter depends, or even, in a further reach of 
 fancy, to defeat death indirectl}', yet effectually, by 
 increasing the birth-rate of the tribe itself. War, one 
 sees, becomes less dreadful to peoples convinced that 
 they hold in their own hands the secret of producing, 
 as well as training, warriors ; and, though death 
 cannot be altogether danced away, these initiation 
 ceremonies are often directed to such purpose that 
 the fear of falling in battle is almost got rid of. In 
 them, with man\- cruel accompaniments, the youth 
 'dies,' as it were by anticipation, ere he is admitted 
 to the status of a warrior and the privileges of the 
 totem society. Sometimes the totem is the weapon 
 itself that ' kills ' him, and from such ' death ' he then 
 ^ See Gideon's stratagem, Judges vii. 20.
 
 3IO Florence Past and Present 
 
 rises invulnerable. It is the wisdom of 'the old man 
 of the mountain ' in a more primitive shape, and as the 
 Assasshis woke from the paradise of their haschisch- 
 dream to affront peril fearlessly at the command of 
 that master, so the new-made warrior returned from 
 the woods convinced that the bitterness of death was 
 past, and filled with the lust of battle. On these 
 playing-fields of defensive mimicry the victories of 
 the tribe are already won, for there death is met and 
 defied by anticipation. The flexible axe of the 
 Florence Museum,^ in its close correspondence with 
 the ' darding knife ' of the Columbian savage, suggests 
 that the totem ism of weapons was known in Tuscany, 
 just as the saying, ' Happy they who change their 
 soul into that which at death they would become,' 
 collected of late from a Florentine witch,- shows that 
 the root principle of this defensive totemism is still 
 recognised here. Who can hear these words without 
 thinking of their classic parallel in Sophocles and 
 Pindar, ' Happy he that hath seen those rites ere he go 
 beneath the earth ' ? -^ The correspondence goes far 
 to complete the picture, suggesting on the one hand 
 
 ' Museo Archeologico, Sala viii, Case E, No. 15, 'Seme palco- 
 etrusco, col tagliente pieghevole .... trovato nel 1873 • • • • in una 
 tomba a ziro di Chiiisi. V. Milani, Mus. Ital., i., p. 307, nota 5.' The 
 folding back of such a blade on the neck of the victim would, one sees, 
 avoid the reality, while giving all the illusion of an actual sacrifice. 
 The axe thus meets all the conditions of a totemistic initiation rite. 
 
 - C. G. Leland, unpublished collections /£?«c.f ;//<'. 
 
 ■' Soph., /^ra^vw., 719 (I)ind.); Find., /'>-rt^;//., 137 (Bergk.); Frazer, 
 Golden Bough, iii. p. 431.
 
 Ceppo and Befana 311 
 
 that the Mysteries of Greece were but a develop- 
 ment of some earlier, ruder, initiation ceremony, 
 and on the other that Tuscany too had such rites 
 which, begun in the savage life of her woods and 
 informed b}' woodland magic, became at last and 
 definitely the mysteries of Demeter in mid-winter. 
 Were it necessary to insist further on these parallels, 
 we should find the bean, so honoured at Befana, 
 playing its part among savages to-day as the vehicle 
 of new life and safety to the initiate, in close corre- 
 spondence with the doctrine of Pythagoras.^ The 
 classic rlionibus too, as the ' bull roarer,' is still used 
 in these savage rites, and when one learns that in 
 France it is sometimes called the lonp-garo7i^\.\\Q name 
 seems ready to throw light at once on the Tuscan 
 superstition of the were-wolf and on the Roman 
 Lupercalia ; the more that the latter ceremony, 
 connected as it confessedly was with the fertility ot 
 vvomen,^ plainly belongs to the order of half natural, 
 half superstitious rites we are studying. 
 
 While points of detail such as these last touched, 
 if suggestive, are still obscure, and probably may 
 ever remain so, the general line of inheritance and of 
 
 ' For Pythagoras, see Pliny, N.H., xviii. 12, ' quoniam mortuoium 
 animae sunt in ea.' The EngHsh Morris-dance is said to mimic 'bean- 
 setting in spring (which is nothing less than the . . . ancient 
 pagan invocation of the earth-spirit.)' See the weekly Spectator of 
 July 24lh, 1909. The 'hobby horse' of the dance is perhaps the 
 English callicantzaros. 
 
 ^ Littre, Dictiontiaire,' i.\. ' loup-garou. ' 
 
 ^ Fowler, Roman Festivals, p. 320.
 
 3 1 2 Florence Past and Present 
 
 successive modification in these strange rites is pretty 
 certain. We have to do here with usages natural to 
 men of the woods, and receiving from them their 
 first development under a magical interpretation. 
 In course of time, as the woods show clearings, and 
 as culture begins in the neighbourhood of the rising 
 villages and towns, these traditional customs find a 
 new application among communities become, at least 
 in some degree, agricultural. The fear of the farmer 
 represents to him the possible failure of his crop, 
 and is above all natural in the depth of winter, when 
 the fields are bare and the life the}- hide still doubt- 
 ful. Beyond the death of the corn lies his own as a 
 certain consequence of famine in the failure of the 
 crops he has sown. A poignant personal fear knocks 
 at his heart and leads him to think of his dead, 
 whom he must join soon if his corn do not rise again. 
 Till the fatal days are over, all manner of underworld 
 terrors take shape in his mind informed by this fear. 
 There is a dread alternative before him of certain 
 return from beneath ; either the corn must spring 
 again to make his heart glad, or the dead will come 
 back in more or less material, more or less human, 
 shape to drag him down t(j the shades. 
 
 Hence the old magic with a new meaning, or at 
 least a new application. The old masks, the old 
 dances, the old fires and music, still mark the dead 
 season, but their minnming has now another purpose. 
 The\' serve to keep up the farmer's heart at its
 
 Ceppo and Befana 313 
 
 lowest ; he trusts them to awake the sun to his duty, 
 to banish the spectres that cold and fear have raised, 
 to secure the springing of the crop, and so keep death 
 at a distance. This transference of rites from the 
 hunter to his successor the farmer, impossible did 
 either truly understand the facts, becomes easy and 
 natural as soon as these facts of nature and of ritual 
 receive a magical interpretation. The hunter had 
 elaborated his mysteries in the woods in a faith 
 which secured him from at least the fear of death. 
 In presence of the same fear why should not the 
 farmer, his successor and heir in a like faith, continue 
 the practice and still find it successful ? The rem- 
 nants of his rites survive in the usages of Ceppo 
 and Befana, which thus continue to our own day 
 what la}- behind all Tuscan farming, even the first ; 
 the woodland life and its issue, the magic of the 
 woods.
 
 CHAPTEE XIII 
 
 MID-LENT AND EASTER 
 
 Mid-Lent at Florence is the day of the scala^ a 
 characteristic local usage still observed by the people. 
 These ladders appear in different forms ; sometimes 
 they are cut out of cardboard and chalked, so 
 that the children who carry them can easily transfer 
 the sign to the clothes of the heedless ; some- 
 times many appear side by side on a thin sheet of 
 perforated paper sin-mounted by more clever scissor- 
 work in a floral pattern, ready to be pinned to the 
 skirts of the passer-by.^ Sometimes the ladder 
 inspires even the pastr)'-cook, and lends its form to 
 various kinds of biscuit set for sale in the shop 
 windows. When tlic children have succeeded in 
 ]:)laying successfull\- the trick of the day, they run 
 off, mocking their victim — who is mostly an old 
 woman — with the traditional cry L"ha ! L'hae — 
 ' you 've got it ! ' 
 
 The background of this custom yields material 
 which helps to exj^lain it, and to show its relation to 
 
 ' See specimens in the Museum of Ellmogiaphy, Florence. 
 .314
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 315 
 
 similar observances in other places. It is said that 
 during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it was 
 the habit here to mark the day by dressing a large 
 doll in the form of an old woman, which was stuffed 
 with nuts and dried fruit, and tied to a ladder. Thus 
 prepared, the doll was carried in triumph to the 
 Mercato Nuovo and sawn in two ; the children 
 scrambling for what fell out.^ Of the complete cere- 
 mony of ' sawing the old woman ' some details have 
 survived in one place, some in another. Naples and 
 Calabria keep the saw to mark the day, while 
 Florence retains the ladder, but the rite was evidently 
 the same in each case, and represents a widespread 
 custom.- 
 
 If we accept the view which makes the ' old 
 woman ' represent the past )'ear, it is pretty plain 
 that the ceremony just described is appropriate to 
 one period only, and must once have been performed 
 at a fixed date, representing, as it did, the death of 
 the year. Nor should it be difficult to discover, for 
 Florence at any rate, what that date was. At present 
 the day of Mid-Lent varies between the limits of 
 February 24th and March 30th. Now within this 
 period falls the 24th of March, which we know was, 
 till 1749, the last day of the year at Florence.'^ If 
 we suppose what is most probable, that the ' sawing 
 
 ^ Pitre, Archh'io, iv. 294. 
 
 - For correspondences in other countries, see Frazer, op. cit., ii. 
 pp. 86 seq. 
 
 ■* Bigazzi, Iscrizioni^ p. 65.
 
 3i6 Florence Past and Present 
 
 of the old woman ' once took place re^ularl}- at this 
 definite date, then the ceremony becomes intelligible, 
 and is seen to relate itself naturally to what we have 
 already observed. The Florentine year opened with 
 the equinox of spring. The last day of the old year 
 was clearly the time to bid farewell to the fear oi 
 winter and the winter cold. In the ' old woman ' we 
 see the final appearance of the Matiia or Befaua of 
 January as it were in her dotage, yet still in part 
 beneficent and bearing gifts, though of a dry and 
 dying sort, as she herself is ready to be done away. 
 Even the children's trick in the streets, which survives 
 to-day, appears as just that bitter scorn of age, 
 especially in woman, which has always been a 
 Florentine characteristic.^ ' Age is upon you,' is 
 the sense of the ' L'ha ! L'hae,' ' and the fruits of 
 age, and of the past, are all that \'Ou can hope to 
 yield.' 
 
 According to the Christian ecclesiastical Calendar 
 twenty days now separate Mid-Lent from Easter, but 
 if the ' sawing of the old woman ' once fell regularly 
 on the last day of the year, and if that day was the 
 24th of March, it is not so certain that the ceremony 
 now to be described — that of Easter Saturday — may 
 not have once closely followed on the other, and been 
 observed with equal regularity on the 25th of March, 
 the Florentine New Year's Day. Occasionally, as 
 every one knows, it falls on that very date still, and 
 
 ' See above, pp. SS-9.
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 317 
 
 there are reasons for thinking it may originally have 
 known no variation from it. These reasons will 
 appear as we study the feast itself 
 
 The peculiarity of Easter at Florence is certainly to 
 ,be found in the Easter car then kindled, and this 
 strange fire of Easter Saturday seems, even at first 
 sight, a renewal in other form of the ceppo that 
 burns at Christmas : a thing hardly Christian, almost 
 certainly derived from pagan worship. To it surely 
 may be applied, with double emphasis, the words of 
 the old ecclesiastical historian when he says : — ' The 
 Saviour and his Apostles have enjoined us by no law 
 to keep this feast . . . the Apostles had no thought 
 of appointing festival days, but of promoting a life of 
 blamelessness and piety. And it seems to me that 
 the feast of Easter has been introduced into the 
 Church from some old usage ; just as many other 
 customs have been established.' ^ If the feast itself is 
 open to such criticism, what shall be said of the rite 
 with which Florence celebrates it ? Surely one may 
 find a strange irony in the fact tiiat the Easter Fire 
 is first kindled in the ancient Church dedicated to 
 those very ' Apostles ' to whom the appeal just quoted 
 was made ! 
 
 At the close of the eight o'clock Mass, said within 
 walls where the winter cold still lingers, a spark is 
 struck from flint and steel with some ceremony, and 
 the candle lit and set in the processional lantern of 
 
 ^ Socrates, Eccles. Hist., v. 22.
 
 3i8 Florence Past and Present 
 
 wrought bronze which a boy in training for the priest- 
 hood is chosen to bear. The clergy form in front, the 
 people follow, and so the light makes its way from the 
 Church of the Apostoli along the Borgo, across the 
 Piazza della Signoria, and by the Badia to the 
 Cathedral, which is reached about nine o'clock. A 
 crowd gathers about the lantern where it now stands 
 near the first pillar of the nave : they are there to 
 kindle the tapers they have brought, and so to carry 
 the blessed fire each to his own home.^ 
 
 Meanwhile the team of white Val di Chiana oxen, 
 enormous, magnificent this day in scarlet trappings, 
 and carrying fans of flowers between their horns, 
 have already brought the great car from its house on 
 the Prato to the Piazza, where they have left it stand- 
 ing midway between the Cathedral and the Baptistery. 
 The car is a high and hollow structure of dark wood, 
 set on wheels, and prepared for the ceremony by the 
 festoons of fireworks — a continuous squib many )'ards 
 long choked at intervals with bursting charges of 
 powder — and the rosettes of paper flowers with which 
 it is hung. A large Catherine wheel, set horizontally, 
 crowns the whole. 
 
 Within the Church, the fire brought there in the 
 mcjrning has served betimes to kindle the Paschal 
 candle. The clergy of the Cathedral are come in 
 pomp from the Baptistery and begin the Mass of 
 
 ' ' In .Sabbato Pasch;c, extincto veteri, novus ii;nis benedicatur, et 
 per pophiin dividatur,' Leo iv., Hovi. de Ciira Past., c. 7 (855). See 
 also G. Villani, Cron., i. 60.
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 
 
 319 
 
 midday. At the Gloria, a deacon touches with the 
 sacred fire a squib called the colojnl)i)ia, which rushes 
 hissing from the altar along a wire stretched in the 
 nave, and thus reaches the car by wa\' of the west 
 door and the open Piazza. For a moment nothing 
 seems to happen, save the recoil of the messenger, 
 
 EASTF.R-CAK IN ITS HOUSE ON THE PRAIO 
 
 which sometimes returns along the wire as it came. 
 Then a thread o( blue smoke curls upward from the 
 car, followed by great cloud-bursts that rise and drift 
 away as, one after another, the choked charges of the 
 wreathed scjuib explode with deafening sound. The 
 startled pigeons of the square circle overhead ; women 
 in the crowd scream ; the bells ring out again from 
 the Campanile, and the massed people move off to
 
 320 Florence Past and Present 
 
 discuss, in the street or the restaurant, the success or 
 failure of the fire. On Easter Saturday the country 
 sends its thousands to Florence for no other purpose. 
 
 Regarding this strange fire, the popular tradition 
 runs that it is a ceremony brought from the East by 
 Pazzo, the eponymous founder of the Florentine house 
 of the Pazzi. He is said to have been a Crusader, 
 and the first to plant the cross on the walls of 
 Jerusalem. Some say he brought the fire back in his 
 hands all the way from the Holy Land ; others that 
 what he carried was the stone still used in the Church 
 of the Apostoli to obtain it.^ In memory of this 
 prowess, the car of Easter Saturday used to pass from 
 its first position to another at the corner of the Corso 
 beside the Pazzi Palace. Three years ago it went 
 instead to the new Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, but 
 still received the fire for this second explosion from 
 the Canto dei Pazzi by a fresh colonibiiux travelling 
 on a wire stretched along the line of the Corso and 
 the Via degli Speziali. In 1909 a tragedy happened, 
 and this year the second explosion has been forbidden 
 by the authorities. 
 
 As a matter of fact, however, the Pazzi had nothing 
 to do with the fire ceremony till about 13 10.'' Their 
 then contemporary, Villani, distinguishes the cere- 
 mony itself from the care of the Pazzi who had come 
 
 ' Or stones, for I believe there are three. One or other, or all, are 
 said to come from the Holy Sepulchre. 
 
 " Letter of Dr. R. Davidsolm to Syndic of Florence. See 
 Corriere delta Sera, 5 June 1909.
 
 X
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 
 
 0^3 
 
 to support and encourage it ; adding that it must be 
 supposed as old as the first Florentine Christianity, if 
 not older ; for he has already said : — ' contuttoche i 
 Fiorentini di nuovo fossono divenuti Cristiani, ancora 
 teneano molti costumi del Paganesimo.' ^ It would 
 seem safest, therefore, to forget the popular tradition 
 of Florence save in two points : that the fire cere- 
 mony was an importation from the East, and that it 
 had something to do with the walls of an eastern 
 city. Both these points will be found justified by the 
 facts of the case. 
 
 Looking then without prejudice at the rite itself, it 
 seems tolerabh- certain that the car of the present 
 day has taken the place of what was once a simple 
 fire. Only two years ago, I happened to spend 
 Easter Saturday in the village of Settimo, and 
 noticed how at noon, when the faint bells of 
 Florence announced the explosion of the car, children 
 were lighting and tending a bonfire in front of the 
 village church. So then it must once have been in 
 the capital too ; the countr\' is an excellent museum 
 for the stud}- of the older, perhaps the original, 
 forms of usage which Florence has altered or lost. 
 
 Nor can this fire have been single, or have burnt 
 alone. As it is. the car receives the spark that 
 kindles it from another fire ; that which burns within 
 the church, beside, or upon, the Christian altar. But 
 we are seeking a use older than the Church or 
 
 ^ G. Villani, Cron., i. 60.
 
 324 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Christianity, and must suppose two fires equally 
 primitive and pagan ; the one handing on the spark 
 to the other by some ritual device of which the 
 actual colombina is the development and carries the 
 reminiscence. What can this device have been ? 
 
 The gunpowder now used to send the spark on its 
 way along a level wire is of course not to be thought 
 of; its use will not carry us back farther than at 
 most, the fifteenth century.^ But surely gravitation, 
 older than the world, and serviceable always, might 
 meet the purpose, were only the pyres arranged on 
 different levels so that a duly descending cord might 
 form the connection between them. Nor is this mere 
 fancy ; we find such a device in use still, even after 
 gunpowder was known to Europe. At St. Peter's of 
 Rome in 1493 a white dove with a glory set about 
 it was arranged to slide down a cord stretched 
 from the roof of the Basilica to the high altar.- That 
 the fire the clove carried once caught the cord ; that 
 the dove once fell, and so died without doing its 
 office, is a mere accidental detail ; principle and 
 practice are alike assured in this example, which fully 
 justifies our supposition. 
 
 Another instance of the same device carries the 
 
 ^ Tlie travelling tirework at Florence is said to date from the 
 Pontificate of Leo x. ; the first half of the sixteenth century. See G. 
 Conti, Firenze Vecchia, p. 535. 
 
 - Muratori, Rer. It. SS. (ed. 1909), t. x.vxii. p. i. Fasc. 4, p. 424. 
 I am greatly indebted for notice of this example to my friend Mr. 
 W. Ashburner. See on this subject J. R. Schmidt, De Cohimbis in 
 Ecclesid Greed et l.alind usilatis, Helmstadii, 171 1.
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 327 
 
 matter beyond Christianity, and shows how a sliding 
 fall, arranged as we have supposed, might even serve 
 to produce the fire needed to kindle the lower pyre. 
 On occasion, in Kumaon, a province of India on the 
 slopes of the western Himalaya, a strange rite takes 
 place called the Barat. A grass rope is stretched 
 from the brow of a cliff to the valley below.^ On the 
 rope a wooden saddle is arranged to travel by 
 gravity, and on the saddle a man sits strapped, with 
 weights hung to his feet to increase the friction. As 
 he shoots down his airy way, the saddle smokes, 
 ready to burst into flame : one sees how easily it 
 might be used to kindle a load of straw set to break 
 the shock of the arrival. 
 
 Suspicion may attach to an example brought to 
 Tuscany from the Himalaya, but none need be felt 
 when Tuscany itself produces a similar use. At 
 Empoli, till 1862, each Corpus Domini da\' as it 
 recurred saw a singular ceremony in which an ass 
 ' flew ' from the tower of the principal Church.- A 
 rope was stretched from the top of the Campanile 
 to the corner of the Piazza below. On this travelled 
 what may be called a saddle, yet on)}- because 
 fastened by girths to the ass's back. It was, in 
 fact, a wooden beam, bearing wings of wood where 
 it met the shoulders of the animal, and furnished 
 
 1 Frazer, Golden Boug/i (2 ed.), iii. pp. 104-5, ^^ho refers lo 
 North Indian Notes and Queries. 
 
 - De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, ii. p. 362.
 
 3^* 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 beside with pulleys arranged to travel on the cord by 
 which the ass accomplished his ' flight.' Thus fur- 
 nished, friction was nearly eliminated and the 
 production of fire made impossible, but if we may 
 suppose the rite in ruder form — the rope merely 
 passed through the holes of the ordinary saddle- 
 bridges — fire might result at Empoli as easily as it 
 still does in the Barat of Kumaon, and under the 
 same natural power. It may be that this, or some- 
 thing like it, was once the means used to kindle the 
 second pyre at Florence. 
 
 As to the first, existing usage is enough to show, 
 in no uncertainty, what primitive practice was ; for 
 the habit of earl)' time is continued even now in the 
 use of flint and steel. Two ways of firemaking may 
 be called primitive ; fire is struck from the stone, as 
 it still is on Easter Saturday in Florence ; or it is 
 rubbed from wood by friction as savages still obtain 
 it. Here then a new probability appears to strengthen 
 our late supposition. The first pyre we know was 
 kindled b\' percussion, is it not natural and likely 
 that friction may have been used to light the second } 
 Once, one fancies, the descending cord may have 
 been used as the actual means of getting fire. Then, 
 just as firemaking b\- friction has everywhere tended 
 to die out before the greater convenience of percussion, 
 so in this rite while the first pyre was still lighted 
 from the stone, the descending cord survived only as 
 a means of carr\ing the fire, already kindled, from
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 329 
 
 the one pyre to the other. Finally, with the invention 
 of gunpowder, the cord fell to its present level, and 
 now persists in the form of a wire, only that it may 
 direct the flight and secure the result. 
 
 Such a probability grows when this Florentine rite 
 is considered in its relation to primitive religion. 
 Belief of a religious kind early gathered about the stone 
 and the tree. We have noted this fact at Florence, 
 but the rite now under consideration would seem to 
 supply a reason for this faith. Nothing is more 
 wonderful than fire, and at its first discovery nothing 
 could be more fit to impress the mind of man with 
 the idea of a hidden and mysterious power ready, it 
 might be, to harm, )'et on the whole beneficial to the 
 human race. Now men had fire either by percussion 
 or by friction, from stones or from trees ; and most 
 naturally then the stone and the tree were thought of 
 as its source : the dwelling-places of the hidden Power 
 that only waited evocation. The p}Te itself seems a 
 ritual presentation of both, for its material comes 
 from the tree, and its form repeats that of the pointed 
 stone, or, as we may say, the pyramid. If then, as 
 seems almost certain, present ritual may be taken as 
 proving for primitive Florence the existence of two 
 pyres, set and lit at the Spring Equinox, nothing 
 could be more rituall)- significant than what we have 
 supposed : that the one was kindled by percussion 
 and the other by friction, in what would be a further 
 affirmation of the tree and stone as the twin sources
 
 330 Florence Past and Present 
 
 of fire, the dwelling-places of the goddess and the 
 god. 
 
 At Florence, as we have seen/ the Decumanus was 
 the ritual road associated, especially at its double 
 cross-roads, with just this tree and stone, the signs 
 and, as once men thought, the habitations of the 
 goddess and the god. These signs of the indwelling 
 power we have found again in the rite of Easter 
 Saturday, and it is worth notice how, even under 
 Christianity, that rite was not thought complete till 
 the car had found its place on the ver}- line in question 
 at the corner of the Via del Proconsolo and the 
 Corso. Tradition sa)-s it came here because of the 
 adjoining Palazzo Pazzi. It is more natural to see in 
 this the original site, sought still even after Christianity 
 had drawn the first part of the ceremony to the space 
 before the Cathedral. The interest of the Pazzi in 
 the Easter Fire would thus appear as the easy conse- 
 quence of their having acquired property, and built 
 their house, close to the original scene of the 
 ceremony.- The legend that they began it, which 
 we know to be false, may yet represent the abiding 
 
 ^ See above, p. 122. 
 
 " Note however that the Pazzi held property that extended along 
 tlie Borgo towards the Church of San Piero. They were reckoned of 
 the Sesto of San Piero, and had much to do, even in the twelfth 
 century, with the Hospital there. As iate as 1628 this family 
 helped to pay for the restoration of the Church. See G. Lami, 
 Memorabilia, pp. 127, 1097-8, etc. Eacciotti, Firenze Illitstrata, 
 1S87, vol. iv. p. 173. Can it have been that this fire was once 
 kindled in Piazza S. Piero, the eastern compitnm ?
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 331 
 
 popular sense that here, by the houses of the Pazzi, 
 lay indeed the root of the whole matter. 
 
 Reading the rite thus — as a very ancient fire- 
 ceremony — one sees a new probability : that just as 
 the ceppo burned at the winter solstice, so this spring 
 fire would find its most natural date where we have 
 ventured to set it, on March 25th. For this day not 
 only opened the Florentine year, but was the Spring 
 Equinox according to the Julian Calendar. The sun 
 is evidently the commanding factor here. In 
 primitive belief the fire, latent in wood and stone 
 alike, had value above all because it was the upper 
 fire manifesting itself on earth. Dul)' evoked in 
 solemn ritual, it furnished, in this derivation and 
 correspondence, the sun-charm relied on as a means 
 of controlling the seasons. Hence at once the 
 Decumanus as the scene of this rite — for such a road 
 repeated on earth the dail}- course of the sun from 
 east to west — and the Equinox as its natural date ; 
 marking as this day did a critical moment in the 
 solar path among the signs of the Zodiac. 
 
 To bring the tree and the stone into this corre- 
 spondence with the sun is to raise another question, 
 which early man must in one way or another have 
 attempted to solve. Obviously the sun was on fire ; 
 plain))' fire abode also in wood and stone. If men 
 believed that fire was one and the same wherever 
 found, they must often have wondered by what means 
 the fire came from above to these its earthly dwelling-
 
 332 Florence Past and Present 
 
 places. Two reasons seem to account for the 
 undeniable fact that the fowls of the air were soon 
 thought of as likely go-betweens in this great matter. 
 Birds fly out of sight at times, but choose trees as 
 their home. Certain birds have the colour of fire in 
 their plumage, and habits of boring wood with their 
 bills, and tapping stones in a wa}' to suggest the 
 action of man when he elicits fire by percussion 
 or friction. Might it not be that they had brought 
 from heaven and hidden in its secret place the fire 
 that man found sleeping there ? 
 
 The universality of this belief is indeed beyond 
 question. In the myth of Suy-jin, the Chinese 
 Prometheus, this sage, walking in heaven, sees there a 
 tree which a bird is pecking while fire issues from it ; ^ 
 an evident discovery of what men once thought the 
 secret of the fire they had learnt to bring forth. So 
 too the Fjort of the African Congo have a fire tale in 
 which the woodpecker pla)'s the chief part, boring 
 heaven with his bill to let fire through.- The same 
 bird enjoyed equal honour among the Greeks and 
 Romans ; one must believe for the same reason. 
 Suidas quotes a Cretan inscription which runs : — 
 ' Here lies the woodpecker who was Zeus.' Now 
 Zeus, etymologically the equivalent of Jupiter, means 
 ' the bright one,' and as Jove was worshipped on the 
 
 ^ E. B. Tylor, Researches, 1865, p. 252. Note tlie alleged derivation 
 of Prometheus from the Sanscrit Pramantha, the fire-drill. 
 
 '^ R. E. Dennett, I- oik -Lore of the Fjort (London, 189S), 
 p. 7, etc.
 
 COUNTRY PROCESSION, WITH ANGIOLETTO, ENTERING SIGNA
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 335 
 
 Roman Capitol as Fagutalis, the god n:iust plainly 
 have been conceived of by his worshippers as the 
 fire of heaven immanent in the tree. The wood- 
 pecker bore his name, then, because it was thought to 
 bring him from his heavenly to his earthly abode. 
 
 Nor did this belief apply only to trees, it was ex- 
 tended to those stones which were evidently the other 
 dwelling-place of fire. So at least it would seem 
 natural to interpret the Jupiter Lapis, the mysterious 
 ' avis sanqualis ' of Pliny ,^ and the tale in which Livy 
 records how this bird was seen to strike with its bill 
 the sacred stone of Crustumerium.- The stone was 
 sacred as the residence of the bright god, and the 
 bird venerable as the messenger of heaven that 
 brought him there. By an easy development of the 
 original idea the bird comes to be a hierogh'ph indi- 
 cating, where it is set, the presence of supernatural 
 power. So it appears on the sacred axes of Crete, 
 and is seen perched on the pillars that represented 
 the tree in early cults. 
 
 In the Val d'Arno birds certainly play their part in 
 the great spring festival. On Easter Monday at 
 Signa little children of two and three }'ears old ride 
 into Church on the asses that bear the Easter offer- 
 ings of oil to the Pievano. A small finch is put into 
 the last child's hand, and presentl)' flies free to escape 
 by the Church door. Its flight is closely watched, 
 
 ^ N.H., ix. 7. For woodpecker, see ilnd., x. iS, etc. 
 - Livy, xli. 13.
 
 1 iff 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 for it is believed to carry the fortune of the season 
 and year to the person or the house on which it 
 first alights. At Florence on Easter Saturday, the 
 
 PROCESSION FROM PIEVE CROSSES PIAZZA OF 
 
 SIGNA ; FORTUNE-TELLER AND HER TABLE 
 
 IN FOREGROUND 
 
 messenger that travels along the wire out of the 
 Cathedral door to the car is still called the colouibiiia. 
 Once it must have been shaped as a dove. Earlier 
 still, as at Rome in 1493, a living pigeon was probably
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 337 
 
 used ; and even yet, as at Signa, this flight is 
 auspicious, and is watched to read the fortune of 
 the year. 
 
 We know already the reason, remote it may be yet 
 certain, which dictates this practice. The bird is the 
 messenger of heaven to the tree and stone ; to the 
 pyre then, which represents both. At Signa, the finch 
 chosen ma\' once have been the cardcllino, the gold- 
 finch with its head of fire. At Florence the fire is 
 evident, as the colovibina burns its way along the wire. 
 And the bird whose name it bears — the dove — was 
 not this too marked by nature for the same office ? 
 The ' woodpecker who was Zeus ' owed this title to 
 his red crest as well as to his habit of drilling trees. 
 The dove, no less than he, wears the colours of the 
 fire in his changeful neck and coral feet ; the fire that 
 sleeps in the ashes,^ and shines above, shot with the 
 green of summer foliage. These are fancies, but not 
 of to-day ; they fed the minds of early men. In 
 Greece Zeus dwelt at Dodona, in the principal tree of 
 a grove hung with bells of sounding brass, hard by a 
 fountain that rose and fell with the sun and where a 
 fire slept, for its water could kindle torches. The 
 bird of this grove was the dove, which lent its name 
 to the priestesses, and all Greece sought Dodona as 
 the chief oracle of the god. So the country still 
 pours in to Florence to know the fate of the year ; to 
 
 ^ Tre'Xeta, a wild dove, is derived from the adjective TreWds, 
 ash-grey. 
 
 Y
 
 ^^S Florence Past and Present 
 
 learn it from the colombiiia, while the bells ring out 
 above, and living authentic doves, wearing the old 
 colours, sweep startled across the sky. These doves 
 of the Duomo are still favourites which none may 
 harm in a land where birds are ruthlessly killed. And 
 this then because once they were so much more ; 
 held for true fire-birds, messengers of a bright heaven 
 that stooped, and a heavenly power that drew near to 
 answer and to bless. 
 
 Was Zeus then, or Jupiter — to give him his Italian 
 name — the god of this Florentine feast ? Names are 
 of little consequence in religion as compared with 
 ideas ; their meaning is mainly local, relative and his- 
 torical. To place and time and circumstance we 
 must return then, ere we can find the answer to such 
 a question. 
 
 The time proper to such a rite as that of Easter 
 Saturday has seemed to be the Equinox of Spring ; 
 the more that Florence then began her year. Now 
 in Greece this Equinox was the date sacred to 
 Cybele, when the feast of the goddess and of her 
 partner Attis were celebrated : the mourning for Attis 
 mingled with the succeeding pomp of the Hilaria} 
 Beyond this general and obvious agreement there are 
 curious details of belief and ritual which serve to 
 connect the Florentine feast with that which Greece 
 and the East observed. 
 
 The goddess herself forms the best point of depar- 
 
 ' Macrob. , Sat., i. 2i.
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 339 
 
 ture here. Cybele is the Semitic Gibel/ and means 
 the mountain. Further examination of the name 
 shows that its root lies in the Hebrew gabal (73J^ to 
 twist as a rope, from which comes the derivative 
 gebid ('?13J), the Hne by which boundaries are meas- 
 ured.- The divinity, then, conceived to attach to 
 the hill belongs to it in its office as a dividing water- 
 shed and limit. The idea of water is indeed so surely 
 implied here that the Semitic Cybele becomes in 
 Greek Rhea, in whom we have no difficult}- in finding 
 the poai wKeavov, the vast streams thought of as 
 bounding on every side the habitable earth. ^ Simi- 
 larl}' we find ra Ki'/3eAu upij, very indefinite and 
 mystical,'* as it were ' the utmost bound of the ever- 
 lasting hills,' or that mountain of Kaf which the xArabs 
 still believe encompasses the world. 
 
 But the boundary is not necessarily the circle of 
 the earth, nor always so absolute and all embracing. 
 It may be as narrow as a city wall or the limits of a 
 single estate or field, but, larger or smaller, it is ever 
 the enceinte, where, naturall}% the mother goddess 
 shows her power and does her office. If her name 
 spells the mountain that encompasses, her head 
 wears the mural crown, the civic boundary that 
 
 1 Diod. Sic, iii. 58. 
 
 - Gesenius, Thesaurus, s.v., cf. also the Latin funis and finis, and 
 Corssen's derivation of Janus from dividere — quasi Divanus. This 
 would make him again the consort of Cybele on the Decumanus with 
 which we know he was associated. 
 
 •* Plato, Cratylus. 
 
 •* Daremberg et .Saglio, Dictioiuiairt, s.v. 'Cybele.'
 
 ;40 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 encloses ; and hers is the stone, pointed like a 
 hill, that marks the limits of lands. She is the 
 mother, and therefore has a male companion, inferior 
 at first yet essential and ever growing in impor- 
 
 TREF.S, NATURAL AND KM UAL, AT MADONNA DEL SASSO 
 
 tance till at last he assumes her place.^ He is the 
 
 tower of the mural crown, the tree that, with the stone, 
 
 secures the rural bouiularx'. The tree of Attis was in 
 
 fact as eminent at the Ililaria as the stone of Cybele. 
 
 ' In virtue of this giowtli the husl>an(l is often the son. Thus Zeus 
 grew as the,' son ' of Rhea.
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 
 
 341 
 
 It were easy to find the tree and the stone alike 
 reverenced still at the spring festival of the Madonna 
 del Sasso in the hills above Fiesole. But we must 
 not wander from the strict Equinox, nor from the rite 
 of Easter Saturday. If the Decumanus was indeed, 
 
 STONE OF MADONNA IN SANCTIARY ALTAR 
 
 as seems likely, the oriy;inal site of the fire ceremony, 
 the ideas represented b\' the name of C\'bele might 
 well demand expression here. We have already 
 supposed that this road was originally drawn as a 
 boundary between the lands of the two adjacent 
 villages.^ A line or cord would naturall}' be used, 
 
 ^ See above, p. 107.
 
 342 Florence Past and Present 
 
 and with some solemnity, when the division was made. 
 What one is led to fancy then is a yearly ceremony 
 in which that solemn measurement w^as repeated in a 
 rite that stretched the cord once more along the 
 Decumanus, now become a street. The mother and 
 protectress of cities would be naturally inxoked on 
 such an occasion, and the cord made to run between 
 her pyre and the fire of her male companion. The 
 spring Equinox, which we know to have been sacred 
 to Cybele, would naturally fix the date of the 
 ceremony. Thus a new and plausible meaning might 
 attach to the cord still used for the colombina ; it 
 would be — wire though it now is — a survival and 
 successor of the measuring line — the gebul — that 
 made Florence what she has become. 
 
 Villani sa}-s that Florence was founded under the 
 third degree of Aries,^ which corresponds sufficiently 
 with the date of Cybele's feast. The twenty-fifth of 
 March was thus the birthday, may it not also have 
 been the name-day, of the city which for so long 
 began her year with the Equinox of Spring ? The 
 name of Florence does, in fact, open a new view of the 
 matter we have in hand. 
 
 Of the two villages which came to the agreement 
 and division just mentioned, the Villa Arnina was 
 probably the more important. This name, now lost, 
 survives in that of the Arno, and also belonged to 
 another stream, the Amine, which drains and waters 
 
 ^ G. Villani, Cron., iii. I.
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 343 
 
 the south-west corner of Tuscany.^ Now the xA.rnine 
 has become the Flora, just as Arnina changed its 
 name to Florentia. Rivers as well as hills tend to 
 bear divine names, and to perpetuate them. Hence 
 a probability that Florence is called after the goddess 
 Flora, whose earlier Ftruscan name seems to have 
 been Arna. Can this Arna, or Flora, have been 
 simply Cybele in a local alias, and perhaps in a 
 further development? 
 
 Cybele was the goddess of boundaries, but her 
 name, the Mater Magna, shows that the boundary 
 had importance because of what it enclosed and pro- 
 tected. If her enceinte be taken as that of the field, 
 then, at her feast in spring, she must have held the 
 place of a goddess of vegetation ; the mother of the 
 springing corn, the green mother or Chloris of the 
 Greeks, the Flora of the Latins. At the Equinox this 
 peculiar power of nature was seen in every field with 
 the springing corn. The winter was past and the life 
 of the new year begun. The winter fears were dead, 
 but they had left a succession in the uncertainty of 
 the season. A harvest there would be, but of what 
 kind ? As the Florentine year opened this was the 
 question of the day. 
 
 On a principle of euphemism — the wish the father 
 to the name — Flora now became Fortuna, uncertain 
 as the season itself, yet placable were it onl)- that she 
 heard herself called by this title. Fortuna is the 
 
 ' Amine occurs as the name of the Fiora in the Maritime Itinerary.
 
 344 Florence Past and Present 
 
 bearing, carrying goddess/ the bringer-forth who is 
 also the bringer-in ; mistress of the farm, dispenser of 
 the rustic joys of harvest-home when uncertainty is a 
 thing of the past. To call Flora so was in itself an 
 attempt at propitiation. 
 
 Nor need there be any doubt that the two are 
 really one, though we must look far afield to find 
 proof of this identity. As Cybele is really the eastern 
 Gibel^ so the Fortuna of the Romans was known in 
 Cilicia, and precisely at Tarsus, as 'Athch or 'Athar- 
 atJicJi, which the Greeks rendered as Atargatis.'' On 
 the later coins of Tarsus she is represented not only 
 wearing the mural crown of Cybele, the civic Fortune, 
 but grasping ears of corn in her hand : '■'' clearly she 
 was a corn goddess, and mother of the fields as well 
 as of the town. Her Semitic name appears in the 
 Spanish Granada, really Karn-'athch,^ and under the 
 Romans this Phoenician town became ' Florentia,' just 
 as the Arnina by the Arno did. This correspondence 
 should be enough to show that Flora and Fortuna 
 were really one, and that she represented Cybele in 
 her character of a corn goddess. So the Etruscans 
 too in their day may have thought to placate Arna by 
 calling her Nortia when the harvest was in question. 
 
 But the enceinte of the mother goddess was the 
 town-wall as well as the boundary of the field ; or, 
 shall we say, that another stonier field lay in her 
 
 ' See Fowler, op. cii., pp. 166-7. - Frazer, Adonis (1907), p. 129. 
 ^ Ibid., p. 131. * Ford's Spain (1855), p. 292.
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 345 
 
 embrace, where a population that desired increase and 
 strength looked to her for protection. In this 
 character Cybele became ^epeVoA/?, the civic Fortune/ 
 concerned with human increase and the direct 
 personal fate of a definite society. Such a goddess, 
 one sees, is indistinguishable from Venus,"' and as 
 Cybele assumes this form, her partner x\ttis suffers a 
 like change, becoming the Adonis with whom Venus, 
 at least in the East, was always associated. 
 
 Here a curious parallel to the Florentine rite 
 demands notice. One centre of this Venus-worship 
 in the East lay at Hierapolis in Syria, where the 
 chief festival of the goddess took place in spring, and 
 was called the Pyre because of the sacred fire then 
 kindled in her honour. From Syria the cult of the 
 goddess and her companion passed to Cyprus, where 
 details of the ceremony are available. There were 
 two pyres it seems, and the worshippers threw into 
 the first of these living doves, which escaped only to 
 perish in the other.-^ But clearly this is a flight which 
 could not be natural ; it must have been restrained 
 and directed by some undescribed device. And in an 
 artificial flight from the one fire to the other we have 
 something which approaches very nearly to the 
 colouibiua of Florence. 
 
 ' Pindar, quoted by Pausanias, lib. iv. She is the original of all 
 female saints who bear in their hands the towns entrusted to their 
 care. 
 
 - For this Venus of the Spring, see Macrob. , Sat.^ i. 21. 
 
 ^ Frazer, Adoiis (1907), p. 114.
 
 346 Florence Past and Present 
 
 This worship did not stay in Cyprus, or even in 
 Greece ; it passed still westward, with the Phoenician 
 ships and the Greek colonists, to find another home 
 in extreme Sicily at the Sicilian Eryx. If we 
 seek it here and not in Arcadia, at the Psophis of 
 Zacynthus, or in Spain, it is onl)- because evidence of 
 the Sicilian ritual is available, while that of Greece 
 can but be conjectured. At Eryx it was still the 
 flight and return of a dove that the worshippers 
 watched, and this dove is definitely described as red ; 
 evidently a true fire-bird, whose home was in the 
 mysterious ever-burning pyre of this temple.^ Now 
 we have already found reason to think that the 
 goddess passed to the Val d'Arno, where she settled 
 in a new 3'et similar seat on the Pisan hills. Nor 
 can Florence be supposed indifferent to her worship 
 when still, as in the Anagoge of Eryx, it is the flight, 
 and especially the return, of a fiery messenger called 
 a dove that her people count on and watch at the 
 festival of spring ! 
 
 The fire which accompanies the goddess in all her 
 migrations demands more consideration than we have 
 yet given it. Ultimately as Gibel, Cybele, or the 
 Baalath of Byblus,- the Dca Syria is a goddess of 
 boundaries, and at these limits fire is readily found. 
 Even in the Middle Age the town ditches of Florence 
 are still called carbonaria, the place of coals.'^ 
 
 ^ Aelian, Dc Auinialihus, iv. 2 ; x. 50. - Frazer, Adonis, p. lO. 
 
 ^ Lami, Memorabilia, p. 986, ad aim. 1064.
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 347 
 
 Already, in the books of the Agrimensores, coals are 
 spoken of as a common means of making a boundary 
 permanent.^ Buried in the boundary trench, they 
 were indestructible, and so lay ready at the first 
 excavation to show beyond doubt where the true 
 limes ran. Earlier still, ere an}' history was written 
 in books, the Italian people of the Tcrrainare left coal 
 in the bounding trench of their towns,"- and bivalve 
 shells — always sacred to the mother goddess — in the 
 ritual furrow that marked the Decumanus.^ The 
 town wall was sometimes used as an altar when the 
 town was in danger.^ Thus, on the whole, it would 
 seem likeh' that boundaries were hallowed always by 
 the fires of the mother of towns, and that the practice 
 of burying coals on such a line may have survived 
 because of convenience, but was originally suggested 
 by the remains of these ritual p}Tes. 
 
 Pursuing the matter of fire, we remember that the 
 pyre of Florence was double, like that of Cyprus. 
 One of these fires must have been lighted for the 
 goddess, and the other could only be that of her male 
 companion, the Adonis of this Venus. But if so, the 
 bond between them, the cord on which the dove 
 travelled as a messenger, could not but have its own 
 meaning. The conjunction of the goddess and the 
 god spelt fertility of every kind, and chiefly the 
 
 ' Siculus Flaccus, De Cond. Agroru/n, ed. Lachmann, p. 140. 
 
 '■^ Atti d. Accad. d. Lincei, Ser. 3a, viii. p. 305. 
 
 3 Boll. d. Pah't. It., xxi. p. 78. ^ 2 Kings iii. 27.
 
 34^ Florence Past and Present 
 
 human increase the town expected under such 
 protection. A singular detail of the Florentine rite 
 makes this certain as far as Florence is concerned. 
 Within the memory of those still living, mischievous 
 boys, armed with needles and stout pack-thread, 
 passed unobserved through the crowded Piazza on 
 Easter Saturday, sewing the clothes of the country- 
 folk together in the press. Wlien the ' Scoppio del 
 Carro ' was over, and the crowd broke up, the feast 
 became a true Hilaria of jest levelled at the un- 
 fortunate men and women who stood perplexed at 
 the trick, and confused in their vain attempts to 
 separate.^ The pack-thread that joined the people 
 clearly corresponded to the cord that united the pyres 
 and directed the dove, the messenger of Venus and 
 the bearer of her fires. ' . . 
 
 Nor in all this were the fields or the increase of 
 the land forgotten. As the Italian 'Villa' still 
 means the estate as well as the country-house, so this 
 ' city ' may be conceived to have comprehended tlje 
 territory in which the town stood. Both were put 
 under the care of the same mother goddess, and her 
 wider function was remembered in the very rite that 
 traced her narrower boundary. The trench that 
 defined the limits of the town and marked its ritual 
 Decumanus was a true furrow, and was traced by a 
 plough drawn by white oxen, as white oxen still drag 
 
 ^ See letter of a septuagenarian in the Florentine Fieramosca for 
 26 April 1909. . ■
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 349 
 
 the car of Florence to its place on Easter Saturday. 
 The ritual fire kindled at the Equinox on the line of 
 the Decumanus was meant to secure fertility in all 
 kinds ; in the fields then, as well as among the people 
 that depended on their produce. 
 
 Many details combine to make this matter certain. 
 The vetches forced for weeks in the dark and produced 
 on Easter Thursday have seemed to some a survival 
 of the ' Gardens of Adonis ' planted in antiquity.^ 
 If so they are really specimen crops, blanched to 
 imitate the colour of ripe corn, and designed, under a 
 doctrine of imitative magic, to procure in due time 
 from nature that which they resemble b}- art. In 
 Indo-China there is a similar practice, and it is 
 perhaps worth notice that there too the dove appears, 
 for the specimen field is reaped when the crop of 
 ' secret tillage ' ■Aid^nds pigcoii-Iiig/ir 
 
 Whether the vetches be specimen crops or no, 
 Florence has still \\hat would seem the natural 
 complement of such a practice. Cakes are baked 
 and sold at Easter which, within the form ot a dove, 
 enclose a red Easter-egg like a fiery heart. These 
 may well owe their shape and use to the same order 
 of ideas. If a specimen crop works by imitation, 
 what may not such anticipation be expected to effect ? 
 Here the first fruits of the harvest are read)-, as it 
 were, before the time, and he who bu\-s to eat may 
 
 ^ Frazer, Adonis, p. 211. 
 
 ^ Frazer, Golden B0//0/1 (igoo), ii. 323-4.
 
 ;5o 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 once have done so thinking to gain personal interest 
 in a rite which he believed able to propitiate the 
 fickle goddess and secure the fertility of his fields. 
 The cakes by themselves indeed would hardly be 
 enough to warrant such a conjecture, but they are 
 
 ri.ORENTINK EASTER-CAKES ; EGC'.S IN KASKEIS, AND DOVE 
 
 not the only ground on which it rests. The dove and 
 fire ceremony they plainly sx-mboh'se draw the 
 country people in thousands still for this chief purpose 
 that they may learn from the flight of the colo)nbina 
 what the harvest will be. The rite still furnishes an 
 oracle then, nia\' it not once have promised more? 
 If so much is left under Christianity, what can the 
 full doctrine of Morentine Paganism ha\c been ?
 
 Mid-Lent and Easter 351 
 
 One ma}^ assume that, whereas the people now 
 assemble merely to know, their remote forefathers 
 came to do : to take part in a rite which they believed 
 able to bind, or at least persuade, Fortune, and so 
 secure her harvest favours. 
 
 To sum up : this spring ceremony not only fits 
 what was once the opening of the Florentine year, 
 but records the great act, otherwise forgotten, by 
 which Arnina and Camarte came to a division and 
 stable agreement. The line then drawn remained to 
 form the Decumanus of Florence, and the agreement 
 arrived at laid the foundation of a union and progress 
 which carried building along this chief determinant, 
 and ended by making Florence what she is. But 
 behind the great moment lay a further past, lost in 
 the depth of woods that had begun to give way to 
 clearing, construction and cultixation. And this past 
 of the woodland life it was that brought its con- 
 tribution to the rite that sealed the civic peace. 
 Men had watched the sun and wondered at it long 
 ere the}' watched again to strike this boundary. 
 They had found its hidden fire in the tree and in the 
 stone. The great discover)-, and the dreams it 
 provoked, were what the\' now acknowledged in their 
 rite. The Fortune of the da\' had come with the 
 first Florentines from the forest that was once the 
 home of their race.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE GRILLO AND MIDSUMMER 
 
 ASCENSION-DAV is observed at Florence in a way 
 to make it one of the most characteristic feasts in 
 
 ^^ 
 
 THE OAK OK THE CASCINE IN TIS THREE GENERATIONS 
 
 tlie Calendar of the city. At dawn, the people stream 
 out in thousands to the Cascinc, spending the day 
 till noon in the open grass\- spaces, and under the 
 
 352
 
 The Grillo and Midsummer 355 
 
 trees, of that public park. While this place was still 
 the dairy farm of the Grand Dukes, custom prescribed 
 that the day should begin with a drink of warm milk 
 taken at the farm.^ The people then passed on, as 
 they still do, to a rendezvous at the ancient oak-tree 
 of the adjoining park, whence they scattered again in 
 groups to catch the gril/i, the black field-crickets, 
 that form, even to-day, the chief object of this outing. 
 Their prey caught and caged, the people dine ; some 
 eating on the grass the provisions they have brought ; 
 others seeking the rustic restaurants set out beneath 
 the trees. At midday the park is empty again ; the 
 people have gone home with their grilli — caught 
 or bought^ — in the little cages of buckwheat stem 
 that serve to contain them. The cages are hung 
 in the houses, for the Florentines think the cricket's 
 song brings luck to the home ; especially if the 
 gril/i can be kept alive and vocal till the day of 
 Corpus Christi. It is to be feared that few survive 
 as long ! 
 
 Just this survival, however, must be insisted on ; 
 for it shows clearly what Florence has in mind when 
 the gril/i are caught. When Easter falls late — 
 towards the 25th of April — Corpus Doviiui^ as Italy 
 calls the further feast, tends to coincide with the 
 summer solstice. Now the song of the field-cricket, 
 opening feebly about the beginning of May, reaches 
 its height only at midsummer, to die away about 
 
 * The traditional ' lattone.'
 
 356 Florence Past and Present 
 
 the 15th of Jul\-.^ Thus, when Ascension-day falls 
 on April 30th there are no singing- crickets ; and 
 
 CAOK FOR A CRICKET IN BUCKWll RA T STEM ; 
 IRADITIONAL EORM 
 
 evidently the solstice is the date at which any observ- 
 ance connected with this insect should properl)' fall. 
 W^ith this reference to the solstice ancient authority 
 1 A. H. Swinton, Insect Variety (London, C'asscll), p. 1S4.
 
 The Grillo and Midsummer 359 
 
 fully agrees. Pliny, who mentions how the giylliis 
 
 was caught in his time with a hair holding an ant as 
 
 bait, quotes Nigidius for the great importance attached 
 
 to the field-cricket in the doctrine of the Magi. It 
 
 burrows in the earth, he says, walks backwards, and 
 
 sings by night ; such are the reasons he offers for the 
 
 attention it attracted.^ Now the same backward 
 
 movement was noticed in the scaraba^us of the Nile 
 
 and in the crab."- Egypt made the scaraba^us a 
 
 symbol of the sun,^ and the world saw the crab in 
 
 that sign of the Zodiac which the sun entered at 
 
 midsummer.* In Cancer, the sun began his annual 
 
 retreat ; hence a perceived relation between this 
 
 solstice and all backward-moving animals. Amoncr 
 
 such then the grillo held a place of honour, and 
 
 belonged, like them, to the same great moment in the 
 
 year ; gathering all the fancies with which the solstice 
 
 was associated. Some of these ma}' now be mentioned. 
 
 Macrobius says that the first point of Cancer is the 
 
 place where the milky-way cuts the path of the 
 
 Zodiac, and that here the gate opens b)- which souls 
 
 descend to earth from heaven.'' It is an article of 
 
 modern folk-lore at Rome, that on the vigil of 
 
 Ascension Day Christ descends to change the water 
 
 into milk in the swelling ears of corn.*^ This belief 
 
 has evidentl}- no relation to the Event the Church 
 
 1 N.H., xxix. 6. - Ibid., xi. 28 ; ix. 31. 
 
 ^ Ibid., XXX. II. ^ Macrob., Sat., i. 21. 
 
 '■' Somn. Scip., \. 12. 
 
 " Coi ricie della Sera (Milan), 21 May 1909.
 
 360 Florence Past and Present 
 
 celebrates. It agrees however with the doctrine of 
 
 Macrobius, and must have been attracted, how one 
 
 cannot sa}% to Ascension Day from midsummer : 
 
 plainly its true date. So the grillo of the same 
 
 solstice is now caught by the Florentines on Ascension 
 
 Day, and they prepare for the chase by drinking 
 
 milk : perhaps once a s}-mpathetic charm directed to 
 
 secure the sweet influences of the \^ia Lactca, and fill 
 
 the swelling corn. We follow the lead of these 
 
 multiplied indications, and turn to the consideration 
 
 of midsummer da\' as the real root of the whole 
 
 matter. 
 
 The 24th of June, once the summer solstice, 
 
 is still observed at Florence as the day of San 
 
 Giovanni, and with marked solemnity, as the birthday 
 
 of her patron saint. He has succeeded in this office 
 
 to Santa Reparata ; and here at least in Florentine 
 
 Christianity, as ever in her paganism, one sees the 
 
 female object of worship for once gi\ ing place to the 
 
 male. Outside the Churches, the features of the day 
 
 are soon described ; they now consist of banquets, 
 
 public or private, and a fine display of fireworks from 
 
 the Carraia bridge;^ as it were to hallow the river 
 
 for the summer bathing which now begins. To enter 
 
 the water before this date ^\•ould be regarded as an 
 
 irregularity. Fire and water then may be taken as 
 
 the ultimate elements of the observance ; they 
 
 ^ Since 1827. Before this date they were shown from the tower of 
 the Palazzo Vecchio ; two years ago the display was ordered on the 
 Piazzale Michelangiolo, where it has since remained.
 
 The Grille and Midsummer ■;6i 
 
 O' 
 
 evidently hold this place by their proved power to 
 
 survive all the changes that time has seen in the 
 
 manner of acknowledging the day. 
 
 Those who would see what the feast used to be at 
 
 Florence, and would follow its constant variety in 
 
 detail, may easily do so in the pages of Cambiagi 
 
 and the other writers who have published on this 
 
 subject.^ Here the lost features of what was once the 
 
 great feast of the Florentine \'ear ma)^ be more simply 
 
 summed up, leaving an}' significant detail to find its 
 
 own place in the illustrative discussion that must 
 
 follow. Licence was a chief note of the feast. 
 
 Process for debt was stopped ; prisons opened to 
 
 discharge even notorious malefactors, twelve of whom 
 
 were included in the procession of the day.- Contadini 
 
 crowded the town, and made strangel)- free with its 
 
 high places ; dancing and sporting all night in the 
 
 great hall of the Palazzo of the Signori, as if all 
 
 distinction of rank were for ever abolished, as indeed 
 
 for the time it was.^ Bonfires of broom burnt at dusk 
 
 in the Piazza, and the rough ball in the palace 
 
 succeeded to a still ruder leaping about these flames ; 
 
 the flight, pursuit, and battle in which burning 
 
 brands took the place of weapons. In the morning 
 
 these fires gave way to the Ceri that represented 
 
 them : towers of wood on wheels, not unlike the 
 
 ^ G. Cambiagi, Memorie Istoriche, Firenze, 1766 ; G. A., Cenui 
 Storici, 1877 ; C. Guasti, Le Feste di San Giovanni, Firenze, 190S. 
 ^ Guasti, op. cit., pp. 7, 33, 94. Cambiagi, op. cit., p. 148. 
 ■* Cambiagi, op. cit. , p. 1 1 1 .
 
 o 
 
 62 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Easter fire-car, moved on an axis by men within, and 
 covered with figures of animals, fruit and flowers : all, 
 in short, that the sun sees and warms in his dail)^ 
 course. These Ceri were the offerings of the subject 
 towns in the Florentine dominion, and from places 
 too small to attempt such a present came tribute in 
 kind, very often in the form of fresh-caught fish, 
 or reeds from the marshes ; ^ representing the stream 
 as the Ceri represented the sun and his fruits. In 
 the great days of Florentine industry and trade, a 
 wonderful show of brocades, hung out before the 
 shops in For' Santa Maria, drew all e}'es, and a palio 
 of rich stuff was the prize in the horse race that closed 
 the feast. This race, sometimes run with riders, 
 sometimes without, must be reckoned among the 
 primitive elements here. In the fourteenth centur\' it 
 was already old beyond memory of man, so that the 
 Chronicle ventures to ascribe its origin to the time 
 when Florence first chose the Baptist as her Patron.- 
 In realit}' it is probably much older ; and indeed, to 
 find the origin of these observances, we must turn 
 from Christianit}' to the paganism that preceded it. 
 
 The Kronia of Greece is the festival which most 
 nearly resembles that of San Gioxanni at Florence. 
 Athens celebrated the Kronia on the banks of the 
 Ilissus, just as Florence feasted her saint by those of 
 the Arno. Another correspondence appears in the 
 offering, which in Greece, as at l-'lorence, seems to 
 
 ^ Cambiagi, op. ci/., pp. 73, 152-3. - G. Villani, Croii., i. 60.
 
 The Grille and Midsummer 363 
 
 have consisted of all kinds of produce. P'easting 
 followed the sacrifice, and at the feast masters and 
 servants sat down together ; for it was essentiall}' the 
 servants' day, when an unusual licence of speech and 
 behaviour was permitted them. The Kronia fell in 
 summer, and was in fact a harvest festival, as indeed 
 one might have guessed from the sickle that Kronos 
 holds in his hand. It is true that Athens celebrated 
 her Kronia in Jul}', but in the Ionian Calendar, the 
 month called Krotiion corresponds to our June.^ 
 Here then, in her great day, Florence is seen looking, 
 not to Rome, for the Roman Saturnalia fell at the 
 solstice of winter, nor even to Athens, where the 
 feast was held in July, but to that further Greece in 
 Asia which lay at the doors of the immemorial East. 
 One point of great importance remains undecided : 
 how can the present Patron ol Florence be related to 
 the Greek Kronos, the god whose place he seems to 
 have taken ? The answer is simpler than might have 
 seemed possible. Beginning with the Baptist, we 
 know that his birthday was fixed for the 24th of 
 June, as that of Christ was made to fall at the winter 
 solstice, on a fantastic interpretation of the words of 
 St. John " He must increase but I must decrease." - 
 There can thus be no doubt that those who thus 
 twisted the text saw behind St. John the sun, that at 
 the solstice of summer begins his annual retreat 
 
 1 Daremherg et Saglio, Dicliomtaire, s.z'. ' Kronia.' 
 - Augustine, Ser///. 287, §4; vol. v. (1692).
 
 364 Florence Past and Present 
 
 and decline. Now it is equally well known that in 
 modern Greece ' St. Elia ' has come to occupy the 
 place of the old Helios, the sun god ; a change which 
 evidently depends on the great similarity of the two 
 names, especiall}- in Greek. ^ The latest witness to 
 this fact wonders who ' St. Elia ' can be : Elijah the 
 prophet or another?- But surely there can be no 
 doubt that he is the Baptist, in the character of 
 * Elias that was for to come.' ^ Thus it is only 
 necessary to remember that Kronos was but another 
 name for Helios * — the sun at a point of time, the 
 sun of the solstice — to see the meaning of the whole 
 cycle of change that has set the Baptist at Florence, 
 as elsewhere, in the place of the old sun god. 
 
 Behind St. John as patron stands the figure of 
 Santa Reparata who preceded him in this office. So 
 in paganism too, be sure, there was a goddess, older, 
 one might almost say, than the sun god, the male 
 who was first subordinate, and then only her equal 
 partner before he came to the strength that enabled 
 him to supplant her. We have seen her already, but 
 to see her here at the solstice a short digression and 
 new approach will be necessary. 
 
 In old Rome the 24th of June was kept as the 
 day of Fortune, when she was worshipped as 
 expressly For tuna Fort is, Fortune at her best 
 strength, evidently in sympathy with the sun then at 
 
 ^ Lawson, op. rit., p. 44. " Ibid., note. 
 
 •* Matt. xi. 14. , , ' Daiemberg et Saglio, s.v. ' Kronia.'
 
 The Grillo and Midsummer 365 
 
 his height.^ Feasting and rustic h'cence marked the 
 day, which was spent by the banks of the Tiber. 
 How shall we account for a Greek festival at Rome, 
 and a date borrowed, not so much from Athens, as 
 from Asia Minor? Very simply, when Tuscany is 
 the teacher. As we know, the cult of Fortune came 
 hence, brought by that Tuscan whom the Romans 
 called Servius Tullius, but whose real name was 
 Mastarna."^ Arna is the Tuscan name of the goddess 
 we seek ; no wonder if she was worshipped at the 
 height of the year in the town of Arnina, and by the 
 banks of the Arno. We have found her at the 
 Equinox of spring already saluted as Nortia, or 
 Fortuna, in the hope of finding her early favour. 
 Now, at the solstice, she has come to her strength, 
 and is Fortuna indeed, Fortuna Fortis ; the goddess 
 who, having brought forth, is now ready to bear 
 home : the mistress of the harvest feast. 
 
 If we are to learn anything more of Fortuna and 
 her inevitable companion as Florence once knew 
 them, this knowledge can only come by looking more 
 nearly at details. Let us begin with what is most 
 sure ; the solemnity of the day in its general character 
 as a harvest dinner,^ The significant detail here is 
 
 ' Fowler, op. cit., pp. 161-172. It is worth notice that in the 
 ancient East the sun was conceived of as female and the moon as male. 
 
 - See Fowler, op. cit., pp. 75, 171, 200. 
 
 ^ The sculptured Calendar on the facade of San Martino, Lucca, 
 shows June as the harvest month. This year (1910) reaping was 
 already begun near Florence on June 25th. For the following details, 
 see Cambiagi, op. ctt,, pp. 42, 121.
 
 366 Florence Past and Present 
 
 that part of the feast which seems to have kept 
 longest what one may call a ritual form and sense ; 
 and this was the provision made for the poor wretch 
 who, lashed to the iron that rose above the principal 
 car, was carried through the streets to represent the 
 main figure of the day, the Patron and Protector of 
 the State. The car stopped in its course opposite a 
 house next the Church of Santa Maria in Campo. 
 From the windows ' San Giovanni ' received a large 
 provision of food and wine. Much of this he threw 
 down to the gaol-birds that formed his train, but 
 always he passed his arm through the great ciambella, 
 keeping that for himself. This was a sweet cake 
 specially baked for the occasion in the oven attached 
 to the Campanile, at the regular price of half a piastre 
 yearly paid by the State. 
 
 In the western Peloponnesus sweet cakes were 
 offered in the same way to one whom the people 
 recognised in like manner as the 'protector of the 
 State,' and as he seems here also to have been the 
 companion of Fortuna, this Greek rite and myth may 
 well be compared with the practice of Florence. The 
 place was Elis, the god Sosipolis — probably a form 
 of Kronos or Helios- — and the story ran as follows. 
 Elis was threatened by the enem\'. A woman, after- 
 wards identified as the goddess Ilithyia, appeared offer- 
 ing her new-born child to lead the town to victory. 
 The infant, set at the head of the host, showed his 
 power by a sudden prodigy. He became a serpent
 
 The Grillo and Midsummer 367 
 
 and before such a wonder the enemy fled, and EHs 
 was safe. The name SosipoHs corresponds exactly 
 with that o{ Pherepolis, given by Pindar to Tyche or 
 Fortuna, and Pausanias records at least one case in 
 which, at Elis, a temple of Fortune stood beside a 
 smaller shrine dedicated to SosipoHs. His principal 
 seat, however, where the sweet cakes were offered, lay 
 under the hill called Kronios, just outside the temple 
 of Ilith)ia. Thus the case is plain ; it is that of a 
 god who, on his way to supplant his female com- 
 panion, begins by assuming her titles and even 
 symbols. Kronos becomes SosipoHs, and in this 
 character Pausanias saw him at Elis carrying the 
 very cornucopia of Fortune as well as her name.^ 
 At Florence she was stronger, and retained this 
 symbol even to our own time in her quality as 
 Abundantia, the goddess of the market pillar. 
 
 Passing from Greece to Italy, we find the same 
 m)'th witnessed to b\' the same symbols. Hard!}- more 
 than a year ago excavation at the Lucus Furrina; on 
 the Roman Janiculum brought to light the remains 
 of a temple of the sun. In the secret cavit)- of the 
 altar lay a bronze figure of a goddess, with a serpent, 
 also of bronze, twined about her bod)-. P>e the 
 cavity was closed some priestly hand had set a fresh 
 hen's Q^g in each fold of the serpent's coils as the 
 supreme dedication of the deposit. The goddess is 
 the Dea Syria, the Atargatis ; identified as such by 
 
 ^ For all this mythology and ritual, see Pausanias, vi. 20, etc.
 
 368 Florence Past and Present 
 
 an inscription found on the spot, and referring to this 
 very figure, in which she is called by her Roman 
 name of Fortuna.^ So Calabria still bakes to this 
 day a sweet cake — I have just seen a specimen at 
 Florence - — wreathed round in the form of two snakes 
 with head and tail complete, and carrying eggs 
 deeply set in the paste, one in each space that the 
 snakes leave between their folds. The general form 
 of the cake is just that of the Florentine Ciambella. 
 Are we to think of the cake offered on the 24th of 
 June to the ' Protector of the City ' as once made 
 serpent-wise like this, or ma\' we not rather suppose 
 that it was as often plain though sweet ; ^ Fortuna, 
 the Protectress, keeping her snakes to herself as we 
 
 ^ See P. Gauckler, Le couple Heliopolitain, in Melanges . . . 
 de r Ecole Fraitcaise (Rome, 1909) ; also C. A', de V Acadcmie des 
 Inscriptions (Paris, 1909), and M. M. Nicole et Darnier, Le 
 Sanctiiaire des Dieiix Oricnta/rx (Rome : Cuggiani, 1909). 
 
 - In the Museo di Etnografia Italiana. 
 
 •'' The subject of Florentine festival-cakes is interesting and difficult. 
 Fagiuoli, the satiric poet, in his J<!i/ne (vi. 91) notes that con/or/ini, 
 as well as ciamhelle, were baked for San Giovanni. Can it be that 
 their name alludes to that of Fortuna Fortis ? As they are elsewhere 
 called capi di lalte and, more plainly, mavimelle, it would seem they 
 sometimes, like the pointed stones of Tamuli in Sardinia, bore the 
 open sign of the motiier-goddess. These f/taiiifnelle are no doubt the 
 Greek niazai, cf. Athen., JJcip. iii. 29; iv. 12. They seem to have 
 been a speciality of Phigalia. Once the confortinaio set up a branch 
 of laurel before his sho]3-door on feast days, hanging it with these 
 confortitii in many shapes. Even now huctellati^ a small crisp form of 
 the ciambelle, are commonly sold in the streets of Florence from a 
 'tree,' on whose twigs they are strung. See the authorities cited in 
 the della Crusca Vocal/olario, s.v. ciambella and conforiini, and the 
 chap-book Satire, dcttati e Gergki, published by A. Salani at 
 Florence in 18S6, p. 12.
 
 The Grillo and Midsummer 
 
 569 
 
 know she kept her cornucopia ? That she had them 
 there is sure evidence to show. 
 
 The bronze Fortuna with her serpent found of late 
 at Rome has been identified, across many centuries 
 of intervening time, with the very ancient goddess of 
 Crete who holds serpents in her hands.^ But while the 
 Roman example is comparatively recent, dating only 
 from the later Empire, another is at hand much more 
 
 
 COIN OF THEZI.I WITH SERTENT-GODDESS 
 (By kind permission of the Delegates of the Clarendon Press) 
 
 to our purpose, since it not onl)- copies more exactly 
 the Cretan type, but approaches nearer it in time, and 
 in place tou :hes Florence very closely. There is a 
 little group of early Italic coins, all found at Vulci or 
 Caere, and all bearing for epigraph the place name 
 THEZI or THEZLI, which Deeke has identified with 
 Fiesole. Pais describes them as modelled on the 
 money of Elis in the fifth century before our era."^ 
 Now some of these coins show ' a running Gorgon, 
 
 ^ P. Gauckler, op. cit., p. 60. 
 
 - E. Pais, 'L'Origine deijli Elruschi ' in Sludii Storici {V\sa, 1893), 
 ii. pp. 49-87. 
 
 2 A
 
 2,yo Florence Past and Present 
 
 holding in each hand a serpent ' : ^ evidently the 
 Cretan goddess in the form in which she first reached 
 Italy and became known at Florence. Remembering 
 ' San Gorgone,' and where those work who still call 
 on his name, we ma\' take this figure as the oldest 
 representation of his consort Arna, the mother-god- 
 dess of the Villa Arnina. To see the last, one need 
 only visit the Convent Church of Santa Verdiana in 
 the Florentine street of the same name. In her 
 pictures this saint stands between two upright snakes, 
 of which the legend says that they were her constant 
 companions. Her name spells the spring, and indeed 
 she would seem to keep the secret of eternal youth. 
 In three thousand years this, the strong Fortune of 
 Florence, has not changed, nor suffered any to take 
 from her here the twin serpents that she first grasped 
 so long ago ! • ' 
 
 The risk she ran was great, for at Florence Fortune 
 lived in close company with the great robber of such 
 things.- To see who this was, we must look awa}' 
 from the food to the fire, the central clement in this 
 Florentine feast. 
 
 Even to-day, the fireworks of Florence give the 
 signal for the lighting up of the hills all along the 
 Val d'Arno on .St. John's eve, and in the capital 
 itself, long after gunpowder had come to play its 
 
 ^ Head, Historia Nnmoritm, p. 12. 
 
 - See, for the attempt, L. Passerini, Ciiriosita, ii. Serie (Firenze, 
 1875), P- 42-
 
 The Grillo and Midsummer 
 
 o7 
 
 blazing, blinding tricks from the tower of Palazzo 
 Vecchio, below in the Piazza unsophisticated fires of 
 broom kept their place, and continued what must 
 have been the more primitive usage. These fires were 
 what the ' ceri ' of the day came later to represent, 
 in a form less perishable and more spectacular. The 
 ceri resembled pyres ; but were meant for ornament 
 rather than for use. 
 
 The same may be said of the car of St. John, the 
 central feature of the great procession. As one reads 
 the description of it in the pages of Cambiagi,^ one 
 sees clearly that it, like the others, was merely a 
 developed ' cero,' looking back, as the ceri themselves 
 did, to an original in the ritual fires of the Piazza. 
 ' Brindellone,' as the car with its figure was called, 
 stood on a square platform set on four massive wheels, 
 and rose above it in four decreasing stories so as to 
 present the form of a true pyramid, the permanent 
 figure of the ritual pyre. On the first story, in front 
 of the car, a niche was contrived, where a boy dressed 
 in lamb-skins stf)od for the saint of the day. On the 
 very summit of the fourth stor}% and at top of all, a 
 padded iron held in his place the man about whom 
 the whole ceremony gathered force and sense. It 
 the car represented a pyre, tiiis man can only have 
 stood for the victim. He too was called ' San 
 Giovanni ' indeed, but must surely once have borne 
 another name : the more that, were he really and 
 
 ^ Cambiagi, c/. fit., pp. 40-42, 120.
 
 372 Florence Past and Present 
 
 originally such, the part of the saint would here be 
 doubled. Who can he have been ? 
 
 In Greek mytholog)' it is Hercules who ends his 
 life in this way, tearing desperately at the shirt of 
 Nessus, and casting himself on the flames of the 
 burning pyre. ' Brindellone,' we are told, means 
 literally the ' tatterdemalion,' and more precisely ' he 
 that affects rags rather willingly than of necessity.' ^ 
 Can it be that this man once took his place on that 
 car which was a pyre that there he might play the 
 part of the ancient hero ? We have already found 
 Fortuna as the corn-goddess of Tarsus, but there she 
 had a male companion whom the Greeks identified 
 with Hercules. This god was worshipped as the 
 founder of the cit}', and its coins show his figure pro- 
 jected on the background of a conical pyre resting on 
 a square base. It is known that Tarsus celebrated 
 him by building and kindling a pyre from time to time 
 in his honour, and that a similar ceremony, often 
 involving the burning of the god in effigy, came west, 
 and was observed not only at T}'re, where it seems 
 to have originated, or at Tarsus, but in the Tyrian 
 colonies of Carthage and of distant Cadiz as well. 
 The Phcenicians called the god Melcarth, as they 
 called the goddess 'Atheh, and a Maltese inscription 
 makes it certain that Melcarth was identified b\' the 
 Greeks with Hercules.- 
 
 ' Seethe yocaMario of KigiiUm-h'anfani, s.7'. 
 
 " See, passim, the chapter ' The hiirnini^ of IMelcartli ' in Frazer, 
 Adonis, pp. 84-90, and ibid., pp. 13, 99.
 
 The Grillo and Midsummer 373 
 
 Now, as to Florence, it is remarkable that a like 
 legend ascribed the foundation of this city to the 
 eastern Hercules. Borghini and Lami, who trace the 
 tale no farther back than the time and authority — late 
 and doubtful indeed — of Annius Viterbensis, seem 
 themselves lost in a dream. ^ They forgot that the 
 fact to be investigated was not the reality of a m}th, 
 but the date of its appearance ; and they ignored the 
 testimony of the public seal of Florence, which, long 
 before the days of the Viterban forger, bore the figure 
 of Hercules as the device of the city.- The name of 
 Premilcore too, if, as seems possible, it preserve that 
 of Melcarth among the Tuscan hills of the Florentine 
 province, would definitely indicate that Hercules was 
 known here in his Phrenician form.^ So too in Elis 
 we find the record of a ' pratum solis ' which Hercules 
 appropriated.* On the seal of Florence Hercules is 
 known as such by the lion-skin he wears, and this 
 symbol of the god has proved more lasting than the 
 god himself; it survives at Palazzo Vecchio to-day 
 in full animal form as the famous Marzocco, the 
 guardian lion of the city, carved in stone under the 
 vaults of the central basement, or lifted on high in 
 pierced iron to adorn the vane of Arnolfo's tower. 
 Once the Marzocco stood outside, on the ringliiera in 
 
 ^ Borghini, Discorsi, i. pp. 14-17 ; Lami, Lezioni, pp. 259-61. 
 " Passerini, op. cit., pp. 37-46. 
 
 ^ Other forms are Primalocore, Primalcorium and Primalcore. See 
 Repetti, Diz. della Toscana, iv. pp. 670-71. 
 ^ Pausanias, v. 13.
 
 374 Florence Past and Present 
 
 front of the palace, and this hon was solemnly crowned 
 in gold once a year for the 24th of June.^ So, too, the 
 central human figure of the day, the man that the 
 great car bore through the city, wore a crown.' This 
 adornment, hardly appropriate to a saint who sought 
 the desert rather than ' kings' palaces,' definitely 
 connects the human figure with the symbolic animal. 
 By this lion, he can only be Hercules ; as his car can 
 only be, at Florence as at Tarsus, the pyre of the 
 eastern god. 
 
 Where did Hercules get his lion ? He was 
 essentially the bully of antiquity, always killing or 
 robbing ; and the probability is he stole it from some 
 one else. He was the essential male, and the 
 primaeval female therefore appears as his probable 
 victim. In Greek story he gathers in himself what 
 once belonged to many forgotten heroes, but behind 
 the Greek Hercules lies the older eastern god with 
 which he was identified, and the Hercules of the east 
 represents, even more definitely, the same victory of 
 the male over the female, the god over the goddess : 
 a change that was inevitable, as society itself passed 
 from the matriarchal to the patriarchal form. Now 
 at Pteria in Asia Minor, and Hierapolis in Syria — to 
 name no other sites — it is the Atargatis, the 
 Fortuna, who rides or stands on a lion, the symbol 
 of strength.^ When therefore the coins of Tarsus 
 
 ' Cambiagi, op. ,it., ji. II2. - Ibid., p. 43. 
 
 ' Macrob., Sat., i. 23.
 
 LION FROM THE CIPFUS OF SAN TOMMASO 
 
 (Kindly photographed for this book 
 by the experts of the Kluseo Archeologico, Florence)
 
 The Grillo and Midsummer ^']'] 
 
 show us her male companion thus supported 
 and attended we know what this means.^ Hercules 
 has begun his career of robbery, and the goddess 
 is his first victim. So at Florence too he appears 
 with that lion which not only declares the god, but, 
 as booty snatched from Fortuna Fortis, defines his 
 real character. He represents an age in which man 
 had begun to take the place once held by woman. 
 How far will he go in Tuscany ; even there he has 
 the lion,' will he appropriate the serpents as well ? 
 Thus, at least in Greece, he seized them, one in each 
 hand, from his cradle ; not only claiming the attribute, 
 but even mocking from birth the very attitude 
 of the goddess who used to hold them so.'' To see 
 how the matter passed we must leave the city for a 
 moment, and make a short excursion into the Tuscan 
 
 ^ See Frazer, Adonis, pp. lOO, 102, 106. 
 
 " The earliest known form of the INIarzocco appears on the stele of 
 San Tommaso in the Museo Archeologico. The lion is here already 
 associated with the sun-god ' Usil Aplu,' and is so archaic and eastern 
 in type as to recall distinctly the sculptures of Asia Minor. There, at 
 Ayazium and Arslan-kaia, we find the original of the w(j/(/of the twin 
 lions and central pillar so well known from its later appearance over 
 the Lion Gate of Mycenae. At the latter Asiatic site the pediment 
 under which the lions appear is crowned by the twin-serpents of the 
 mother-goddess. At Florence, in the example just cited, the stele 
 itself is the pillar, and the lions guard it still, one carved on each of 
 the two opposite faces. Of the two remaining sides one has the image 
 of the sun-god, and the other a winged griffin which, to judge from 
 the THEZLi coins, may represent the goddess. For the Asiatic 
 examples, see Perrot et Chipiez, v. p. no, etc. 
 
 "^ Even in the caJuceus, each point where the twin serpents inter- 
 laced was known as the 'nodus llerculis.' See Macrob., Sat., i. 19.
 
 378 Florence Past and Present 
 
 country ; but a brief day's journey from the gates of 
 Florence. 
 
 The birthplace of Santa Verdiana, in whom we 
 have found the last, the remaining, representative of 
 the ancient goddess, lies at Castelfiorentino in the 
 Val d'Elsa. A hamlet near by is still called Lungo- 
 tuono ; ^ an ominous name, recalling as it does the 
 doubly rolling peal of thunder that announced and 
 accompanied the birth of Hercules. Yet if the god is 
 here he does not prevail. The legend of the saint 
 tells how her familiar snakes were attacked ; how the 
 men of the place rose against them ; how soldiers 
 pursued and mutilated them ; how the saint resisted ; 
 put forth her power ; healed their wounds, restored 
 their full form ; retained them for herself."' Another 
 neighbouring name, that of Celiaula, where Santa 
 
 ^ See Repetti, op. cit., i. p. 539. 
 
 " F. L. Giacomini, Vila dcUa gloriosa vergine S. Verdiana 
 (Firenze, 1692), pp. 48-53. How a daughter of the Attavanti in the 
 early thirteenth century stepped into the place of the earth-goddess 
 and appropriated her symbols — the mystic cista and the snakes that, 
 once concealed there, have issued from it — were a tale too long and 
 obscure for a mere note. The root of the matter lies in the occasional 
 ceremony of the \'er Sacrum (Festus, Dc Verb. Sig., p. 379), when 
 under calamity the young were Teileci and banished to bring in pio- 
 sperity as soon as they came to ripe age. We may think of a Vcr 
 Dianae sacrum then ; remembering the famine at Castelfiorentino with 
 which the Legend of the Saint opens, the help she brought the starving 
 people and her voluntary assumption of the veil in a cell outside the 
 walls. Note also that the ancient word A/^^the earth, was preserved 
 in the ritual of the Ephesian Diana (Clem. Alex., Strom., 1. 5 ^<^' 
 Paris, p. 568) and gives the liknon, the specific form of cista so often 
 used to contain the fruits of the earth and the sacred snakes in the 
 mysteries of Greece.
 
 S. VERDIANA, AS SME APPEARS OX HER HOUSE 
 AT CASTELFIORENTINO
 
 The Grillo and Midsummer 381 
 
 Verdiana has a place on the high altar, and much 
 reverence, ma}' possibly hold the secret of a further 
 triumph of Fortuna Fortis — the goddess who defied 
 the all-conquering god. For, in this name, ' Celi ' 
 readily becomes on a Tuscan tongue ' Ceri,' ^ and 
 ' Ceriaula ' is near enough to the Ciraiili registered by 
 Pitre to warrant serious attention to what he says 
 under that head.- The Ciraiili, then, are known in 
 Sicily as people belonging to different families, but 
 distinguished by this additional name because all 
 have the power of healing those whom serpents have 
 bitten. The name indeed seems to have been derived 
 from the Greek verb K-jyAen-, to charm serpents by 
 music. Thus at Celiaula, if we are not mistaken, the 
 goddess would seem to have delegated her power to 
 her priests, and thence to have sent them forth to 
 play in Tuscany the part of healers. At Rome, on 
 the other hand, such men were known as Marsi, for 
 there Fortuna was not so much Fortis as in her own 
 Tuscan seat, and the Mars or Mas — the essential 
 male power — had come to take her place in this 
 particular. Remember that he who brought her 
 south was Mast-Arna, or Arna's man as the name may 
 probably be rendered, and that the planet Mars was 
 also known to the ancients as the star of Hercules.^ 
 
 ' Giacomini in fact registers the form Ciricciavoli ; op. cil., p. 326. 
 
 - G. Pitre, Ctuiosita di Usi Popo/aii (Catania, 1902), pp. 146-9. 
 See also his Archivio, i. pp. 76 seq. (Palermo, 18S2), and his Usi e 
 Costumi, iv. pp. 212 seq. 
 
 3 Pliny, N.H., ii. 8; Macrob. . Sat., iii. 12.
 
 382 Florence Past and Present 
 
 The place held by Mars at Florence, if not supreme, 
 was at least very important. Villa Camarte joined 
 the Villa Arnina to found the city, as it were in a 
 ritual union of the goddess and the god. The Church 
 where ' San Giovanni ' stayed his progress to eat and 
 distribute the ritual meal was ' in Campo ' ; that is in 
 Camarte.^ San Giovanni itself, the Baptistery of 
 Florence, was also 'in Camarte."-^ Villani says this 
 Church was first built as a Temple of Mars ; that it 
 was left open above after the manner of the Roman 
 Pantheon, and that the statue of the god stood beneath 
 this opening on a pillar set in the centre of the 
 building.^ This pillar, according to Vasari, still stands 
 as one of the supports of the architrave under the 
 first galler)', having been set there to replace another 
 of granite removed to be the Column of the Mercato 
 Vecchio, where it carried the statue of Abundance 
 with her cornucopia.^ Thus again, by such inter- 
 change, the goddess comes into near, though acci- 
 dental, relation with the god. That there was a 
 ' Balneum Martis ' close to the Baptistery is sure,^ 
 and that the Church itself has taken the place of a 
 temple of the god is therefore probable. Mars, we 
 repeat, was the male par cxcclloicc ; the equivalent 
 of the eastern Hercules, the consort of Fortuna. 
 That his name and worship were associated with 
 
 1 I.ami, Lezioiii, p. 58. - //•/(/., p. 84. 
 
 ^ G. Villani, Cro/i., i. 42. 
 
 ■* Vi/e (ed. Milanesi, 1878), ii. 400. See above, p. no. 
 ^ Lami, op. cii., 46.
 
 The Grillo and Midsummer 383 
 
 Fortuna's high day, even the present Baptistery 
 affords some evidence. Of the zodiac still visible 
 in the pavement Villani says : — ' We have it on 
 ancient authority that the figure of the sun inlaid 
 with cement, and inscribed, ' En giro torte sol ciclos, 
 et rotor igne,' was astrologically laid here ; for when 
 the sun enters Cancer he shines at noon on this spot 
 through the opening in the roof where the lantern is ; 
 but does so at no other time of year.' ^ Now the 
 first point of Cancer corresponds to the 24th of 
 June as Florence reckoned it. The very inscription 
 is contrived to read as well backwards as forwards, 
 as it were in sympathy with the sun himself as he 
 retreats from the solstice onwards. His involved 
 course through the Zodiac is what the word torte 
 insists upon ; it is the * serpent's path,' which 
 Macrobius so names in the very chapter where he 
 notes the tendency of the god to assume the attributes 
 and the appearance of Mars.- 
 
 The feast, so far as it meant eating and drinking, 
 has occupied our attention long enough, nor is it 
 necessary to insist further on what may be called 
 the first aspect of that fire which was so natural an 
 element of sun-worship. W^e therefore choose this 
 moment to pass to the other : that in which fire 
 becomes involved with the water that surely plays 
 its own part here. The goddess Arna was, even nom- 
 inally, in relation with the stream that flowed through 
 
 1 G. Villani, Croit., i. 60. - Macrob., Sa/.. i. i"], passim.
 
 384 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Florence. The Baptist himself had a connection 
 with water that needs no further emphasis. The 
 fires of the solstice came to be kindled at last 
 on the bridge, as once no doubt they burned 
 first on the banks of the Arno or shone from 
 fire-boats that the river bore on its very bosom. 
 How are we to understand the combination, on 
 such a day, of elements apparently so contrary and 
 irreconcilable? 
 
 It may be well to recall here, even more exactly 
 than we have yet done, the dress and appearance of 
 the chief actor in the festival ; the man who looked 
 down on the people from the height of the car of San 
 Giovanni. We know that he was crowned as a king, 
 we have not yet noticed that the fountain of Florence 
 ran wine, and that the king was dressed, front and 
 back, in two tiger-skins buttoned down the sides, 
 while his throne, or pyre, was drawn through 
 Florence by oxen.^ But, b)' all these signs together 
 this is Bacchus, the Dionysus of the Greeks, to whom 
 the tiger was constantly given, and the ox as well, 
 on a legend that he first yoked this animal to the 
 plough.- Yet the day tells us that he must, in fact, 
 have represented, not the Bacchus of the west but 
 the sun god ; probably after some ancient eastern 
 fashion such as that of Hierapohs in Syria, where 
 the male consort of Fortune appeared seated upon 
 
 ' Cambiagi, op. liL, pp. 42, 123. 
 - riutarcli, ('.A'., 145.
 
 The Grillo and Midsummer 385 
 
 bulls. ^ Is there any reason to think that the god 
 ever came west in any such form ? 
 
 The cemetery of Tarquinii, near the modern 
 Corneto, has yielded, from one of its tombs, no less 
 than eleven examples of a circular bronze plaque 
 bearing the unmistakable type of which we are in 
 search : the Oriental Bacchus, bearded to exaggera- 
 tion, and horned too, for he has borrowed this detail 
 from his symbolic ox.- The golden bronze of the 
 circular disk behind gives his head the air of 
 looking out from the sun itself, which he in fact 
 represented. Tarquinii lay at those gates of the 
 south-western sea-board by which the Etruscans 
 first entered Tuscany : it was the point from which 
 eastern cults early made their way up country, carried 
 b)' this conquest and prevailing civilisation. 
 
 This Bacchus, then, represents the sun, but in what 
 activity ? Macrobius is explicit here, not only describ- 
 ing the bearded figure of the sun-god at the Syrian 
 Heliopolis as habited like a Mars, and attended 
 by a female companion whom a serpent enclosed,^ 
 but proceeding immediately thereafter to a distinction 
 in which Liber Pater, the bearded Bacchus, is 
 declared as the sun of the night, the sun, that is, in 
 his subterranean course, when he still moves and 
 
 ^ Frazer, Adonis, p. 130. 
 
 ^ See Bui/. 1st. Corr. Arch., ad ann. 1829, p. 150. One is figured 
 by Dennis in his Cities and Cemeteries of Etritria, who reports that 
 they are preserved in the Gregorian JNIuseum at Rome. 
 
 •* Sat., i. 17, ad calcem. 
 
 2 B
 
 o 
 
 86 Florence Past and Present 
 
 works though withdrawn from the eyes of men. He 
 determines the strength and chief observance of the 
 god to fall at the summer solstice, in sign of which 
 his beard is seen fully grown ; and describes his Thra- 
 cian Temple as round,, with a hole in the roof open 
 to the sky.^ We know why San Giovanni had his 
 feast at midsummer, and can now understand Villani's 
 description of his Church at Florence as once open 
 to the sky in the midst ; the chronicler was applying 
 to a Christian Church the still living tradition of the 
 pagan temple of the sun that the Camarte of which 
 he speaks had once built on or near the same site. 
 
 This conception of the secret, or nightly, sun is one 
 worth development. To early man every sunset and 
 every solstice of summer brought the same problem : 
 where did the sun go when he sank ; how was his 
 return prepared ; from what depths, and by what 
 channels, did his force and heat, that dated their 
 annual decline from midsummer, still reach the earth 
 and make it fertile ? 
 
 If the East first proposed the answer, it was in the 
 West that her children found it ; pushing their 
 voyages till the limits of the land were reached and 
 the ultimate sunset seen. The furthest truth open 
 to such observation was evidently this, that the sun in 
 his setting sought the water, fell into the RJica — the 
 ocean stream — and so, men quickly supposed, re- 
 turned again by secret channels to his rising point in 
 ^ Sat., i. 1 8.
 
 The Grillo and Midsummer T^Sy 
 
 the East. An immediate development of the idea 
 provided that boat of the Sun which Hercules was 
 said to have borrowed.^ 
 
 Thus it was at the Pillars of Hercules that the 
 secret was learned, and where water appeared as the 
 ultimate vehicle of the sun's hidden force. When 
 the night drew her veil over these fires, the\' burned 
 still, it was thought, in a hundred springs. When 
 Cancer came, and the sun began his annual retreat, 
 the meaning of that withdrawal lay open ; the force 
 that heaven lost earth gained, in every rising fountain 
 and flowing river. This view of nature was confirmed 
 to man b\' man\' facts and fancies confounded 
 together in a common misinterpretation. Did not 
 the great river of Egypt commence its rise with just 
 that solstice which opened the period of the sun's 
 decline ? - The fountain of Dodona, the Anapauo- 
 menos, did it not move in .sympathy with the hidden 
 sun ; empty by day but full at midnight, nay full of 
 the dark sun's fire, for it even kindled torches ! ■' So 
 Deles, they said, had a spring that rose and fell with 
 the Nile, and Tenedos another, which ran only after 
 the summer solstice.^ Of fountains that intoxicated 
 there is no need to speak, though these also the 
 ancients believed in, pushing to this extreme point 
 
 ' This scyphtts is sometimes called a boat, sometimes a cup, thus 
 challenging comparison with the crater of the solar Bacchus. See 
 Macrobius, Somn. Scip., i. I2 ; Sat., v. 21. 
 
 - Plut., De placitis . . . Philos., i. i. 
 
 3 Pliny, N.H., ii. 103. ^ Ibid.
 
 388 ■■* Florence Past and Present 
 
 their faith in that Bacchus who was once the sun 
 god and only later the god of the vine.^ The god 
 Volcanus too entered their dream, for rivers of fire 
 authentic and terrible, earth born, could only seem 
 to them the ultimate, and now dreadful, effect of 
 these secret rays. Kronos, the retreating sun,- may 
 give kiv/nios the waterspring, which, in Pindar, as he 
 describes Etna, becomes the stream of red-hot lava 
 that Hephctstus poured.-^ Under this solar classifica- 
 tion, fire and water, bane and blessing, are brought 
 together, and one begins to understand why fish 
 were offered from the Tiber at Rome on the day of 
 Vulcan ; the waters rendering tribute to the dread 
 form of the god of fire who thus possessed them, and 
 the worshippers using fire as the means of making 
 that offering complete.^ 
 
 The rise of the Nile was perhaps the greatest proof 
 on which this theory of the hidden sun depended, 
 and the lotos of the Nile^ became the widespread 
 symbol of the secret doctrine for a very special reason, 
 even beyond that of its mere habitat in so sympathetic 
 a stream. The lotos flower was round and red, so 
 that it fairl)' represented the sun. With the sun it 
 moved, sinking deep at midniglit, just sliowing on the 
 
 1 riiny, N.H. 
 
 - Theopompus (330 B.C.) says that in the west they called the 
 winter Kvonos. See him quoted by Plutarch, Isis ct Osiris, Ixix.- 
 Ixxi. 
 
 "' Pindar, P., i. 48. ^ Fowler, op. tit., p. 209. 
 
 ■* Nymph'ta nelumbo ; see Perrot et Chipiez, v. 577,
 
 The Grillo and Midsummer 389 
 
 surface at dawn, and rising high above the water at 
 midday. It was, as it were, the sun itself in the 
 stream, and declared the wonder of his daily, as the 
 Nile of his }'earl)-, withdrawal. This, perhaps, is the 
 ' flower ' carried in the left hand of the god ot 
 Heliopolis ; ^ he of Tarsus certain!}' holds a sceptre 
 with a lotos for finial,- and when we find that 
 
 GIGLIO FROM LINTEL OF RIGATTIEKI IN MUSEO DI S. MARCO 
 
 Florence crowns her Marzocco at the solstice with 
 lilies, and paints that in the centre red, while they 
 cr}' from her car giglio ! giglio ! ^ a new interpreta- 
 tion of the ancient flower begins to seem possible. 
 If the lotus became the rose in the worship of 
 Helios at Rhodes,^ there is no reason wh}' we 
 should not find it in the giagginolo of Florence.^ 
 
 ' Macrob. Saf., i. 17. 
 
 - Head, I/ist. Num., p. 614 quoted by Frazer, Adonis, p. 93, note. 
 ^ Cambiagi, op. cii., pp. 42, 112. ■• Head, op. cit., pp. 53S seq. 
 
 ^ Note the curious fact that the £ii/ggw/o, ahnost the synonym of the 
 giagghiolo, is the lotos liee.
 
 390 Florence Past and Present 
 
 So Marzocco and Giglio together would tell the 
 same tale. 
 
 Whether they kindled torches or no, all hot springs 
 were clearly born of the setting, the secret, sun, and 
 as such were sacred to Hercules ; ^ not so much, one 
 may believe, because the)' refreshed men after labour, 
 as because Hercules represented the eastern sun-god. 
 Malispini tells us that in old times there was such a 
 spring, a mile and a half be)'ond Fiesole in the hills, 
 which flowed to fill a bath in that city ; brought there 
 in an artificial channel. The water poured into the 
 bath, he adds, through the mouth of a lion so 
 wondrously wrought that it seemed alive.- There is 
 no reason to doubt the story, for an early example of 
 the same use of the lion of the eastern Hercules 
 comes from Cyprus.'^ At Fiesole it has double 
 value, however, as it throws new light on the Floren- 
 tine Marzocco, showing him definitely as the lion 
 of- the sun. His name, we ma\' add, affords a 
 further probabilitj^ : that the Mars of Camarte was 
 only Hercules, that is the sun-god, under "another 
 title. 
 
 Felt beyond question in hot springs, the i)ower of 
 the secret sun might, men thought, be hardl)- less 
 surely found in all waters from the solstice onwards ; 
 their pleasant warmth at midsummer was but the 
 
 ^ Allien., Dcip., xii. i. 
 
 - R. c G. Malispini, Croiiara, xxv. 
 
 ■* It was found at Amalluis. See Fiazer, Adonis, p. 91.
 
 The Grille and Midsummer 391 
 
 sensible sign of those deeper virtues that the decHning 
 sun then began to communicate to every stream. 
 There was never, so far as we know, any hot spring 
 at Florence, but the Arno flowed under the city 
 walls, and, by ancient tradition, which lives in a 
 measure to-day, bathing in the river began on the 
 24th of June. This is a practice so widespread in 
 Europe as to be almost as universal as it is natural ; ^ 
 that it is not natural onl}-, we may take two signifi- 
 cant cases in proof. 
 
 In Roumania they have a legend of the solstice ; 
 that the sun stood still in the heavens to admire the 
 beauty of a maiden whom he saw bathing in the sea, 
 and that his descending power transformed her into a 
 rose."- Here we find again that rudd}- lotos of Egypt 
 which alread}', in its northward progress, had become 
 a rose at Rhodes, in view of a Colossus who was the 
 sun god of the East on his way to become the Greek 
 Hercules. So, too, the people of the Italian Abruzzi 
 explain the custom of bathing on the 24th of June, 
 which they also share, by saying that the water then 
 acquires marvellous virtue by the descent into it of 
 the sun and moon together.^ Here the male and the 
 female, the goddess and the god, are seen combining 
 in this secret work, which at Florence — the daughter 
 of Arnina and Camarte — must once have been thought 
 
 ' For many examples see Frazer, Adonis, pp. 204 seq. 
 ~ R. Folkard, Platit Zc^n- (London, 18S4), p. 516. 
 •* G. Finamore, Credenzc , . . Abriizzcsi, pp. 156-60.
 
 392 Florence Past and Present 
 
 due to the united force of Arna and of Mars directed 
 at midsummer to this end. The Giglio and the 
 Marzocco would thus appear as the patent symbols, 
 not so much of the Ville taken separately, as of this 
 myth, and of the faith in it which made of these two 
 towns one Florence. Nor is it without significance 
 here that in historic times, as Florence added to her 
 growing province on every side, each fresh submission 
 to her arms was marked by a new ' cero ' offered at 
 this date and feast. As to the bathing then practised, 
 its real character was so well known that the Church 
 early forbade it because involving a deep pagan 
 superstition.^ What that belief was we have already 
 seen. 
 
 The final ceremony of the feast was the horse-race 
 for a prize ; the famous Palio of Florence. This took 
 place in the evening of the great day, and the horses 
 ran, sometimes with riders on their backs, sometimes 
 without, but always across the city from west to east. 
 At one time the race went by Via Palazzuolo and 
 Via della Spada, at another by Borgognissanti and 
 Via Vigna Nuova to the same point at the corner of 
 Palazzo Strozzi ; but always from thence, by Via 
 Strozzi, Via degli Spe/.iaH, and the Corso, to San 
 Piero and the Port' alia Croce, where the goal was set 
 and the Palio waited the winner. This prize was 
 poorer or richer according to the circumstances of the 
 
 ^ See Giimm, neiiische M., i. p. 4Q0, and S. Aiignsti)ii Opera 
 (Paris, 1683), V. 903, and p. ii. 461 ei seq.
 
 The Grillo and Midsummer 393 
 
 city, but ever of scarlet, whether simple cloth, rich 
 velvet, or gold brocade.^ 
 
 It is not difficult to find in such a race the final 
 expression of just those fundamental ideas we have 
 traced in the feast itself From Via Tornabuoni 
 eastward, the course laid for it never varied, and as 
 one realises once more that the Mugnone used to 
 flow here, and that the ' gorgo ' lay between St. 
 Ambrogio and the Port' alia Croce,^ it seems likely 
 that the race was originally from water to water. 
 Poseidon, the water god, was also the god of the 
 horse and the patron of horse races, and it is difficult 
 to believe that this race could be run on the 24th of 
 June without reference to the waters, and to the 
 powers that then in a special manner made these 
 streams their home. 
 
 It was the sun, the heavenly fire, that entered the 
 water to work wonders, and this other element finds 
 no less clear expression in the race than do the 
 streams which were then supposed to receive him. 
 The horse belongs, we may remember, to Helios no 
 less than to Poseidon. Here, at P'lorence, the invari- 
 able course from stream to stream is the original 
 Decumamis of the city, once traced in a rite in- 
 distinguishable from Sun-worship, and now retraced 
 by these thundering hoofs against the path of the 
 sun, for this is the day of his retreat, the opening of 
 his hidden work. So the Pelopium of Elis — her field 
 
 ^ Cambi.igi, op. cit., pp. 58-60, 14S-62. " See above, p. 108.
 
 394 Florence Past and Present 
 
 dedicated to the sun — was built about, and had its 
 door so set that none could enter it save as they 
 moved from west to east.^ And the Palio itself, the 
 prize that Florence held out, declared in its very 
 colour that fire which, falling from heaven and ready 
 to become secret, was the hope of the day ; the goal 
 towards which not the race alone but the whole 
 festival steadily moved ; in the sunset that wakened 
 the cricket's song. 
 
 In a final word let it now be said, by way of 
 summing up, that while many of the details of this 
 Midsummer feast, in Greece and Florence alike, must 
 be pronounced mere accretions, and fit, as such, to be 
 the despair of one who would reduce them to the 
 exact order of a historic development, the root of the 
 whole is equally plain and ancient. It cannot be 
 without meaning that in so many parts of Europe 
 water is made to play a distinct part in harvest 
 festivals, or that, alike in Germany, on the Danube, 
 and in rural France, the fire of St. John in several 
 forms is thrown into wells and streams at Midsummer, 
 sometimes with the expressed purpose of communi- 
 cating virtue to their waters.'-' The oldest objects of 
 pagan worship, the stock and the stone, had that 
 place and ke])t it long because the)- were supposed 
 to be the dwelling-places of the sun's fire. Not the 
 discovery of fire by man, remember, but only the 
 
 1 Pausanias, v. 13. 
 
 - Frazer, Golden Bough, iii. pp. 273, 278, 2S1.
 
 TREE FROM WIHCH CRICKETS ARE SOLD ON ASCENSION DAY
 
 The Grillo and Midsummer 397 
 
 sudden fancy that saw the sun itself in the spark, 
 gave the stock and stone their high place. But for 
 fancy the waters give direct vision ; of the sun, that 
 seems by reflection to inhabit their depths. Thus the 
 dyad becomes a triad ; water, wood and stone ranking 
 together — that as the vehicle, these as the more 
 permanent dwelling-places of the fire of heaven. 
 When the matter is thus seen at its simplest it 
 becomes impossible to assign any order or date to 
 the stages of such a belief, or to set any limit to its 
 possible antiquity.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE FEAST OE SEPTEMBER 
 
 The evening of the /th uf September is dis- 
 tinguished by a curious observance, less known 
 than those of the other Florentine festivals because 
 few who notice such things are then in town. Once 
 indeed, and not so long ago, this drew crowds from 
 the surrounding country ; now what is left passes 
 unobserved in the poorer suburbs and outskirts of 
 the city, and is in fact rather the sport of children 
 than the more serious matter that past generations 
 knew. Such as it is, the Ficnicolonc may well demand 
 attention, if only because of the greater past it still 
 faintly represents. 
 
 Light is the chief feature of this children's game. 
 Tapers and candles are set in lanterns of coloured 
 paper where their blaze makes a bra\e show. The 
 paper is stretched on slips of cane or thin wood, so 
 bent that the lantern takes the shape desired, as a 
 boat, a globe, a fish or a bell : to name those most 
 commonly seen. So shaped, it dangles with its 
 dancing flame swung from the end of a long cane 
 
 398
 
 The Feast of September 399 
 
 which the child carries in his hand. There is a 
 natural rivalry in the matter ; each child proud to 
 think his own lantern the best ; and, as the\' move, 
 
 PAPER LANTERNS FROM FIERUCOLONE OF I9IO 
 
 meet and challeny;e each other on the street, the 
 traditional rhyme is still heard : — 
 
 L'e piu bella la mia Mine is the better, braveand fine ! 
 
 Che quella della zia My aunt "s is nothing, look at mine! 
 
 though the days are past when this lantern-pla}- was 
 the diversion, not of children only, but of their elders 
 as well. Another rhyme belonging to the same 
 occasion : — 
 
 Bello, bello ! Here is a basket ! look to me, 
 
 A chi lo guarda, l'e un For a better liasket you ne'er shall 
 
 corbello. see.
 
 400 Florence Past and Present 
 
 would seem to indicate that the lantern of to-day 
 was once an ordinary basket, carrying a candle and 
 swinging from the end of a pole. 
 
 The noise that accompanies these dancing lights 
 is something beyond the shouts of childish delight or 
 even rivalry ; it lias a further meaning that may often 
 be bitter enough ; filled as it is with the spirit of 
 Florentine mocker}', than which none is sharper. 
 Each quarter of the town, each street almost, has its 
 butt ; some unfortunate man or woman who, for one 
 reason or another, often merely a physical peculiarity 
 or deformit}', has drawn the attention and the malice 
 of the neighbourhood. At the Ficrucolone this 
 enmity finds full expression. An effigy of the person 
 in question is prepared, and, set on a pole, is carried 
 through the streets.^ How the lanterns crowd about 
 it ; how the clamour rises afresh ; the whistles that 
 are blown, the bells that are rung ; the mocking jests 
 that fly freely as the figure makes its progress : one 
 can fancy it all, and yet feel sure that the fancy falls 
 short of the fact in Florence, where no feast would 
 seem complete without such salt. This at anyrate 
 is, I am told, the chief remaining feature of the 
 popular festival to-day. 
 
 Once, ' the feast of lanterns,' as we may call it, was 
 much more important. The name Fierucolone — an 
 augmented diminutive of fiera — tells us that a fair 
 
 ' An example of this elTigy, ami a colleclion of Fierucolone lanterns 
 may be seen in the Museo Etnografico, Florence.
 
 The Feast of September 401 
 
 took place on the 8th of September, and relates it to 
 some other and greater occasion of the same kind ; 
 no doubt the midsummer display of stuffs and 
 brocades in For' Santa Maria on the 24th of June. 
 If Florence had thought only of these — her glory — 
 this would have been simph' the Fiemcola, the ' poor 
 fair of poor things ' ; for what other comparison 
 could there be between the finest Florentine products 
 and the coarse countr}'-made linen, and the strings 
 of dried mushrooms that were bought and sold in 
 September. Yet the country so crowded the town to 
 sell and see, and the town so poured itself into the 
 street to see and bu)', that the Fierucola was indeed 
 the Fierucolonc, the great occasion of the }'ear in 
 this humbler commerce. 
 
 The hills sent tiieir stout spinners and weavers of 
 yarn ; women of the mountains, large of figure, light 
 of foot and tongue, apt at a bargain ; who came to 
 Florence a thousand together, attended by the hill- 
 men, their fathers, husbands, and sons, all keen on 
 business, but no less read)' for the holiday and the 
 feast. The 7th of September saw their arrival, and 
 the Church of the Annunziata received these pilgrims, 
 whose piety was combined with the desire to do 
 much business and carrx- good money home. The 
 rolls of rough linen la}' in heaps under the Loggie of 
 the Piazza, and there too, in the Cloister and even the 
 Church itself, the pilgrims of the fair themselves lay 
 down to sleep when their devotions were over. So 
 
 2 C
 
 402 Florence Past and Present 
 
 strange was the sight ; so uncouth the people and 
 their clothes and prayers ; that the open Church, the 
 Cloister and the Piazza, where till midnight the wild 
 scene went on, and all night long this mass of country 
 people slept, drew the town as to a public spectacle. 
 The boys of Florence, you may be sure, did not lose 
 their opportunity. They stole among the groups of 
 praying, singing, sleeping people, now mocking their 
 mountain latin, now setting to ribald music an imita- 
 tion of the wild cadence in which the country folk 
 prayed, now blowing at the sleepers' very ears whistles 
 of clay that were fit to wake the dead. Whistling, 
 ringing and mockery may be still heard at the 
 Fierucolone, but these are only the poor survival of 
 a yet coarser and wilder past. No effigy was then 
 needed, for the country people, present in person, 
 were themselves the butt of the town, though it is 
 said that as long as the fair lasted many a paper 
 lantern was itself a ' guy,' dressed to the figure of 
 the country fashion. But neither mockery nor per- 
 secution could turn back the people of the hills, or 
 defeat the combined claims of religion and of business 
 they felt so deeply. 
 
 It would seem then as if this persistence marked 
 the Fierucolone as a very ancient observance ; it 
 invites us at any rate to ask what the root of the 
 matter can possibly have been. The Ecclesiastical 
 Calendar might provide an answer, showing us the 
 7th of September as the Vigil, and the 8th as
 
 The Feast of September 403 
 
 the clay, of the Virgin's birth. Yet this solution is 
 hardly sufficient to remove all doubt. The ecclesi- 
 astical date is said to have been fixed about 695 A.D., 
 by the dream of a monk, but its observance was not 
 general in the W'est till the end of the first Christian 
 millennium, or even later.^ In the absence of any 
 direct tradition as to the commencement of the 
 Fierucolone at Florence, to suppose the observance 
 no older than the date and use just mentioned is little 
 more satisfactory than to say that it began in the 
 public rejoicings ordered in 1683, when Vienna was 
 deliv'Cred this day from the fear of the Turk. So too 
 the ecclesiastical date ma}^ have added prestige to 
 the Fierucolone, and secured its observance clown to 
 our own times, but can hardly be supposed enough to 
 account for so deeply rooted a popular habit and use. 
 The fair, we are told, was originally held, not at the 
 Church of the Virgin as in later days, but at that of 
 San Piero Maggiore,- and in the adjoining market. 
 Thus the connection of the Fierucolone with the 
 Virgin is seen to be both late and dubious. W^e 
 know this Mercatino as in all probability the original, 
 the pre-roman market of Florence ; this covipitiim at 
 San Piero as one of her oldest religious centres. It 
 would seem as if the origin and real nature of the 
 
 ' I )iii;ui(lus, Dh'iii. Offir., vii. 28; Muratori, A'./.S., ii. p. ii. 
 1021. The latter document shows that about looo A.D. the observ- 
 ance of the Virgin's birth was not yet general in Italy. 
 
 - See G. Conti, Fii-euze Vcahia (1899), PP- 606 seq., for this 
 important fact, and for many details of the feast in later times.
 
 404 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Fierucolone must be sought in the remote past of 
 Florentine paganism, rather than in the nearer 
 antiquity of her Christianity, even the first. We may 
 begin the search b\' considering the probabiHties of 
 the case ; both general and particular. 
 
 riAZZA Ol'- S. riKKO^ \VHH I'OKTICO .H ClIL'Rtil 
 The arch on the left leads to Rorgo Piiiti 
 
 Pre-Christian festivals ccrtainK' marl^cd the chief 
 astronomical moments in the Morcntinc }'car, for at 
 the winter solstice we have found the Cepi:)o, at the 
 spring ecjuinox the Fire of Fortune, and at the 
 solstice of summer the feast of Hercules or Bacchus, 
 the feast of the departing sun. \ow the month of 
 September holds a similar date in that of the autumn
 
 The Feast of September 405 
 
 equinox ; it would be strange then did it not show a 
 hke feast. 
 
 We expect another festival, and are not without the 
 means of arriving at a plausible conjecture regarding 
 its nature. During the greater part of the month the 
 sun moves in the sign of Virgo, the young woman 
 who holds in her hand the stars called arist(X or spica 
 Virghiis — the ear of corn. ^ Now this cannot be the 
 corn of harvest, for reaping was done in June, and 
 finished, at latest, in July. It can only be the corn 
 of seed-time, and in fact the sowing began in 
 September as ancient authors tell.- The chief seed- 
 time la}' after the equinox, but sowing was done in a 
 measure before that date. The September festival 
 must have to do with the seed-time, and would rather 
 precede the equinox than follow it, for anticipation is 
 ever a note of Italian religious practice. 
 
 The poet Ausonius gives the Autumn to Volcanus : ^ 
 September walks in purple, and holds a cornucopia 
 full of the fruits of the earth. We are here on 
 familiar ground, for Volcanus is only — and here 
 evidentl}- — a forni of that Bacchus who is also 
 Hercules, the subterranean power of the sun, now in 
 full retreat and seen therefore in a new fruitfulness. 
 And Virgo ; who can she be but Fortuna, or Arna 
 
 ^ See ISIacrobius, Sat., i. 21. and Pliny, X.H., xviii. 31, 74. The 
 latter authority says the stars of Spica rose nn the 15th of the month. 
 
 - See Libri de Re Rustica (Florenti:^: Junta, 1515), pp. 222 ro. 
 223 ro., 319 vo.'izx vo. 
 
 ^ D. M. Ausonius, Eclog., ed. Scaliger (15SS), p. 1S6.
 
 4o6 Florence Past and Present 
 
 to use her Florentine name, the goddess of the spring 
 and of the harvest, now ready to preside over 
 another seed-time ? Her arista is even now the 
 word used in Florence for a baked pig's chine, as if 
 she were indeed the Greek Demeter to whom that 
 animal was sacred.^ She is the guide and hope of 
 those who sow, yet not without the help of him who 
 comes to carry her cornucopia while she is thus busy. 
 His is the subterranean heat which strikes upwards in 
 the soil, and saves the seed from death in the furrow. 
 Demeter the corn mother, Dionysus her consort, 
 Proserpine her daughter, who was the corn cast into 
 the earth and left for six months to that dark 
 keeping : such are the personages of the sacred 
 drama we have the right to expect. 
 
 Here and now, on Italian soil ; on the 7th and 
 8th of September ; we have the full right to expect 
 them. There may have been transference hither 
 from a later date; from the 15th of the month, 
 or even from the equinox itself, under some disturb- 
 ance or new attraction brought among these days by 
 the Calendar of late Christian time. Or there may 
 have been nothing of the kind ; onl)' tliat anticipa- 
 tion of the eciuinox 1)\- the 8th of the montli which 
 the relation of Ascension day to the summer solstice 
 so plainly suggests.- The fact is that even now at 
 
 ' So Vairo calls tlie ridge belv\een two furrows /(^;rrt. See De Re 
 Rtist., i. 32, and Nonius, De Com. Doct., pp. 62, 152. 
 - See above, p. 357.
 
 The Feast of September 407 
 
 Naples the Virgin's birthday, as celebrated at 
 Piedigrotta, is known in the gei-go as la Coriata ; ^ the 
 feast of the Kore, the Proserpine who is the corn of 
 seed-time. It would not be wonderful then if we 
 were to find the old Greek drama, in which she 
 played a principal part, fully staged in the correspond- 
 ing Tuscan feast. 
 
 The Greater Mysteries of Demeter, held at Eleusis 
 in mid-September, certainly show several points of 
 agreement with the Fierucolone of Florence. The 
 date sufficiently corresponds, for the Mysteries were 
 celebrated from the 15th of Bocdromiou onwards,- 
 and Boedroinion is, for practical purposes, our month 
 of September. At Eleusis, as at Florence, the crowd 
 from all parts of the country was very great. An 
 early day was devoted to a ceremonial purification 
 of the candidates, who found the lustral water in the 
 neighbouring river. Of this no distinct trace remains 
 at Florence, but the original site of the Fierucolone 
 at the Mercatino, close to the waters of the Affrico 
 and the gorgo, would be very proper for such a 
 purpose. Next came the procession of the cistifcrs : 
 may one see something of this in the lights hidden in 
 corhcUi at the Fierucolone, and in the lanterns that, 
 for all their brightness, were but swinging baskets 
 too of coloured paper ? Something of a wish to 
 
 1 E. Mirabella, op. cit., p. 228. 
 
 - Plut., Demetr., 26. This is the date adopted by Meursius in his 
 Elensinia, c. 21, which may be consulted for details.
 
 4o8 Florence Past and: Present 
 
 hide as well as to show is clearly present ; the light 
 is there, sure enough, but either you do not name it 
 at all, or in your rh\'me you must call it not a light, 
 or even a lantern, but a basket. ' A chi lo guarda, 
 I'e un corbello.' 
 
 Lights there were at Eleusis as at Florence, moving 
 in the long procession led by the Dadoiidios. Under 
 his guidance, and carrying their torches, the candi- 
 dates for initiation passed along the sacred street to 
 the temple of the goddess, where they spent the 
 night. The Greek scene, one sees, cannot have 
 differed much from that acted at the Fierucolone 
 to the wonder of Florence. Next day saw another 
 procession with the figure of the god in the midst, 
 borne on high above the shouting crowd. The 
 close of the whole celebration brought the cr/vfoya/xara, 
 the biting ribald jests levelled from the bridge by 
 the initiated against the passing crowd. It ma}' well 
 be that \\\Q.frizzo^ that peculiar product of Florentine 
 wit, like so much else here, derives its spirit and its 
 form from a remote past, and from a Greek original. 
 
 The comparison between the Fierucolone and the 
 Eleusinia need not be confined to such details, and 
 should not linger upon them. The Greek Mysteries 
 had a centre, a rite of chief importance, about which 
 all the subordinate ceremonies gathered, and from 
 which they took their meaning : a thing done in 
 secret, and revealed onh- to the epoptai. If we can 
 find this, or anything like it, at Florence we may
 
 The Feast of September 409 
 
 feel certain of the practical identit}- of Greek and 
 Tuscan doctrine. It will be best, however, to 
 approach so cardinal a point gradually, and from the 
 Tuscan and even the local side. 
 
 Locally, the original seat of the Fierucolone lay 
 at San Pietro, that is at the covipituiii where we have 
 already suspected the presence of Janus : hitherto a 
 mere name indeed, but one that is more than 
 suggested by the neighbouring gcniciilinii. It is 
 time these names were examined more closely. 
 
 At Rome, Janus was held as one of the Dii 
 Penates/ and as a good authority tells us that in 
 Etruria the same place was given to the Genius 
 Jovialis — the spirit of Jupiter - — it is natural to con- 
 clude that this is Etruscan doctrine throughout, and 
 that the Ani oi Tuscany became at Rome indifferently 
 Janus or Genius. He was the inward power of 
 generation, the masculine power, like the Greek 
 Hercules ; the spirit, then, not of Jove only, but of all 
 male deities ; the god of all men. In this masculine 
 world he was just what his corresponding Uui became 
 in the world of the women. The pair represented in 
 fact the idea of personalit}-, divine or human, doubled 
 by that of sex, and ready to reproduce its like. Men 
 swore b)- Hercules, women by Juno. A man 
 ' indulged his Genius,' an angry woman said of 
 herself ' my Juno is passionate.' By an easy 
 
 ' Procop., Dc bell. Goth., i. 25. 
 
 " Quoted by Arnobius, Adv. Geutcs, iii. 40.
 
 41 o Florence Past and Present 
 
 transition, not unknown to-day, this Juno became 
 the Fortune, perhaps the Fate, of her possessor. 
 There are inscriptions which give the Genius as 
 the male form of the Fortuna, in a distribution of 
 office wliich recalls exactly the relation between the 
 male agathodcemon and the female agathc tycJie of the 
 Greeks.^ The serpent, whom we have met so often 
 already, was the recognised s\-mbol of both. 
 
 The sure sign that we ha\"e not wandered from 
 ancient Tuscan ideas is seen in the noted and 
 peculiar relation between Hercules and Juno dis- 
 played in many examples of Etruscan art : on the 
 mirror, for instance, where Hercules is seen as the 
 mate of Juno;- evidently he can hardly be other 
 than the Genius Jovialis, the spirit of Jupiter, on 
 which graphic art can la}' no emphasis save by 
 presenting him as a distinct figure. This Hercules, 
 or Genius, and this Juno his companion, belong 
 originally to Ionia, where they are seen together on 
 the coins of Thasos and the frieze of Assos.^ 
 
 The Janus belonged not to individuals only, but 
 to human groups as well, who worshipped him as the 
 common spirit of their clan ; embodying, as it were, 
 its personality, and giving distinction to its members. 
 This cult was naturally most deeply felt among the 
 upper classes where it amounted to a worship of the 
 
 ' Daremberg et Saglio, 5.c'. 'Genius.' 
 
 - Fowler, op. cit., p. 143. 
 
 ^ Daremberg et Saglio, s.v. ' Heraklc.«.'
 
 The Feast of September 411 
 
 spirit of the family. The ' Janus Patricius ' is, in fact, 
 known to have borne that title in old Rome,i a.nd as 
 such he can have been no other than the Genius of 
 the Gens. Thus when at Florence we find, in the 
 immediate neighbourhood of San Pietro, both the 
 Via Gcntilis and the Geniculnm'^ the full sense of 
 such names begins at last to appear. x-\t this 
 compitiun the spirit of religion and of family stood at 
 its height ; in a double culmination indeed, for this 
 paganism was nothing if not aristocratic ; its last 
 refuge lay in those patrician families who so long 
 resisted Christianity, as preferring to ' indulge their 
 genius ' and still to sacrifice at his altars. In 
 Florence the greater of these shrines probably stood 
 at the eastern cross-roads, and the lesser was that 
 geniculnm we have found close b\', on the Via Sacra. 
 This Janus, who was pre-eminentl}- pater ; this 
 Genius thought of as the author of life in all its 
 forms ; himself provides an easy transition from the 
 local centre of his cult at Florence to the subject 
 more immediately in hand ; the purpose that drew the 
 people there in thousands, every September, as the 
 autumn equinox approached. For it was the seed- 
 time the countrx- had in mind ; the risk implied in 
 that great committal of grain to earth ; the powers 
 to be propitiated on such an occasion. And one of 
 
 ^ Roscher, Lex., 21, 26, 40. Preller compares the similar cult- 
 title Trarpt^os found at Athens and used to distinguish the god wor- 
 shipped by those ot Ionian descent. 
 
 - See above, pp. 116, 117.
 
 412 Florence Past and Present 
 
 the cult-titles of Janus, Consivus, the god of sowing,^ 
 shows that he was indeed recognised in a character 
 peculiarly appropriate to this season and to the work 
 then in hand. So, too, the Genius appears as the close 
 associate, if not actually the equivalent oi Liber ; - that 
 Bacchus who bore the cornucopia and represented 
 the vis iiitiiiia, the hidden power, of earthh' plenty, 
 which men thcuight could be no other than the 
 subterranean sun. Committed to this power, all 
 seeds must needs be safe, warmed and made fertile by 
 that secret and genial heat. 
 
 We have almost forgotten that Janus does not 
 work alone, that he x?. Juuoniiis \''' known therefore 
 not so much in himself as by the name of his 
 female companion. How much was thought to 
 depend on this union and co-operation of the 
 goddess with the god, the Mysteries of Demeter 
 are ready to show. We return to them, for a 
 moment, that they may throw fresh light on the 
 market, the fair, and the feast of Florence, and of 
 September. 
 
 At Eleusis the heart of the Mysteries lay here, in 
 
 a co-operation of the goddess and the god that was 
 
 figuratively set forth as a marriage, visible to the 
 
 initiated alone, and in the {ox\w of ritual espousals 
 
 where the hierophant stood for Dionwsus, and the 
 
 ^ Macrob., Sat., i. 9. 
 
 - ' Si quel ad hoc templum rem divinam fecerit Jovi Libeio aut Jovis 
 Genio.' Inscription from Furfo (Naples) C.I.L., i. 603. 
 ^ Macrob., Sat., i. 9,
 
 The Feast of September 413 
 
 chief priestess for Demeter.^ Hope lay in their thus 
 joining hands to help, and the first direction of the 
 expected power was declared in another symbol 
 shown to anxious eyes : the ear of corn, whose 
 grains were ready to fall into the ground. Demeter 
 was thus named in the silence of the mystery as the 
 corn-mother,- and her marriage appeared as the only 
 rite that could secure the presence and power of the 
 corn-father, without which all must come to nothing. 
 These ritual espousals must once have been a sun- 
 charm, meant to command the subterranean heat and 
 set it about its gcjiial hopeful work. 
 
 A rite not ver)- dissimilar has left traces of its 
 presence in Florentine history, and has deepl\- 
 impressed the popular imagination. We have already 
 noticed, in passing, the curious ceremon}' of the 
 Archbishop's marriage to the Abbess of San Pietro,^ 
 and may now refer to the matter again, and in more 
 detail, as it has an evident interest at this point of 
 our argument. In 1567, not twenty \-ears before the 
 old custom was abolished, this was the way of it ; as 
 we learn from a note in manuscript made at the time.^ 
 The day happened on that occasion to be the 
 14th of May, and Monsignore opened his pro- 
 
 ^ See authorities cited iu I>a\\son, (>/. lit., pp. 579-8o. 
 
 - Hippolytus, Kefutatio, v. viii. p. 162 (ed. Duncker and 
 Schneidewin). See Frazer, Adonis, p. 324, to which I am indebted 
 for this reference. 
 
 ' See above, p. 124. 
 
 ■* ' MS. in Casa Tolomei,' quoted by Lastri, Oss. I'ior., v. pp. 
 S5 seq.
 
 414 Florence Past and Present 
 
 gress by a short stage from Scandicci to Monte 
 Oliveto, where the monks gave him hospitahty till the 
 next morning. On the 15th, arrayed in all his 
 vestments and mounted on a white palfrey, he rode 
 with a great following to Porta San Frediano, where 
 the Grand Duke's men met him as a guard of honour. 
 Surrounded by the Visdomini, the hereditary patrons 
 of the See, he thence moved, in the centre of a great 
 procession of clerg\' and laity, by the Borghi and 
 across the Ponte Vecchio to the Piazza della Signoria, 
 where an address of public welcome was presented and 
 answered. Thence he rode on to the Mercatino, and 
 found the Piazza dressed in gala, and all the Strozzi 
 of the blood of Bianca ready to receive him. Here he 
 dismounted, and the Strozzi allowed the servants of 
 the Convent to lead away the palfrey as their 
 perquisite, but kept the saddle and bridle for them- 
 selves. With the Della Tosa, the Archbishop now 
 entered the Churcii of San Piero, prayed a while, and 
 then took the formal seat prepared for his new dignity 
 beside the altar and beneath the can()|)y of state. 
 On the other side 3at the Abbess with her nuns, and 
 as soon as all was ready she rose, moved across, and 
 sat down on a seat prepared for licr by the Arch- 
 bishop's side. He then pronounced a brief allocution 
 ' in the accustomed form,' declaring that he accepted 
 her as his bride ; she representing the Church of 
 p'lorence. The rite was made valid by the gift of the 
 usual ring, which in this case cost two hinidred florins,
 
 The Feast of September 415 
 
 and when the Archbishop had set it on her finger she 
 returned to her former place among the sisterhood. 
 He then blessed the people, left the church, and went 
 to the Cathedral, staying only a moment at the 
 Geniatiiiiu in the Borgo to kneel and say the 
 accustomed prayer. In the afternoon, when the 
 religious ceremonies in the Duomo and the Baptistery 
 were over, and they had eaten, the Abbess of San 
 Piero sent her bridegroom of the morning, with great 
 pomp, the bridal bed in crimson, gold, and fine linen, 
 which she and her nuns had prepared against the time 
 when it would be required. Thus the whole ceremon)- 
 ended in a flourish of trumpets. Lastri says of it : — 
 ' This was rather a mysterious than a mundane 
 thing,' ^ and indeed it is to be taken as such. 
 
 What concerns us is to notice that by all signs this 
 rite is pagan and not Christian, and was probabl}- a 
 ritual marriage that had come down from immemorial 
 antiquity. In the Bishop of Florence, thus engaged, 
 
 ^ Oss. Fiorentino (1821), v. p. 94. See also, in A. Cocchi, 
 Chiese di Firenze (1903), at p. 103, the account of an earlier 
 occasion and form. The words of the BtiUettoite there quoted may be 
 repeated here : — iverunt usque ad cameram, et in camera, domine 
 Abbatisse dicti monasterii, in qua camera dictus dominus Episcopus 
 pulcerrinmm lectum, <|uem dicta domina Abbatissa pro eo fieri fecerat, 
 invenit, et super eodem lecto requievit ad vokmtatem suam 
 Die autem sequenti . . . redierunt in mane ad dictam cameram, 
 ubi erat dictus dominus Episcopus . . . from which it would 
 appear that in 1286 the custom was that the Bishop should spend the 
 night in the Convent. At Pistoia, where a rite of the same nature 
 obtained, the bed was set up in the Choir of the Church. See Lastri, 
 op. cit., p. 95.
 
 4i6 Florence Past and Present 
 
 we see not obscurely the Hierophant of Eleusis ; in 
 his Bride the priestess of the same mysteries. Those 
 who surround them at the auspicious moment are not 
 the people, whom the Abbess is said to represent, but 
 the aristocracy, and in particular two families where 
 the ancient rule of the matriarchate still held good. 
 The Visdomini confessed it openly in their other name 
 of Delia Tosa, and the part taken by the Strozzi was 
 limited to those who could prove their descent from 
 Bianca.^ So the Bishop himself was not Bishop of 
 Florence save by consent of a woman, and in right of 
 her he espoused. That the ' marriage ' was localised 
 at San Piero, where of old the September feast was 
 held, may make us bold — yet not too bold — in accept- 
 ing the conjecture suggested by such a conjunction. 
 Florentine Christianity had probably lifted from its 
 true setting a pagan rite that was once performed 
 yearly at this ver)- place as the central mystery of 
 September. Thus the correspondence with Eleusis 
 would be complete, and the ga\- lights and jests of the 
 Fierncolone would take new colour and meaning as 
 the natural accompaniment of the ritual marriage. 
 
 Were excavation possible on such a site, there might 
 even yet be found ])eneath the Church of San Piero 
 the subterranean vault that once knew the mystery 
 that called to the subterranean fire.- To see this rite 
 
 ' Cosimo della Rena, Serie, p. 31, makes the whole family of the 
 Strozzi take both their blood and their name from a certain Strozza. 
 
 - The Greek rite was performed underground. Lawson, op. ciL, p. 
 577-
 
 The Feast of September 417 
 
 performed in their interest was what drew crowds to 
 Eleusis ; the same desire may once have filled the 
 market and temple of Arnina, and sustained the 
 heart of Florentine worshippers during the long vigil 
 to the dawn of the great day. 
 
 The substructures of San Piero wait to give up 
 their secret, but at another site, no great way from the 
 city, something has been found suggesting strongh' 
 that Florence may indeed have known the doctrine of 
 Eleusis ; the mystery of Demeter and of her husband, 
 of the ear of corn, and of the autumn furrow that 
 the dark sun warmed. Borghini tells us that during 
 the sixteenth century one of the Adriani turned up 
 in his land near Antella a small, rather thick, copper 
 coin stamped with ears of corn and lilies.^ On one 
 side appeared the figure of three mounds of earth, 
 with an ear rising from each ; that in the centre 
 upright, those at the sides bowed outwards. Together, 
 he says, they presented the general form of the gigli'o, 
 and between the three ears the spaces of the field 
 bore two small gigli. In these latter he sees the 
 original of the fioretti ; the first form of those thread- 
 like appendages which, rising between the petals as 
 stamens might, still distinguish the Giglio of Florence 
 from that of France. If he is right, we may surely 
 read here what he hardly suspected. The three 
 mounds are three ridges of the new-ploughed field ; 
 the porcae of which Varro speaks.- The three ears, 
 1 Discorsi, ii. p. 193. 2 jj)^ j.^ j^^^^f^^ i ^2. 
 
 2 D
 
 41 8 Florence Past and Present 
 
 two of which bend to drop their grains in the ready- 
 furrow, represent the goddess to whom the pig was 
 sacred ; Demeter, the mother of the corn. The flower 
 set in such close union with the grain — call it lily or 
 lotos — is her consort, without whom sowing were in 
 vain, and who certainly bore just such a symbol at 
 Tarsus.^ This coin of Antella might have been 
 struck to commemorate the ritual marriage of 
 September between priest and priestess, and if we 
 accept what it seems to give us, the Giglio of 
 Florence is not simple but double, two in one, corn 
 and flower ; to signify goddess and god at work 
 together in the autumn field ; while its colour, as of 
 triumphant fire, declares further the same doctrine of 
 the subterranean sun. 
 
 It will certainly be said we go too fast and too far ; 
 and indeed by itself this coin were probably a late 
 and surely an insufficient foundation for such a 
 building of conjecture. Be it ever so plausible, 
 conjecture cannot stand alone, and only proof can 
 support it. If it is to be found, such proof must be 
 sought in a yet nearer and deeper examination of 
 the matter in hand. 
 
 In general, it is surely plain enough that a doctrine 
 of the subterranean sun, such as we have supposed, 
 would, wherever it was held, deeply influence the 
 beliefs of living men regarding the state of the dead. 
 The earth had received them, must they not belong 
 ' See above, p. 389.
 
 The Feast of September 419 
 
 to the kingdom of that hidden power? So Pindar, in 
 the well-known passage where he sets forth the joys of 
 the Greek paradise — its meadows aflame with roses ; 
 its trees of incense bearing golden fruit ; its games, 
 its music, its gardens — in opening the picture, places 
 all these delights under the glory of a sun which 
 shines btvicath, while the living are wrapped in mid- 
 night darkness.^ This, we may believe is the Genius, 
 thought able, in an ultimate blessing, to secure the 
 survival of personalit}- even under bodily dissolution ; 
 and, in a yet bolder figure, this is the Hercules who 
 brings back Theseus and Alcestis to upper earth 
 from the under world. So Bacchus too was fabled 
 to have descended and returned from thence in a 
 sun-myth which joins the Greek Dionysus very 
 closely to the Egyptian Osiris. The Mysteries of 
 Dionysus, we know, taught the hope of life beyond 
 the grave,- and in Egypt the same doctrine, openly 
 expressed in the Book of the Dead, was symbolised 
 in the figure of the lotus flower buried with every 
 mummv. Tiie question then is limited. Such a 
 hope lived in Greece, declared in the rites of Demeter 
 and Dion}-sus ; in Eg)-pt too, symbolised by the 
 ruddy flower that sank and rose in the Nile as the 
 sun went and came between summer and winter, day 
 and night. Did Florence admit it, and embody her 
 
 ' Pind., Fragm. iBergk.), 129. Il is quoted by Pint. {Coitsol. ad 
 ApolL, iii. ), to comfort his friend on the loss of a son. 
 - Plut., Consol. ad. uxor., 10.
 
 420 Florence Past and Present 
 
 hope in her red Giglio ? Was she in so supreme a 
 sense the city of the Flower? 
 
 The monumental stelai of the Museum suppl)- an 
 immediate answer. They formally place the dead 
 under the care of the sun god, whose lion adorns that 
 of San Tommaso, while others lift above the grave 
 a triumphant finial, which probably represents the 
 rising or setting sun.^ This doctrine of immortality 
 is thus made good here at least as early as the sixth 
 century before our Era, for the presence of such 
 symbols at the grave can have no other meaning. It 
 cannot be traced further back, but the belief in life 
 beyond death sureh' may ; what else guided the 
 hand that left beside the ashes of the dead the 
 ancient yEgaean brooch found in one of the 
 prehistoric graves that underla)^ the centre of 
 Florence ? This brooch is the beginning of the 
 funeral hoard, and the hoard, consisting of useful 
 articles, seems to imply more than mere respect 
 for the dead ; the feeling that finds expression in 
 such a way is surely the sense that the dead are 
 still alive. 
 
 If the faith in Immortality must be recognised in 
 early Florence as well as in Greece and Egypt, and 
 if this city acknowledged betimes the definite doctrine 
 of the future life current in the East, it becomes 
 
 1 The motif presented in these finials is common in the art of early 
 Crete and of Mycena:. It is found, reversed, between the legs of the 
 Amandola ctatcr now in the Ancona Museum, and there appears to 
 represent definitely tlie midnight sun.
 
 The Feast of September 421 
 
 increasingly probable that here, as there, that doctrine 
 was delivered in a M}'stery. The final proof there- 
 fore of what we have hitherto ventured to assume 
 comes clearl)- into view. If the ritual marriage 
 practised at San Piero was what we have supposed it 
 — the Tuscan form of the corresponding rite at 
 Eleusis — then, in its deepest meaning, it must, at 
 Florence too, have concerned the dead, and taught a 
 hope of life beyond the grave. If it can be shown 
 that this was so, then there is no more doubt ; the 
 Mysteries of Demeter and of Bacchus are indeed here ; 
 not in accidental resemblances only, but in their 
 essence and spirit as well. We must now appeal to 
 a single detail, but it is one which, if it have sense at 
 all, cannot but be conclusive. 
 
 The Bishop of Florence on his way to become a 
 bridegroom at San Piero, moved thither attended 
 by a bodyguard, which by ancient right was ever 
 recruited from among the men of one family only, the 
 Delia Tosa. These Visdomini, or ' Bishops' Substi- 
 tutes ' as the name means, held at Florence a place 
 which may be compared with that of the Greek 
 Eumolpidi ; the family which for twelve hundred years 
 cherished, ordered, and presided over the Mysteries 
 of Eleusis. Christianity, one supposes, had taken 
 from the Delia Tosa the right the\' may once have 
 had, of supplying Florence with her Hierophants year 
 by year, but something of such a privilege remained 
 with them, and is seen as they, receive and solemnly
 
 42 2 Florence Past and Present 
 
 conduct to his ' marriage ' each new Bishop as he 
 arrives from without. 
 
 Like true Eumolpids they lead the procession still, 
 and are dressed for the part ; in long robes that befit 
 the occasion and their hieratic character, and bearing 
 coloured wands, red, white, and black, in their hands. 
 On their heads are garlands of fresh flowers, and it is 
 these that fix our attention while the wearers gather 
 about the Bishop, help him from his palfrey, lead him 
 into San Piero, and from Church to Convent, and to 
 the privacy and repose he found there. For the 
 garlands they wear are no mere reminiscence or 
 survival of pagan practice ; the\- have a definite 
 doctrinal meaning, and the doctrine implied in them 
 is that very faith which so long ago drew thousands 
 to the Mysteries of Eleusis. 
 
 The herb used, we are told, to weave these crowns 
 was the pervinca} the periwinkle, with its delicately 
 fringed leaves of green, and large purplish blue 
 flowers. Now t\\Q pervinca has two alternative names 
 in Tuscany ; it is the Fior di Morto, or Mortiiic, and 
 the Manunoloner- The last name declares the mother- 
 goddess we have already found in the Mammola,^ 
 and the others proclaim the pervinca as the herb 
 of the dead. Mattioli, in fact, registers in his Herbal 
 the Tuscan practice of weaving garlands of pciinnca 
 
 ' Laslri, op. ciL, v. p. SS. 
 
 - O. T, Tozzetti, /;/,:;. Boian. (1825), ii. 234. 
 
 " See above, p. 113.
 
 The Feast of September 423 
 
 for the corpses of young people,^ and Lastri records 
 a singular case of a Florentine woman, in whose 
 coffin this herb was found fresh and verdant after 
 many centuries of burial.- It was clearly the local 
 ' immortelle.' 
 
 Now there is one explanation, and one only, which 
 accounts in a natural way for the use of this herb to 
 crown those that led the Bishop to San Piero. The 
 occasion in itself was all jo}'ful ; why this flower of 
 the dead ? The Delia Tosa, who wore it, were the 
 Paranymphs, leading the Bishop to his Bridal 
 chamber ; why were they crov/ned as for the tomb ? 
 There can be only one answer ; the ceremony holds 
 more than it shows at first sight. In this flower a 
 long past declares itself The corn- mother is here, 
 the Mammolona, the great mother or Mater Magna, 
 as Demeter was at Eleusis. She is here to meet her 
 bridegroom, and of that marriage hope is born, not 
 only as men in the clear September cast corn in the 
 earth, but as they think of the dead they have already 
 laid there ; the dead who are not dead, but who live 
 still while the corpse decays. We know this was the 
 hope of Eleusis ; and, by these crowns she wove for 
 this marriage, Florence held it too, and confessed it 
 on a like occasion. The lights of the Ficrucolone 
 gain a new sense here ; they are no mere accompani- 
 ment of a rite, however jo\'ous ; they are definitel}' 
 the Rificolone, as the Florentines still call the 
 
 ^ Comni. in Dioscor. (1558), p. 4S7. - Op. cit., vi. 201-2.
 
 424 Florence Past and Present 
 
 September feast ; lights put out only to be kindled 
 again ; as it were the soul breaking out to immortality 
 through the gates of death. 
 
 Fire has indeed a peculiar place in this doctrine ; 
 and one which, for all our care, we have not yet fully 
 exhausted. It is the force of the subterranean sun, 
 the glory of Dionysus, felt in the genial heat of the 
 earth, where it brings forth fruit of every kind, and 
 whence it issues in streams and fountains, whose 
 Avater — sometimes evidently igneous — was supposed 
 the constant vehicle of that bright energy. 
 
 Those that believed this doctrine could not but 
 find a new sacredness and wonder in the tree. Early 
 and successful attempts at fire-making, with wood 
 a.lone, had shown that fire lived in the tree no less 
 than in the stone ; and the bird was hailed as the 
 messenger that lodged this power of the sun in the 
 wood. But, evidently, what the bird did directly by 
 flying down, the water did indirectly by rising from 
 beneath. If this element was the vehicle of the 
 hidden fire, it was even more surely that which every 
 tree drank through its roots.^ Hence a peculiar rever- 
 ence paid to remarkable trees whose roots enclose 
 a natural spring, and whose branches overarch it. 
 Such is the well of St. Keyne in Cornwall,- and such 
 the spring which a mighty ilex shadows still under 
 
 ' Pliny, N.H., xvii. 2. 
 
 - M. A. Courtney, Cornish Fcasls (1890), p. 64. For a very 
 significant Roman case, where the tree, the fire and the water appear 
 together, see Pliny, N.fL, ii. 10.
 
 The Feast of September 
 
 425 
 
 the hill of Monte Murlo near Prato : it is said to have 
 risen in a miracle when the tree was first planted. 
 
 The tree thus appeared as a meeting place of the 
 midday and the midnight sun ; its boughs sheltered 
 
 ILEX AND SACRED WELL NEAR MO.NTE MURLO 
 
 the winged messengers of the former, its roots drank 
 the fires of the other, conveyed from beneath in the 
 rise of subterranean waters : its fruit was the 
 result of both. This is the doctrine of Empedocles,
 
 426 Florence Past and Present 
 
 who said trees grew at first by the internal heat laid 
 up in the earth ; that when, thereafter, the path of 
 the sun was laid, day divided from night, and man 
 from woman, trees began to bring forth fruit by the 
 mingled power in them of fire and water.^ What 
 the doctrine comes to is that the tree is a true solis 
 fncina, the meeting place of the upper with the under 
 fires. The natural symbol of this belief was the 
 column, where the substance of the stone, itself the 
 home of fire, was brought to \\\q form of the tree, 
 where the same fire was believed to dwell in a 
 marriage of heaven and earth, and therefore with 
 double efficacy. 
 
 Now the market in front of San Piero had just 
 such a pillar, which must have meant much 
 more than the mere occurrence here of the 
 ancient cojiipititm. Let us see what part this pillar 
 plays in an ecclesiastical ceremonial which so 
 evidently repeats that of a pagan mystery. Helped 
 by the Delia Tosa, the Bishop alights from his palfrey ;. 
 but he is not allowed to set foot on the ground ; 
 he steps on the stump of the column itself; an act 
 which so surely and constantly made part of the rite 
 that the stone which received his foot was known 
 in Florence as ' la stafifa del Vescovo ' : the Bishop's 
 stirrup.- It would seem, indeed, that he was to 
 be carefulh- kept from contact with the soil. In 
 
 ' (Quoted hy I'lutarch, De placit. phil., v. 26. 
 '■^ Lnslri, op. cit. , v. p. 89.
 
 The Feast of September 427 
 
 1567 he mereh' used the pillar as a stepping- 
 off stone, but in 1286 the rite retained more of the 
 past. The Delia Tosa then ' received him in their 
 arms, and went with him to the altar . . . and 
 thereafter, when he would withdraw himself, they still 
 accompanied him, holding him in their arms ; that is, 
 helping to carry him, and went with him even to the 
 bed-chamber.' ^ One step more in such retrogression 
 and it is clear what we should find. The feet that 
 had touched the column must not be profaned by 
 any contact with the earth till the whole ceremony is 
 over. Significant indeed is the sudden change the 
 next day brings. He who had ridden to the Church 
 now walks thence to the Geniculum ; he who had 
 been carried in his attendants' arms, walks barefoot ; 
 for now the great Mysteries are over, and only 
 the lesser left. 
 
 The marriage at San Piero, if we have read the signs 
 aright, would thus represent, ritually and symbolically, 
 the union of heaven and earth, of fire and water, in the 
 tree. The pagan Hierophant, whom the Bishop had 
 come to supplant, moved to the copipitiim that in a 
 mystery he might represent the Dion}\sus, the god 
 who was the hidden fire. He himself becomes 
 charged — as from an electric conductor — when he 
 touches the tree, and thenceforth must be treated as 
 the god in person till the mystery is complete ; borne 
 
 ^ BuUettoue, quoted in A. Cocchi, Chicse di Fireitze (1903), 
 p. 103.
 
 428 Florence Past and Present 
 
 up above the earth lest the Genius, the new 
 personaHty revealed in this place and rite, depart 
 from him, and the mystic marriage lose its highest 
 significance and effect. It is well known that such 
 precautions have been, and still are, taken in the rites 
 of many different nations.^ 
 
 Thus we have returned — after how many journeys 
 in how many different directions — to the place which 
 seems to have been the principal and most ancient 
 seat of Florentine religion ; as the line in which it 
 stood was that along which Florence moved west- 
 ward to her later centre and splendid development. 
 More : for we have come to find there that which is 
 truly original and central in the city of the soul ; that 
 salt without which no religion can long survive ; the 
 hope of eternal life. Had it been only the corn men 
 thought of when they gathered of old in the 
 Mercatino, a few bad years had seen the end of that 
 
 ' For examples consult Frazer, Golden Boii^li, iii. pp. 202, 464, etc.
 
 The Feast of September 429 
 
 September feast. The Mystery rather concerned the 
 dead ; and such hope of Hfe did it inspire that, age 
 after age, the promise of eternity it held out gave 
 permanence to the rite itself So it endured, as 
 all must which is substantial truth — even though 
 confused in surrounding falsehood — till the day when 
 the Truth Himself appeared to abolish Death and 
 bring Life and Immortality to light in the good 
 news of His Resurrection. 
 
 LAUS DEO.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abundantia, 1 10, 113, 307, 367, 
 
 382. 
 
 Abundia, 307. 
 
 Acorns as food, 22. 
 
 Adonis, 345, 347, 349. 
 
 -^gaean brooch, 72, 74, 131, 151, 
 
 420. 
 Aes rude, 132. 
 Aes si^^na/um, ix, 48 n. 
 Affrico, river, 108, 125-6, 407. 
 Agriculture, early, 102-4, i35-9- 
 Agrimensores, 106-8, 347. 
 Alphabet, discovery ot the, 52-3. 
 Altafronte, 82-3. 
 Ambrogiana, the, 193, 205. 
 Amiata, Monte, 5. 
 Amphitheatre, the, 73, 152. 
 Anagoge at Eryx, 346. 
 Anapauonienos, 387. 
 Ani, 119, 278, 409. 
 Antella, 55, 221, 417-18. 
 Apennine, the, 3-4, 15, 40, 49, 53, 
 
 55, 105, 216. 
 Aplu, Usil, 121, 131-2, 377 n. 
 Apparita pass, 55. 
 Arcetri, 69. 
 
 Arezzo, 4-5, 6, 53, 129, 131, 197-8. 
 Argiano, 51. 
 Arista, the, 405-6. 
 Arna, the goddess, 295, 343, 365, 
 
 370, 383. 392, 405- 
 Arnaccio, the, 201. 
 Arnina, Villa, 103, 107, 119, 125, 
 
 138-42, 342, 344, 351, 365, 370, 
 
 382, 391-2. 
 Amine, river, 342-3. 
 Aroanius, river, 294-5. 
 Artimino, 51, 68. 
 Ascension d-iy, 352-60, 406. 
 Assassins, the, 310.-' 
 Ass of Empoli, 327-8, 
 Atargatis, 344, 367, 374. 
 
 'Atheh, 344, 372. 
 Attis, 338, 340, 345. 
 Aulla, 5. 
 
 Bacchus, 384-5, 388, 404-5, 412, 
 
 419. 
 Badia all' Isola tomb, 52-3. 
 
 of Fiesole, 64. 
 
 Baptistery, the, no ?i., 382-3, 
 
 386. 
 Barat of Kumaon, 327-8. 
 Bathing, ceremonial, 391. 
 Beans as a prophylactic, 304-6. 
 Beccola, 212-13, 225. 
 Becolino, the, 212-13, 225. 
 Befana, 289-90, 293, 300-13, 316. 
 Bellariva, 172. 
 Bellosguardo, 69, 81. 
 Birds, sacred, 424. 
 Bisarni, 67. 
 Bisenzio, 201, 218. 
 Bishop's progress, 1 16-17. 
 Boccaccio, 285. 
 Bocca d'Arno, 220. 
 Boedromion , 407. 
 Borghi, the, 81. 
 Borgo vS Jacopo, 81, 174. 
 
 S. Piero, 114, 330 «. 
 
 Borgunto, 55, 69,70, 73, 75, 78, 93, 
 
 no, 126, 129, 139. 
 Bridges, 228-31. 
 Brindellone, 371-2. 
 Brunellesco, 194. 
 Biillettone, the, 1 16-17, 4^5 "•> 
 
 427. 
 Buti, 295. 
 
 Caduceus, the, 377 ;/. 
 Cakes, ritual, 349, 366, 368 ?i. 
 Calcinaia, 201. 
 Calcisfriizzo, 162. 
 Calimara, Via, 146. 
 
 431
 
 432 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Callicantzari , 287-8, 291, 299, 300, 
 _ 302, 304, 306. 
 Camaldoli, 215, 217. 
 Caniarte, Villa, 103, 107, 119, 125, 
 
 138-40, 351. 382, 386, 3902. 
 Camerata, 69. 
 Camorra, the, x. 
 Campagna of Rome, the, 14, 15, 
 
 86. 
 Cancer, sign of, 359, 383, 387, 
 Candeii, 53, 57, 67, 69, 72-3, 93, 
 
 129, 139-40, 149, 152, 231. 
 Canto dei Pazzi, 320, 330. 
 Caravan, the, 98-9, loi. 
 Carbonari a, 346. 
 Cardea, the goddess, 276, 280. 
 Cardo, the, 146, 149-50, 153. 
 Carp, 178, 180. 
 Carradora, 280. 
 Carradore, 238. 
 Casaglia, pass of, 53, 55, 70. 
 Castelfranco, lygn., 198. 
 Castellina in Chianti, 51, 56 ;/. 
 Celiaula, 381. 
 Centaurs, 288, 296, 299. 
 Chestnuts as food, 23-6. 
 Chiana, the, 4-5, 196-7. 
 Chianti, 6, 70. 
 Chiusi, 196-7. 
 Cimarnta , the, 270. 
 Ciminian forest, 15. 
 Cippi, 131, 420. 
 Cippus of S. Tommaso, 121, 131-2, 
 
 377 n. , 420. 
 Cirauli, the, 381. 
 
 Clothes, spell of boiling, 29, 30, 32. 
 Colle, tomb at, 51-3, 72. 
 Colotnbina, the, 319, 324, 336-8, 
 
 345-. 
 Compita, 109-10, 113-16, 118, 122, 
 
 126, 145, 149, 290, 330, 403, 409, 
 
 411, 426. 
 Compitalia, the, 289-92, 299, 302, 
 , 306. 
 Consivus, Janus, 412. 
 Convents, early, 104-6. 
 Copper, 132-3. 
 Coriata, the, 407. 
 Corpus Domini day, 327, 337. 
 Cortona, 196. 
 Cretan goddess, 369-70. 
 Custonaci, Madonna of, 294 >i. 
 Cybele, 338-46. 
 Cyprus, 131, 133. 
 
 Dalmatian Yule, 291. 
 
 Dante, 94. 
 
 Da Vinci, Leonardo, 193, 213. 
 
 Dead, the, 287, 292-3, 305, 418-29. 
 
 Dea Syria, the, 367 
 
 Decnmanus, the, 146-50, 153, 320, 
 
 330-1, 339 «•. 341-2" 348-9, 351, 
 
 392-3- 
 Delia Tosa family, 414, 416, 421, 
 
 423, 426-7. 
 Demeter, 293-6, 299, 302, 306-7, 
 
 311, 406, 413, 417-18, 423. 
 Dialect, 90, 171. 
 Diana, 119 ;«., 299, 306. 
 Dionysus, 384, 406, 412, 419, 424, 
 
 427. 
 Dodona, oracle of, 337, 387. 
 Doves, sacred, 324, 336-7, 346, 
 
 350. 
 Duomo, the, 194-5. 
 
 Eels, 179. 
 
 Eleusis, 407-8, 412, 416-17, 421-3. 
 Empoli, 201, 205, 220, 327. 
 Engineering, early, 137-40. 
 Envoiltement, spell of, 33. 
 Equinoxes, the, 316, 329, 331, 338, 
 
 341-3. 349. 404. 406. 
 Eryx, 294-6, 346. 
 Etruscans, the, 127-53. 
 
 Fasting, 26 8. 
 
 Fattura della Morte, 32-3. 
 
 Fiesole, 53, 55, 63, 69, 129, 137-52, 
 
 162, 221, 369. 
 Flora, river, 343. 
 Fire, prophylactic, 288, 301, 303, 
 
 307- 
 birds, 332, 335, 337, 346, 349- 
 
 50- 
 
 ■ cars, 317-23, 361-2, 371, 392. 
 
 making, 276, 328-9, 331, 424. 
 
 Fishers and hunters, 13 20, 22, 26-8, 
 
 32-4, 36-41, 45-6, 50, 57. 85-8, 
 
 89-93, 96, 98-100, 189, 214, 226, 
 
 271, 308-13, 351. 
 Flexible axe, 310. 
 Flora, 295, 343-4- 
 Florentia in Spain, 344. 
 Fonterutoli, 56 v. 
 Footprint, magic, 30-2. 
 Fortuna, 113, 145, 149, 291-3, 343-5, 
 
 351. 364-5. 367-70, 372, 374. 377, 
 
 381-4, 405, 410.
 
 Index 
 
 4jo 
 
 Frizzo, the, 95-6, 400, 402, 408. 
 Fucecchio, 52, 131, 161, 211. 
 Futa pass, 70-2. 
 
 Gavtbriniis tombs, 71-2, 108, 151. 
 Gardens of Adonis, 349. 
 Gates of the Sun, 292, 359. 
 Geniculum, 117, 119-20, 409, 411, 
 
 415. 427- 
 Genita Mana, 290. 
 Ge?tiiis, the, 134-5, 142, 219, 227, 
 
 409, 411-12, 419, 427. 
 Gergo, the, 212-13, 291-2. 
 Gigho of Florence, 389-90, 392, 417- 
 
 18, 420. 
 Girone, the, 6, 11, 47-S, 53, 60, 
 
 139- 
 Glazing of pottery, 188-9. 
 Golfolina, 6, 10, 51, 53, 57, 60, 67, 
 
 137-8, 139-40, 201, 213-14, 220. 
 Gondolas, 190. 
 Gorge, or Gorgo, 43, 46, 53, 67, 
 
 108 «., 219, 227, 393, 407. 
 Gorgon, the, 369-70. 
 Granada, 344. 
 Greece and Greeks at Florence, 
 
 i-^, X. 53-4. 72, 287, 303, 305, 308, 
 
 310-11, 337-8, 346-7, 362, 377, 
 
 407. 
 Grillo, the, 357-60, 394. 
 
 Helios, 364, 366, 393. 
 
 Hercules, 372-4, 381, 387, 390, 405, 
 
 409-10, 419. 
 Herodias, 307. 
 Hestia, 223. 
 Hilaria, 338, 340, 348. 
 Homoeopathic magic, 32-6. 
 Horse, the, 41, 250, 256. 
 Hunters and fishers, 13-20, 22, 26-8, 
 
 32-4, 36-41, 45-6, 50, 57, 85-93, 
 
 96, 98-100, 189, 214, 226, 27 c, 
 
 308-13, 351. 
 
 Immortality, 418-29. 
 Istia, 161, 224. 
 
 Janus, 118-19, 134, 142,276, 278, 
 
 339 «., 409-12. 
 Jettatiira, 30, 274. 
 Juno, 409-10, 412. 
 Jupiter Lapis, 335. 
 
 Kore, 407. 
 
 Kronia, the, 362-3. 
 Kronos, 363, 366-7, 388. 
 
 Lakes, former, 6-1 1, 47, 60, 137-8. 
 
 La Mula, tomb at, 78, 151-2. 
 
 Language, 89-96. 
 
 Larella, the, 292. 
 
 Lari. 285-6. 
 
 Lares, 286-7, 289-90, 292. 
 
 Larva, 290. 
 
 Latiuni, 14-16, 37-8,40,91, 93, 102. 
 
 Laitone, the, 357 71. 
 
 Leghorn, 220. 
 
 Liber Pater, 42, 385. 
 
 Lilybaeum, 295. 
 
 Limite, 202-12, 222. 
 
 Lions, sacred, 373-4, 377, 420. 
 
 Lombardy, 15-16, 37-8, 40, 71, 91, 
 
 93, 98, lOI. 
 Lotos, the, 388-9, 391, 418-19. 
 Loup garoii, 311. 
 Lucca, 5. 
 
 L21CUS Furrinae, 367. 
 Lupercalia, 311. 
 Lupo mainiaro, 34-6. 287-8, 290, 311. 
 
 Madnkss, magic of, vii-ix, 36. 
 Madonna della Tromba, 114, 300, 
 
 307- 
 
 del Sasso, 341. 
 
 Magic, 26-36, 268-9. 
 
 Magra river, 4-5. 
 
 ALimmola, 113, 422. 
 
 Mania, 290-3, 299, 302, 307, 316. 
 
 Maniac, 290, 307. 
 
 Manies, 307. 
 
 Mannar a, 291. 
 
 Marcignana, 198. 
 
 Maremma, the, 41. 
 
 Markets, 81. 
 
 Marricige, ritual, 124, 413-28. 
 
 Mars, 381-3, 385, 390, 392. 
 
 Marsi, the, 381. 
 
 Marzocco, 373-4. 377 "•. 389. 390. 
 
 392- 
 Masking, 3035, 308-13. 
 ^L^starna, 365, 381. 
 Mater Magna, the, 343, 423. 
 Matriarchate, 99-100, 104, 113, 123, 
 
 136. 
 Melcarth, 372-3. 
 Mercatino, 115, 118, 126, 141-3, 146, 
 
 152, 403. 
 Mercato .Vuovo, 149. 
 
 2 E
 
 434 
 
 Florence Past and Present 
 
 Mercato Vecchio, no, 126, 141-3, 
 
 145-6, 152. 
 Midnight sun, 385-92, 405, 412, 
 
 417-19, 421. 
 Milky VVay, 360. 
 Montelupo, 6, 10, 193, 201, 205. 
 Monte Morello, 70, 75. 
 Monte Murlo, 29, 425. 
 Montepiano, 218. 
 Montepulciano, 196. 
 Mother-goddess, 113, 122. 
 Mugello, 70-1. 
 Mugnone river, 63-4, 67-9, 71-2, 
 
 108, 125-6, 129, 144, 146, 198, 
 Murviedro, 55. 
 Mut, the goddess, 261 n. 
 Mycenae, 78, 132, 151. 
 Mysteries, the, 311, 407-8, 412, 419, 
 
 421. 
 
 Nave, the, 228. 
 
 Naviglio, 202. 
 
 Netting-needle, 177. 
 
 New Year at Florence, 316, 338, 
 
 342, 551- 
 Nile, the, 307-9. 
 
 Nipotecosa family, 104, 114, 123. 
 Noise, prophylactic, 289, 299, 501, 
 
 303. 307- 
 Normans on Arno, 195. 
 Nortia, goddess, 291-2, 344, 365. 
 Nth language, 54-6, 74, 151. 
 
 Oak of Signa, 29. 
 
 Ocrisia, 289. 
 
 Oxen, 40, 250, 318, 348. 
 
 Pack-horse, the, 41, 143. 
 
 Parsimony, Florentine, 20-2. 
 
 Pazzi, the, 320, 330 11. 
 
 Palazzi of Florence, 86-7. 
 
 Palio, the, 236, 392-4. 
 
 Fedga taja magic, 30-2. 
 
 Phigalia, 293, 295. 
 
 Piagentina, 172. 
 
 Piazza dell' Arno or delle Travi, 70, 
 
 73-5. 103, 107, 134, 140-r, 214. 
 Picchiotti, the, 206-12, 222. 
 Pinti, 70, 73, 115, T50, 152. 
 Pisa, 4, 6, 49, 71, 190, 194, 196, 202, 
 
 220. 
 Pistoia, 6, 51. 
 
 Po valley, 13, 50, 70, 86, 137. 
 Poison in fish, 180. 
 
 Pontassieve, 5-6, 10. 
 
 Ponte Vecchio, 81, 139, 149, 152, 
 
 213, 231. 
 Porcac, 406, 417. 
 Pork as a bait, 291. 
 Porticella di fodari, 214 «. 
 Poseidon, 294-6, 302, 306 ;/., 393. 
 Pozzo della Botta, 218. 
 Pratovecchio, 216-7. 
 Premilcore, 373. 
 Prometheus, 332 /;. 
 Proserpine, 290-1, 293, 406-7. 
 Proverbs, 88-9. 
 Psophis, 294-5. 
 Pyramid, 329. 
 Pyre of Hierapolis, 345. 
 
 QuiNTO, 71, 78, 151-2. 
 
 Rad5dese, 307. 
 Reeds, 13, 205, 257, 260. 
 Renaissance, xii, 133-4. 
 Rhea, 339, 386. 
 Rhombus, 311. 
 Ritual flight, the, 120. 
 Roads, 41-8, 51, etc. 
 Ronta, 55. 
 Rue, 279. 
 Rutuli, the, 56 ;/. 
 
 Saguntum, 55, 294. 
 
 Sahara trade, 53. 
 
 SS. Apostoli Church, 317, 320. 
 
 S. Elias, 364. 
 
 S. Giorgio, hill of, 67, 69, 71-2, 81, 
 
 138. ^ 
 S. Giovanni alia \'^ena, 296, 300. 
 S. Gorgone, 219, 227, 370. 
 S. Nicholas, 302. 
 S. Peter of Verona, 299 w., 300. 
 S. Piero Maggiore, Church of, 24, 
 
 115-20, 124, 403, 409, 411, 413-14, 
 
 416-17, 421, 426-7. 
 S. Reparata, 360, 364. 
 S. Toinmaso, Church and cipptis, 
 
 121, 131-2, 377 n., 420. 
 S. Trinita, Church, Piazza, colunm, 
 
 and bridge, 64, 193. 
 S. Verdiana, 370, 378, 381. 
 Sa?tta Clans, 302. 
 Sawing the old ■woman ,315 
 Scala, the, 314-15. 
 Se»ii, 182. 
 Serchio, river, 4-5.
 
 Ind 
 
 ex 
 
 435 
 
 Servius Tullius, 289, 291-2, 365. 
 Sesto road, 71-8, 81, no, 122, 
 
 126. 
 Sewi7tg clothes, 348. 
 Sieve, river, 4-6. 
 Signa, 6, 10, 29, 63, 193, 201, 218, 
 
 231. 335-7- 
 Sminthius, y^ n. 
 Snakes, sacreii, 366, 368, 377, 383, 
 
 385. 410. 
 Solstices, 331, 359-63, 383, 386, 404, 
 
 406. 
 Soma, the, 253, 256. 
 Sosipolis, 366-7. 
 Spain, 55. 
 Spina, ix. 
 
 Spirits, wood and water, 28-9. 
 Springs, sacred, 387, 390, 424-5. 
 Stock and stone, sacred, 122, 136, 
 
 276-7, 329, 331, 335, 337. 
 Straw-plait, 205, 265. 
 Strozzi, the, 414, 416. 
 Sun worship, 106, T19, 121-2. 
 Superstition, 26-36. 
 Sympathetic magic, 29-32. 
 
 Tarsus, god of, 377, 389, 418. 
 Theodoric, 195. 
 Terramare, the, 347. 
 Thezli, coins of, 369. 
 Tiber, the, 4, 14-15, 71. 
 Timber trade, 134-5, 214 n. 
 Torre Lunga, the, 205. 
 Totemism, 27, 309-11. 
 Trade guilds, 170. 
 Trees, sacred, 29, 109, T13, 122-3, 
 424-6. 
 
 Ugnano, 198. 
 Uni, 278, 409. 
 Usil-Aplu, 121, 131-2, 377 11. 
 
 Vallombros.\, 218. 
 Vampires, 287-8, 305 ;/., 306. 
 Varlungo, 163. 
 
 Venus, 293-5, 296 n., 299 11., 345. 
 Verruca, 295-6, 299. 
 Ver iacrum, the, 378 n . 
 Vesta, 223-4. 
 Via dei Bardi, 82. 
 
 Gentilis, 116, 411. 
 
 Sacra, 107, 121-2, 124-6, 140-1, 
 
 146, 149, 411. 
 Villa Arnina, 103, 107, 119, 125, 
 
 138--J2, 342, 344, 351, 365, 370, 
 
 382, 39T-2. 
 Camarte, 103, 107, 119, 125, 138- 
 
 .40. 351. 382, 386, 390-2. 
 Villanova, 70-2, 78, 151. 
 Visdomini, the, 414, 416, 421. 
 Volcanoes, 4-5. 
 Voherra, 6, 29. 
 
 Wedding of waters, 197. 
 Were-wolves, 34-6, 287-8, 290, 
 
 311- 
 Wheel-traffic, 143-6, 152, 244, 249. 
 Wine-fiasks, 205, 242-3, 256-7. 
 Witches, 29, 32, 265-6, 306-7. 
 Woodpecker, 332, 337. 
 
 Zacvnthl's, 54-5, 294, 306 n. 
 Zeus, 332, 335, 337-8. 
 Zodiac in pavement, 383. 
 Ziicca da Sale. 182.
 
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