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* BOLLO. 231 BOMAIC LITERATURE. died about 931. Consult Kiceman, The y'orman Cunqiicst, vol. i. (Oxford, 1807). See Normans. ROLLS. The records of the ancient English courts. The term originated at a time when buokbiiiding was not conunon, and it was the custom to write the records of court proceedings ui)Oii sheets of parchment, which were tacked or fastened together and rolled up. See Records, Public. ROLLS, Master of the. See JIaster of the KOLI.S. ROM, or ROMANY. See Gypsies. ROMAGNA, ro-ma'ura. A territorial divi- sion of Italy which formed part of the Papal States (q.v. ). It embraces the provinces of Bo- logna, Fcrrara. Forli, and Ravenna. ROMAGNOSI, rO'ma-nyo'ze, Giovanni Do- siENico ( 17(il-1835). An Italian jurist, born at Salsoniaggiore. He was educated at Piacenza, and became instructor in law at Parma (1S03), and in 1806 professor of law at Padua. The downfall of Napoleon caused him to leave the last place and he became professor of law at the University of Corfu in 1824. Romagnosi in his teaching extolled society as the natural condition of man, upheld the State against the individual, and repudiated the contract theory of the origin of societ}'. His two most important works are the Genesi del diritto i^enale (1780) and Intro- duzione alio studio del diritto pubhlieo uni- rcrsale (1805). His Opere were published at Florence in 1832-3.5. While imprisoned by the Austrians in ISOO. Romagnosi is said to have an- ticipated Oersted in the discovery of the magnetic needle. ROMAIC (:rL. Romaiciis, from CJk. 'PuuaiKis, Rlwrnailcos, Roman, Latin, Byzantine, from 'Piiim;, RhoiHc, Lat. Rointi. Rome, later also Byzantium). The vernacular language of modern Greece. See the section on Modern G-reek in the article Greek Language. ROMAIC LITERATURE. The modern Greek literature. It is commonly regarded as be- longing to the period that begins after the over- throw by the Turks of the Byzantine Empire in A.D. 1453. But the beginnings of Romaic litera- ture considered as the written expression of Romaic speech must be sought at least three cen- turies earlier. Theodores Prodromes ( Ptochopro- dromos), who flourished in the first half of the twelfth century, has been considered the first modern Greek writer. His begging poems, writ- ten in the so-called political verse and in the vulgar language, are a most interesting literary and linguistic monument. But Prodromes is by no means the first Romaic writer. The jjopular epic nuxterial out of which the metrical romance of Diogenes Akritas was afterwards constructed appears to belong to an earlier period, and Romaic prose documents composed in Lower Italy carry us back to the tenth century. The metrical Chronicle of the Conquest of the ilorea. which deals with the foundation of the feudal principalities in Greece after the Fourth Crusade, was composed before 1326. In the earlier period, as it may be called, of Romaic literature, Constantinople, Cyprus, and Crete ap- pear to have been the chief centres of production. Didactic, erotic, and allegorical poetry, legal and historical writings in prose, are among the forms of literature represented. To a Cretan poet of Venetian origin, Vincenzo Cornaro. who llourishcd apparently about 15."i(l, beUings willi some right the title of the modern Homer. His long romuii- tie jioem ICrulocritos, in which, in the niediu^vul manner, the loves of Erotooritos, the si>n of an -tliinian courlfer. and .relu^.a, the daughter of Heracles, King of Athens, are narrated, i.s still a great favorite with the (Jreek iiopulaee. tirei-k l>rose writing from the fall of Constantinople to the latter half of the eighteenth century repre- sents substantially Imt the continuation and propagation of the later Byzantine literatnre and scholarship. But during the |)eriod of Turkish rule, i)articularly in Northern (ireece, a nniss of most striking and interesting popular poetry, composed and transmitted unwritten, was aceii- nnilating. In this popular poetry the life, the emotions, the superstitions of the' Greek people are reflected. In the so-called Klephtic songs, in which is vividly p(utraycd the spirit of the wild mountaineers of Thessaly and Epirus, who were sometimes a sort of local police in Turkish pay, sometimes brigands, we lind expressed that love of liberty and hatred of the opprosor which were to culminate in the Revolution of 1821. Noteworthy among these poems is the Quarrel of Oh/ntpos and Kixsavos ((3ssa), which was trans- lated, together with other popular Romaic poems, by Goethe. Of others of the poems 'iove and love's pain" is the burden ; of yet others, death and Charos, the modern Greek death-god, are the theme. The ])ropliet of the sjiirit of liberty, which was gaining greater ])ower under the in- fluence of the French Revolution, was Rhegas of Velestinos (Phera?) (1754-98). Rhegas, who lived in the service of the CJreek Hospodar of Wallachia and who paid the price of his patriot- ism with his life, is the author of the rousing war-song, "On, sons of the Hellenes!" The stir- ring poem, "How long, pallicar.s?" is also com- monly ascribed to him. Of a ditTerent type was the man who has Ijcen often regarded as the modern Greek Anacrcon, Athanasios Christopulos (1770-1847), who spent what would .seem to have been an epicurean existence at Bucharest, imitating the Anacreontica in Romaic and trou- bling himself little about the regeneration of Cireece. Noteworthy also is the satiric fabulist loannes Velaras of Epirus (1773-1823), who was physician to Veli Pasha, son of the infamous Ali Pasha of .Janina. Among the cultivators and de- velopers of Romaic prose style, a very pronnnent place should be given to the first gieat modern Greek scholar. Adamantios Kor.nes (Coray) (1748- 1833 ), who left his mark upon classical, as well as modern, Greek philology. He took a middle posi- tion in the strife that "arose at the beginning of the revival of national life between the purists and the vulgarists in Romaic speech and writ ing. The current t^reek style of to-day occupies in general this vague middle groiuid. hut the most vital and original literature of the Greeks is still, in poetry at least, in the vulgar tongue. It was in this tongue, and in that form of it which was current in the Ionian Islands, that the great poet of the Greek Revolution, Dionysios Solomos, w^rote. Solonios is a Avriter of real and eminent genius. He was horn in Zante, in 1798, was educated in Italy, where he studied law at Venice. Cremona, and Padua, and de- veloped his literary knowledge and poetic talent by association with the poets of the day, particularly Monti, and by reading the Italian