On The Rocks Below Stood Fishermen Hauling In A Great Net,
Whilst A Boy Splashed The Water To Drive The Fish Back Until They
Were Safely Enveloped In The Last Meshes; Admirable Figures,
Consummate In Graceful Strength, Their Bare Legs And Arms The Tone
Of Terra Cotta.
What slight clothing they wore became them
perfectly, as is always the case with a costume well adapted to the
natural life of its wearers.
Their slow, patient effort speaks of
immemorial usage, and it is in harmony with time itself. These
fishermen are the primitives of Taranto; who shall say for how many
centuries they have hauled their nets upon the rock? When Plato
visited the Schools of Taras, he saw the same brown-legged figures,
in much the same garb, gathering their sea-harvest. When Hannibal,
beset by the Romans, drew his ships across the peninsula and so
escaped from the inner sea, fishermen of Tarentum went forth as
ever, seeking their daily food. A thousand years passed, and the
fury of the Saracens, when it had laid the city low, spared some
humble Tarentine and the net by which he lived. To-day the
fisher-folk form a colony apart; they speak a dialect which retains
many Greek words unknown to the rest of the population. I could not
gaze at them long enough; their lithe limbs, their attitudes at work
or in repose, their wild, black hair, perpetually reminded me of
shapes pictured on a classic vase.
Later in the day I came upon a figure scarcely less impressive.
Beyond the new quarter of the town, on the ragged edge of its wide,
half-peopled streets, lies a tract of olive orchards and of
seed-land; there, alone amid great bare fields, a countryman was
ploughing.
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