Note 219 — Chapter III
Reading edition
Such phrases as i nostri maggiori patrizii in Roma (i. 37), la quasi dovuta a noi per le nostre virtù da tutte le genti riverenzia e obbedienzia (ii. 218), nostri ottimi passati Itali debellarono e sotto averono tutte le genti (ii. 9), might be culled in plenty. Alberti shows how deep was the Latin idealism of the Renaissance, and how impossible it would have been for the Italians to found their national self-consciousness on aught but a recovery of the past.