4 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



hills which lie shadowy under the clear sky ; most 

 prominent and most mysterious is Vesuvius, a few miles 

 to the south. But the charms of natural beauty in 

 Nola were surpassed by those of picturesque antiquity : 

 the half-mythical "Pelasgians founded it before the walls 

 of Rome were begun ; they were followed by the 

 Chalcidians of Cuma, from whom the Nolans inherited 

 a Greek spirit, calm yet quick, eager in the pursuit of 

 wisdom and in the love of beauty, which down even 

 to the 1 6th century distinguished them above other 

 Italians. There followed a chequered history in which 

 the Samnites, the early Romans, Hannibal, Sulla, and 

 Spartacus, played successive parts. Nola was the death- 

 place of Augustus, and to that fact owed its greatness 

 in Imperial times, when its two great amphitheatres 

 and multitude of beautiful temples topped a great city, 

 shut in by massive walls, with twelve gates that opened 

 to all parts of Italy. Evil times were to come ; 

 Alaric, the Saracens, Manfred, and others had their will 

 of Nola, and earthquakes, flood, and plague reduced it 

 by the end of the I5th century to one tenth of its 

 former self. It had its own martyrs, for the old faith 

 and for the new ; one of the latter, Pomponio Algerio, 

 suffered during Bruno's lifetime a fate that fore- 

 shadowed his own ; accused while a student at Padua of 

 contempt for the Christian religion, he was imprisoned 

 in Padua, Venice, and Rome, and finally burnt at the 

 stake. Its sons never lost their love for the 

 mother-town ; Bruno speaks of it always with affec- 

 tion, as to him "the garden of Italy"; of a 

 nephew of Ambrogio Leone, the historian of its 

 antiquities, we are told that, on returning to Nola 

 after a few days' absence, seeming ill with longing, 

 he threw himself on the earth and kissed it with 



