Page:Petrach, the first modern scholar and man of letters.djvu/321

Rh curiosity to see the country. I finally penetrated into Germany, to the banks of the Rhine itself. I have carefully noted the customs of the people, and have been much interested in observing the characteristics of a country hitherto unknown to me, and in comparing the things I saw with those at home. While I found much to admire in both countries, I in no way regretted my Italian origin. Indeed, the more I travel, the more my admiration for Italy grows. If Plato, as he himself says, thanked the immortal gods, among other things, for making him a Greek and not a barbarian, why should not we too thank the Lord for the land of our birth, unless to be born a Greek be considered more noble than to be born an Italian. This, however, would be to assert that the slave was above his master. No Greekling, however shameless, would dare to make such a claim, if he but recollected that long before Rome was founded and had by superior strength established her sway, long before the world yet knew of the Romans, “men of the toga, lords of the earth,” a beggarly fourth part of Italy, a region desert and uninhabited, was nevertheless styled by its Greek colonists “Greater Greece.” If that scanty area could then be called great, how very great, how immense, must the Roman power have seemed after Corinth had fallen, after Ætolia had been devastated and Argos, Mycenæ, and other cities had been taken, after the Macedonian kings had been captured, Pyrrhus vanquished, and Thermopylæ a second time drenched with Asiatic blood! Certainly no one can deny that it is a trifle more distinguished to be an