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In 1737 the learned Aceti was able to enumerate over two thousand celebrated Calabrians athletes, generals, musicians, centenarians, inventors, martyrs, ten popes, ten kings, as well as some sixty conspicuous women. A land of thinkers. Old Zavarroni, born in 1705, gives us a list of seven hundred Calabrian writers; and I, for one, would not care to bring his catalogue up to date.
"The hardy Alpini from the frontiers, the stout soldiers of Piedmont, the well-to-do peasantry of Venetia, the Sardinians, who are ever to the front when there is fighting to be enjoyed, the Tuscans, Calabrians, and those Sicilians once so famous amongst the legionaries, are all here or at the depots training for war. Mobilization must have affected two and a half million Italians at least.
Murat's suite instantly made the air ring with acclamations, but the Calabrians remained silent, and not one of his comrades took up the cry for which the king himself had given the signal; on the contrary, a low murmur ran through the crowd. Murat well understood this forerunner of the storm.
"It now hangs" so I wrote some years ago "at a dangerous angle, and I doubt whether it will survive till its services are requisitioned next June." Prophetic utterance! It was blown down that same winter, and has not yet been replaced. No wonder North Italians, judging by such external indications, regard all Calabrians as savages.
You see, the north of Italy are really Celts, like the French and Irish, being descended from the Lombards, but the Sicilians and Calabrians are a mixture of the old pirates, the Moors, and the degenerated Latin races that were left when the Roman Empire fell to pieces.
The Comanche young women are exquisitely clean, good-looking, and but slightly bronzed; indeed the Spaniards of Andalusia and the Calabrians are darker than they are. Their voice is soft, their motions dignified and graceful: their eyes dark and flashing, when excited, but otherwise mild, with a soft tinge of melancholy.
The Viceroy agreed to these terms, but had no sooner traversed half the strait with two vessels than he broke them, and full of hostile designs landed in Calabria in order to join Peter of Catanzaro, who being advised of what was going forward had embarked before them with his Calabrians, abandoning his horses and baggage to the fury of the people.
Together with the Sardinians, these Calabrians are the hardiest of native races, and this is what makes them prefer the strenuous but lucrative life in North American mines to the easier career in Argentina, which Neapolitans favour. There they learn English. They remember their families and the village that gave them birth, but their patriotism towards Casa Savoia is of the slenderest.
This attempt at a method which should be certain, which should level capacities, which should do its work in a short time, had a special attraction for the imagination of the wild spirits of the South, from Raimond Lulli in the thirteenth century to the audacious Calabrians of the sixteenth. With Bacon it was something much more serious and reasonable and business-like.
They call themselves Calabrians. Noi siamo calabresi! they proudly say, meaning that they are above suspicion of unfair dealing. As a matter of fact, they are a muddled brood, and considerably given to cheating when there is any prospect of success.
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