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rut of the cars as at Pompeii. The exterior and steps of the theatre exist; the stage is destroyed, and the orchestra planted. The most important of these ruins is the amphitheatre, called the Coliseum, majestic outside, but covered with grass in the interior.

Arpino, the native place of Cicero, which he has several times affectionately styled his Ithaca, is in the vicinity. Arce, on the road, was the residence of his brother Quintus. The beautiful villa of the latter, in which his wife Pomponia, sister of Atticus, gave such a bad reception to his brother-in-law and the men invited to the feast of the place by her husband, has been placed with some probability at the Fontana buona, where a great number of small statues, busts, vases, paintings, and mosaics have been found.

The position of Arpino on a double hill is picturesque. An elegant modern inscription alludes to its fabled foundation by Saturn, whose cinerary urn a Benedictine of Arpino, P. Clavelli, pretends to have found, and the more cerLain glory of this little town of being the birth place of Marius and Cicero. Arpino abounds in antiquities. The site of Cicero's house is placed by a very doubtful tradition in the street of Cortina; it is more likely to have been in the island of the Fibreno, near Arpino, where MM. Didot have established a fine paper mill; the aspect of these places is still very similar to the description preceding the touching passage of the De legibus of this same house: Quid plura? Hanc vides villam, ut nunc quidem est, latius ædificatam patris nostri studio; qui, quum esset infirma valetudine, hic fere @tatem egit in litteris. Sed hoc ipso in loco, quum avus viveret, et antiquo more parva esset villa, ut illa Curiana in Sabinis, me scito esse natum. Quare inest nescio quid, et latet in animo ac sensu meo, quo me plus hic locus fortasse delectet: siquidem etiam ille sapientissimus vir, Ithacam ut videret, immortalitatem scribitur repudiasse.

The house of Marius is popularly stated to have stood on the spot occupied by the fine palace of the Castello, now in ruins.

Certain inscriptions record the existence of several fullonica (workshops

'Epist. ad Attic. lib. v. 4.

of fullers and dyers), a curious particular which proves that the ancient town had the same kind of industry as the new one, where great quantities of peloncino, a kind of common shagged cloth, are manufactured; the limpid waters of the Fibreno still favouring that kind of industry.

The various churches and private galleries of Arpino present paintings and drawings by Gioseppino, called the Cav. d'Arpino. The house in which he lived outside the Porta dell' Arco, has, on a ceiling, a phaeton by this talented but taste-corrupting artist, who has been justly styled the Cav. Marini of painting.

The inhabitants of Arpino are for the most part in easy circumstances; dilettanti are numerous there, and they are now performing on the new and pretty Tullio theatre works composed by these distinguished amateurs.

Arpino is the native place of the learned and zealous missionary, P. San Germano, who resided in India from 1782 to 1808, finished the church of Rangoon, the only port of the Birman empire, formerly open to Europeans, and managed the college which he had also completed, a flourishing and civilising institution, which supplies the country with priests, surgeons, ingineers and pilots. The services rendered by P. San Germano had so gained the esteem of the viceroy of Rangoon and his consort, that they visited the college and even the church during the ceremonies; the princess showed a great inclination to embrace the catholic faith. The map of the port, accurately drawn by P. San Germano for the East India Company, procured him a pension from England, of which Rangoon soon became one of the most important conquests. In 1808, P. San Germano came back to Italy, intending to return to the East, but was prevented by the war. He then settled at Arpino, and, being named director of the Barnabite college, he was occupied in arranging the documents that he had collected during his long residence at Rangoon and in other parts of the Birman empire, when he died in 1819. It was at Rome, but at the expense and under the auspices of the London Asiatic Society, that the publication took place, in 1833, of the De

* Lib. 1.

scription of the Birman empire by the Roman catholic missionary, a picture reckoned the most exact, the most positive that has yet appeared of the intellectual and moral condition of that country, and of which Mr. W. Fandy was the translator; this case presents an honourable and consoling example of that Christian and scientific fraternity which ought to unite generous and elevated minds. Is it not wonderful? the missionary, the Barnabite, the fellowcountryman of Cicero, has, by the power of his doctrine alone, spoken to remote nations who never heard the name of the Roman orator: charity goes much further than eloquence and philosophy.

CHAPTER XIV.

Isola di Sorra.-Valley of lake Fucino.-Mount Velino.-Lake.-Emissario.- Alba. - Antiquities.— Church of Saint Peter.

The valley of lake Fucino is now one of the points of Italy most worthy of a visit from enlightened travellers, and it is ranked with the valley of Tivoli, the hills of Albano and the shores of Pæstum.

The Isola di Sorra, on the road, presents the most varied views, and a majestic and noisy double cascade formed by the Liris.

Lake Fucino is of a circular form, sixteen miles in diameter and forty in circuit, abounding with excellent fish, and is girded by an amphitheatre of hills covered with towns and villages, and crowned with a flourishing vegetation. Being sheltered by the mass of Mount Velino, the highest point of the Apennines, which rises two thousand three hundred and ninety-three metres above the level of the sea, the country enjoys a salubrious and temperate climate.

The grand Emissario of Claudius falls into the Liris after passing through Mount Salviano, a length of three thousand five hundred metres. This monument of an imbecile emperor, the widest, deepest, and longest of all known tunnels, superior even to the Greek one of Jake Copais in Boeotia, was excavated in eleven years by thirty thousand slaves, and it excites the highest admiration of engineers and antiquarians.

In the valley of lake Fucino the powerful colony of Alba was founded, in the country of the Æqui, now but a miser

able village of a hundred and fifty inhabitants. Charles of Anjou ransacked and plundered these ruins to build the superb monastery of the Templars which he erected near Scurgola in commemoration of his victory over the unfortunate Conradin, and its vast ruins may still be seen.

Alba, an ancient fortified town, retains some fragments of its ramparts. towers, and outworks, Roman constructions of amazing solidity. The present population is grouped round the principal tower on the summit of one of the three hills of the old town.

The temple on the hill of Saint Peter is also a very remarkable Roman work, but prior to the conquest of Greece and when all was Tuscan at Rome. Despite its métamorphosis into a Christian basilic, dedicated to Saint Peter, which has mutilated it. the edifice is still interesting for art. The three naves are separated by eighteen marble Corinthian columns; an ambo of precious marbles is one of the works called Alexandrine, from the emperor Alexander Severus, who invented or improved this kind of mosaic. The balustrade of the choir, ornamented with mosaics and elegant miniature columns, is the workmanship of the celebrated Cosmati, a family, who for more than three centuries, practiced and taught sculpture and mosaic at Rome with ho

nour.

CHAPTER XV.

Road to Rome.-Aversa.-Hospital-Wine.-Capua.

-Amphitheatre.-Cathedral.--Ancient Minturnæ.

-Via Appia.-Garigliano.-Gaeta-Castellone.— Villa and tomb of Cicero.-Fontana Artachia.— Itri-Fondi.-Death of Esmenard.

Aversa was famous for its madhouse, which some foreigners have thought undeserving its reputation. Its only merit was, perhaps, to have been the first, in Italy, to deliver these unfortunates from the chains with which they were shackled. Aversa was the ancient Atella. noted for its satirical farces, a kind of prelude to the Latin theatre, said to have been played in the Oscan tongue, the ancient vernacular language of Italy. which survived in some measure there, even after the Latian idiom became predominant with the Roman power.

The convent of Saint Peter, at Majella, formerly the castle, was the place at which Andrea, the husband of Queen

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cades fell. To aggravate this destruction, the ruins furnished materials for the duomo, the steeple, and the tower of the princes of Conca.

The modern Capua is a kind of fortified town which might be dismantled without much harm, as it is combined with no strategic operation, and could make but a feeble resistance. It has a practical school for artillery and engineering.

The Gothic cathedral has many columns of antique granite. A Piety and Christ in the sepulchre, in the subterranean chapel, statues vaunted by Lalande and other travellers, as Bernini's, are neither good nor by him, but by his pupil Vaccaro.

Non rura, quæ Liris quieta

Mordet aqua, taciturnus amnis.

The magnificent amphitheatre of Capua shows the wealth, the power, of this queen of the Campania, whose Etruscan civilisation long preceded that of Rome. It has been regarded as the oldest amphitheatre and the model of all others. The Campanians invented gladiatorial combats. Cicero pretends that the fertility of the soil caused the ferocity of the inhabitants, an extraordi- The fabulous and poetical Liris, after nary effect, but explained by other ex-bearing a succession of names in antiamples how many times has blood quity, took the barbarous name of Gaflowed in the midst of banquets, flowers, rigliano about the ninth century. Its and perfumes! The republic of Capua current is as dilatory and dull as in the was treated by the Romans with an days of Horace : excess of barbarity unbeard-of in history; the people were reduced to slavery and sold by auction, and the senators beaten with rods and beheaded And yet Ci- In 1832 a new iron suspension bridge cero, one of the mildest of men, shrunk was thrown over it by M. Girard, the not from approving such horrors, which first erected in Italy. These construche attributes rather to prudence than tions of modern industry, very useful cruelty, non crudelitate.... sed consilio. certainly and preferable to the old ferThe voluptuous and sanguinary Capuans ries and vacillating boat bridges, must first used the velarium (a silk curtain of nevertheless contrast with the rich mamany colours stretched over the amphi- | terials, the majesty, and the associations theatre to keep off the sun) which pro- of antique monuments. The French cured them from the Romans the re- army was defeated by Gonsalvo on the proach of effeminacy, though they them- picturesque banks of the Garigliano, a selves were not slow to adopt it. The formidable military position. Machiaamphitheatre of Capua is the only one vel, in reporting the events of this war existing that has some constructions in to his government which had an interest the centre the use of which is not yet therein, said that "on the French side explained. Florus wittily expresses the there was money and the best troops, common error refuted by Montesquieu and fortune on the Spanish side." Branon the protracted sojourn of Annibal at tôme, rather a courtier and selfish man Capua, when he says that he was better than a Frenchman, who more than once pleased with enjoying than taking ad- regrets not having attached himself to vantage of his victory, cum victoria some foreign court, evinces a more paposset uti, frui maluit. Capua was re-triotic emotion on the subject of this built by Julius Cæsar, who settled a colony there; it was burnt in 840 by the Saracens, and the amphitheatre, built by Cæsar's colony, repaired and embellished under Adrian, and dedicated to Antoninus Pius, became a citadel. Being besieged by Athanasius, bishop of Naples, the Saracens defended themselves, and then the statues perished, the columns were overthrown, and the walls and ar

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reverse than usual, when he exclaims with a degree of feeling and imagination: "Hélas! j'ay veu ces lieux-là derniers, et mesmes le Garillan, et c'estoit sur le tard, à soleil couchant, que les ombres et les mânes commencent à se paroistre comme fantosme plustost qu'aux autres heures du jour, où il me sembloit que ces âmes généreuses de nos braves François là morts s'esle

voient sur la terre et me parloient, et quasi me respondoient sur mes plaintes que je leur faisois de leur combat et de leur mort."

Here begins the Via Appia, the oldest and grandest of ancient highways, surnamed the queen of the Roman roads (regina viarum), which has given to immortality the name of the severe blind old censor Appius Claudius; it was once lined with superb mausoleums, temples, triumphal arches, and other monuments, and extended to Benevento and Brinda; while its management and reparation have thrown glory on Cæsar, Augustus, Vespasian, Domitian, Nerva, Trajan, and Theodoric.

Between the Garigliano and Mola are the ruins of an aqueduct, a theatre, and a fine amphitheatre, the remains of the ancient Minturnæ, whose marshes and reeds concealed Marius.

Gaeta, with its orange and lemon orchards on the seaside, has an enchanting aspect. The women are handsome, dressed in a picturesque manner, and wear pretty tresses of riband in their hair; which, instead of the glossy black of Italian females, is of a light chesnut, like Alcina's. There are some vestiges of a theatre, an amphitheatre, a temple of Neptune, and of the villas of Scaurus and Adrian. It was on these same shores that Lælius and Scipio made ducks and drakes, and returned to the games of infancy like many other celebrated men.

In the baptistry of the cathedral of Gaeta, an antique monument, there is a fine basso-relievo. The steeple is remarkable, as also the celebrated column of twelve faces, with the indication of the winds in Greek and Latin.

The citadel of Gaeta is famous for two fine defences; the first in 1501, the second in 1806. It presents, on its highest point, the picturesque tower visible at a great distance, called the Tower of Orlando, after the Italian practice of giving the name of Charlemagne's paladin to certain great old edifices. This monument is antique, and the inscription proved it to have been the tomb of L. Munatius Plancus.

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Castellone di Gaeta, delightfully situated, is the ancient Formiæ; a part of

Vle de Gonzalve de Cordoue.

See ante, book xt. ch. v.

Prince Caposele. See his letter to madame Brun of Copenhagen, entitled Antichità Ciceroniane ed

the walls and a door still exist. The celebrated villa of Cicero, the site of which now belongs to the estate of a man of erudition, 3 stood between Mola and Castellone. It is said that when Alfonso V. of Aragon, king of Naples, justly surnamed the Magnanimous, was besieging Gaeta, he refused to take stones from the house reputed to have been Cicero's, for the purpose of loading his great guns, declaring that he would rather leave his artillery inactive than profane and destroy the house of such a philosopher and orator. The lofty monument in ruins called Torre di Cicerone, is not, as asserted, Cicero's tomb, nor yet the temple he had erected to Apolio, as the abbé Chaupy pretended. The tomb erected to the great Roman orator by his freedmen, would be, according to other conjectures, the vast rectangular mausoleum, the ruins of which are at the foot of Mount Acerbara, opposite the tower, to the right of the Via Appia. 4 Marius, in his prison at Minturnæ, is respected by the Cimbrian; Cicero dies by the hand of the tribune Popilius, whom he had defended: the barbarian with his savage instinct was more easily moved than the Roman, the agent of the triumvirs; and the father of his country was destined to die near the spot where the proscriber of Rome was saved.

At the very place where Cicero perished, the young Conradin was taken and betrayed by the lord of Astura; this enchanted strand seems fatal to innocence and genius.

Notwithstanding the ever suspicious prepossessions of every man in favour of his own, the fountain of Artachia, near which Ulysses met the daughter of Antiphates, king of the Lestrigons, who was going thither for water, may possibly be in the above mentioned little town rendered famous by the ruins of Cicero's house. 5

Itri was the urbs Mamurrarum of Horace, where he lodged at Murena's and supped at Capito's:

Murena præbente domum, Capitone culinam.

The soil is of a deep red, and the valley savage.

iscrizioni esistenti nella villa Formiana in Castellone di Gaeta. Naples, 1827, 8vo.

4 See the Antichità, p. 17 et seq.

5 Id. p. 35 el seq.

Fondi, an ancient town, has now a most dismal aspect; it was again destroyed a second time and burnt by the famous corsair Barbarossa II., enraged at not being able to carry off the beautiful and witty Giulia Gonzaga, widow of Vespasiano Colonna, and countess of Fondi, that he might present her to Soliman II.: Giulia, alarmed in the dead of night and seized naked in her bed by a gentleman whom her jealous and ungrateful modesty caused afterwards to be put to death, had only the time to leap from a window, jump on a horse and gain the mountain. The schoolroom where Saint Thomas taught theology at Fondi was under repair when I passed, and was, I believe. about to be converted into a chapel. His chamber is also shown, his well, and a partly withered orange-tree, which he planted head downwards, a phenomenon now acknowledged as very possible. This noble plant accorded with Saint Thomas, asthe cypress with Saint Dominick.

It was at one of the rapid descents of this road that the bard of Navigation was thrown from his carriage amid the rocks, in consequence of which he died six days after at Fondi, while his fellowtraveller, the excellent Granet, was nowise injured. The academician, Esménard's successor, ingeniously alludes to this catastrophe in the following passage: "Propitious muses, said Horace, ye ever watch over him who joins your choirs, who drinks the pure waters of the sacred fountain: under your conduct he shall safely pass the precipitous paths of the country of the Sabines.-This sweet oracle of the prince of lyrics was then fated to be falsified almost on the very spot where it was inspired. "

CHAPTER XVI.

Road to Rome continued.-Measures against banditti. -Garbaronl.-Terracina.- Palace of Theodoric. -Port-Cathedral.- Pontine marshes.- Monte Circello.-Walls, temples of Cora.-Velletri. Genzano.- Larricla.- Chigi palace. - Church.Albano. Tombs.- Gallery.- Castel-Gandolfo.Lake. - Emissario. - Patriotic superstition of Rome.-Nymphea.-Palace.-Church.-Barberini villa.-View of the Campagna of Rome.

The measures taken against banditti on the road to Rome were really formidable in 1826. The military posts were

See ante, book vin. ch. 6.

so near each other that the road had the appearance of a long camp. The capitulation of Garbaroni, the last of the Roman banditti, had contributed to the extinction or rather suspension of robbery. Garbaroni was at first confined in the castle of Saint Angelo, but afterwards removed to Civita Vecchia, to seclude him from the curiosity of travellers, several of whom had even thought proper to make him presents. He pretended that he was slandered, having killed only thirtyfive persons instead of the hundreds attributed to him. The moral education and material prosperity of the people, would be far preferable to all these violent external remedies, the cosmetics of brute force and police regulations, which keep down the evil but do not cure it.

Terracina, the first town of the Roman states, is the ancient and opulent town of the Volscians, Anxur, the pillage of which enriched the Roman army of the military tribune Fabius Ambustus. Its steep hill still presents the bright aspect painted by Horace :

Impositum saxis late candentibus Anxur.

The ruins of the palace of Theodoric, of the beginning of the fifth century, whence there is an admirable view, are a curious monument of the construction of Roman edifices in the earlier days of the decline.

The remains of the ancient and now waterless port of Terracina, eleven hundred and sixty metres in circumference, prove that it was built for an extensive and very active navigation; one may see the marble modillions with holes through which the cables were passed in mooring vessels. The mole, or boundary wall, appears even now of amazing solidity. Nothing is known of the epoch or founder of this port, a monument of the civilisation, power, and wealth of the ancient Terracina, but, from the kind of its reticulated fabric, it must be regarded as among the first regularly built ones in Italy.

The cathedral has several fine fluted columns of white marble, procured from a temple of Apollo, and other antique pillars.

A splendid palace, vast granaries, and

* Discours de réception de M. Ch. Lacretelle.

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