Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/806

 where there was nothing to awaken a thirst for knowledge, a place where emulation could not exist, and where the loudest blasts of Fame's trumpet are never heard. Genius, however, is not the slave of place or circumstance. Speciosá was accustomed from a child to aid her father, a petty apothecary, in the work of his shop; as the drugs passed through her hands, her thoughtful mind observed the chemical effects, which led to experiments, examination, reading. She chanced to become known to a lawyer of Parma, Signer Bottioni—a correspondence ensued, in which she displayed the utmost natural eloquence and grace. She afterwards became his wife, and went with him to live in Parma, where there is no want of learned men or libraries. Her first care was to select the best masters, and, after acquiring a knowledge of Italian literature, she would not be satisfied without studying the Latin and Greek authors in then original languages.

She has published several prose and poetical works, and some dramas, among which may be cited "Madame de Maintenon," which is formed on a well-managed plot—and developed by naturally sustained characters. 

ZANARDI, GENTILE, an artist, a native of Bologna, and flourished in the seventeenth century. She was instructed by Marc Antonio Franceschini, and had an extraordinary talent in copying the works of the great masters. She also painted historical subjects of her own design with equal taste and delicacy. The time of her death is not mentioned. 

ZANWISKI, CONSTANTIA, PRINCESS CZARTONYSKA, and accomplished woman, was the wife of Andrzey Zanwiski, a distinguished defender of the rights of Poland. She died in 1797. 

ZAPPI, FAUSTINA, daughter of the painter Carlo Mazatti, and wife of Giambattista Zappi, who was born in 1668, and died in 1719. Faustina was beautiful, and a poetess. Some of her sonnets are very fine. She resided principally at Rome. 

ZENOBIA SEPTIMIA, of Palmyra, was a native of Syria, and a descendant of the Ptolemies. She was celebrated for her beauty, the melody of her voice, her mental talents, literary acquirements, and her distinguished heroism and valour, as well as her modesty and chastity. "Her manly understanding," says Gibbon, "was strengthened and adorned by study. She was not ignorant of the Latin tongue, and possessed in equal excellence the Greek, the Syriac, and the Egyptian languages; she had drawn up, for her own use, an epitome of Oriental history, and familiarly compared the beauties of Homer and Plato, under the tuition of the sublime Longinus."

She married Odenatus, a Saracen prince, who had raised himself from a private station to the dominion of the East; and she delighted in those exercises of war and the chase to which he was devoted. She often accompanied her husband on long and toilsome marches, 