"I am not responsible for
the eccentricities of the driver, who probably had some urgent private
affairs to settle at Taranto. The fine must be paid." A fellow-passenger
took a more charitable view of the case. He suggested that an inspector
of the line had been travelling along with us, and that the driver,
knowing this, was naturally ambitious to show how fast he could go.
A mile or so before reaching Tarante the railway crosses a stream that
flows into the inland sea. One would be glad to believe those sages who
hold it to be the far-famed Galaesus. It rises near at hand in a marsh,
amid mighty tufts of reeds and odorous flowers, and the liquid bubbles
up in pools of crystalline transparency - deep and perfidious cauldrons
overhung by the trembling soil on which you stand. These fountains form
a respectable stream some four hundred yards in length; another copious
spring rises up in the sea near its mouth. But can this be the river
whose virtues are extolled by: Virgil, Horace, Martial, Statius,
Propertius, Strabo, Pliny, Varro and Coramella? What a constellation of
names around these short-lived waters! Truly, minuit praesentia
famam, as Boccaccio says of the once-renowned Sebethus.
Often have I visited this site and tried to reconstruct its vanished
glories. My enthusiasm even led me, some years ago, to the town hall, in
order to ascertain its true official name, and here they informed me
that "it is vulgarly called Citrezze; but the correct version is 'Le
Giadrezze,' which, as you are aware, sir, signifies pleasantness"
This functionary was evidently ignorant of the fact that so long ago as
1771 the learned commentator (Carducci) of the "Delizie Tarentine"
already sneered at this popular etymology; adding, what is of greater
interest, that "in the time of our fathers" this region was covered with
woods and rich in game.
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