At The Sign Of "Magna Graecia" One Is Willing To
Accept "Hydroelectropathic" As A Late Echo Of Hellenic Speech.
CHAPTER V
DULCE GALAESI FLUMEN
Taranto has a very interesting Museum. I went there with an
introduction to the curator, who spared no trouble in pointing out
to me all that was best worth seeing. He and I were alone in the
little galleries; at a second or third visit I had the Museum to
myself, save for an attendant who seemed to regard a visitor as a
pleasant novelty, and bestirred himself for my comfort when I wanted
to make sketches. Nothing is charged for admission, yet no one
enters. Presumably, all the Tarentines who care for archaeology have
already been here, and strangers are few.
Upon the shelves are seen innumerable miniature busts, carved in
some kind of stone; thought to be simply portraits of private
persons. One peers into the faces of men, women, and children,
vaguely conjecturing their date, their circumstances; some of them
may have dwelt in the old time on this very spot of ground now
covered by the Museum. Like other people who grow too rich and
comfortable, the citizens of Tarentum loved mirth and mockery; their
Greek theatre was remarkable for irreverent farce, for parodies of
the great drama of Athens. And here is testimony to the fact: all
manner of comic masks, of grotesque visages; mouths distorted into
impossible grins, eyes leering and goggling, noses extravagant. I
sketched a caricature of Medusa, the anguished features and snaky
locks travestied with satiric grimness.
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