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View Full Version : Giacomo Casanova speaks about a Greek rhetotician in Macedonia


Flipper
07-21-2006, 09:50 AM
Giacomo Casanova was born in Venice in 1725. His parents, both actors, wanted him to become a priest, but their hopes were dashed when, at sixteen, he was expelled from the seminary for immoral misconduct. Probably best-known for his reputation as a womanizer, Casanova was in turn a secretary, a soldier in the Venetian army, a preacher, an alchemist, a gambler, a violinist, a lottery director, and a spy. He translated Homer's Iliad into Italian and collaborated with Da Ponte on the libretto for Mozart's Don Giovanni. He retired in 1785 to the castle of a friend - Count Waldstein of Bohemia - in order to write his memoirs. Because every previous edition of Casonova's Memoirs had been abridged to suppress the author's political and religious views and tame his vivid, often racy, style, the literary world considered it a major event when Willard R. Trask's translation of the complete original text was published in six double volumes between 1966 and 1971. Trask's award-winning translation now appears in paperback for the first time.

Giacomo Casanova - History of My Life, page 311, notes

Casanova marks the name Zoilus with number 21.

On note 21 we read:

Zoilus of Amfipolis in Macedonia, a Greek rhetorician (3rd century BC), known for his carping and his malicious criticism of Homer.

So an Italian comprehending the Ancient Hellinic dialect speaks about the Greek Zoilus from Amfipolis, back in 1725.

Nikos
07-21-2006, 07:29 PM
No big deal.

Amfipolis was a city located in Macedonia, but it was an Athenian colony.
It was not a Macedonian city, but a city entirely built by Atheneans.

Flipper
07-21-2006, 07:45 PM
No big deal.
It was not a Macedonian city, but a city entirely built by Atheneans.

Not builded...They had chosen to be part of the Athenian league and share the same economical system. Athens didn't send workers to build every city that joined the league. Who were they? The EU?

Besides that was not my point...