At a subsequent date these southern Italians had to bow down before the Romans, who founded military colonies amongst them, but never succeeded in completely Latinising them. When the Roman Empire fell to pieces the Cæsars of Byzantium still maintained themselves for a long time in Southern Italy, and the Greek language again preponderated, but gradually Romance dialects gained the upper hand. The inhabitants returned to a state of barbarism, but they retained to a great extent their language and customs, and even now there are districts in the south which are Italian in appearance rather than in reality, and in eight villages of the Terra d’Otranto the Hellenic dialect of the Peloponnesus is still spoken. Towns like Naples, Nicastro, Taranto, Gallipoli, Monopoli, and others, whilst preserving their sonorous Greek names, have also retained many features which recall the times of Magna Græcia.

Reggio—that is, the “city of the strait”—appears to have retained the use of Greek much longer than any other town, and its patricians, who boasted of being pure Ionians, still spoke the language of their ancestors towards the close of the thirteenth century. In several remote towns of the interior Greek was formerly in common use. The old popular songs of Bova, a small town near the southern {295} extremity of Italy, are in an Ionian dialect more like the language of Xenophon than is modern Greek. Down to a very recent date the peasants near Roccaforte del Greco, Condofuri, and Cardeto spoke Greek, and when they appeared before a magistrate they required an interpreter. At the present day all young people speak Italian; the old language has been forgotten, but the Greek type remains. The men and women of Cardeto are famous for their beauty, more especially the latter. “They are Minervas,” we are told by a local historian. Their principal livelihood consists in acting as wet nurses to the children of the citizens of Reggio. The women of Bagnara, between Scilla and Palmi, are likewise of wondrous beauty, but their features are stern, betraying Arab blood, and they are destitute of the noble placidity of the Greek.

It is said that the women of the Hellenic villages of Calabria are still in the habit of executing a sacred dance, which lasts for hours, and resembles the representations we meet with on ancient vases, only they dance before the church instead of the temple, and their ceremonies are blessed by Christian priests. Funerals are accompanied by weeping women, who collect their tears in lachrymatories. Elsewhere, as in the environs of Tarento, the children consecrate the hair of their head to the manes of their ancestors. Old morals, no less than old customs, have been preserved. Woman is still looked upon as an inferior being, and even at Reggio the wives of citizens or noblemen who respect ancient tradition confine themselves to the gynæceum. They do not visit the theatre, go out but rarely, and when they walk abroad are attended by barefooted servants, and not by their husbands.

In addition to Samnites, Iapygians, and Greeks, who form the bulk of the population of Southern Italy, we meet with Etruscans in the Campania; Saracens in the peninsula of Gargano, in the Campania, the marina of Reggio, Bagnara, and other coast towns; Lombards in Benevento, who retained their language down to the eleventh century; Normans, from whom the shepherds on the hills are supposed to be descended; and Spaniards in several coast towns, especially at Barletta, in Apulia. The Albanians have probably furnished the largest contingent of all the strangers now domiciled in Southern Italy. They are numerous on the whole of the eastern slope of the peninsula, from the promontory of Gargano to the southernmost point of Calabria. One of their clans came to Italy in 1440, but the bulk of them only arrived during the second half of the fifteenth century, after the heroic resistance made by Scanderbeg had been overcome by the Turks. The conquered Skipetars were then compelled to expatriate themselves in order to escape the yoke of the Turks, and they were received with open arms by the Kings of Naples, who granted them several deserted villages, which are now amongst the most flourishing of Southern Italy. The descendants of these Skipetars, who are principally domiciled in the Basilicata and Calabria, rank among the most useful citizens of the country. They take the lead in the intellectual regeneration of the old kingdom of Naples, and were the first to join the liberating army of Garibaldi. Many have become Italianised, but there are still over 80,000 who have neither forgotten their origin nor their language. {296}

The Neapolitans are undoubtedly one of the finest races of Europe. The Calabrians, the mountaineers of Molise, and the peasants of the Basilicata are so well proportioned, erect, supple of limb, and agile, that their low stature, as compared with the races of the North, can hardly be a subject of reproach; and the nobility and expression of the faces of Neapolitan women fully compensate for the irregularity we frequently meet with. The faces of the children, with their large black eyes and well-formed lips, beam with intelligence, but the wretched existence to which too many of them are condemned soon degrades their physiognomy. Supremely ignorant, the Neapolitan is, nevertheless, most admirably gifted by nature. The country which has produced so many great men since the days of Pythagoras is in nowise inferior to any other; its philosophers, historians, and lawyers have exercised a powerful influence upon the march of human thought; and the number of great musicians which it has produced is proportionately large.

Still, in many respects, the inhabitants of Southern Italy hold the lowest rank amongst the nations of Europe. Ever since the annihilation of the Greek republican cities the country has been subjected to foreign masters, who have either devastated it or systematically oppressed its inhabitants. With the exception of Amalfi, no other town was granted the privilege of governing itself for any length of time. The very position of the country exposed it to dangers. Placed in the centre of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, it was on the high-road of every pirate or invader, whether Saracen or Norman, Spaniard or Frenchman, and the absence of any natural cohesion between its various districts prevented its population from organizing a united resistance against the attacks of foreign invaders. Southern Italy has not the river basins of Lombardy, Tuscany, Umbria, or Rome; there exists no centre of gravity, so to say, and the country is split up into separate sections having nothing in common.

The government under which the Neapolitans lived until quite recently was most humiliating. “I do not require my people to think,” said King Ferdinand II. of Naples. Ideas which did not commend themselves to the authorities were punished as crimes, and only mendicity and moral depravity were allowed to flourish. Science was compelled to live in retirement; history to seek a refuge in the catacombs of archæology; and literature was corrupt or frivolous. Of the Neapolitans who did not expatriate themselves only a very small number became eminent. Schools were hardly known outside the large towns, and where they did exist they were placed under the supervision of the police. Men able to read and write were looked at askance, and, to escape being accused of belonging to some secret society, they were compelled to turn hypocrites. Old superstitions exist in full force, and the heathen hallucinations of Greeks and Iapygians still survive. The idolatrous Neapolitan casts himself down before the statue of St. Januarius, but heaps imprecations upon the head of his saint if his miraculous blood does not quickly liquefy. Similar superstitions exist in nearly every town of Naples. Every one of them has its patron saint or deity, who, if he should fail to protect his people, is treated as a common enemy. As recently as 1858 the villagers of Calabria, irritated by a drought, put their venerated saints into prison; and Barletta, {297} about the same period, had the melancholy honour of being the last town in Europe in which Protestants were burned alive. Such is the fanaticism still met with in the second half of the nineteenth century ! [102]

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Fig. 108.—EDUCATIONAL MAP OF ITALY.