'Sulmona,' says Boccaccio, 'bewails
that Ovid lies buried far away in exile; and Parma rejoices that
Cassius sleeps within its walls.' The Mantuans coined a medal in 1257
with the bust of Virgil, and raised a statue to represent him. In a fit
of aristocratic insolence, the guardian of the young Gonzaga, Carlo
Malatesta, caused it to be pulled down in 1392, and was afterwards
forced, when he found the fame of the old poet too strong for him, to
set it up again. Even then, perhaps, the grotto, a couple of miles from
the town, where Virgil was said to have meditated, was shown to
strangers, like the 'Scuola di Virgilio' at Naples. Como claimed both
the Plinys for its own, and at the end of the fifteenth century erected
statues in their honour, sitting under graceful baldachins on the
facade of the cathedral.
History and the new topography were now careful to leave no local
celebrity unnoticed. At the same period the northern chronicles only
here and there, among the list of popes, emperors, earthquakes, and
comets, put in the remark, that at such a time this or that famous man
'flourished.' We shall elsewhere have to show how, mainly under the
influence of this idea of fame, an admirable biographical literature
was developed. We must here limit ourselves to the local patriotism of
the topographers who recorded the claims of their native cities to
distinction.
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