For the rest, the Italians shared with other nations the common stock of medieval literature--Chronicles, Encyclopædias, Epitomes, Moralizations, Histories in verse, Rhetorical Summaries, and prose abstracts of Universal History--the meager _débris_ and detritus of the huge moraines carried down by extinct classic glaciers. It is not needful to dwell upon this aspect of the national culture, since it presents no specific features. What is most to our purpose, is to note the affectionate remembrance of Rome and Roman worthies, which endured in each great town. The people, as distinguished from the feudal nobility, were and ever felt themselves to be the heirs of the old Roman population. Therefore the soldiers on guard against the Huns at Modena in 924, sang in their barbarous Latin verse of Hector and the Capitol[8]:
Dum Hector vigil exstitit in Troïa, Non eam cepit fraudulenta Græcia: Prima quiete dormiente Troïa, Laxavit Sinon fallax claustra perfida ... Vigili voce avis anser candida Fugavit Gallos ex arce Romulea Pro qua virtute facta est argentea, Et a Romanis adorata ut Dea.
The Tuscan women told tales of Troy and Catiline and Julius Cæsar[9]:
L'altra, traendo alla rocca la chioma, Favoleggiava con la sua famiglia De' Troiani e di Fiesole e di Roma.
A rhyming chronicler of Pisa compared the battles of the burghers against the Saracens with the Punic wars. The tomb of Virgil at Naples was an object for pilgrimage, and one of the few spots round which a group of local legends clustered. The memory of Livy added luster to Padua, and Mussato boasted that her walls, like those of Troy, her mother-city, were sacrosanct. The memory of the Plinies ennobled Como, that of Ovid gave glory to Sulmona, that of Tully to Arpino. Florence clung to the mutilated statue of Mars upon her bridge with almost superstitious reverence, as proof of Roman origin; while Siena adopted for her ensign the she-wolf and the Roman twins. Pagan customs survived, and were jealously maintained in the central and southern provinces; and the name of the Republic sufficed to stir Arnold's revolution in Rome, long before the days of Rienzi. To the mighty German potentate, King Frederick Barbarossa, attended with his Northern chivalry, a handful of Romans dared to say: "Thou wast a stranger; I, the City, gave thee civic rights. Thou camest from transalpine regions; I have conferred on thee the principality."[10] It would be easy to multiply these instances. Enough, however, has been said to show that through the gloom of medieval history, before humanism had begun to dawn, and while the other nations were creating legends and popular epics, Italy maintained a dim but tenacious sense of her Roman past. This consciousness has here to be insisted on, not merely because it stood in the way of mythopoeic activity, but because it found full and proper satisfaction in that Revival of Learning which decided the Renaissance.