Excerpt from Palio and Ponte: An Account of the Sports of Central Italy From the Age of Dante to the Xxth Century
Some years ago, I wrote a short account of the annual Sienese horse-races under the title of Our Lady of August and the Palio of Siena. That work, which was published and sold almost exclusively in Siena, met with so favourable a reception at the hands of the public and of authoritative Italian reviewers, that I might not unreasonably flatter myself that a second edition is needed. I have, however, preferred to re-write the entire book, and that for two reasons: the first, that there is much to omit; the second, that there is more to add.
Thus, the publication of Professor Langton Douglas' learned volume has enabled me to dispense with a large amount of matter which was only indirectly connected with my subject, and only necessary because no English History of Siena had, as yet, been written; while, on the other hand, further study and research have taught me that I took too narrow a view of the Palio when I regarded it merely as a Sienese institution. A Sienese institution it is; but it is something more. It is the last survivor of those old chivalric games which were played on all the piazze of Tuscany in the Middle Ages; and it can no more be understood, if viewed alone, than the history of any one Italian Commune can be understood, if divorced from the history of its neighbours.
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