popular prize-fighters. And this in the classic land of brigandage and
bloodshed!

The intellectual under-current. . . .

It was an apt commentary on my _graffito._ And another, more personally
poignant, not to say piquant, was soon to follow: the bed. But no. I
will say nothing about the bed, nothing whatever; nothing beyond this,
that it yielded an entomological harvest which surpassed my wildest
expectations.




XXVI

AMONG THE BRUTTIANS


Conspicuous among the wise men of Longobucco in olden days was the
physician Bruno, who "flourished" about the end of the thirteenth
century. He called himself _Longoburgensis Calaber,_ and his great
treatise on anatomical dissection, embodying much Greek and Arabic lore,
was printed many years after his death. Another was Francesco Maria
Labonia; he wrote, in 1664, "De vera loci urbis Timesinae situatione,
etc.," to prove, presumably, that his birthplace occupied the site
whence the Homeric ore of Temese was derived. There are modern writers
who support this view.

The local silver mines were exploited in antiquity; first by Sybaris,