amna, for the same reason that a part of Asia was named Mesopotamia. We enter at the gate of the three monuments, so called, because there stood near it a monument erected to Tacitus the historian, with two others to the emperors Tacitus and Florianus, all of them natives of the place. These were a few years ago demolished by thunder, and the fragments of them are in the hands of some gentlemen of the town. Near the dome I was shown a square marble, inserted in the wall, with the following inscription. Saluti perpetuæ Augustæ Libertatique Publice Populi Romani Genio municipi Anno post D. CC. IV. Ad Cnejum Domitium Ahenobarbum. Coss. providentiæ Ti. Cæsaris Augusti nati ad Æternitatem Romam nominis sublato hoste perniciosissimo P. R. Faustus Titius Liberalis VI. vir iterum. P. S. F. C. that is, pecunia sua fieri curavit. This stone was probably set up on occasion of the fall of Sejanus. After the name of Ahenobarbus there is a little furrow in the marble, but so smooth and well polished, that I should not have taken notice of it had not I seen Coss. at the end of it, by which it is plain there was once the name of another consul, which has been industriously razed out. Lucius Aruncius Camillus Scribonianus was consul under the reign of Tiberius, and was afterwards put to death for a conspiracy that he had formed against the emperor Claudius; at which time it was ordered that his name and consulate should be effaced out of all public registers and inscriptions. It is not therefore improbable, that it was this long name which filled up the gap I am now mentioning. There are near this monument the ruins of an ancient theatre, with some of the caves entire. I saw among the ruins an old heathen altar, with this particularity in it, that it is hollowed like a dish at one end; but it was not this end on which the sacrifice was laid, as one may guess from the make of the festoon that runs round the altar, and is inverted when the hollow stands uppermost. In the same yard, among the rubbish of the theatre, lie two pillars, the one of granite, and the other of a very beautiful marble. I went out of my way to see the famous cascade about three miles from Terni. It is Vide Fast. Consul. Sicul. formed by the fall of the river Velino, which Virgil mentions in the seventh Æneid.-Rosea rura Velini. The channel of this river lies very high, and is shaded on all sides by a green forest, made up of several kinds of trees that preserve their verdure all the year. The neighbouring mountains are covered with them, and, by reason of their height, are more exposed to the dews and drizzling rains than any of the adjacent parts, which gives occasion to Virgil's rosea rura (dewy countries). The river runs extremely rapid before its fall, and rushes down a precipice of a hundred yards high. It throws itself into the hollow of a rock, which has probably been worn by such a constant fall of water. It is impossible to see the bottom on which it breaks, for the thickness of the mist that rises from it, which looks at a distance like clouds of smoke ascending from some vast furnace, and distils in perpetual rains on all the places that lie near it. I think there is something more astonishing in this cascade than in all the water-works of Versailles, and could not but wonder, when I first saw it, that I had never met with it in any of the old poets, especially in Claudian, who makes his Emperor Honorius go out of his way to see the river Nar, which runs just below it, and yet does not mention what would have been so great an embellishment to his poem. But at present I do not in the least question, notwithstanding the opinion of some learned men to the contrary, that this is the gulf through which Virgil's Alecto shoots herself into hell: for the very place, the great reputation of it, the fall of waters, the woods that encompass it, with the smoke and noise that arise from it, are all pointed at in the description. Perhaps he would not mention the name of the river, because he has done it in the verses that precede. We may add to this, that the cascade is not far off that part of Italy, which has been called Italiæ Meditullium. Est locus Italiæ medio, sub montibus altis, EN. vii. In midst of Italy, well known to fame, Which, falling from on high, with bellowing sound To this infernal gate the fury flies, Here hides her hated head, and frees the labouring skies. DRYDEN. It was indeed the most proper place in the world for a fury to make her exit, after she had filled a nation with distractions and alarms; and I believe every reader's imagination is pleased, when he sees the angry goddess thus sinking, as it were, in a tempest, and plunging herself into hell, amidst such a scene of horror and confusion. The river Velino, after having found its way out from among the rocks where it falls, runs into the Nera. The channel of this last river is white with rocks, and the surface of it, for a long space, covered with froth and bubbles; for it runs all along upon the fret, and is still breaking against the stones that oppose its passage: so that for these reasons, as well as for the mixture of sulphur in its waters, it is very well described by Virgil, in that verse which mentions these two rivers in their old Roman names. Tartaream intendit vocem, quâ protinus omne The sacred lake of Trivia from afar, The Veline fountains, and sulphureous Nar, EN. vii. Shake at the baleful blast, the signal of the war. DRYDEN. He makes the sound of the fury's trumpet run up the Nera to the very sources of Velino, which agrees extremely well with the situation of these rivers. When Virgil has marked any particular quality in a river, the other poets seldom fail of copying after him. -Sulphureus Nar. AUSON. SIL. IT. lib. viii. -Narque albescentibus undis In Tibrim properans― -Et Nar viriatus odoro Sulfure CLAUD. DE PR. ET OLYB. Cons. -The hoary Nar, Corrupted with the stench of sulphur, flows, And into Tiber's streams the infected current throws. From this river our next town on the road receives the name of Narni. I saw hereabouts nothing remarkable except Augustus's bridge, that stands half a mile from the town, and is one of the stateliest ruins in Italy. It has no cement, and looks as firm as one entire stone. There is an arch of it unbroken, the broadest that I have ever seen, though by reason of its great height it does not appear so. The middle one was still much broader. They join together two mountains, and belonged, without doubt, to the bridge that Martial mentions, though Mr. Ray takes them to be the remains of an aqueduct. Sed jam parce mihi, nec abutere Narnia quinto, Preserve my better part, and spare my friend; Lib. vii. From Narni I went to Otricoli, a very mean little village, that stands where the castle of Ocriculum did formerly. I turned about half a mile out of the road to see the ruins of old Ocriculum, that lie near the banks of the Tiber. There are still scattered pillars and pedestals, huge pieces of marble half buried in the earth, fragments of towers, subterraneous vaults, bathing places, and the like marks of its ancient magnificence. In my way to Rome, seeing a high hill standing by itself in the Campania, I did not question but it had a classic name, and upon inquiry found it to be Mount Saracte. The Italians at present call it, because its name begins with an S., St. Oreste. The fatigue of our crossing the Apennines, and of our whole journey from Loretto to Rome, was very agreeably relieved by the variety of scenes we passed through. For not to mention the rude prospect of rocks rising one above another, of the gutters deep-worn in the sides of them by torrents of rain and snow-water, or the long channels of sand winding about their bottoms, that are sometimes filled with so many rivers: we saw, in six days' travelling, the several seasons of the year in their beauty and perfection. We were sometimes shivering on the top of a bleak mountain, and a little while after basking in a warm valley, covered with violets and almondtrees in blossom, the bees already swarming over them, though but in the month of February. Sometimes our road led us through groves of olives, or by gardens of oranges, or into several hollow apartments among the rocks and mountains, that look like so many natural green-houses; as being always shaded with a great variety of trees and shrubs that never lose their verdure. I shall say nothing of the Via Flaminia, which has been spoken of by most of the voyage-writers that have passed it, but shall set down Claudian's account of the journey that Honorius made from Ravenna to Rome, which lies most of it in the same road that I have been describing. -Antiquæ muros egressa Ravennæ Signa movet, jamque ora Padi portusque relinquit Non procul amnis adest, urbi qui nominis auctor Inter utrumque jugum tortis anfractibus albet. Excipiunt arcus, operosaque semita, vastis DE 6. CONS. HON. 1 A highway made by Vespasian, like the Grotto Obscuro near Naples. 2 This fountain not known. |