Pensieri di varia filosofia e di bella letteratura/4445

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[p. 378 modifica] with his army at the critical moment by forced marches from the land of the Volscians: the victors, encamping on the Janiculum, sent out foraging parties across the river and laid waste the country; until some skirmishes, which again took place by the temple of Hope and at the Colline gate, checked their depredations: yet a severe famine arose within the city (26 gennaio 1829).


*    Niebuhr, ib., sezione intitolata The Patrician Houses and the Curies, p. 268. Each house (ciascuno dei γένη gentes nei quali era anticamente distribuito il popolo ateniese) bore a peculiar name resembling a patronymic in form; as the Codrids, the Eumolpids, the Butads: which produces an appearance, but a fallacious one, of a family affinity (perché quelle gentes, come appresso i Romani, erano una mera divisione [p. 379 modifica]politica; ciascuna gens o casa era composta di piú famiglie senz’alcun riguardo ad affinità scambievole). These names may have been transferred from the most distinguished among the associated families to the rest: it is more probable that they were adopted from the name of a hero, who was their eponymus. Such a house was that of the Homerids in Chios; whose descent from the poet was only an inference drawn from their name, whereas others pronounced that they were no way related io him (not. 747. Harpocration, voc. ‘Ομηρίδαι. It may be warrantably assumed that a hero named Homer was revered by the Ionians at the time when Chios received its laws. See the Rhenish Museum (Museo Renano), I, 257). In Greek history what appears to be a family, may probably often have been a house of this kind; and this system of subdivision is not to be confined to the Ionian tribes alone (27, 1829).