CESAROTTI, MELCHIORE (1730-1808), Italian poet, was born at Padua in 1730, of a noble but impoverished family. At the university of his native place his literary progress procured for him at a very early age the chair of rhetoric, and in 1768 the professorship of Greek and Hebrew. On the invasion of Italy by the French, he gave his pen to their cause, received a pension, and was made knight of the iron crown by Napoleon I., to whom, in consequence, he addressed a bombastic and extravagantly flattering poem called Pronea. Cesarotti is best known as the translator of Homer and Ossian. Much praise cannot be given to his version of the Iliad, for he has not scrupled to add, omit and modernize. Ossian, which he held to be the finest of poems, he has, on the other hand, considerably improved in translation; and the appearance of his version attracted much attention in Italy and France, and raised up many imitators of the Ossianic style. Cesarotti also produced a number of works in prose, including a Course of Greek Literature, and essays On the Origin and Progress of the Poetic Art, On the Sources of the Pleasure derived from Tragedy, On the Philosophy of Language and On the Philosophy of Taste, the last being a defence of his own great eccentricities in criticism. His weakness was a straining after novelty. His style is forcible, but full of Gallicisms.
A complete edition of his works, in 42 vols. 8vo. began to appear at Pisa in 1800, and was completed in 1813, after his death. See Memoirs, by Barbieri (Padua, 1810), and Un Filosofo delle lettere, by Alemanni (Turin, 1894).
CESENA (anc. Caesena), a town and episcopal see of Emilia, Italy, in the province of Forlì, 12 m. S.E. by rail from the town of Forlì, on the line between Bologna and Rimini, 144 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1905) 12,245 (town); 43,468 (commune). The town is picturesquely situated at the foot of the slopes of the Apennines, and is crowned by a medieval fortress (Rocca), begun by the emperor Frederick I. (Barbarossa) probably, but altered and added to later. The cathedral has two fine marble altars by the Lombardi of Venice (or their school). The library, built for Domenico Malatesta in 1452 by Matteo Nuzio, is a fine early Renaissance building, and its internal arrangements, with the original desks to which the books are still chained, are especially well preserved (see J.W. Clark, The Care of Books, Cambridge, 1901, p. 199). In it are valuable MSS., many of which were used by Aldus Manutius. It also contains a picture gallery with a good “Presentation in the Temple” by Francesco Francia. There are some fine palaces in the town. Three-quarters of a mile south-east on the hill stands the handsome church of S. Maria del Monte, after the style of Bramante, with carved stalls of the 16th century. Wine, hemp and silk are the main articles of trade. About the ancient Caesena little is said in classical authors: it is mentioned as a station on the Via Aemilia and as a fortress in the wars of Theodoric and Narses. During the middle ages it was at first independent. In 1357 it was unsuccessfully defended by the wife of Francesco Ordelaffi, lord of Forlì, against the papal troops under Albornoz. In 1377 it was sacked by Cardinal Robert of Geneva (afterwards Clement VII., antipope). It was then held by the Malatesta of Rimini until 1465, when it came under the dominion of the church. Both Pius VI. (1717) and Pius VII. (1742) were born at Cesena.
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CESNOLA, LUIGI PALMA DI (1832-1904), Italian-American soldier and archaeologist, was born near Turin on the 29th of July 1832. Having served in the Austrian and Crimean Wars, in 1860 he went to New York, where he taught Italian and French and founded a military school for officers. He took part in the American Civil War as colonel of a cavalry regiment, and at Aldie (June 1863) was wounded and taken prisoner. He was released from Libby prison early in 1864, served in the Wilderness and Petersburg campaigns (1864-65) as a brigadier of cavalry, and at the close of the war was breveted brigadier-general. He was then appointed United States consul at Larnaca in Cyprus (1865-1877). During his stay in the island he carried on excavations, which resulted in the discovery of a large number of antiquities. The collection was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of New York, and Cesnola became director in 1879. Doubt having been thrown by Gaston L. Feuerdant, in an article in the New York Herald (August 1880), upon the genuineness of his restorations, the matter was referred to a special committee, which pronounced in his favour.[1] He is the author of Cyprus, its ancient Cities, Tombs and Temples (1877), an interesting book of travel and of considerable service to the practical antiquary; and of a Descriptive Atlas of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriote Antiquities (3 vols., 1884-6). He died in New York on the 21st of November 1904. He was a member of several learned societies in Europe and America, and in 1897 he received a Congressional medal of honour for conspicuous military services.
His brother, Alessandro Palma di Cesnola, born in 1839, conducted excavations at Paphos (where he was U.S. vice-consul) and Salamis on behalf of the British government. The results of these are described in Salaminia (1882).