Pagina:Zibaldone di pensieri VII.djvu/376

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(4433-4434) pensieri 367

e medesimo. I Siceli, secondo l’autore, furono Pelasghi, di quelli chiamati Tirreni, che dall’Italia, cioè da quella parte della penisola che allora si chiamava propriamente Italia, cacciati dagli Aborigini, emigrarono in Sicilia, cosí detta d’allora in poi, dal nome di questi emigranti, Siceli, cioè Itali (9, 1829).

Ib., p. 40, nota 127. Salmasius saw that Maleventum or Maloentum, in the heart of what was afterward Samnium would in pure Greek have been Maloeis or Malus. E l’autore lo dimostra con altri esempi di nomi latini neutri in entum derivati da nomi greci mascolini in ας o ους, genitivo εντος. Vedi nel Cellario e nel Forcellini le sciocche etimologie di Maleventum date dagli antichi latini, le quali dimostrano la loro ignoranza o inavvertenza circa il digamma (9, 1829). Anzi da tale ignoranza sembra nato il nome di Beneventum dato a quel che prima fu Maleventum.

Ib., p. 50-1. We may observe a magical power exercised by the Greek language and national character over foreign races that came in contact with them. The inhabitants of Asia Minor hellenized themselves from the time of the Macedonian conquest, almost without any settlements among them of genuine Greeks: Antioch, though the common people spoke a barbarous language, became altogether a Greek city; and the entire transformation of the Syrians was averted only by their Oriental inflexibility. Even the Albanians, who have settled as colonies in modern  (4434) Greece, have adopted the Romaic by the side of their own language, and in several places have forgotten the latter: it was in this way only that the immortal Suli was Greek; and the noble Hydra itself, the destructions of which we shall perhaps have to deplore before the publication of this volume, is an Albanian settlement.... Calabria, like Sicily, continued a Grecian land, though Roman colonies were planted in the coasts: the Greek lan-