DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.786#0472
chap, lvii.] BATTLE OF THE THRASYMENE. 455
appetites to her discretion. The sun shone warmly into
the room—the hostess smiled cheerily—a glorious land-
scape lay beneath our window—and what mattered it that
the dishes stood on the bare board ; that the spoons and
forks were of tin, and that the merchant's servant, and a
bearded pilgrim in sackcloth, Rome-bound for the Holy
Week, whom, in his pious generosity, my companion had
invited to partake, sat down to table with us? Travelling
in Italy, for him who would mix with the natives, and can
forget home-bred pride, prejudices, and exigencies, levels
all distinctions.
At Monte Gualandro, we entered the Papal State. Here
at our feet lay the Thrasymene,1 a broad expanse of blue,
mirroring in intenser hues the complexion of the heavens.
Three wooded islets lay, floating it seemed, on its unruffled
surface. Towns and villages glittered on the verdant
shore. Dark heights of purple waved around ; but loftier
far, and far more distant, the Apennines reared their
crests of snow—Nature's nobles, proud, distant, and cold,
holding no communion with the herd of lowlier mountains
around them.
* Such was the scene on which the sun shone on that
eventful day, when Rome lay humbled at the feet of Car-
thage, when fifteen thousand of her sons dyed yon plain
and lake with their blood. From the height of Monte
Gualandro the whole battle-field is within view. At the
foot of the hill, or a little further to the right, on the
shores of the lake, Plaminius, on his way from Arretium,
halted on the eve of the battle. Ere the sun had risen on
the morrow he entered the pass between this hill and the
1 The Lacus Thrasymenus, Thrasu- taken from the oldest native dialect,
menus, Trasymenus, or Trasumenus of Many of the ancients also called it
antiquity. Polybius (III. 82) calls it Tharsomenus, instead of Thrasumenus.
TafxTt^ivri \ifivrj, which Mannert (Geog. Quintil. Inst. Orat. I. 5.
p. 416) takes to be correct, as probably
appetites to her discretion. The sun shone warmly into
the room—the hostess smiled cheerily—a glorious land-
scape lay beneath our window—and what mattered it that
the dishes stood on the bare board ; that the spoons and
forks were of tin, and that the merchant's servant, and a
bearded pilgrim in sackcloth, Rome-bound for the Holy
Week, whom, in his pious generosity, my companion had
invited to partake, sat down to table with us? Travelling
in Italy, for him who would mix with the natives, and can
forget home-bred pride, prejudices, and exigencies, levels
all distinctions.
At Monte Gualandro, we entered the Papal State. Here
at our feet lay the Thrasymene,1 a broad expanse of blue,
mirroring in intenser hues the complexion of the heavens.
Three wooded islets lay, floating it seemed, on its unruffled
surface. Towns and villages glittered on the verdant
shore. Dark heights of purple waved around ; but loftier
far, and far more distant, the Apennines reared their
crests of snow—Nature's nobles, proud, distant, and cold,
holding no communion with the herd of lowlier mountains
around them.
* Such was the scene on which the sun shone on that
eventful day, when Rome lay humbled at the feet of Car-
thage, when fifteen thousand of her sons dyed yon plain
and lake with their blood. From the height of Monte
Gualandro the whole battle-field is within view. At the
foot of the hill, or a little further to the right, on the
shores of the lake, Plaminius, on his way from Arretium,
halted on the eve of the battle. Ere the sun had risen on
the morrow he entered the pass between this hill and the
1 The Lacus Thrasymenus, Thrasu- taken from the oldest native dialect,
menus, Trasymenus, or Trasumenus of Many of the ancients also called it
antiquity. Polybius (III. 82) calls it Tharsomenus, instead of Thrasumenus.
TafxTt^ivri \ifivrj, which Mannert (Geog. Quintil. Inst. Orat. I. 5.
p. 416) takes to be correct, as probably