Top 15 Italo Pizzi Quotes

Although he was a Muslim of religion and although he had to live in times, in which of the ancient and glorious Persia only the name remained, he could, however, he alone, understand all the glory and the inherient and warlike nature of his homeland. (p. 123)

Talking about the merits of Firdusi is certainly not light and easy; but having to keep our word about it, we will start with the language which by the Persian writers who came after him, was increasingly corrupt with Arabic words. Firdusi instead knew how to use the real Persian language by abstaining, as much as he could, from the Arabic words that were introduced into Persia after the conquest of the Arabs. His way of expressing himself is robust, nervous and devoid of those games of words and those uncertain grigami that we so often encounter in the imitatory poets of the Arabs, such as Hâfiz, Khâkâni, Saadi and Giâmi. They met again often in their songs, figures and really grandiose similarities, which, however, never touch the monstrous like those that are needed in Indian poems, especially if of old age, as are the Purâni, nor do they go to the ridiculous and the silly like some of the Arabic and Persian poetry that imitated it on. (pp. 121-122)

It is not [...] to wonder if the memory of the Achaemenids has completely disappeared from the minds of the people who did not know them and did not love them; and if their names, their exploits and the order of their succession are now known, this is due to the diligence of the Greek and Latin historians and especially of Herodotus, and to the care 71)

While the Arsacids and Sassanids specially cared for the prosperity and good condition of their people, and the Sassanids put on the ancient religion in honor, thus awakening the memory of the ancient myths and ancient heroes, the Achemenids were instead like strangers to their people. Who did not know the king of kings who sat in Persepolis, except for the tributes he was to send him; and because the tributes were burdensome, and because the youth was sometimes obliged to leave the native country to go to fight in distant countries, where the repugnant the ardor of conquest of the king was repugnant; so the king was hat.

The religion of the Vedi for the Indians and that of Homer and Hesiod for the Greeks was but the expression of the ideas of the people, often subject to change and contradict each other because they were never fixed or determined by any sacred book of the nature of the Bible or of the <nowiki>'</nowiki> The Iranian religion is on the contrary the work of philosophers and priests, founded, he is true, over the popular idea of the continuous struggle between good and evil, but reduced in a system by elected and speculative minds and confirmed with a sacred code, immutable, which was said to be revealed by Ormuzd to his prophet Zarathustra or Zoroaster. (p 26)

The pârsi has not accepted any words from foreign languages and differs little from the language of Firdusi, of the greatest Persian epic poet who lived around the thousand of the vernacular era, who can be considered as the first who with an immortal work, as Dante did for the Italians, has honored the language of Persia of his From then on the Persian went more and more corrupting with accepting Arabic words; and nowadays in the works of modern Persian writers it is nothing but a jargon, of which two thirds are Arabic, while the language has been preserved much purer in the countryside and in the villages, where it is not uncommon to meet some good farmer who in his pure Persian dialect, which by some was 17.)

If the Homeric poems are a faithful mirror of the heroic life of the Greeks, of the feelings and ideas of that age, the Book of Kings is no less the faithful image of the soul, heart and ingenuity of the Persian people. (pp. X-XI)

The Book of Kings is a faithful image of the ingenuity, soul and heart of the Persian people, if not of our times, at least of that age when he had not yet been impregnated by the Muslim doctrines, and still felt the beneficial strength of the ancient religion of Zoroastro, infiant, energetic and, after Christianity.

As for breadth, all other epics yield by far to the Book of Kings of Firdusi, finding that the <nowiki>'</nowiki>Iliad' and the<nowiki>'</nowiki>'Odyssey are restricted to two single facts, one before, the other after the This same thing can be said of the Nibelungen of the Germans and the Kalevala of the Finns; and only the <nowiki>'</nowiki>Edda' of the Scandinavians could be an exception, starting from the origin of all things and descending then to narrate the facts of the Gods, the Giant [...] But the greatest value of the Book of Kings, for which it acquires great importance, is to be a national epic, an epic that is, the subject of which was not found and elaborated by a poet in the silence of his room and with the escort of his books, such as the Jerusalem and the <nowiki>'</nowiki>

If it was rightly said that India gave the world the priests, and that Greece and Rome gave the civil man, no less rightly it can be said that Persia gave instead the type of man who believes, who works, who fights.

The morality taught by the 'Avesta', beyond and above its theological, dogmatic, ritual precepts, is still a very high and pure morality that rightly places Zoroastrianism among the most elected religions in the world. The same threefold precept of never sinning in thoughts, in works, in words, which is also among the precepts of Christianity, encloses in its rigidity and summarizes every other precept that is intended to guide man down here. The greatest virtues that, moreover, were recommended not also by the <nowiki>'</nowiki>Avesta', but also by the law and custom common to all the Iranians, were justice, charity, generosity, piety, the horror of lying.

Perhaps the hot fantasy of the Iranians in some prince of Semitic, cruel and tyrannical lineage, who infested them, saw in it the living and visible image of the evil infernal Drugia procreated by Anra.

Dahaka means the snake that bites. In the naturalistic sense, it is the aerial monster that, according to the primitive concepts of a naturalistic religion, contends the celestial spaces to the Gods of light, and yet rejoins his brother of the Rigveda who is the serpent Ahi. L<nowiki>'</nowiki>Avesta', adjoining the frightening and horrible traits due to the imagination of the vulgar, designates it from time to time as the worst and most eliitial Drugia that Anra Mainyu has created, and describes it with three heads, with three jaws, with six eyes; but then, rising

Anra Mainyu is very clever, nor could it be anything else, because, being evil par excellence in its totality, if it had a little bit of wisdom, it would also have in itself some good. Satan on the contrary, if not always, very often appears cunning and cunning and acute troubadour of deception and devious arts, identified then, for easy and fantastication of thought, to the scrutineering and inquiring spirit of man. One day, at the end of the world, both will be defeated; but, where Satan will forever remain the lord of the painful kingdom, Anra Mainyu, since then only the absolute reign of good will begin, will remain annihilated. It will be so then for ever the existence of evil.

In ethical and moral respect, Mithra is regarded as a jealous custodian of the covenants that mortals conclude among themselves, a displeaunted of justice and mutual faith, a punisher of traitors and frighteds; and Xenophon attests that the Persians used to swear in his name.