The Pursuit of Italy Quotes

“When intellectuals accept stereotypes, it is not surprising that other people do the same.”
― David Gilmour, The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, Its Regions, and Their Peoples

“Yet, however noticeable physical differences may often be, race has never been a serious factor in Italian history: there is no Italian race and there never has been one. The arguments of those who claim otherwise, usually fascists or extreme nationalists, are ludicrous. So is the more recent boast by a leader of the Venetian League that, while Lombards are upstarts descended from the Gauls, his own people have a pure ethnic pedigree. 13 The truth was recognized long ago by the Risorgimento liberal Cesare Balbo, who observed that Italy was ‘a multiracial community composed of successive waves of immigrants’;”
― David Gilmour, The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, Its Regions, and Their Peoples

“The tribes of Apulia were supposedly divided into Daunians, Peucetians and Messapians in the heel, but these names come from Greek writers and were adopted by Roman ones; perhaps the people themselves did not recognize such distinctions. As for the Samnites, highland tribes from Molise and the centre, they cannot rigorously be separated from the Lucanians and Bruttians whose ancestors they were.”
― David Gilmour, The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, Its Regions, and Their Peoples

“the central Apennines were inhabited by Umbrians, Sabines, Volscians and Samnites,”
― David Gilmour, The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, Its Regions, and Their Peoples