Preface Without appealing to the ancients, from whom there is an abundance of national patriotic material and expressions of italianità to be found, particularly in Virgil and many other ancient Italian authors, we will instead begin with Dante Alighieri, who is generally considered the first modern Italian patriot. I. — Dante Alighieri The national idea came to Dante as part of that essential continuity between ancient Rome and modem Italy which is the key to Italian civilisation. Virgil himself had defined the national aspirations of Italians throughout the centuries, when he placed upon the lips of Aeneas the pregnant words: Italiam quaero patriam . There was never a time, from the day on which a barbarian conqueror dethroned the last of the old Roman emperors in the west to that on which Victor Emanuel assumed the crown of the united kingdom in 1861, when Italy—in the notorious phrase of the anti-Italian Metternich—was “a mere geographical expression.” As surprising as it m...
History of Italy and the Italian People