[Editor: This is a chapter from The Eureka Stockade by Raffaello Carboni. A glossary has been provided to explain various words and phrases that may be unfamiliar to modern readers.]
[Editor: The quotation, beginning “And I proposed”, was placed on its own inset area on the right of the page.]
XCIV.
EXPLANATION,
to be submitted to
HER MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA, LONDON,
and to
HIS HOLINESS PIUS IX., PONTIFEX MAXIMUS, ROME,
by
my brother Don Antonio Carboni, D.D.,
Head-master of the Grammar School, Coriano, Romagna.
——
Homo Sum, Nil Humani a me Alienum Puto.
How do I explain, that I allowed one full year to pass away before publishing my story, whilst many, soon after my acquittal, heard me in person, corroborate, not indeed boastingly, the impression that I was the identical brave fellow before whose pike a British soldier was coward enough to run away.
I have one excuse, and it is an excuse.
The cast of mind which Providence was pleased to assign me was terribly shaken during four long, long months suffering in gaol, especially, considering the company I was in, which was my misery. The excitement during my trial, my glorious acquittal by a British jury, the hearty acclamations of joy from the people, made me put up with the ignominy and the impotent teeth-gnashing of silver and gold lace; and for the cause of the diggers to which I was sincerely attached, I was not sorry at the Toorak spiders having lent me the wings of an hero — the principal foreign hero of the Eureka stockade. My credit consists now in having the moral courage to assert the truth among living witnesses.
“And I proposed in my mind to seek and search out wisely concerning all things that are done under the sun. This painful occupation hath God given to the children of men to be exercised therein. I have seen all things that are done under the sun, and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” — The Preacher, chap. 1st, v. 13, 14.
Source:
Raffaello Carboni. The Eureka Stockade: The Consequence of Some Pirates Wanting on Quarter-Deck a Rebellion, Public Library of South Australia, Adelaide, 1962 [facsimile of the 1855 edition], page 119
Editor’s notes:
homo sum, nil humani a me alienum puto = (Latin) “I am man, I think nothing human alien to me”, or “I am a human being, and I consider nothing belonging to humanity as alien to me”, from the play “Heauton Timorumenos” (“The Self-Tormentor”) (line 77) by Terence (Publius Terentius, ca.195 BC – 159? BC), “homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto” [this quote, rendered as “Homo sum: humani a me nihil alienum puto”, was used in “Nero: Tragaedia Nova” by Matthew Gwinne (1558? – 1627) and in “Oratio VI” (Oration 6) by Giambattista Vico (1668 – 1744)]
The Preacher = Ecclesiastes (in the Bible); The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha (2007) says “Ecclesiastes is a Latin transliteration of the Greek rendering of the pen-name of the author, known in Hebrew as Qohelet (“Gatherer,” traditionally “the Teacher” or “the Preacher”)” [the text quoted by Carboni is from Ecclesiastes 1:13-14 in the Bible]
silver and gold lace = presumably a broad reference to government officials
Toorak = a reference to the government of Victoria; Toorak House was the residence of the Governors of Victoria from 1854 to 1876
References:
[Ecclesiastes text]:
“Ecclesiastes 1”, New Advent (accessed 6 January 2013)
homo sum, nil humani a me alienum puto:
Max Gauna. The Rabelaisian Mythologies, Associated University Presses, Cranbury (New Jersey), 1996, page 51 (accessed 18 January 2013)
Riccardo Steiner. “Foreward”, in: Salomon Resnik. Mental Space, Karnac Books, London, 1995, [page 13] (accessed 18 January 2013)
“P. Terenti Afri Heavton Timorvmenos”, The Latin Library (accessed 18 January 2013)
“Heauton Timorumenos”, Wikipedia (accessed 18 January 2013)
“Nero Tragaedia Nova”, The Latin Library (accessed 18 January 2013)
“Matthew Gwinne”, Wikipedia (accessed 18 January 2013)
“Giambattista Vico: Oratio VI”, The Latin Library (accessed 18 January 2013)
“Giambattista Vico”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University (accessed 18 January 2013)
The Preacher (Ecclesiastes):
Michael D. Coogan, Marc Z. Brettler, Carol A. Newsom, and Pheme Perkins [editors]. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha (augmented third edition), Oxford University Press, New York, 2007, page 944 (accessed 6 January 2013)
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