United States or Costa Rica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Poetics had been known to the middle ages only through a Latin abridgment by Hermannus Allemanus. This was derived from a Hebrew translation from the Arabic of Averroes, who, in turn, knew only a Syriac translation of the Greek. The Greek text was first published in the Aldine Rhetores Graeci badly edited by Ducas. Robortelli edited it in 1548. Segni translated it in 1549.
After quoting the witty saying of Malvezzi, "I vestimenti negli animali sono molto securi segni della loro natura, negli nomini del lor cervello," he goes on to say, "Be it excusable in the French to alter and impose the mode on others, 'tis no less a weakness and a shame in the rest of the world, who have no dependence on them, to admit them, at least to that degree of levity as to turn into all their shapes without discrimination; so as when the freak takes our Monsieurs to appear like so many farces or Jack Puddings on the stage, all the world should alter shape and play the pantomimes with them.
He deserves a place upon the muster-roll of literary statesmen mentioned by me in chapter V.; nor should I have omitted him from the company of Segni and Varchi, had not his history been exclusively devoted to an earlier period than theirs. At the same time he was an intimate friend both of Guicciardini and Machiavelli.
Space does not permit of a fuller description of the remarkable volcanic features of the tract lying along the western slope of the Apennines; but from what has been stated it will be clear that volcanic forces have been in operation at one time on a grand scale in the Roman States and the South of Tuscany, over a tract extending from Mount Annato to Velletri and Segni.
For Antonio Segni, who was very much his friend, he made, on a sheet of paper, a Neptune executed with such careful draughtsmanship that it seemed absolutely alive. In it one saw the ocean troubled, and Neptune's car drawn by sea-horses, with fantastic creatures, marine monsters and winds, and some very beautiful heads of sea-gods.
After dinner I ordered a coffee; the landlord, who also had had his dinner, asked me to be good enough to defer it for another year and I assented. I then asked him which was the best inn at Segni. He replied that it did not matter, that when a man had quattrini one albergo was as good as another.
The stately philosophical historians, so stoically grand, and the prattling local chroniclers, so highly coloured and so gentle and graceful; Guicciardini and Machiavelli and Valori and Segni, on the one hand Corio, Allegretti, Matarazzo, Infessura, on the other; all these, from whom we learn the real existence of immorality far more universal and abominable than our dramatists venture to show, relate quietly, calmly, with analytical frigidness or gossiping levity, the things which we often shrink from repeating, and sometimes recoil from believing.
Both Segni and Varchi discerned the exaggerated and therefore baneful influence of Savonarola's prophecies over the populace of Florence. In spite of continued failure, the people kept trusting to the monk's prediction that, after her chastisement, Florence would bloom forth with double luster, and that angels in the last resort would man her walls and repel the invaders.
At Naples, in 1535, he pleaded the cause of Duke Alessandro against the exiles before Charles V. Nardi on this occasion acted as secretary and advocate for Filippo Strozzi and the exiles; his own history was composed in exile at Venice, where he died. Segni was nephew of the Gonfalonier Capponi, and shared the anxieties of the moderate liberals during the siege of Florence.
For the mode of working the Parlamento and Balia, see Segni, p. 199; Nardi, lib. vi. cap. 4; Varchi, vol. ii. p. 372.
Word Of The Day