[394] [Compare the opening lines of Byron's _Ode on Venice_--

"Oh Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls
Are level with the waters, there shall be
A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls,
A loud lament along the sweeping sea!"

Shelley, too, in his _Lines written among the Euganean Hills_, bewailed
the approaching doom of the "sea-girt city." But threatened cities, like
threatened men, live long, and since its annexation to Italy, in 1866, a
revival of trade and the re-establishment of the arsenal have brought
back a certain measure of prosperity.]

[lq] {339} _Even in Destruction's heart_----.--[MS. M.]

[395] That is, the Lion of St. Mark, the standard of the republic, which
is the origin of the word Pantaloon--Piantaleone, Pantaleon, Pantaloon.

[The Venetians were nicknamed Pantaloni. Byron, who seems to have relied
on the authority of a Venetian glossary, assumes that the "by-word" may
be traced to the patriotism of merchant-princes "who were reputed to
hoist flags with the Venetian lion waving to the breeze on every rock
and barren headland of Levantine waters" (_Memoirs of Count Carlo
Gozzi_, translated by J. Addington Symonds, 1890, Introd. part ii. p.
44), and that in consequence of this spread-eagleism the Venetians were
held up to scorn by their neighbours as "planters of the lion"--a
reproach which conveyed a tribute to their prowess. A more probable
explanation is that the "by-word," with its cognates "Pantaleone," the
typical masque of Italian comedy--progenitor of our "Pantaloon;" and
"pantaloni," "pantaloons," the typical Venetian costume--derive their
origin from the baptismal name "Pantaleone," frequently given to
Venetian children, in honour of St. Pantaleon of Nicomedia, physician
and martyr, whose cult was much in vogue in Northern Italy, and
especially in Venice, where his relics, which "coruscated with
miracles," were the object of peculiar veneration.

St. Pantaleon was known to the Greek Church as [Greek: Pantelee/mon],
that is, the "all-pitiful;" and in Latin his name is spelled
_Pantaleymon_ and _Pantaleemon_. Hagiologists seem to have been puzzled,
but the compiler of the _Acta Sanctorum_, for July 27, St. Pantaleon's
Day in the Roman calendar (xxxiii. 397-426), gives the preference to
Pantaleon, and explains that he was hailed as Pantaleemon by a divine
voice at the hour of his martyrdom, which proclaimed "eum non amplius
esse vocandum Pantaleonem, sed Pantaleemonem.