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 'TOT CONGEST* MANU PRAEHUPTI8 OPPIDA SAXIS." VERG. QEORG. II. 15S 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NHW YORK LONDON 
 
 5 West 23d Street 24 Bedford Street, Strand 
 
 Ubc Iknfcfecrbocbcr press 
 
 

 
 COPYRIGHT, 1893 
 
 G.P.PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall^ London 
 
 By G. p. Putnam's Sons 
 
 Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by 
 
 XCbc TRnicfterbocfeer jprcss, IRcw l^orft 
 G, P. Putnam's Sons 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Arezzo I 
 
 CORTONA .12 
 
 Perugia 23 
 
 The V01.UMNIAN Tomb ... 34 
 
 Pr^-Franciscan Assisi ... 46 
 
 SPEi.1.0 58 
 
 VEii 67 
 
 FiDEN^ 77 
 
 Antemn^ 86 
 
 OSTIA 96 
 
 The AivBAN Mount . . . . 108 
 
 CoRi 123 
 
 NORBA 131 
 
 Segni 150 
 
 iter ad brundisium 
 
 I. Anagni 165 
 
 II. Ferentino . . . .185 
 
 III. AI.ATRI 206 
 
 VOL. II. iii 
 
!▼ 
 
 Contents 
 
 
 IV. 
 
 From Ai^atri to Capua 
 
 221 
 
 V. 
 
 A Church by the: Camp of 
 
 
 
 Hannibai. .... 
 
 234 
 
 VI. 
 
 A GiviMPSie OF Samnium 
 
 251 
 
 VII. 
 
 Benevento .... 
 
 264 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Norman Buii^dings in Apui^ia 
 
 281 
 
 IX. 
 
 Bari 
 
 295 
 
VNIVEBSISI 
 
 Hre330^ 
 
 'X'HE city of Maecenas, and of a whole 
 ■* crowd of famous men of later 
 times, shows no outward signs of being 
 much frequented by travellers. There 
 is some difficulty there in getting so 
 much as an Italian newspaper, and, 
 though excellent photographs have 
 been taken of some of the chief build- 
 ings, they must be sought for at Flor- 
 ence ; they are not to be bought at 
 Arezzo. Yet the old Etruscan city has 
 many attractions, among them surely 
 the singular cleanness of its streets, 
 and, above all, that clear and pure air 
 which is thought to have had some- 
 thing to do with nourishing the genius 
 of so many of its citizens in so many 
 
2 irtalg. 
 
 different ways. Perhaps, on the whole, 
 Arezzo does not suffer from not having 
 yet put on the cosmopolitan character 
 of some of its neighbours. And if the 
 city does not, either as Arretium or as 
 Arezzo, stand forth in the first rank of 
 Italian cities, still it has a long history 
 under both forms of its name. If, 
 again, its buildings do not rank with 
 those of Pisa or lyucca, still there is 
 quite enough both in the general 
 aspect of the city, and in some par- 
 ticular objects within its walls, to 
 claim a day or two's sojourn from any 
 one who is not eager to rush from 
 Florence to Rome as fast as the so- 
 called express train can carry him. 
 
 Arezzo, as to its physical site, holds 
 a middle position between cities which 
 sit perched on a high hill- top like 
 Fiesole, and cities which, like Flor- 
 ence, lie flat or nearly so on the banks 
 of a great river. It has its river, if we 
 may give that name to the mere brook 
 
Bre330. 3 
 
 which presently loses itself in the 
 Chiana, as the Chiana soon loses itself 
 in the Arno. The river too has a 
 bridge, but both river and bridge have 
 to be sought for ; they form no impor- 
 tant points in the general aspect of the 
 city. The bridge at Arezzo is not one 
 of those to which we instinctively go 
 the first thing to take a general view 
 of the city as a whole. The hill is a 
 more real thing, as any one will say who 
 climbs some of its steeper streets. Still 
 it is one of those hills which seem to 
 borrow height and steepness from the 
 fact of being built upon. If it were 
 covered with green grass, it would 
 simply pass as one of several small 
 hills which break the flat of the rich 
 plain, girded in on all sides by higher 
 mountains, which rise, in February at 
 least, into vast snowy heights in the 
 further distance. Still Arezzo has dis- 
 tinctly the character of a hill city, not 
 of a river city ; the hill counts for a 
 
4 irtali^. 
 
 good deal, while the river counts for 
 nothing. The best points for a general 
 view from below will be found on the 
 town wall, a little way to the left of the 
 railway station ; while to look down 
 on Arezzo we must climb to the castle 
 in the eastern corner of the city, whose 
 Medicean fortifications look strong 
 enough without, but which, within, 
 has gardens and fig trees level with 
 the walls, and rabbits running about 
 at large among them. The castle 
 therefore forms no special object in 
 the general view ; it simply passes as 
 a more marked part of the line of the 
 city walls. These last remain in their 
 whole circuit, except where they have 
 been broken down to make the ap- 
 proach to the railway ; surely a new 
 gate would have been a better way of 
 compassing this object. A town wall 
 standing free, as those of Arezzo stand 
 in nearly their whole range, is always 
 a striking object, and one whose cir- 
 
Bre330. 5 
 
 cuit it is pleasant and instructive to 
 make. And it has a special interest 
 in some cities, of which Arezzo is one, 
 which have, so to speak, a show side. 
 One side lies open to the world ; the 
 ancient roads, the modern railway, 
 approach it ; the city dies away into 
 the country by gradually descending 
 suburbs. On the other side, the wall 
 suddenly parts the inhabited town, 
 sometimes from actual desolation, at 
 all events from open fields ; the hill 
 rises sheer above whatever lies beyond 
 it. So it is with the north-eastern side 
 of Arezzo, if we go behind the cathe- 
 dral and the castle ; we have not fully 
 taken in the lie of the city without 
 taking this walk to its rear. Still we 
 must not look to the walls of Arezzo 
 for the special interest of some other 
 walls. They will not give us either 
 Roman or Etruscan blocks, nor yet the 
 picturesque outline of mediaeval towers 
 and gateways. The walls put on their 
 
6 -fftalu. 
 
 present aspect in Medicean times, and 
 over one of the gates we see an inscrip- 
 tion which illustrates one stage of a 
 tyrant's progress. The first avowed 
 sovereign Cosmo appears as ' ' Duke 
 of Florence and Siena/' He had in- 
 herited one enslaved commonwealth ; 
 he had himself enslaved another ; 
 meanwhile he was waiting for the fit- 
 ting reward of such exploits in the 
 higher rank and more sounding title 
 of a Grand Duke of Tuscany. 
 
 In the general view of Arezzo there 
 can be hardly said to be any one domi- 
 nant object. If the castle made any 
 show, it and the cathedral church, 
 standing nearly on the same level on 
 the highest ground in the town, would 
 stand well side by side. As it is, the 
 body of the duomo is the prominent 
 feature in the view. But it is hardly 
 a dominant feature. It is the only 
 building whose body shows itself, but 
 it rises among a crowd of towers, 
 
Bre330. 7 
 
 ecclesiastical and municipal, and one 
 of them, the great campanile of St. 
 Mary della Pieve, though the body of 
 its church does not show itself far 
 below, is a distinct rival to the cathe- 
 dral, and utterly dwarfs its small and 
 modern, though not ungraceful, octa- 
 gon tower. These two churches form 
 the two greatest architectural objects 
 in Arezzo. The municipal element 
 does not show itself so largely as might 
 be looked for. The town -house is 
 there, and the town-tower, and that 
 hard by the duomo ; but they do not 
 hold, even comparatively, anything 
 like the same position as their fellows 
 in the great Florentine piazza. Perhaps 
 this is not wonderful in a city which 
 was so largely Ghibelin, and whose 
 most noted historical character was a 
 fighting bishop. Guy Tarlati, bishop 
 and lord of Arezzo, keeps — though 
 not on its old site — his splendid tomb 
 in the duomo, on which are graven the 
 
8 Htm* 
 
 names and likenesses of the castles 
 which he won, and how King Lewis 
 of Bavaria took the lyombard crown at 
 his hands. But Arezzo has little or 
 nothing to show in the way of houses 
 or palaces or of street arcades. Its 
 most striking building besides the 
 churches is the front of that called the 
 Fraternita dei Laid, in the open slop- 
 ing space which seems to mark the 
 forum of Arretium. This is a work 
 in the mixed style of the fourteenth 
 century, but so rich and graceful in its 
 detail as to disarm criticism. Within, 
 it contains the public library and 
 museum. This last has much to show 
 in many ways ; most striking of all, 
 because thoroughly local, are the huge 
 tusks and other remains of the fossil 
 elephants and other vast beasts of by- 
 gone days. The valley of the Chiana 
 is full of them. Naturally enough, in 
 the early days of science, when ele- 
 phants' bones were no longer thought 
 
to be those of giants, they were set 
 down as relics of the Gaetulian beasts 
 of Hannibal. 
 
 Something may be picked up here 
 and there in the other churches of 
 Arezzo ; but it is Santa Maria della 
 Pieve which is the real object of study. 
 The duofno is absolutely without out- 
 line ; it is a single body with nothing 
 to break it, and nothing to finish it at 
 either end. But its proportions within 
 come somewhat nearer to Northern 
 ideas than is common in the Italian 
 Gothic, and its apse specially reveals 
 the German hand to which tradition 
 attributes the building. The church 
 of La Pieve is of a higher order. It 
 has real shape within and without. 
 Its four arms should support a cupola, 
 only the cupola has never been fin- 
 ished ; the apse is in the very best 
 form of the Italian Romanesque ; the 
 west front is called a copy of Pisa ; 
 but neither its merits nor its defects 
 
 
10 fftal^. 
 
 seem borrowed from that model. Part 
 of it is sham, which nothing at Pisa is, 
 while the small arcades stand out free, 
 as at IvUcca, but not at Pisa. The 
 front is a wonderful display of column 
 capitals of all kinds, from the Corin- 
 thian column used up again in its 
 lowest range to the fantastic devices 
 of the small ranges above them. The 
 arch and the entablature are both 
 used ; so they are in the apse : so they 
 are within. For the choir has a real 
 triforium, and that triforium shows 
 this strange falling back on the con- 
 struction of the Greek. The arches 
 below are round ; those which should 
 support the cupola, as well as those of 
 the nave, are pointed, the latter rising 
 from columns of prodigious height. 
 The internal effect is like nothing else ; 
 it is quite un- Italian ; it is as little like 
 anything English or French ; the 
 arches, but not the columns, suggest 
 the memory of Aquitaine. The south 
 
side has been rebuilt. Perhaps the 
 work was physically needful : but it 
 has involved the destruction of the sub- 
 structure of the ancient building on the 
 site of which the church stands. The 
 columns in the west front seem to be 
 the only remains of Arretium as dis- 
 tinguished from Arezzo. The '*Tyrr- 
 hena regum progenies ' ' have here left 
 but small traces behind them. 
 
Cortona^ 
 
 CROM Arezzo the next stage will 
 ^ naturally be to the hill on whose 
 height 
 
 .... Cortona lifts to heaven 
 Her diadem of towers. 
 
 If the journey be made on a market or 
 fair day, the space between the walls 
 and the station at Arezzo may be seen 
 crowded with white oxen, suggesting 
 the thought of triumphs and triumphal 
 sacrifices. Their race, it was said, 
 prayed to the gods that Marcus and 
 Julian might not win victories which 
 would lead to their destruction. 
 And the prayer seems to have been 
 answered, as the breed specially con- 
 nected with Clitumnus has clearly not 
 
Cottona* 13 
 
 died out, even by the banks of Clanis. 
 The journey is not a long one ; yet, if 
 we had time to see everything, we 
 might well wish to break it, as we pass 
 by the hill of Castiglione Fiorentino, 
 with its walls and towers. That strong 
 and stern hill-fortress comes in well 
 between Arezzo and Cortona. Arezzo 
 covers a hill, but it can hardly be said 
 to stand on a hill-top ; Castiglione dis- 
 tinctly does stand on a hill-top ; Cor- 
 tona sits enthroned on a height which 
 it would hardly be straining language 
 to speak of as a mountain. We have 
 now come to a site of the oldest class, 
 the stronghold on the height, like Akro- 
 I korinthos and the lyarissa of Argos. 
 But at Argos and Corinth the moun- 
 tain-fortress became, at a later stage, 
 the citadel of the younger city which 
 grew up at the mountain's foot. But 
 at Cortona, as at greater Perugia, the 
 city still abides on the height ; it has 
 never come down into the plain. So 
 
14 Utal^. 
 
 it has remained at Laon ; so it has be- 
 come at Girgenti, where the vast lower 
 space of the later Akragas is forsaken, 
 and the modern town has shrunk up 
 within the lines of the ancient acropo- 
 lis. From the ground below Cortona 
 we look up to a city like those of old, 
 great and fenced up to heaven ; the 
 *^ diadem of towers" is there still, 
 though it is now made up of a group 
 of towers, ecclesiastical, municipal, 
 and military, none of them of any ac- 
 count in itself, but each of which joins 
 with its fellows to make up an effec- 
 tive whole. At Cortona indeed, as at 
 Argos and Corinth, there is an upper 
 and a lower city, and the upper city 
 is pretty well forsaken. But while at 
 Argos and Corinth the lower city 
 stands in the plain, and the acropolis 
 soars far above it, at Cortona the lower 
 city itself stands so high up the hill 
 that it is only when we reach it that 
 we fully understand that there is a 
 
Cortona. 15 
 
 higher city still. The site itself be- 
 longs so thoroughly to the oldest days 
 of our European world that there is a 
 certain kind of satisfaction in finding 
 that the main interest of the place be- 
 longs to those oldest days . We are well 
 pleased that everything of later times 
 is of quite a secondary character, and 
 that the distinctive character of Cortona 
 is to be the city of the Etruscan walls. 
 In truth, a certain degree of wonder 
 is awakened by the fact that Cortona 
 exists at all. It would have been by 
 no means amazing if we had found 
 only its ruins, as on so many other old- 
 world sites for which later times have 
 found no use. Great in its earliest 
 days, foremost among the Etruscan 
 cities of the mountains, Cortona has 
 never been great in any later age. As 
 a Roman city and colony it was of 
 so little account that, even in Italy, 
 where bishops are so thick upon the 
 ground, it did not become a bishopric 
 
i6 irtai^. 
 
 till the fourteenth century. Just at 
 that time came its short period of any- 
 thing like importance ambng the cities 
 of mediaeval Italy. Sold to Florence 
 early in the fifteenth century, it has 
 ever since followed the fortunes of the 
 ruling city. Yet through all these 
 changes Cortona has managed to live 
 on, though we can hardly say to flour- 
 ish. It still keeps the character of a 
 city, though a small and mean one, 
 inhabited by a race of whom the 
 younger sort seem to have nothing to 
 do but to run after the occasional vis- 
 itor. One ragged urchin offers to ac- 
 company him to the cathedral ; another 
 persists in following him round nearly 
 the whole circuit of the ancient walls. 
 This last is too bad ; a walk round the 
 walls of Cortona is emphatically one 
 of those things which are best enjoyed 
 in one's own company. 
 
 As an Italian city which has lived, 
 though in rather a feeble way, through 
 
Cortona. 17 
 
 the regular stages of Roman colony 
 and mediaeval commonwealth, Cortona 
 has of course its monuments which 
 record those periods of its being. There 
 are some small fragments of Roman 
 work, but nothing that can be called a 
 Roman building. There is a crowd of 
 churches and monasteries, but none of 
 any great architectural value, though 
 some contain works of importance in 
 the history of painting. It perhaps 
 marks the position of Cortona as a 
 comparatively modern bishopric that 
 its cathedral church is in no sort the 
 crowning building of the city. The 
 duomo stands about half-way up the 
 height within the town, on a corner of 
 the walls. Its elegant Renaissance 
 interior has been already spoken of; 
 it seems to have supplanted a Roman- 
 esque building the columns of which 
 may have been used again. The point 
 in the upper city where we should 
 have looked for the duomo is occupied 
 
i8 irtal^. 
 
 by the Church of St. Margaret, that 
 is, Margaret of Cortona, described over 
 her portal as ' ' pcenitens Margarita, ' ' 
 marked off thereby alike from the vir- 
 gin of Antioch and from the matron 
 of Scotland. The municipal buildings 
 are not remarkable, though one wall 
 of the Palazzo Pretorio must be a 
 treasure-house for students of Italian 
 'heraldry, thickly coated as it is with 
 the arms of successive podestas. Of 
 private palaces the steep and narrow 
 streets contain one or two ; but it is 
 not on its street architecture that Cor- 
 tona can rest its claim to fame. From 
 the lower city, with its labyrinth of 
 streets, we may climb to the acropolis. 
 Here, around the Church of St. Mar- 
 garet, all seems desolate. The Fran- 
 ciscan convent on the slope below it 
 lies in ruins — not an usual state for 
 an Italian building. The castle above, 
 fenced in by its ditch, seems as deso- 
 late as everything around, save the 
 
Cortona. 19 
 
 new or renewed fabric of St. Marga- 
 ret's. This height is the point of view 
 to which the visitor to Cortona will be 
 first taken, if he listens to local impor- 
 tunity. A noble outlook it is ; but 
 the traveller can find points of view 
 equally noble in the course of the work 
 which should be done first of all — that 
 of compassing the mighty wall which 
 is the thing that makes Cortona what 
 it is. 
 
 The process of going to the back of 
 the city, which may be done in some 
 measure at Arezzo, may be done in all 
 its fulness at Cortona. Happily, very 
 nearly the whole wall can be com- 
 passed without, and in by far the 
 greater part of its course more or less 
 of the old Etruscan rampart remains. 
 In many places the mighty stones still 
 stand to no small height, patched of 
 course and raised with work of later 
 times, but still standing firmly fixed 
 as they were laid when Cortona stood 
 
20 1ftal^. 
 
 in the first rank among the cities of 
 the Rasena. Not that there is reason 
 to attribute any amazing antiquity to 
 these walls. We must remember that 
 the Etruscan cities kept their local 
 freedom till the days of Sulla, and that 
 some Etruscan works are later than 
 some Roman works. The masonry is by 
 no means of the rough and early kind ; 
 yet the one remaining gate, unluckily 
 blocked, is square-headed, and might 
 almost have stood at Myk^n^. On the 
 highest point, the hindermost point, 
 the wildest and most desolate point, 
 where, though just outside an inhab- 
 ited city, we feel as if we were in a 
 land forsaken of men, the Etruscan 
 wall has largely given way to the 
 mediaeval fortress whose present as- 
 pect dates from Medicean days. But 
 it has given way only to leave one of 
 the grandest pieces of the whole wall 
 standing as an outpost in the rear of 
 the city, overhanging the steepest 
 
Cottona, 
 
 point of the whole hill. The Etruscan 
 wall, the Medicean castle, one seeming 
 to stand as forsaken and useless as the 
 other, fomi a summary of the history 
 of Cortona in stone and brick. 
 
 From the walls we may well turn to 
 the Museum, to see the tombs and the 
 other relics of the men who reared 
 them. Pre-eminent among them, the 
 glory of the Cortonese collection, as 
 the Chimaera is the glory of the Flor- 
 entine collection, is a magnificent 
 bronze lamp, wrought with endless 
 mythological figures. Near it stands 
 the painting of a female head, which 
 we might at first take for the work of 
 Renaissance hands, and in which those 
 who are skilled in such matters profess 
 to recognize the existing type of Cor- 
 tonese beauty. The painting however 
 dates from the days when Cortona 
 was still Etruscan. Perugia keeps her 
 ancient inhabitants themselves, in the 
 shape at least of their skulls and 
 
22 Iftali?. 
 
 skeletons. At Cortona the remote 
 mothers, it may be, of her present 
 people live more vividly in the form 
 of the Muse whose features were 
 copied, it may be nineteen hundred 
 3^ears back, from the living counte- 
 nance of one of them. 
 
Perugia. 
 
 THE hill-city of Perugia supplies an 
 instructive contrast with the hill- 
 city of Cortona. The obvious contrast 
 in the matter of modem prosperity and 
 importance is an essential part of the 
 comparative history. Cortona has 
 through all ages lived on, but not 
 much more than lived on. Perugia 
 has, through all ages, kept, if not a 
 place in the first rank of Italian cities, 
 yet at any rate a high place in the 
 second rank. She never had the Euro- 
 pean importance of Venice, Genoa, 
 Florence, Naples, and Milan, or of 
 Pisa in her great days. But in the 
 purely Italian history of all ages 
 Perugia keeps herself before our eyes, 
 23 
 
24 1[tali2. 
 
 as a city of mark, from the wars of 
 the growing Roman commonwealth 
 down to the struggle which in our 
 own days freed her from a second 
 Roman yoke. In the civil wars of the 
 old Rome, in the wars between the 
 Goth and the New Rome, in the long 
 tale of the troubled greatness of medi- 
 aeval Italy, Etruscan Perusia, Roman 
 Augusta Perusia, mediaeval and mod- 
 ern Perugia, holds no mean place. 
 And the last act in the long drama is 
 not the least notable. It sounds like 
 a bit out of Plutarch's " lyife of Ti- 
 moleon," when we read or when we 
 remember how, twice within our own 
 days, little more than twenty and 
 thirty years back, the fortress of the 
 tyrants was swept away, as the great 
 symbolic act which crowned the win- 
 ning back of freedom in its newest 
 form. When a city has such a tale 
 as this to tell, we do not expect, we 
 do not wish, that its only or its chief 
 
peruala* 25 
 
 interest should gather round the monu- 
 ments of an early and almost prae- 
 historic day of greatness. At Cortona 
 we are glad that things Etruscan are 
 undoubtedly uppermost. At Perugia 
 we are glad that things Etruscan are 
 there to be seen in abundance ; but 
 we also welcome the monuments of 
 Roman days, pagan and Christian ; 
 we welcome the streets, the churches, 
 and palaces of mediaeval times, and 
 even the works of recent times indeed. 
 The Place of Victor Emmanuel with 
 the modern buildings which crown 
 it, supplanting the fortress of Pope 
 Paul, as that supplanted the houses, 
 churches, and palaces of earlier times, 
 is as much a part of the history of 
 Perugia as the Arch of Augustus or 
 the Etruscan wall itself. 
 
 The difference between the abiding 
 greatness of Perugia and the abiding 
 littleness of Cortona is no doubt largely 
 due to the physical difference of their 
 
 I UNIVERSITY \ 
 
26 1ftal^. 
 
 sites. Both are hill-cities, mountain- 
 cities, if we will ; but they sit upon 
 hills of quite different kinds. The hill 
 of Perugia is better fitted for growth 
 than the hill of Cortona. Cortona sits 
 on a single hill-top. Perugia sits, not 
 indeed on seven hills, but on a hill 
 of complicated outline, which throws 
 out several — possibly seven — outlying, 
 mostly lower, spurs, with deep valleys 
 between them. The Etruscan and 
 Roman city took in only the central 
 height, itself of a very irregular shape 
 and at some points very narrow. The 
 lower and outlying spurs were taken 
 within the city in later times. Hence 
 it is only in a small part of their cir- 
 cuit that the original walls remain the 
 present external walls ; it is only on 
 part of its western side that we can at 
 all go behind Perugia. But the lower 
 city is still thoroughly a hill-city. The 
 hill of Perugia is lower than the hill 
 of Cortona, while the city of Perugia 
 
peruala, 27 
 
 is vastly greater than the city of Cor- 
 tona. But Perugia is as far removed 
 as Cortona from coming down into the 
 plain. On the little hill of Arezzo 
 such a process could happen, and it 
 has happened. Not so with the loftier 
 seats of its neighbours. Cortona is not 
 likely to grow ; Perugia very likely 
 may. But it will take a long period 
 of downward growth before unbroken 
 dwellings of men stretch all the w^ay 
 from its railway station to its munici- 
 pal palace. 
 
 At Perugia, as becomes its history, 
 no one class of monuments draws to 
 itself exclusive, or even predominant, 
 attention. Perhaps, on the whole, the 
 municipal element is the most striking. 
 The vast pile of the public palace, its 
 grand portal, its bold ranges of win- 
 dows, its worthy satellites, the Ex- 
 change, and the great fountain with its 
 marvels of sculpture, utterly outdo, as 
 the central points of the city, the lofty 
 
28 irtalis. 
 
 but shapeless and unfinished cathedral 
 which stands opposite to them. And 
 at this point, the Church and the com- 
 monwealth are the only rivals; the 
 remains of earlier times do not come 
 into view. For them we must seek, 
 but at no great distance. Go down 
 from the central height, and stand on 
 the bridge which spans the Via Appia 
 of Perugia, a strange namesake for the 
 Via Appia of Rome. There the walls 
 of the Etruscan city, rising on the one 
 side above the houses, on the other 
 above one of the deep valleys, form the 
 main feature. And, if they lose in 
 effect from the modern houses built 
 upon them, the very incongruity has a 
 kind of attractiveness, as binding the 
 two ends of the story together. From 
 this point of view, Perugia is specially 
 Perugian. And, if the walls are less 
 perfect than those of Cortona, they 
 have something that Cortona has not. 
 The Arch of Augustus, the barrier 
 
Ipcrugia. 29 
 
 between the older and the newer city, 
 spans the steep and narrow street 
 fittingly known as Via Vecchia. At 
 Perugia the name of Augustus sug- 
 gests the thought whether he really 
 made the bloody sacrifice to the manes 
 of his uncle with which some reports 
 charge him. The gate at least makes 
 no answer, save that we see that the 
 Roman built on the foundations of 
 the Etruscan, save that the legend of 
 ' * Augusta Perusia ' ' is itself a record 
 of destruction and revival. The gate- 
 way, tall, narrow, gloomy, the Roman 
 arch springing from two vast Etruscan 
 towers, is a contrast indeed to such 
 strictly architectural designs as the 
 two gates of Autun. The Roman 
 builder was evidently cramped by the 
 presence of the older work. In fact the 
 general character of the gateway has 
 more in common with the endless 
 mediaeval gateways and arches which 
 span the streets of Perugia. Of really 
 
30 1Ftal^. 
 
 better design, though blocked and in 
 a less favourable position, is the other 
 gateway, the Porta Martis, which now 
 makes part of the substructure of the 
 new piazza, as it once did of that of 
 the papal fortress. And he who looks 
 curiously will find out, not indeed any 
 more Roman gateways, but the jambs 
 from which at least two other arches, 
 either Roman or Etruscan, once sprang. 
 The walls and gateways of a city 
 can hardly be called its skeleton, but 
 they are in some sort its shell. And 
 at Perugia the body within the shell 
 was of no mean kind. Take away 
 every great public building, church, or 
 palace, and Perugia itself, its mere 
 streets and houses, would have a great 
 deal to show. With no grand street 
 arcades like Bologna, few or no strik- 
 ing private palaces like Venice and 
 Verona, Perugia once had vStreets after 
 streets — the small and narrow streets 
 not the least conspicuously — of a thor- 
 
©etuQta* 31 
 
 oughly good and simple style of street 
 architecture. Arched doors and 
 arched windows are all, and they are 
 quite enough. Some are round, some 
 are pointed ; some are of brick, some 
 of stone ; and those of brick with 
 round arches are decidedly the best. 
 But never were buildings more mer- 
 cilessly spoiled than the Perugian 
 houses. As in England mediaeval 
 houses are spoiled to make bigger 
 windows, so at Perugia they are 
 spoiled to make smaller windows. 
 Most of the doorways and windows 
 are cut through and blocked, and an 
 ugly square hole is bored to do the 
 duty of the artistic feature which is 
 destroyed. No land has more to show 
 in the way of various forms of beauty 
 than Italy ; but when an Italian does 
 go in for ugliness he beats all other 
 nations in carrying out his object. 
 
 Perugia, we need hardly say, is a 
 city of paintings, and it is as receptacles 
 
32 irtali2- 
 
 for paintings that its churches seem 
 mainly to be looked on. But some of 
 them deserve no small attention on 
 other grounds. At the two ends of 
 the city are two churches which fol- 
 low naturally on the Etruscan and 
 Roman walls and gates. At one end, 
 the Church of St. Angelo, circular 
 within, sixteen-sided without, forms 
 one of the long series of round and 
 polygonal churches which stretch from 
 Jerusalem to Ludlow. And this, 
 clearly a building of Christian Roman 
 times, with its beautiful marble and 
 granite Corinthian columns, though 
 not one of the greatest in size, holds 
 no mean place among them. At the 
 other end, the Abbey of Saint Peter, 
 amid many changes, still keeps two 
 noble ranges of Ionic columns, the 
 spoils doubtless of some Pagan build- 
 ing at its first erection in the eleventh 
 century. Nor must the duonio itself 
 be judged of by its outside. The 
 
Iperugla* 33 
 
 work of a German architect, it shows 
 a German character in the three 
 bodies of the same height, and its pil- 
 lars consequently of amazing height. 
 But at Perugia it is not churches or 
 palaces or earlier remains which we 
 study, each apart from other things. 
 Here they all unite to form a whole 
 greater than any one class alone — 
 Augusta Perusia itself. 
 
 VOL. II. — ^3 
 
 S 
 
Ube IDolumnian TLomb. 
 
 'X'HE ancient Etruscans have some 
 ^ points of analogy with the modern 
 Freemasons. This last familiar and 
 yet mysterious body seems to let the 
 outer world know everything about 
 itself, except what it is. We have read 
 various books by Freemasons about 
 Freemasonry, about its history, its 
 constitution, its ritual. On all these 
 points they seem to give us the fullest 
 particulars : we have only to complain 
 that the historical part is a little vague, 
 and its evidence a little uncertain. We 
 vShould not like rashly to decide whether 
 Freemasonry was already ancient in 
 the days of Solomon or whether it can- 
 not be traced with certainty any furthei 
 34 
 
Zbc IDolumnian ^omb. 35 
 
 back than the eighteenth century. 
 But we know the exact duties of a 
 Tyler, and we know that at the end 
 of a Masonic prayer we should answer, 
 not "Amen," but ''So mote it be." 
 Still, what Freemasonry is, how a 
 man becomes a Freemason, or what 
 really distinguishes a Freemason from 
 other people, are points about which 
 the Masonic books leave us wholly in 
 the dark. So it is with the Etruscans. 
 We seem to know everything about 
 them, except who they were. As far as 
 we can know a people from their arts and 
 monuments, there is no people whom 
 we seem to know better. We have 
 full and clear monumental evidence as 
 to the people themselves, as to many 
 points in their w^ays, thoughts, and 
 belief. We know how they built, 
 carved, and painted, and their build- 
 ings, sculptures, and paintings, tell us 
 in many points how they lived, and 
 what was their faith and worship. We 
 
36 lltal^* 
 
 have indeed no Etruscan books; but 
 their language still lives, at least it 
 abides, in endless inscriptions. But 
 who the Etruscans were, and what 
 their language was, remain unsolved 
 puzzles. The ordinary scholar is half- 
 amused, half-provoked, at long lines 
 of alphabetic writing, of which, as far 
 as the mere letters go, he can read a 
 great deal, but of which, save here 
 and there a proper name, he cannot 
 understand a word. He knows that 
 one ingenious man has read it all into 
 good German and another into good 
 Turkish. He curses every Lucumo 
 whose image he sees for sticking like 
 a Frenchman to his own tongue. Why 
 could they not write up everything in 
 three or four languages ? How happy 
 he would be if he could light on a 
 lyatin or Greek crib which would give 
 life to the dead letter. For surely 
 nothing in the world so truly answers 
 the description of a dead letter, as 
 

 Ube IDolumnian tTomb, 37 
 
 words after words, most of which it is 
 not hard to spell, but at the meaning 
 of which we cannot even guess. 
 
 It is natural that in the museums 
 of the Ktruscan cities the monuments 
 of a kind whose interest is specially 
 local should form a chief part of the 
 show. At Florence, at Arezzo, at 
 Cortona, at Perugia, the collections 
 which each city has brought together 
 make us familiar, if we are not so 
 already, with much of Etruscan art 
 and Etruscan life. Or shall we say 
 that what they really make us familiar 
 with is more truly Etruscan death? 
 Our knowledge of most nations of 
 remote times comes largely from their 
 tombs and from the contents of their 
 tombs, and this must specially be the 
 case with a people who, like the Etrus- 
 cans, have left no literature behind 
 them. The last distinction makes it 
 hardly fair to attempt any comparison 
 between the Etruscans and nations 
 
38 ttm* 
 
 like the Greeks or the Romans, with 
 whose writings we are familiar. But 
 suppose we had no Greek or Roman 
 literature, suppose we had, as we have 
 in the case of the Etruscans, no means 
 of learning anything of Greek or 
 Roman life, except from Greek and 
 Roman monuments. The sepulchral 
 element would be very important ; 
 but it would hardly be so distinctly 
 dominant as it is in the Etruscan 
 case. At all events, it would not 
 be so distinctly forced upon the 
 thoughts as it is in the Etruscan case. 
 Take a Roman sarcophagus : we know 
 it to be sepulchral, but it does not of 
 itself proclaim its use ; there often is 
 no distinct reference to the deceased 
 person ; at all events, his whole 
 figure is not graven on the top of 
 the chest which contains his bones 
 or his ashes. But in the Etruscan 
 museums it is the sepulchral figures 
 which draw the eye and the thoughts 
 
^be IDolumnlan ^omb. 39 
 
 towards them far more than anything 
 else, more than even the chimaera, the 
 bronze lamp, and the painted muse. 
 Of various sizes, of various degrees of 
 art, they all keep one general likeness. 
 The departed I^ucumo leans on his 
 elbow, his hand holding what the un- 
 initiated are tempted to take for a dish 
 symbolizing his admittance to divine 
 banquets in the other world, but which 
 the learned tell us is designed to catch 
 the tears of those who mourn for him. 
 Sometimes the Lucumonissa — if we 
 may coin so mediaeval a form — lies 
 apart, sometimes along with her hus- 
 band. On the whole, these Etruscan 
 sculptures seem to bring us personally 
 nearer to the men of a distant age and 
 a mysterious race than is done by any- 
 thing in either Greek or Roman art. 
 
 But if these works can teach us thus 
 much when set in rows in a place where 
 they were never meant to be set up, 
 how much more plainly do they speak 
 
40 fftal^. 
 
 to us when we see them at home, un- 
 touched, in the place and in the state 
 in which the first artist set them ! 
 The Volumnian tomb near Perugia is 
 one of the sights which, when once 
 seen, is not likely to be forgotten. 
 The caution does not bear on Etruscan 
 art ; but it is well to walk to it from 
 St. Peter's Abbey ; going by the rail- 
 way is a roundabout business, and the 
 walk downwards commands a glorious 
 and ever-shifting view over the plain 
 and the mountains, with the towns of 
 Assisi, Spello, and a third further on 
 — can it be distant Trevi ? Foligno lies 
 down in the plain — each seated on its 
 hill. The tomb is reached : a small 
 collection from other places has been 
 formed on each side of the door. This 
 is all very well ; but we doubt the 
 wisdom of putting, as we understood 
 had been done, some things from other 
 places in the tomb itself. But this is 
 not a moment at which we are inclined 
 
^be Dolumnian tTomb. 41 
 
 to find fault. We rejoice at finding 
 that what ought to be there is so 
 happily and wisely left in its place, 
 and are not greatly disturbed if a few 
 things are put inside which had better 
 have been left outside. The stone 
 doorway of the lintelled entrance — 
 moved doubtless only when another 
 member of the house was literally 
 gathered to his fathers — stands by the 
 side ; it was too cumbrous to be kept 
 in its old place now that the tomb 
 stands ready to be entered by all whose 
 tastes lead them that way. We go in ; 
 the mind goes back to ruder sepulchres 
 at Uleybury and New Grange, of sepul- 
 chres at least as highly finished in 
 their own way at Myken^, But those 
 were built, piled up of stones ; here 
 the dwelling of the dead Lucumos is 
 hewn in the native tufa. The top is 
 not, as we might have looked for, 
 domical ; it imitates the forms of a 
 wooden roof. From it still hang the 
 
42 1Ftal^. 
 
 lamps ; on its surface are carved the 
 heads of the sun-god and of the ever- 
 recurring Medusa. Nor is the sun- 
 god's own presence utterly shut out 
 from the home of the dead. It is a 
 strange feeling when a burst of sun- 
 shine through the open door kindles 
 the eyes of the Gorgon with a strange 
 brilliancy, and lights up the innermost 
 recess, almost as when the sinking 
 rays light up the apses of Rheims 
 and of St. Mark's. In that innermost 
 recess, fronting us as we enter, lies on 
 his kistwaen — may we transfer the bar- 
 barian name to so delicate a work of 
 art ? — the father of the household gath- 
 ered around him. He is doubtless very 
 far from being the first Felimna, but 
 the first Felimna whose ashes rest here. 
 The name of the family can be spelled 
 out easily by those who, without boast- 
 ing any special Etruscan lore, are used 
 to the oldest Greek writing from right 
 to left. Children and grandchildren 
 
Zhc IDolumntan ^omb. 43 
 
 are grouped around the patriarch ; and 
 here comes what, from a strictly 
 historical view, is the most speaking 
 thing in the whole tomb. The name 
 of Avle Felimna can be easily read on 
 a chest on the right hand. On the 
 left hand opposite to it is another chest 
 which has forsaken the Etruscan type. 
 Here is no figure, no legend in 
 mysterious characters. We have in- 
 stead one of those sepulchral chests 
 which imitate the figure of a hoUvSe 
 with doors. The legend, in every-day 
 Latin, announces that the ashes within 
 it are those of P. Volumnius A. F. 
 That is, the Etruscan Avle Felimna 
 was the father of the Roman Publius 
 Volumnius. We are in the first cen- 
 tury before our sera, when the old 
 Etruscan life ended after the Social 
 War, and when the lyucumos of Arre- 
 tium and Perusia became Roman Clinii 
 and Volumnii. To an English scholar 
 the change comes home with a special 
 
44 Iftali?. 
 
 force. He has an analogy in the change 
 of nomenclature in his own land under 
 Norman influences in the twelfth cen- 
 tury. Publius Volumnius, son of Avle 
 Felimna, is the exact parallel to Robert 
 the son of Gk)dwin, and a crowd of 
 others in his days, Norman-named 
 sons of English fathers. 
 
 We are not describing at length what 
 may be found described at length else- 
 where. But there is another point in 
 these Etruscan sculptures which gives 
 them a strange and special interest. 
 This is their strangely Christian look. 
 The genii are wonderfully like angels ; 
 but so are many Roman figures also, 
 say those in the spandrils of the arch 
 of Severus. But Roman art has noth- 
 ing to set alongside of the Lucumo 
 reclining on his tomb, not exactly like 
 a strictly mediaeval recumbent figure, 
 but very like a tomb of the type not un- 
 common a little later, say in the time of 
 Elizabeth and James the First. And in 
 
^be Dolumnlan ^omb^ 45 
 
 the sculptures on the chests, wherever, 
 instead of familiar Greek legends, they 
 give us living pictures of Etruscan life, 
 we often see the sons of the Rasena 
 clearly receiving a kind of baptism. 
 There is no kind of ancient works 
 which need a greater effort to believe 
 in their antiquity. And nowhere do 
 the sculptures look fresher — almost 
 modern — than when seen in contrast 
 with the walls and roof above and 
 beside them, the sepulchre hewn in 
 the rock, with the great stone rolled to 
 its door. 
 
pta^^^ifranciscan Hssisi* 
 
 T^HERE is a certain satisfaction, a 
 * satisfaction which has a spice of 
 mischief in it, in dwelling on some 
 feature in a place which is quite differ- 
 ent from that which makes the place 
 famous with the world in general. So 
 to do is sometimes needful as a protest 
 against serious error. When so many 
 members of Parliament showed a few 
 years back, and when the Times 
 showed only a very little time back, 
 that they believed that the University 
 of Oxford was founded by somebody — 
 Alfred will do as well as anybody else 
 — and that the city of Oxford some- 
 how grew up around the University, 
 it became, and it remains, a duty 
 46 
 
Ipra^=^ranci6can B6Si6t» 47 
 
 to historic truth to point out the im- 
 portance of Oxford, geographical and 
 therefore political and military, for 
 some ages before the University was 
 heard of When the Times thought 
 that Oxford was left to the scholars, 
 because ' ' thanes and barons ' ' did not 
 think it worth struggling for, the 
 Times clearly did not know that 
 schools grew up at Oxford then, just 
 as schools have grown up at Man- 
 chester since, because Oxford was al- 
 ready, according to the standard of the 
 time, a great, flourishing, and central 
 town, and therefore fittingly chosen as 
 a seat of councils and parliaments. 
 Here there is real error to fight 
 against ; in other cases there is simply 
 a kind of pleasure in pointing out that, 
 while the received object of attraction 
 in a place is often perfectly worthy of 
 its fame, the place contains other, and 
 often older, objects which are worthy 
 of some measure of fame also. It is 
 
48 irtai^. 
 
 quite possible that some people may 
 think that the town of Assisi grew up 
 round the church and monastery of 
 Saint Francis. If anyone does think 
 so, the error is of exactly the same kind 
 as the error of thinking that the city 
 of Oxford grew up around the Uni- 
 versity. It is Saint Francis and his 
 church which have made Assisi a 
 place of world-wide fame and world- 
 wide pilgrimage, and Saint Francis 
 and his church are fully worthy of 
 their fame. Yet Assisi had been a 
 city of men for ages on ages before 
 Saint Francis was bom, and Assisi 
 would still be a place well worthy 
 of a visit, though Saint Francis 
 had never been bom, and though 
 his church had therefore never been 
 built. It is perhaps a light mat- 
 ter that Assisi had eminent citizens 
 besides Saint Francis and very unlike 
 Saint Francis, that it was the birth- 
 place of Propertius before him and 
 
IptacsJ'ranciscan 'BeeieU 49 
 
 of Metastasio after him. But before 
 Assisi, as the birthplace of the se- 
 raphic doctor, had earned a right to 
 be itself called ''seraphica civitas," 
 before one of its later churches came to 
 rank with the patriarchal basilicas of 
 Rome, Assisi had, as a Roman and an 
 early mediaeval city, covered its soil 
 with monuments of which not a few 
 still exist and which are well worthy 
 of study. And in one way they 
 have a kind of connexion with Saint 
 Francis which his own church has not. 
 The saint never saw his own monu- 
 ment ; it would have vexed his soul 
 could he have known that such a 
 monument was to be. But in his 
 youth he saw, and doubtless mused, as 
 on the bleak mountain of Subasio and 
 the yellow stream of Chiaschio, so also 
 on the campanile and apse of the 
 cathedral church of St. Rufino and on 
 the columns of the converted temple 
 of the Great Twin Brethren. 
 
50 Ktal^, 
 
 Assisi is one of the hill-cities ; but 
 the hill-cities supply endless varieties 
 among themselves. Assisi does not, 
 like the others which we have spoken 
 of, occupy a hill which is wholly its 
 own ; the hill on which it stands, 
 though very distinct, is still only a 
 spur of a huge mountain. As at 
 Mykene, while the akropolis is high 
 enough, there is something far higher 
 rising immediately above it. And the 
 akropolis of Assisi is a mere fortress ; 
 even if it was the primitive place of 
 shelter, it cannot have been inhabited 
 for many ages. The duonio stands, 
 very far certainly from the top of the 
 hill, but at the top of the really 
 inhabited city with its continuous 
 streets, and that is no small height 
 from the lowest line of them. Above 
 the church are the remains of the 
 theatre, of the amphitheatre ; the dis- 
 tant tower beyond it, and soaring over 
 all, the fortress of Rocco Grande with 
 
Iprat^ffranclscan Bsslst. 51 
 
 no dwelling of man near it, or for 
 some way below it. To go behind 
 Assisi is almost more needful than in 
 the case of any of the other hill-cities, 
 not only for the mediaeval walls, for the 
 slight traces which seem to mark an 
 outer and earlier wall ; but yet more 
 for the view over the narrow valley, 
 the bleak hills scattered with houses, 
 the winding river at their feet, soon to 
 become yet more winding in the plain, 
 and the glimpse far away of Perugia 
 on its hill. But Assisi has a spot 
 only less wild within the city walls, 
 the ground namely over which we 
 climb from the inhabited streets to the 
 fortress. So it is at Cortona ; but there 
 the presence of the church and monas- 
 tery of St. Margaret makes all the differ- 
 ence. The general view of AvSsisi, as 
 vSeen from below, gives us the church of 
 Saint Francis with the great arched sub- 
 structure to the left, the mountain to 
 the right ; between them is a hill with 
 
52 IFtal^. 
 
 a city running along it at about half 
 its height, sending up a forest of bell- 
 towers, vSome really good in themselves, 
 all joining in the general effect. Above 
 all this is the hill-top, partly grassy, 
 partly rocky, crowned by the towers of 
 the fortress which looks down on all, 
 except the steep of the mountain 
 itself. 
 
 Of particular objects older than the 
 church of Saint Francis, a restriction 
 which of course also cuts out the 
 church of his friend, Saint Clara, 
 there can be no doubt that the monu- 
 ment of greatest interest is the temple 
 in the forum — now Piazza grande — 
 with its Corinthian columns strangely 
 hemmed in by a house on one side and 
 on the other by the bell-tower which 
 was added when the temple was turned 
 into a church. But it is surely not, as 
 it is locally called, a temple of Minerva, 
 but rather of Castor and Pollux. Not 
 the least interesting part of its belong- 
 
prxs=ffranci6can UesieU 53 
 
 ings lies below ground ; for the level 
 of the forum at Assisi has risen as 
 though it had been at Rome or at 
 Trier. The temple must have risen 
 on a bold flight of steps, of which 
 some of the upper ones still remain. 
 In front of it, below the steps, was a 
 great altar, with the drains for the 
 blood of the victims, just as we see 
 them on the Athenian akropolis. 
 Such drains always bring to our mind 
 those comments of Dean Stanley on 
 this repulsive feature of pagan and 
 ancient Jewish worship, which has 
 passed away alike from the church, 
 from the synagogue, and from the 
 mOvSque, save only at Mecca. In front 
 again is the dedicatory inscription with 
 the name of the founder of the temple, 
 and the record of the dedication-feast 
 which he made to the magistrates and 
 people. His name can doubtless be 
 turned to in Mommsen's great collec- 
 tion ; we are not sure that in the 
 
54 irtali2. 
 
 underground gloom we took it down 
 quite correctly, and it is better not to 
 be wrong. Anyhow the dedication is 
 not to Minerva but to the twin heroes. 
 A great number of inscriptions are 
 built up in the wall of the church. As 
 usual, there are more freedmen than 
 sons ; and among the freedmen the one 
 best worth notice is Publius Decimius 
 Eros Merula, physician, surgeon, and 
 oculist, who bought his freedom for so 
 much, his magistracy as one of the 
 Sexviri for so much, who spent so 
 much on mending the roads, and left 
 . so much behind him. Here the state 
 of things is vividly brought home to 
 us in which a man could buy, not only 
 his cook and his coachman, but also 
 his architect and his medical adviser. 
 And we are set thinking on the one 
 hand how great must be the physical 
 infusion of foreign blood, Greek and 
 barbarian, in the actual people of 
 Italy, and on the other hand how 
 
Ipra:=ffrancl6can Uesisl 55 
 
 thoroughly and speedily all such foreign 
 elements were practically Romanized. 
 The son of the slave-born magistrate 
 of Assisi would look on himself, and 
 be looked on by others, as no less good 
 a Roman than any Fabius or Cornelius 
 who might still linger on. 
 
 The temple above ground and its 
 appurtenances underground are the 
 most memorable things in Prae-Francis- 
 can Assisi ; but there are other things 
 besides, both Roman and mediaeval. 
 The lower church of Sta. Maria Mag- 
 giore, close by the bishop's palace, 
 and which is said to have been the 
 original cathedral, is a Romanesque 
 building of rather a German look, with 
 masses of wall instead of columns. 
 The thought comes into the mind that 
 it is the cella of a temple with arches 
 cut through its walls. But it hardly 
 can be ; the arrangement seems to be a 
 local fashion ; it is found also in the 
 later and larger church of St. Peter 
 
5f> irtai^. 
 
 hard by. Besides, at Sta. Maria Mag- 
 giore there are the clear remains of 
 a Roman building, seemingly a house, 
 with columns and mosaic floors, under- 
 neath the present church of St. Rufino. 
 The later cathedral has been sadly dis- 
 figured within ; but it keeps its apse 
 of the twelfth century, its west front of 
 the thirteenth, using up older sculp- 
 tures, and it has the best bell-tower in 
 Assisi. And below it remains the 
 crypt of the older church of 1028, with 
 ancient Ionic columns used up, and 
 Corinthian capitals imitated as they 
 might be in 1028. Just above are 
 scanty remains of the theatre ; above 
 again are still scantier remains of the 
 amphitheatre ; but its shape is im- 
 pressed on the surrounding buildings, 
 just as the four arms of the Roman 
 Chester abide unchanged in many an 
 English town where every actual house 
 is modern. A piece of Roman wall, 
 and a wide arch in the Via San 
 
pra^=3franci0can Bs6i6i. 57 
 
 Paolo leading out of the forum, com- 
 plete the remains of ancient Assisi 
 above ground. It is doubtless alto- 
 gether against rule, but among so many 
 memorials of earlier gods and earlier 
 saints, it is quite possible, in climbing 
 the steep and narrow streets of Assisi, 
 to forget for a while both Saint Francis 
 aAd Saint Clara. 
 
Spello^ 
 
 T^HE Umbrian town which takes care 
 ' to blazon over one of its many 
 gates its full description as " Ispello 
 Colonia Giulia, Citta Flavia Costante, ' ' 
 is hardly of any great fame, either as 
 ancient Hispellum or as modem Spello. 
 It must have some visitors, drawn 
 thither most likely by two or three 
 pictures by famous masters which re- 
 main in one of its churches. Some- 
 body must come to see them, or their 
 keepers would not have learned the 
 common, but shabby, trick of keeping 
 them covered, in hopes of earning a 
 lira by uncovering them. May we 
 make the confession that we became 
 aware — or, to speak more delicately, 
 that we were reminded — of the exist- 
 58 
 
Spello. 59 
 
 ence of the colony at once Julian and 
 Flavian by the description in the gen- 
 erally excellent German guide-book 
 of Gsell-fels ? And may we further add 
 that, though we feel thoroughly thank- 
 ful to its author for sending us to Spello 
 at all, yet his description is not quite 
 so orderly as is usual with him, and 
 that, though he is perfectly accurate 
 in his enumeration of the Roman monu- 
 ments, yet his account led us to expect 
 to find them in a more perfect state 
 than they actually are ? On the whole, 
 except for the wonderful prospect 
 which Spello shares with Perugia and 
 Assisi, we should hardly send anybody 
 to Spello except a very zealous anti- 
 quary ; but a very zealous antiquary 
 we certainly should send thither. There 
 is no one object of first-rate importance 
 of any date in the place ; but there are 
 the remains of a crowd of objects which 
 have been of some importance. There 
 is also the site ; there is the general 
 
6o irtal^. 
 
 look of the place, which is akin to that 
 of the other hill-towns, but which, as 
 Spello is the smallest and least fre- 
 quented of the group, is there less un- 
 touched and modernized in any way 
 than even at Cortona or Assisi. We 
 except of course the fashion of merci- 
 lessly spoiling the mediaeval houses 
 which has gone on as merrily at Spello 
 as at Perugia and Assisi. But that is no 
 fashion of yesterday. The general old- 
 world air, strong in some parts of Peru- 
 gia, stronger at Assisi, is strongest of all 
 at Spello, while at Spello there seems 
 less eagerness than at Cortona to seize 
 the stranger and make a prey of him. 
 The look-out is perhaps the finest of all; 
 it takes in as prominent objects sharp- 
 peaked mountains and ranges deep 
 with snow, which barely come into the 
 other views, and the long series of hill- 
 towns is pleasantly broken by the 
 towers and cupolas of Foligno in the 
 plain. The mediaeval walls and towers, 
 
Spello^ 6i 
 
 at all events on the south-eastern side, 
 form a line which is not easily sur- 
 passed ; the walk outside Spello, 
 though it lacks both the antiquity and 
 the wildness of the walk outside Cor- 
 tona, outdoes it in mere picturesque 
 effect. The particular objects at Spello 
 are perhaps a little disappointing : 
 Spello itself, as a whole, is certainly 
 not disappointing. 
 
 At Spello we have reached an Italian 
 town which is not a bishop's see ; even 
 in Italy it was not likely to be so, with 
 Assisi so close on one hand and Foligno 
 on the other. There is therefore no 
 duomo, nor is there any other church 
 of much architectural importance. The 
 best are two small forsaken Roman- 
 esque churches outside the walls, one 
 on each side of the town. One of 
 them, that of St. Claudius, forms one 
 building of a group by which we pass 
 on the road from Assisi to Spello, a 
 group lying in the plain, with Spello on 
 
62 1[tal^. 
 
 its height rising above them. There 
 is a large modern villa which seems to 
 be built on Roman foundations ; by its 
 side lies the little Romanesque church ; 
 nearly opposite is the amphitheatre of 
 Hispellum, keeping some fragments 
 of its walls and with its marked shape 
 deeply impressed on the ground. Here 
 the amphitheatre is down in the plain ; 
 at Assisi it stands in the higher part 
 of the present city ; in both it lies, ac- 
 cording to rule, outside the original 
 Roman enclosure. It shows the pas- 
 sionate love for these sports wherever 
 the influence of Rome spread, that two 
 amphitheatres could be needed with so 
 small a distance between them as that 
 which parts Assisi from Spello. More 
 nearly opposite to the villa are other Ro- 
 man fragments which are said to have 
 been part of a theatre ; but the form of 
 the building is certainly not so clearly 
 stamped on the ground as that of its 
 bloodier neighbour. Indeed we are in 
 
Spello. 63 
 
 a region of Roman remains ; other 
 fragments lie by the roadside between 
 Assisi and Spello, and when we reach 
 the latter town, we find that, next to its 
 general effect, it is its Roman remains 
 which form its chief attraction. 
 
 As we draw near from Assisi, the 
 Julian colony of Hispellum, the Flavia 
 Constans of a later day, is becomingly 
 entered by a Roman gateway which 
 bears the name of Porta Consolare. 
 But on the road from Foligno the con- 
 sular gate is reached only through 
 a mediaeval one, which bears, as we 
 have said, all the names of the town 
 prominently set forth for the stranger's 
 benefit. The consular gate stands at 
 the bottom of the hill : for Spello 
 thoroughly occupies the whole of its 
 hill ; there is plenty of climbing to be 
 done in its streets ; but it has all to be 
 done in continuous streets within the 
 town walls. The consular gate has 
 been patched in later times ; but the 
 
64 1ftal^. 
 
 Roman arch is perfect. It is a single 
 simple arch, plain enough, and of no 
 great height, a marked contrast to the 
 lofty arch of Perugia. Another gate- 
 way on the side towards Assisi, known 
 as Porta Veneris, must have been a 
 far more elaborate design. But the 
 whole is imperfect and broken down ; 
 one arch of the double entrance is 
 blocked, and the other is supplanted 
 by a later arch. Yet there is a good 
 effect about the whole, owing to the 
 bold polygonal towers of later date 
 which flank the Roman gateway. An- 
 other gateway, higher up on the same 
 side, is cut down to the mere stones of 
 an arch hanging in the air. This is 
 locally known as the arco di trionfo. 
 Of the arco di Augusto within the town, 
 said to be a triumphal arch of Macri- 
 nus, there is nothing left but a single 
 jamb. In short the Roman remains 
 of Hispellum, though considerable in 
 number, are slight and fragmentary in 
 
Spcllo, 65 
 
 actual extent. Yet there is a pleasure 
 in tracing them out. Conceive them 
 perfect, and Hispellum would come 
 near to rival Verona, not as it was, but 
 as it is. But, after all, there is a cer- 
 tain perverse turn of thought which is 
 better pleased with tracing out what 
 has been than with simply admiring 
 what still is. Spello will make the end 
 of a mid-Italian series seen after the 
 great snow-tide to match the mid- 
 French series seen before it. Every- 
 thing cannot be seen in one journey. 
 All roads lead to Rome ; but thirty- 
 seven days are enough to spend on any 
 one of them. From the colony of His- 
 pellum then we must hurry on to 
 aurea Roma herself, even though we 
 have to rush by many a town and 
 fortress on its hill-top, by Trevi and 
 Spoleto, and, proudest of all, by 
 
 . . . that grey crag where, girt with towers, 
 The fortress of Nequinum lowers 
 O'er the pale waves of Nar. 
 
 VOL. II.— S 
 
66 -fftal^. 
 
 Marry, Nami is somewhat ; but Rome 
 is more. Rome, too, at each visit, 
 presents fresh objects, old and new. 
 The oldest and the newest seem to 
 have come together, when one set of 
 placards on the wall invites the Roman 
 people to meet on the Capitol, and 
 when the Quaestor Bacchus — it is tak- 
 ing a liberty with a living man and 
 magistrate, but we cannot help lyatin- 
 izing the Questore Bacco — puts out 
 another set of placards to forbid the 
 meeting. We are inclined to turn to 
 others among our memories, to others 
 among our lays. We might almost 
 look for a secession ; we might almost 
 expect to see once more 
 
 . . . the tents which in old time whitened 
 the Sacred Hill. 
 
 But those who were forbidden to meet 
 on the Capitol did not secede even to 
 the Aventine ; the secession was done 
 within doors, in the Sala Dante, 
 
\)cil 
 
 T^HE student of what M. Ampere 
 * calls * ' L' Histoire Romaine a 
 Rome ' ' must take care not to confine 
 his studies to Rome only. The local 
 history of Rome — and the local history 
 of Rome is no small part of the oecu- 
 menical history — is not fully under- 
 stood unless we fully take in the history 
 and position of the elder sites among 
 which Rome arose. With Rome we 
 must compare and contrast the cities 
 of her enemies and her allies, the cities 
 which she swept away, the cities which 
 she made part of herself, the cities which 
 simply withered away before her. And 
 first on the list may well come the city 
 which was before all others the rival 
 67 
 
68 irtals- 
 
 of Rome, and where she did indeed 
 sweep with the besom of destruction. 
 A short journey from the Flaminian 
 Gate, a journey through a country 
 which might almost pass for a border 
 shire of England, with the heights of 
 Wales in the distance, brings us to a 
 city which has utterly perished, where 
 no permanent human dwelling-place is 
 left within the ancient circuit. In a 
 basin, as it were, unseen until we are 
 close beneath or above it, hedged in 
 by surrounding hills as by a rampart, 
 stands all that is left of the first great 
 rival of Rome, an inland Carthage on 
 the soil of Etruria. There once was 
 Veii, the first great conquest of Rome, 
 the Italian Troy, round whose ten years' 
 siege wonders have gathered almost as 
 round the Achaian warfare by the 
 Hellespont. There are no monuments 
 of the departed life of Veii such as are 
 left of not a few cities which have 
 passed out of the list of living things 
 
no less utterly. Of the greatest city 
 of southern Etruria nothing remains 
 beyond a site which can never be 
 wiped out but by some convulsion 
 of nature, a few scraps to show that 
 man once dwelled there, and tombs 
 not a few to show that those who 
 dwelled there belonged to a race 
 with whom death counted for more 
 than life. 
 
 A sight of the spot which once was 
 Veii makes us better understand some 
 points in early Italian history. We see 
 why Veii was the rival of Rome, and 
 why she was the unsuccessful rival of 
 Rome. Above all, we understand bet- 
 ter than anywhere else how deep must 
 have been the hatred with which the 
 ^ old-established cities of Italy must have 
 I looked on the upstart settlement by the 
 Tiber, which grew up to so strange 
 a greatness and threatened to devour 
 them one by one. Veii, the great 
 border city of Etruria, was the only 
 
70 ftal^. 
 
 one among Rome's immediate neigh- 
 bours which could contend with her 
 on equal terms. Elsewhere, in her 
 early history, Rome, as a single city, 
 is of equal weight in peace or war with 
 whole confederations. 
 
 The happy position of certain hills 
 by the Tiber had enabled one lucky 
 group of lyatin settlements to coalesce 
 into a single city as great as all the 
 others put together. But at Veii we 
 see the marks of what clearly was a 
 great city, a city fully equal in extent 
 to Rome. And when the ancient 
 writers tell us that, in riches and splen- 
 dour, in the character of its public and 
 private buildings, Veii far surpassed 
 Rome, it is only what we should expect 
 from a great and ancient Etruscan 
 city which had entered on the stage 
 of decline when Rome was entering on 
 the stage of youthful greatness. There 
 was little fear of Veii overthrowing 
 Rome ; but both sides must have felt 
 
IDeiu 71 
 
 that a day would come when Rome 
 would be very likely to overthrow 
 Veil. Two cities so great and so near 
 together could not go on together. 
 Two cities, very great according to the 
 standard of those times, considerable 
 according even to a modern standard, 
 cities of nations differing in blood, lan- 
 guage, and everthing else which can 
 keep nations asunder, stood so near 
 that the modern inquirer can drive 
 from one to the other, spend several 
 hours on its site, and drive back again, 
 between an ordinary breakfast and din- 
 ner. Rivalry and bitter hatred were 
 unavoidable. Veii must have felt all 
 the deadly grief of being outstripped 
 by a younger rival, while Rome must 
 have felt that Veii was the great 
 hindrance to any advance of her do- 
 minion on the right bank of her own 
 river. No form of alliance, confedera- 
 tion, or dependence was possible ; a 
 death struggle must come sooner or 
 
72 1ftali5. 
 
 later between the old Etruscan and the 
 newer Latin city. 
 
 The site of Veil is that of a great 
 city, a strong city, but not a city made, 
 like Rome, for rule. We go far and 
 wide, and we find nothing like the 
 "great group of village communities 
 by the Tiber. ' ' Veii is not a group, 
 and she has no Tiber. The city stood 
 high on the rocks, yet it can hardly 
 be called a hill-city. A peninsular site 
 rises above the steep and craggy banks 
 of two small streams which make up 
 the fateful Cremera ; but the peninsula 
 itself is nearly a table-land, a table-land 
 surrounded by hills. The stream sup- 
 plied the walls with an admirable 
 natural fosse, and that was all. The 
 vast space enclosed by the walls makes 
 us naturally ask whether the city could 
 have been laid out on so great a scale 
 from the beginning. We may believe 
 that, as in so many cases, the arx, 
 a peninsula within a peninsula, was 
 
Veil 73 
 
 the original city, and that the rest was 
 taken in afterwards. But, if so, it 
 would seem as if it must have been 
 taken in at a blow, as if Veii took a 
 single leap from littleness to greatness, 
 unlike the gradual growth of Rome 
 or Syracuse. At all events, there is 
 the undoubted extent of a great city, a 
 city clearly of an earlier type than 
 Rome, a city which may well have 
 reached its present extent while Rome 
 had not spread beyond the Palatine. 
 Such a site marks a great advance on 
 the occupation of inaccessible hill-tops ; 
 but Veii itself must have seemed an 
 old-world city in the eyes of those who 
 had the highway of the Tiber below 
 their walls. 
 
 It is strange to step out the traces of 
 a city whose position and extent are 
 so unmistakably marked, but of which 
 nothing is left which can be called a 
 building, or even a ruin. The most 
 memorable work in the cimmti.ef-;Yeii 
 
 CNIVEESITl ; 
 
74 irtai^. 
 
 is a work not of building but of boring 
 — the Ponte Sodo, hewn in the rock 
 for the better passage of the guardian 
 stream. Besides these, some small 
 fragments of the Etruscan wall, the 
 signs of a double gate, some masonry 
 of the small Roman tower which in 
 after times arose within the forsaken 
 walls, are pretty well all that remains 
 of the life of Veii. The remains of its 
 death are more plentiful. There is the 
 Roman columbarium, within the Etrus- 
 can site ; there are the Etruscan tombs 
 bored deep in all the surrounding hills. 
 There is, above all, the famous painted 
 tomb, shielding no such sculptures and 
 inscriptions as those on which we gaze 
 in the great Volumnian sepulchre, but 
 within which one lucky eye was privi- 
 leged for a moment to see the Lucumo 
 himself, as he crumbled away at the 
 entrance of the unaccustomed air. A 
 scrap or two of his harness is there 
 still ; the arms are there ; the strange- 
 shaped beasts are there, in their primi- 
 
vat 75 
 
 tive form and colouring ; the guardian 
 lions keep the door ; but we have no 
 written aenigma even to guess at. We 
 can only feel our way to a date by 
 marking the imperfect attempt at an 
 arch, an earlier and ruder stage by far 
 than the roof of Rome's Tullianum or 
 its fellow at Tusculum. In the Vol- 
 umnian tomb the main interest comes 
 from the fact that it belongs to the 
 very latest Etruscan times, to the tran- 
 sition from Etruscan to Roman life. 
 In the Veientine tomb the main interest 
 comes from the fact that it cannot be 
 later than an early stage in Roman his- 
 tory, and that it may be as much earlier 
 as we choose to think it. It is the same 
 with all the Httle that is left of Veii. 
 We know that, except the palpable 
 remains of the Roman miinicipium, 
 nothing can be later than B.C. 396, and 
 that anything may be vastly earlier. 
 In the history of Italy, the date when 
 Rome doubled her territory by con- 
 quering a city a dozen miles from her 
 
76 Htm* 
 
 gates passes for an early stage. The 
 life of Rome is still before her. In 
 Greece at the same date, the greatness 
 of Athens, the truest greatness of 
 Sparta, is past ; the only fresh life that 
 is to come is that of ephemeral Thebes 
 and half- Hellenic Macedonia. 
 
 We turn from Veii, feeling how thor- 
 oughly true in its main outline, how 
 utterly untrustworthy in its detail, is 
 what passes for early Roman history. 
 The legend of Veii counts for less than 
 the legend of Troy, inasmuch as inven- 
 tion and combination are hardly gen- 
 uine legend at all. But that Veii was 
 and is not, that her fall was the rising 
 point in Rome's dCvStiny, that it was 
 needful for the course of things which 
 has stretched from that day to this 
 that Veii should cease to be — all this 
 we understand ten times the better 
 when we turn from the living tale of 
 I^ivy to the yet more living witness of 
 the forsaken site. 
 
Jfl6en^* 
 
 CROM the villa of the White Hens 
 ^ we looked across to the arx of 
 Fidense as one of the main points in 
 the view. The hill of Castel Giubeleo 
 seems planted there by the hand of 
 nature as a border- defence of I^atium 
 against Etruscan attacks. Yet both 
 strong sites and other things some- 
 times fail to discharge the exact func- 
 tions which seem to have been laid 
 upon them by the hand of nature. 
 The post which seems designed as the 
 lyatin bulwark against the Etruscan 
 does, as a matter of fact, play its chief 
 part in history in the character of 
 an Etruscan outpost on I^atin soil. 
 Whether Fidenae was really such an 
 ^ outpost in the strict sense, whether it 
 77 
 
78 irtai^» 
 
 was a remnant of the wider Etruscan 
 dominion of the days when the Tiber 
 was not a border-stream, or whether it 
 was a Latin town which, from what- 
 ever cause, chose to throw itself on 
 the Etruscan side, it is not only as the 
 enemy of Rome, but as the ally of 
 Veii, that Fidenae made itself memora- 
 ble. If we accept the received story, 
 the war which brought about the ruin 
 of Fidense was caused because its 
 people slew the envoys of Rome in 
 obedience to the hasty, perhaps mis- 
 interpreted, words of a Veientine king. 
 The king who thus took so little heed 
 of the law of nations of course paid his 
 forfeit, and the Royal spoils won from 
 Ivars Tolumnius by Aulus Cornelius 
 Cossus formed one of the most cher- 
 ished relics of the early days of Rome. 
 We may believe the details of the 
 story or not ; but the spoils at least 
 were real, if the witness of Augustus 
 Caesar is to be believed. 
 
ffiDen^. 79 
 
 Each of the roads which lead out of 
 Rome — since the railway came, there 
 is practically only one way which 
 leads into Rome — has its own special 
 interest, and the Salarian way is cer- 
 tainly not inferior to the Cassian or 
 the Flaminian. We leave the city by 
 that which in its material fabric is the 
 most modem, which in its associations 
 is perhaps the most historic, of all the 
 gates of Rome. The Salarian gate in 
 the wall of Aurelian may be looked at 
 as in some sort drawing to itself the 
 memories of the neighbouring Colline 
 gate in the wall of Servius. He who 
 fought before the Colline gate, he who 
 entered by the Colline gate, could 
 hardly fail to march over the ground 
 where in the new system of defence the 
 Salarian gate was to arise. The Col- 
 line gate on the high ground of the 
 Quirinal hill was the weakest point 
 of Rome ; it was therefore specially 
 strengthened in the Servian line of 
 
8o irtai^» 
 
 defence. It was the point by which 
 most of the early invaders of Rome 
 marched in or strove to march in. 
 There the revolted troops entered to 
 put down the tyranny of the decem- 
 virs ; there the Gauls came in after 
 the slaughter of the AUia ; to that 
 gate Hannibal drew near, and those 
 who did not understand Hannibal said 
 that he hurled his spear over it. Be- 
 fore the Colline gate Rome had for the 
 last time to struggle for the dominion 
 of Italy in the fight between Sulla 
 and Pontius Telesinus. And when 
 the Colline gate had given way to the 
 Salarian, it was at the new entrance to 
 Rome that the enemy came in whose 
 coming declared that her political 
 dominion over the world had ceased, 
 but that her moral dominion was 
 stronger than ever. ' ' At midnight 
 the Salarian gate was silently opened, 
 and the inhabitants were awakened 
 by the tremendous sound of the Gothic 
 
^ibcnx. 8i 
 
 trumpet." And if these gates were a 
 centre of fighting, they were also, in 
 a strange and special way, a centre of 
 burying. Along this road, as along 
 others, we mark the broken tombs 
 here and there, two pre-eminently just 
 outside the present gate ; but this 
 quarter supplies one strange contrast 
 in the matter of burials which is not 
 to be found elsewhere. Outside the 
 CoUine gate was the living tomb of 
 unchaste vestals ; not far beyond the 
 Salarian we come to the Christian 
 coemeterium Priscillae. We go on ; 
 we descend the hill, the northern 
 slope of the Quirinal, and find our- 
 selves in the alluvial ground of Tiber 
 and Anio. We have now come near 
 to the meeting of the streams ; Anio 
 is spanned by a bridge which at first 
 sight might seem to be wholly a thing 
 of yesterday, but which in truth has 
 lived and gone through much from 
 the earliest times to the latest. Broken 
 
82 irtaii?. 
 
 down and rebuilt over and over again, 
 from the wars of Narses to those of 
 Garibaldi, its main arch is indeed 
 of the newest workmanship ; but if we 
 go down to the banks we see the 
 smaller side arches, which must have 
 been ancient when they were crossed 
 by Hannibal, perhaps hardly new 
 when they were crossed by Cossus. 
 A few steps further, and we come to 
 another record of change ; an ancient 
 tomb has grown into a mediaeval 
 tower ; the mediaeval tower now pro- 
 claims itself as an "osteria"; but we 
 feel hardly tempted to try its powers 
 of entertainment. We are now fairly 
 in the low ground ; the hills of Rome 
 lie behind us ; the hills beyond Tiber 
 which skirt the Flaminian way rise to 
 our left ; the hills of Fidenae are before 
 us. To the right lies the ground be- 
 tween the Salarian and the Nomentane 
 road where Phaon had his villa and 
 where his master Nero came by his 
 
^lDcn^» 83 
 
 end. Presently the road, and its com- 
 panion the railway, pass close under 
 hills to the right and, at one point, with 
 Tiber close by them to the left. A 
 little further on they pass between 
 hills on either side, a loftier and 
 isolated height to the left, a range of 
 lower hills, broken by more than one 
 stream and its valley to the right. We 
 are in the heart of forsaken Fidense, in 
 the pass which divides its soaring 
 akropolis by the river from the body 
 of the city on the inland side. 
 
 The arx of Fidense, now the hill of 
 Castel Giubeleo, is not, indeed, a 
 height like that of Tusculum or that 
 of Cortona ; but it comes nearer to 
 them than anything to be found at 
 Veii or Rome. A bend of the river 
 leaves a rich alluvial flat between its 
 bank and a hill which on that side 
 rises steeply enough. Here the men 
 of the faithless Latin city could look 
 out to their friends beyond the river, 
 
84 Ktal^^ 
 
 over the mouth of the small but 
 famous stream of Cremera, over the 
 hills on either side, the Fabian out- 
 post, the future home of Livia, far 
 away, if not to Veii itself, yet to points 
 further off than Veii. The view from 
 the arx of Fidenae and the view from 
 the hill of lyivia complete one another. 
 Inland we see Rome on its hills ; but 
 we must again remark that when 
 Fidenae was, Rome sent up no lofty 
 towers and cupolas to mark its place 
 against the horizon. At our feet we 
 see the lower hills occupied by the rest 
 of the town, surely a modern settle- 
 ment compared with the original arx. 
 We go over its site and round its site, 
 we mark its tombs, its cloaca, the place 
 where its gates once were. The walk 
 in the valley by the brook between the 
 lower hill of Fidenae and the hill 
 which lies between Fidenae and Rome 
 brings the features of the place well 
 out. It was no small gain for Veii to 
 
have such a confederate on Latin 
 ground as the strong post which we 
 are compassing. We can well under- 
 stand why Rome on the first oppor- 
 tunity swept Fidense utterly away, 
 while the existence of Veii had to be 
 endured for a generation longer. 
 
 As at Veii, so at Fidense, the traces 
 of the living are gone — yet more 
 utterly at Fidenae than at Veii. The 
 traces of the dead are far more plen- 
 tiful, though Fidenae has nothing to 
 set against the painted tomb of Veii. 
 The city, doubtless, perished after the 
 w^ar in which Cossus won the spoils 
 of Tolumnius. Strabo speaks of Fi- 
 denae as a deserted place, the posses- 
 sion of a single man. Yet the potestas 
 of Fidenae — perhaps its dictator — may 
 have lingered on, as such dignitaries 
 have lingered on in the boroughs 
 once threatened by Sir Charles Dilke. 
 
Hntemna^* 
 
 TT is one of the amiable features of 
 * the study of historical topography 
 that its votaries are so easily pleased. 
 Two places may have equal charms on 
 utterly opposite grounds. The merit 
 of one city is that it has lived on un- 
 interruptedly from the earliest times 
 till now. The merit of another city is 
 that it ceased to live at all many ages 
 back. One is precious because it con- 
 tains a series of monuments of all ages. 
 Another is equally precious because 
 all its monuments are of one age. A 
 third is as precious as either because 
 it contains no monuments at all. This 
 last kind of charm may seem paradoxi- 
 cal ; but it will be acknowledged by 
 86 
 
Bntemna^. 87 
 
 every one wlio has given himself 
 heartily to this kind of research. At 
 Veil and at Fidenae the great merit is 
 that there is, speaking roughly, noth- 
 ing to see there ; in truth there is the 
 more to see because there is nothing 
 to see. No doubt Veii and Fidenae 
 untouched, as they stood under !Lars 
 Tolumnius, would be best of all ; but 
 we set that aside among the things 
 which it is no use hoping for. And no 
 doubt if we found the sites of Veii 
 and Fidenae full of Roman and medi- 
 aeval monuments, we should doubtless 
 be glad to see them ; but, as they are 
 not there, we are still more glad that 
 they are away. But we turn from 
 Veii and Fidenae to a city compared 
 with which Veii and Fidenae might 
 seem to have a wealth of monuments. 
 It is, after all, an exaggeration to say 
 that nothing is left of Veii or of 
 Fidenae. The sites are the main 
 things ; but there really is something 
 
88 irtal^, 
 
 to see beside the sites. But there is a 
 city, at least the site of a city, much 
 nearer to Rome than either of them, of 
 which the great charm is that it does 
 not contain a single monument of any 
 kind or date. Here we can, even 
 more truly than at Veil and at Fidenae, 
 say that the very ruins have perished ; 
 but it is just because the very ruins 
 have perished yet more utterly than 
 elsewhere that the spot has a strong 
 and special attraction of its own. 
 
 We took a kind of Pisgah view of 
 Antemnae both from the road to the 
 White Hens and from the road to 
 Fidenae. As we before said, it ought 
 to be examined as one of the objects 
 on this last road ; only things are not 
 always as they ought to be. We must 
 therefore start afresh from the Flam- 
 inian gate and for the third time make 
 our way to the Milvian bridge. This 
 time as our course is to lead us to one 
 of the oldest sites in Roman history, 
 
Bntemnac. 
 
 it may be well, by way of contrast, to 
 let the bridge call up thoughts of war- 
 fare yet later than that of Constantine. 
 It was on the Roman side of the Mil- 
 vian bridge, when the bridge itself, 
 which he had fortified, was betrayed 
 to the Gothic enemy, that Belisarius, 
 with another Maxentius at his side, 
 withstood the host which Witigis had 
 led from Narnia. Readers either of 
 Procopius or of Gibbon must remem- 
 ber how every dart was aimed at the 
 bay horse, and how the rider of the 
 bay horse escaped without a wound. 
 This time we keep ourselves, with 
 Belisarius, on the Roman side of the 
 bridge. We are therefore not tempted 
 to have our thoughts carried oif into 
 quite another part of the world by 
 the statue of a famous Bohemian 
 saint, who is said by some Bohemian 
 scholars to be a purely imagin- 
 ary being. Our present business is 
 not with Saint John Nepomuk, not 
 
go 1ftali2- 
 
 even with Belisarius or with Constan- 
 tine ; we have to do with times before 
 Rome was, when Tiber still parted the 
 free Etruscan from the free Latin. 
 We walk along his left bank, keeping 
 within the bounds of lyatium, but with 
 the eye tempted at every moment to 
 look across to the opposite, the Etrus- 
 can bank. Both banks are so quiet, 
 both are so nearly forsaken, both come 
 so easily within an ordinary walk from 
 our Roman quarters, that it is hard to 
 call up the days when Tiber was the 
 boundary stream, not merely of separ- 
 ate commonwealths, not merely of dis- 
 tinct and hostile nations, but of nations 
 between which there was no tie of 
 origin, language, or religion. To be 
 sold beyond the Tiber was the most 
 frightful of all dooms which spared 
 life and limb. If the debtor were sold 
 to Ardea or Tusculum, he might win 
 his freedom and become a denizen of a 
 city of his own speech. To sell him 
 
'Bntcmnx, 91 
 
 beyond the Tiber was like handing 
 him over to bondage among Turks or 
 Moors. But our path keeps us on the 
 I<atin side, in a land which, when it 
 was inhabited at all, was inhabited by 
 men of an intelligible speech. We 
 peer under a rocky cliff, the riverward 
 slope of the hill which rises just out- 
 side the Flaminian Gate of Rome. On 
 that hill Witigis held his headquarters 
 when Belisarius and Saint Peter be- 
 tween them guarded the Pincian. But, 
 we ask, why did not some city, why 
 did not Rome itself, arise on a site 
 which seems so thoroughly suited for 
 the needs of an ancient settlement? 
 But we have to go further for what we 
 seek; no record tells of any settle- 
 ment on the Monte Parioli. We pass 
 on by a few tombs in the hill-side, and 
 we more distinctly make out the shape 
 of a grassy hill parted by a wide allu- 
 vial plain from the river on the eastern 
 side by which we approach. That is 
 
92 1Ftal^. 
 
 the hill of Antemnae, a vanished city 
 whose legendary story may be summed 
 up in a few but instructive words. 
 Antemnae was older than Rome. It 
 was one of the towns whose daughters 
 supplied objects for that great act of 
 what our forefathers called Quenfang, 
 what sociologists called exogamy, 
 which secured that the Roman State 
 should last more than one generation. 
 War follows ; Rome prevails ; Hersilia, 
 wife of Romulus, but so strangely 
 mother of nobody, pleads for the con- 
 quered, and Antemnae is merged in 
 Rome. We may be sure that this is 
 the genuine story, rather than others 
 which give Antemnae a longer life. In 
 sober history its sole record seems to 
 be that in Strabo's day the town had 
 wholly passed away, and that the site 
 was, as now, like Fidenae, the posses- 
 sion of a single man. 
 
 The story in Livy is well imagined. 
 The city whose people Romulus spares 
 
Untcmnx. 93 
 
 at the prayer of his wife has a spe- 
 cially Roman character. Parted as the 
 hill is from the Tiber on three sides, 
 its northern point, the point of a rather 
 long promontory, overhangs the river 
 at the very point of its junction with 
 the Anio. Hence, it would seem, the 
 descriptive name Antemnae, the town 
 before the rivers. Such a site belongs 
 to the same class as the hills of Rome. 
 Less isolated than the Palatine or the 
 Aventine, it is as much isolated as the 
 Capitoline was while it still clave to 
 the Quirinal. Such a site, with a de- 
 scriptive name, can hardly belong to 
 the earliest times ; it marks the same 
 degree of progress as the settlement of 
 Rome itself. Cut off as it was from 
 the oldest Rome by the whole of the 
 high ground within and without the 
 Roman walls, such a settlement on the 
 river, a settlement so like Rome itself, 
 might well be felt to be a special rival, 
 a rival which must cease to exist as a 
 
94 irtal^. 
 
 hostile post, but whose people might 
 well be incorporated with their more 
 successful kinsfolk. 
 
 Of a tale placed in a time which is 
 purely legendary, the utmost that we 
 can say is that the legend falls in with 
 the appearances of the site. Antemnse 
 has utterly perished; there is not a 
 scrap of wall ; some stones which de- 
 ceive the eye at a distance prove, on 
 coming near, to be part of the rock 
 peeping out through the sides of the 
 otherwise green hill. We believe that 
 no antiquities have been found there. 
 But the site speaks for itself. It is a 
 manifest fortress ; the gates are as 
 plain as if their openings were spanned 
 by arches like those of Perugia or 
 Trier. We look out on Fidenae and 
 its surroundings, on the old battle- 
 fields of kings and consuls and em- 
 perors ; on the bridge of Narses and 
 Garibaldi, on the line of march which 
 brought the Gaul, the Carthaginian, 
 
Bntemnje, 95 
 
 the Samnite, and the Goth to the 
 gates, and some of them within the 
 gates, of Rome. We can look down 
 on nearly the whole of Roman history 
 from the site where once stood Virgil's 
 "turrigerae Antemnae." But we are 
 yet farther from being able to tell the 
 towers thereof than we were at Veil 
 and Fidenae. At Antemnse the ruins 
 themselves have perished. 
 
©9tia. 
 
 CROM the nearest neighbours and 
 ^ rivals of Rome, from the slight 
 remains which mark the sites of Veii 
 and Fidenae, from the almost more in- 
 structive lack of remains which marks 
 the site of Antemnae, we may well 
 pass to a spot which lies at a greater 
 distance from Rome than any of them, 
 but which never was Rome's rival or 
 even neighbour, because it was from 
 the beginning simply an outlying part 
 of Rome itself. This is the forsaken 
 haven of Rome at Ostia. The exist- 
 ence of Ostia at an early stage of the 
 historic being of Rome is no small sign 
 of what Rome already was, and it may 
 well have had no small share in making 
 96 
 
©etfa. 97 
 
 Rome what she afterwards was to be. 
 For an inland town like Rome to pos- 
 sess a haven of its own, existing solely 
 as its haven, at once marked and 
 strengthened the difference between 
 Rome and other inland towns. For 
 Ostia, it must be borne in mind, was 
 the haven of Rome and nothing else. 
 It was not a separate maritime city- 
 made into the haven of Rome by any 
 process of conquest or confederation. 
 Tradition makes Ostia spring into 
 being because it was found that Rome 
 needed a haven. And the tradition 
 has nothing to contradict it and all 
 likelihood to support it ; the name of 
 the place by itself might almost be 
 accepted as proving its truth. The 
 foundation of Ostia, too, is placed in a 
 period which is eminently a traditional, 
 as distinguished from a legendary, 
 period. It is safer not to rule either 
 that there was a personal Ancus Mar- 
 cius or that there was not; but we 
 
 VOL. II. — 7 
 
98 irtai^. 
 
 may be pretty sure that the events 
 assigned to his reign really happened, 
 if we can only keep ourselves from 
 attempting dates where there is no 
 chronology. Tradition then calls 
 Ancus the founder of Ostia. The 
 really important point is that whoever 
 founded Ostia founded it purely in the 
 interest of Rome, and that in an age 
 when Rome was still in the days of 
 her early growth. 
 
 This at once marks a wide difference 
 between Rome and other cities of that 
 time. Even the most famous of the 
 early seats of maritime enterprise had 
 the port separate from the city, later 
 than the city. Corinth herself had 
 her two havens, apart alike from her 
 mountain citadel and from the vener- 
 able columns at its foot. When Cor- 
 inth started in life men shrank from 
 the close neighbourhood of the sea. 
 It marks a later stage when Corinthian 
 enterprise planted colonies absolutely 
 
©0tta» 99 
 
 in the sea — Syracuse on her island, 
 the elder Korkyra on her peninsula. 
 It was not till long after Ostia had 
 arisen that inland Athens yoked her- 
 self to the sea. But, as the site of 
 Rome itself on the broad Tiber showed 
 that men had even then learned to 
 understand the value of sites widely 
 different from Tusculum on her height 
 or Veii with her encircling brooks, so 
 the creation of Ostia proves yet more. 
 Rome, far more distant from the sea 
 than Corinth, Megara, or even Athens, 
 had already learned that a hold on the 
 sea was needful for her power. There 
 could have been nothing like it in 
 Italy. There were inland cities and 
 there were maritime cities ; but there 
 was no inland city which had put forth 
 a maritime outpost at such a distance. 
 Indeed, no other city had put forth 
 such an outpost at all, maritime or 
 otherwise. For Ostia was not a colony, 
 not a dependency. It had no separate 
 
loo Iftal^. 
 
 being of its own. It was a limb of 
 Rome transplanted to a distance of 
 fifteen Italian miles from the main 
 body. 
 
 Ostia, then, called into being because 
 Rome stood on the Tiber, is eminently 
 a child of the Tiber. But Father Tiber 
 is unluckily one of those fathers who 
 do not scruple to swallow up their own 
 children. He has changed his course, 
 and he has changed it in a way which 
 is not a little dangerous for what is 
 still left of Ostia. The diggings which 
 have been carried on by the Italian 
 Government are most praiseworthy, 
 and they have brought to light much 
 that is most interesting and instruc- 
 tive. But streets, storehouses, temples, 
 theatres, will in vain be dug out if the 
 ravenous river god is to gulp them 
 down as soon as they are well dug out. 
 At the present moment one street, with 
 its pavement laid bare, with its build- 
 ings still standing on each side, leads 
 
©0tta. loi 
 
 in a perilous manner into the stream. 
 That is to say, one end is gone ; the 
 rest will soon follow ; the pieces of 
 wall nearest to the stream are crumb- 
 ling to their fall. Surely it would be 
 well to imitate in the haven of Ancus 
 the work done for the mother-city by 
 his successor. Fence in the flood, as 
 the elder Tarquin fenced it in beside 
 the mouth of the cloaca maxima ; make 
 a strong wall of defence against the 
 waters, and the remains which are left 
 of Ostia may abide as long as the 
 cloaca maxima itself. 
 
 And what is left of Ostia is indeed 
 worth preserving. Only a small part 
 of the town has as yet been dug out ; 
 but, even as it is, Ostia is becoming a 
 fair rival to Pompeii. The interest, 
 indeed, is of a somewhat different kind 
 in the two places. Pompeii will come 
 first with the artist and Ostia with the 
 historian. Nothing of any moment 
 ever happened at Pompeii except 
 
102 Iftali^. 
 
 the destruction and the discovery of 
 Pompeii itself. But a great deal hap- 
 pened at Ostia, and that at widely- 
 distant dates. It is perhaps needless to 
 mention that one thing which is said 
 to have happened at Ostia never hap- 
 pened either there or anywhere else — 
 namely, destruction by the Saracens in 
 the fifth century, which is recorded 
 indeed in Murray's '' Handbook," but 
 which was certainly unknown to Pro- 
 copius. Ostia, destroyed by Marius, 
 restored by Sulla, was failing in the 
 days of Strabo to discharge its duty as 
 the haven of Rome. It had yielded 
 to the same enemy which afterwards 
 overcame Ravenna and Pisa ; the silt 
 of Father Tiber was too much for it. 
 Yet, notwithstanding this misfortune, 
 notwithstanding the change which it 
 led to, when Claudius found it needful 
 to transfer the harbour of Rome to 
 Portus on the other side of the river, 
 Ostia contrived to live on through all 
 
©9tta, 103 
 
 disadvantages. For it has many and 
 great buildings later than Strabo and 
 Claudius, among them an Imperial 
 house with graceful columns, which 
 contains the famous shrine of Mithras. 
 There is abundant evidence that all 
 through the second century of our 
 sera great architectural works were 
 carried on at Ostia. Besides the 
 palace, there is the great central 
 temple, be it of Jupiter or of Vulcan, 
 standing so proudly on its steps. 
 There is a theatre whose columns 
 and inscriptions supply no small ma- 
 terials for study, a theatre of which 
 it might be too much to say that it 
 suggests those of Orange or Taor- 
 mina, but which certainly suggests 
 that of Aries. 
 
 In the sixth century Procopius de- 
 scribes Ostia as lacking w^alls, and he 
 complains that the road from Ostia to 
 Rome did not follow the course of the 
 river, and was therefore useless as a 
 
104 irtai^. 
 
 towing-path. This is eminently true 
 still. The road goes through scenery 
 of various kinds, some rather English- 
 looking, though none very striking ; 
 the Tiber makes a far less important 
 feature than we might have looked 
 for. But, if Ostia had no walls in the 
 days of Belisarius, it had no lack of 
 walls in earlier days. The most inter- 
 esting, from one point of view, among 
 the ruins of Ostia are the remains, 
 forming part of two sides of a square, 
 of the primitive wall, a dry wall of 
 massive stones, belonging no doubt to 
 the period of the first foundation. 
 These were clearly ruinous when the 
 later brick buildings were reared ; 
 the wall was broken down, and men 
 built against and upon it ; they plas- 
 tered it ; they chamfered its stones for 
 the convenience of plastering, as best 
 suited their purpose. The flourishing 
 town of the second century may well 
 have been wall-less. Rome herself at 
 
©6tta. 105 
 
 that date had no defence. The wall 
 of Servius had ceased to serve any 
 military purpose, and the wall of 
 Aurelian was not yet. 
 
 The history of Ostia from the ninth 
 century onwards, from the vain at- 
 tempt of Gregory the Fourth to turn 
 Ostia into Gregoriopolis, belongs to 
 another, though almost adjacent, site. 
 New Ostia, with its castle, its cathe- 
 dral, its gateway, its one or two nar- 
 row streets, but with seemingly hardly 
 a dozen inhabitants, is a sadder sight 
 than old Ostia, with no inhabitant 
 except the stalwart custode, who de- 
 fends himself against Ostian air by 
 daily doses of quinine. Yet the castle 
 of Cardinal Estouteville ranks high 
 among picturesque fortresses ; the 
 cathedral shows a mixture of classical 
 and Gothic detail for which nothing 
 in Rome prepares us ; fragments of 
 ancient work lie around ; the staircase 
 of the bishop's palace, the palace of 
 
io6 1ftal^. 
 
 the first among cardinals, is rich in 
 ancient inscriptions. But we hasten 
 on to the older site. There is some- 
 thing specially striking in its half- 
 excavated state. We tread the ancient 
 pavement, between the ancient houses, 
 of a street dug out of a cornfield on 
 either side. The wall of Ancus loses 
 itself in a bank of earth. Here a house, 
 there a temple, is dug out, leaving just 
 space enough to see it among sur- 
 rounding blades of corn. At Pompeii, 
 too, the diggings are not finished ; but 
 there one part is dug, another is not ; 
 here we thread our way along what is 
 dug with the far greater mass of the 
 undug to right and left of us. So far 
 we are content ; the undug may soon 
 be promoted to the state of the dug, 
 and Mother Earth is a safe keeper of 
 antiquities. It is otherwise with 
 Father Tiber. When he is close on 
 one side of us, there is, as our guide 
 truly tells us, no small danger. He 
 
©6tla. 107 
 
 once, as Horace witnesses, set forth to 
 destroy the monuments of Numa at 
 Rome ; he is clearly minded to do the 
 like by the monuments of Numa*s 
 grandson at Ostia. 
 
XCbe aiban /iDount- 
 
 \17"HAT is the common point of 
 ^ ^ connexion between all the lands 
 and places which bear the name of 
 Alba, Albania, or something like it? 
 They lie so far apart, they are in- 
 habited by people of such utterly 
 different nations and languages, that 
 it is strange if there be any point of 
 connexion among them, while it is at 
 least as strange if the name has settled 
 down on so many remote spots by 
 sheer accident only. We must not 
 forget that our own land has an inter- 
 est in the question : we dwell in the 
 Isle of Albion, and its northern part 
 is specially Albanach or Albany. An 
 English lady living on the eastern 
 1 08 
 
ITbe Blban /Rbount. 109 
 
 shore of the Hadriatic was lately com- 
 plimented by a Scotch lady because, 
 being an Albanian, she spoke such 
 good English. It was afterwards sug- 
 gested to her that she might have 
 answered with a tu quoque or some- 
 thing more ; the Englishwoman was 
 no Albanian ; the Scotchwoman in a 
 certain sense was. But have Alban- 
 ians of either of these kinds anything 
 to do either with the Duke of Alz^a — 
 for in his tongue " non aliud est 
 z;iz^ere quam ^i^ere " — or with the 
 Albania beyond the Euxine? Then 
 again it is singular to read, say in 
 Dionysios of Halikarnassos, the local 
 wars of Rome and Alba Longa de- 
 scribed under exactly the same gentile 
 names as those by which Imperial 
 Anna describes strife between the 
 New Rome and those Ghegs and 
 Tosks who have again begun to make 
 themselves famous. It is 'Foofxaioi 
 and 'AXfiavoi in both cases, without 
 
no irtal^. 
 
 the change of jot or tittle. In this 
 case, at least, we believe that philo- 
 logers would deny the slightest 
 kindred between the names ; but the 
 casual identity is thereby only made 
 the more startling. A malicious critic 
 might say that Anna's Romans were 
 as unlike old Romans as her Albanians 
 could be unlike the men of Alba 
 Ivonga. But her Romans did at least 
 claim to be Romans, sharers in the 
 inheritance of the wolf and the eagle ; 
 while her Albanians certainly laid no 
 claims to any rights in the Alban sow 
 and her thirty pigs. 
 
 Rome, undutiful daughter, swept 
 away her mother city so thoroughly 
 that its site has become a matter of 
 dispute. But the name lived on in 
 derivative forms. Alba perished, but 
 the Alban lake and the Alban mount 
 kept their places, to play no small part 
 in the history of Rome. There is the 
 lake, there is the great drain for its 
 
Cbe Blban /iRount 
 
 waters, so strangely interwoven with 
 the tale of Veii. There is the mount, 
 with the road by which the chariot of 
 Marcellus went up in triumph ; there 
 are still the displaced stones of the 
 temple which was the religious centre 
 of the lyatin name. But for the 
 fanaticism of the last Stewart, the pil- 
 lared front of the Latin Jupiter might 
 still form the proudest of crowns for 
 the height on which the gazer from 
 the walls of Rome fixes his eye more 
 commonly than on any other. And, 
 if Alba perished, she did in a manner 
 rise again. The neighbourhood of dead 
 Alba became as favourite a quarter for 
 the villas of Roman nobles as the 
 neighbourhood of living Tusculum. 
 There the great Pompeius had a 
 dwelling ; there, according to one ver- 
 sion of his story, his body — or perhaps 
 only his head — found a stately tomb, 
 though Hadrian could make his verse 
 by the Alexandrian Shore to say that 
 
112 irtal^» 
 
 no tomb had \)een found for him who 
 had so many temples. But of all 
 villas on Alban ground, of all Albana, 
 the Albanum of the Emperors, with 
 its spacious gardens, its long terraces 
 still to be traced, of course came to be 
 the greatest. The walled station of 
 the Imperial guards, the fellow of the 
 Praetorian camp at Rome, became the 
 kernel of a new town, and Albano 
 still exists, an episcopal city, seat of a 
 cardinal-bishop, and it still keeps its 
 character as a summer retreat for 
 those who, now as of old, seek to 
 escape the smoke and wealth and noise 
 of lordly Rome. Albano and Alba 
 stand in somewhat the same relation as 
 Spalato and Salona. In both cases 
 the new city grew out of an Imperial 
 dwelling-place in the neighborhood of 
 the old. But there is this wide differ- 
 ence between them, that Alba has 
 utterly perished, while Salona survives 
 in ample ruins. Alba had vanished 
 
^be Blban /Ibount. 113 
 
 ages and ages before Albano arose. 
 Spalato vStood ready to be a city of 
 refuge for those who fled from Salona 
 in her day of overthrow. 
 
 The town of Albano itself contains 
 a good many antiquities, the most 
 prominent among which, that which 
 greets the eye on the entrance from 
 Rome, is the huge tower- like pile, so 
 cruelly stripped of its hewn stone, 
 which, truly or falsely, passes for the 
 tomb of Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus. 
 More striking on a close examination, 
 though spoiled in its effect by a Papal 
 freak of restoration, is the tomb which 
 hovers between the names of Aruns 
 son of Porsena and the Horatii and 
 Curiatii. Which of the two would 
 Sir George I^ewis have looked on as 
 the more impossible? This is the 
 tomb which so singularly forestalled 
 the outline of the Glastonbury 
 kitchen — before its chimneys perished 
 — and thereby of the Museum labor- 
 
"4 IFtals* 
 
 atory at Oxford. A good deal of the 
 wall of the camp, a good deal of an 
 amphitheatre on the hill-side, and 
 several other fragments of the earlier 
 Imperial time, are still to be seen. 
 But after all Albano really exists, not 
 for its own sake, but as a starting- 
 point for the Alban lake and the Alban 
 mount, and hardly less as a starting- 
 point for 
 
 . . . the still glassy lake that sleeps 
 Beneath Aricia's trees. 
 
 Aricia has changed its site ; the small 
 modern town has flown up to the 
 level of the arx, to be approached by 
 Albano by almost the only work on 
 which we do not grudge to see the 
 name of Pius IX. The viaduct of 
 that " Pontifex Optimus Maximus " — 
 his votaries seem never quite to dis- 
 tinguish between him and Jupiter — is 
 really a work worthy of Caesars or 
 consuls. Below it new Aricia has left 
 
^be Blban ^ount. 115 
 
 the elder city, its fragments of walls 
 and of the Appian Way, to be sought 
 for in the valley below, the crater, so 
 wise men tell us, of an extinct vol- 
 cano, the biggest surely even in this 
 region where craters meet us at every 
 step. Scraps of primaeval wall, hardly 
 to be distinguished from the rocks, 
 prepare us for what we are to see at 
 places further out of the ordinary 
 track ; walls of the days of Sulla join 
 on alike to what we have seen at 
 Rome, and to what we are to see at 
 Cori. But, after all, the *' still glassy 
 lake ' ' to which the grove of the ' ' rex 
 nemorensis ' ' has given the name of 
 Nemi, is the true glory of Aricia. 
 How well we remember being puz- 
 zled years and years ago with the 
 thrilling run of the lines — 
 
 Those trees in whose dim shadow 
 The ghastly priest doth reign, 
 
 The priest who slew the slayer, 
 And shall himself be slain. 
 
ii6 Utalis. 
 
 In these days the fault would be 
 held to lie with the poet for venturing 
 on an allusion which it might need a 
 little research to take in. In those 
 days we thought in such cases that 
 the fault lay with ourselves ; we 
 admired without understanding till 
 we lighted on the explanation which 
 enabled us to understand as well. As 
 such a process is a wholesome one, we 
 will leave the lines without comment ; 
 not to speak of books of reference, the 
 story will be found, in a somewhat 
 grotesque form, in Dr. Meri vale's 
 chapter on the reign of Caius, better 
 known as Caligula. 
 
 The ghastly priest has gone from 
 Nemi ; but the lake is there still, and 
 the successors of the trees. Access is 
 courteously granted by the present 
 owner, who, we may believe, has never 
 slain anybody, and who, we hope, 
 may not be slain himself. But though 
 we may admire Nemi from close by, 
 
Zbc Blban /llbount. 117 
 
 we do not fully understand Nemi and 
 its place among things, till we can look 
 upon it in company with its greater 
 fellow of Alba. That is, we must 
 climb the Alban mount, or a good part 
 of its height. But we go first to the 
 Alban lake itself ; and to do so we go 
 along its rim and slide down the side 
 of its crater. There we find the 
 emissarius, so deftly cut in the rock, 
 and which has done its work so well 
 for so many ages. Who made it ? 
 Camillus, or some one long before 
 Camillus? The men who built the 
 great cloaca of Rome were quite 
 capable of cutting the hole through 
 the rock of Alba, without any mes- 
 sage from Delphi or any design 
 against the walls of Veil. Whoever 
 the borer was, he did his work far 
 more thoroughly than Claudius ages 
 afterwards did his for the Fucine lake, 
 which work it has been left for the 
 Torlonia of our own day to finish. 
 
ii8 1ftal^. 
 
 i 
 
 But no one, we may suppose, wished 
 at any time to drain the Alban lake, 
 but only to keep it in order. How 
 needful such a work is we do not fully 
 grasp till we can look down from 
 above. Then we take in the strict 
 accuracy of the name crater. We see 
 the two lakes, greater and smaller, 
 side by side, like two basins in the 
 s-trictest sense, in which, at some time 
 which geologists may fix, but which it 
 is enough for history to say that it was 
 long before the oldest primaeval wall, 
 the powers of water supplanted those 
 of fire. We take in how the larger 
 lake, with its narrow rim, in some 
 parts of its circuit with its low rim, 
 liable to be swollen, but with no 
 natural outlet for its waters, might 
 easily come to overflow, if artificial 
 means had not been, in some early 
 time, taken to check it. 
 
 But when we have wound our way 
 by the rim of the lake, by the house 
 
Zbc Blban /Iftount* 119 
 
 which the so-called Prisoner of the 
 Vatican never chooses to visit, by the 
 rock which still bears his name, when 
 we have crossed the so-called fields of 
 Hannibal — yet another crater, science 
 tells us — when we have climbed by the 
 triumphal wa}^ to the height of Monte 
 Cavo, we do indeed understand the 
 geography and history of Rome and 
 Latium better than we did before. The 
 eye may range over the height of 
 Tusculum and over the battle-ground 
 of Regillus as far as the height of 
 Praeneste ; it may range hither and 
 thither over many points which have 
 their charm both of history and of 
 nature. But there are two sides to 
 which the historical eye will be 
 attracted before all others. Such a 
 gazer will better take in the position 
 of Rome, as he sees it, with its seven 
 hills shrunk out of sight, a point — 
 rather a line — in the Latin plain, with 
 a wall of Etruscan hills beyond it. 
 
I20 HUl^, 
 
 We see how utterly different was the 
 position of Rome from the position of 
 the elder cities ; we see how she lies in 
 the midst, at the very meeting-place of 
 nations ; we see how needful for her it 
 was to make the barrier behind her 
 her own ; and we understand her wars 
 with Veii better than before. But we 
 look down too on the Latin plain 
 itself : we look down, we believe, on 
 the vanished site of Rome's mother at 
 our feet ; we look out on the great flat 
 once fringed with cities, and on the 
 great and wide sea beyond it. Here, 
 standing forth as an advanced post of 
 the land, we see where 
 
 .... the Witch's Fortress 
 O'erhangs the dark-blue seas. 
 
 And beyond Circeii and its island 
 satellites, we look on to the more 
 distant height, in so many ages the 
 boundary height, best known as a 
 height by the name of Anxur, but 
 
^be Blban /llbount. 
 
 known as a boundary by the name of 
 Terracina. When we think how early 
 Rome became the mistress, not only of 
 the height on which we stand and of 
 the kindred heights around it, but of 
 that long coast-line and its protecting 
 heights, we feel why Rome, so early 
 in her history, had to enter on a career 
 of wide-spreading policy, which could 
 never have suggested itself to a power 
 seated at Veii or at Prseneste. Rome, 
 on her great river, with her haven at 
 its mouth, with her long line of sea- 
 faring subjects or allies, felt from a 
 very early time the friendship or 
 enmity of the great powers of the 
 sea to be an important matter. She 
 had to dread Etruscan pirates and 
 Phoenician traders ; the Greek of 
 Cumae might perhaps do something 
 more against her than merely shelter 
 her tyrants. We may believe or not 
 in the connexion between the Alban 
 lake and the fall of Veii, but, as we 
 
 UNIVERSIll 
 
122 irtal)^. 
 
 look one way from beside the few 
 stones that are left of Jove's loftiest 
 temple, we understand how needful it 
 was that Juno of Veii should move to 
 Rome. We may or we may not have 
 the camping-ground of Hannibal be- 
 hind us ; but as we look out seawards 
 we believe in the first treaty with 
 Carthage ; we go on to wonder how 
 things had turned about, when Duilius 
 and Lutatius could break the Cartha- 
 ginian power by sea, and when Han- 
 nibal could make his way into Italy 
 by land. 
 
Cori* 
 
 T^HERE was some reason in the 
 ^ remark made by Mr. Creighton 
 in the Academy a little time back, that 
 there must be something ' ' irritating 
 to the Italians of the present date 
 in the point of view which is often 
 adopted by English writers towards 
 Italian history." "Their cities," he 
 said, * ' which are still instinct with 
 political and social life, are regarded 
 as museums of curiosities, which serve 
 to awaken picturesque reminiscences 
 in the mind of the passing tourist." 
 Mr. Creighton was speaking of Genoa, 
 and at Genoa and in cities like Genoa, 
 what he says may be perfectly true. 
 But there are other Italian cities where 
 123 
 
124 Utal^. 
 
 the political and social life at least 
 hides itself from the passing tourist, 
 and where the curiosity with which 
 he regards the city is as nothing com- 
 pared with the curiosity with which 
 the inhabitants of the city seem to 
 regard him. The curiosity is not 
 specially irritating ; it is perhaps 
 mixed up with a certain open craving 
 after soldi which nothing short of the 
 very highest civilization can get rid 
 of; but it is quite distinct from the 
 endless touting and wearying which 
 the traveller has to undergo in places 
 which are one degree more advanced, 
 or which, to speak more civilly, have 
 fallen less far back. For it is only 
 civil to believe of cities which were 
 once independent commonwealths, 
 members of the I^eague of the Thirty 
 Cities, and, therefore, doubtless in- 
 stinct with political life, that they 
 were, at least two or three milleniums 
 back, cleaner than they are now, and 
 
CorU 125 
 
 filled with inhabitants who had some- 
 thing more to do than their successors 
 seem to have. But the interest which 
 the novelty of the stranger awakens 
 in the minds of the present inhabitants 
 — far keener, it would seem, than the 
 interest which the antiquity of the city 
 awakens in his mind — really does him 
 no harm. The modern I^atins or 
 Volscians come and look ; they won- 
 der ; they follow. If the nature of 
 the country requires that the strangers 
 be set on asses and mules, the curi- 
 osity, as is only natural, reaches its 
 height. The asses of the Prisci I^atini 
 or of their Volscian neighbours are 
 undoubtedly grave and discreet beasts ; 
 even the obstinacy of the mule is a 
 virtue when he knows the way so much 
 better than his foreign rider. But 
 there is something grotesque in the 
 way of going ; it is not wonderful if 
 the sight gathers together a crowd, 
 if the travellers find themselves the 
 
126 irtali^. 
 
 centre, not exactly of triumph, for they 
 are not drawn in a chariot ; not ex- 
 actly of an ovation, for they do not walk 
 on foot ; but of a not ill-humoured 
 procession of gazers, it may even be 
 of admirers. 
 
 Something of this kind is likely to 
 be the destiny, at some point at least, 
 of those who wish to carry out the full 
 programme of the right wing of the 
 Latin host of Regillus : 
 
 Aricia, Cora, Norba, 
 Velitrae, with the might 
 Of Setia and of Tusculum. 
 
 Tusculum they will, perhaps, have 
 made the object of a separate pilgrim- 
 age ; Aricia belongs to the following 
 of Jupiter and the Alban mount ; 
 " Setia' s purple vineyards " it may be 
 hard to take into the line of march ; 
 but, with a slight change of order, 
 ^'Velitr^, Cora, Norba," with the 
 later Ninfa thrown in as a substitute 
 
CovU 127 
 
 for neglected Setia, will form an 
 admirable group, a day's journey, 
 which those who have made it will 
 perhaps, at the end of a day or two, 
 feel sorry that they have not cut into 
 two. Velitrae — hardly changed in the 
 modern Velletri — has itself but little 
 to show beyond one of the very noblest 
 bell- towers of the second Italian period, 
 where the pointed arch creeps in, a 
 visitor which in Italy is better away, 
 but which at least keeps out the 
 vagaries of a yet later time. The lie- 
 of the town is good ; it stands well on 
 its hill, of no great elevation among 
 its brighter neighbours. Besides the 
 bell-tower, it has little to show in the 
 ecclesiastical line, save only the eccen- 
 tricity of having its cathedral church 
 placed as if we were in Wales instead 
 of in Italy, at the bottom of the city in- 
 stead of at the top. One or two ancient 
 houses and modern palaces may claim 
 some attention, but Velletri, truly 
 
128 irtals* 
 
 barren in Roman remains, cannot be 
 said to be fruitful in those of mediaeval 
 times. The chief value of the town is 
 as a starting-point — we can hardly call 
 it centre — for Cora, Norba, and several 
 other of its ancient fellows. The view 
 from Velletri is beyond words. We 
 look over the fertile plain, dying away 
 to the right into the Pomptine marshes, 
 and fenced in by the mighty lime- 
 stone bulwark of the Volscian moun- 
 tains. To the right of all the height 
 of Anxur's temple looms in the dis- 
 tance ; Circeii, with its following of 
 islands, rises nearer and more plainly, 
 almost itself like a great island, re- 
 minding the visitor from the West of 
 England of Brean Down and the Holms 
 in the Severn Sea. But the njountains 
 draw the eyes towards them by some- 
 thing more than their bright masses, 
 something more than a light and shade 
 upon their sides. Several of their 
 strong points are crowned with castles 
 
CorL 129 
 
 and whole towns ; and one point so 
 crowned stands out as the centre of all. 
 We see one spur of the mountain, far 
 lower than the heights beyond it, 
 crowned by a little city coming some 
 way down its sides, with a tall tower 
 rising well from the midst when the 
 sunlight catches it. There stands one 
 of the chief objects for which Velletri 
 is the starting-point ; there we have to 
 p look for — 
 
 . . . the gigantic watch-towers, 
 No work of earthly men, 
 
 Whence Corals sentinel's o'erlook 
 The never-ending fen. 
 
 Watch-towers, perhaps, in the strictest 
 sense, we do not see, and we shall 
 hardly find them when we come 
 nearer ; but Cora, Corz, still keeps the 
 mightiest of walls, which it was no 
 wonder that men looked on as too 
 mighty to be the work of such mortals 
 — in Homer's phrase — as we now are, 
 
 VOL. II. — 9 
 
I30 1ftal^. 
 
 and looked on them as reared by no 
 hands weaker than those of the forgers 
 of Jove's own thunderbolts. With 
 Cori we enter on the examination of a 
 long series of towns, whose main fea- 
 ture is their primaeval walls, and 
 among these Cori has the merit of 
 showing us the walls that are the 
 most primaeval of all. None of its 
 fellows can show such blocks as the 
 mysterious engineers, whose work men 
 love to call Cyclopean, piled together 
 in the lower town of Cori, just outside 
 what is now the gate of Ninfa. Blocks 
 indeed of equal size we may see else- 
 where, but surely none of equal rude- 
 ness. They are heaped together as 
 they w^ere hewn or torn away from their 
 place in the natural rock ; huge lime- 
 stone blocks of every size and shape, 
 with the spaces between them filled up 
 with similar stones of their own kind. 
 But the whole range of the wall of 
 Cori is not of this primitive sort. The 
 
Cori* 131 
 
 curious in such matters distinguish 
 five epochs : Cyclopean, I^atin, Old 
 Roman, Roman of Sulla's day, and — 
 the leap is a great one — mediaeval 
 walls of the time of King Ladislaus ; 
 we hardly venture to give an Angevin 
 king of the hither Sicily the full 
 Slavonic shape which marks him as 
 sprung from the other side of Hadria. 
 The stones of the first four — we have 
 already spoken of the first of all — are 
 all polygonal, of distinguishing degrees 
 of regularity of work and degrees of 
 size. The rudest wall, as far as we 
 saw, of all is to be found quite at the 
 bottom ; the others may be seen side 
 by side in the great walls of the arx 
 which soar high above all, and which 
 shelter the chief ornament of Cori in 
 quite another department. 
 
 According to the nearly invariable 
 rule, the arx of Cora contained a 
 temple, and the temple, as so often 
 happens, has been turned into a 
 
132 1Ftal^^ 
 
 church. But the change has been less 
 destructive to Cori than in many other 
 places. The house of St. Peter has 
 been built without damaging the por- 
 tico of the house of Hercules— the old 
 I^atin Herculus was hopelessly con- 
 fused with the Herakles of Greek 
 legend — and still keeps the columns 
 of his portico, both on its front and its 
 sides ; keeps his entablature, his ped- 
 iment, the gate-way of his cella, the 
 inscription which records the work of 
 the local duumvirs, Manlius and Ttir- 
 pilius. But what shall we say to the 
 columns themselves ? They profess to 
 be Doric, even to be Greek Doric ; 
 but they have bases ; they stand as 
 wide apart as Etruscan tradition 
 planted the columns of the Capitoline 
 Jupiter ; the shafts themselves, in- 
 stead of being as massive as Psestum, 
 are slenderer than Nemea. But sin 
 against rule as it may, the upper tem- 
 ple at Cori is still undoubtedly pretty, 
 
Cori. 133 
 
 to say the least, and it is really all the 
 more interesting because of its sin 
 against rule. Far finer in themselves 
 are the Corinthian columns — such as 
 are left — of the temple of the Greek 
 Twin Brethren lower down the hill ; 
 but we can • see good Corinthian 
 columns in a great many places ; the 
 peculiarities of the Hercules temple 
 are special to Cori. Do they not speak 
 of the Hellenizing mind of the great 
 dictator who made Cora rise again 
 after it had suffered deeply at the 
 hands of his Marian enemies ? Stern 
 restorer of what he deemed Rome's 
 ancient ways, but votary and favourite 
 of Hellenic gods, the taste of Sulla 
 might well lead him to some such 
 forms as we see in the object, yet promi- 
 nent from many points of view, that 
 crowns the height of the citadel of Cora. 
 But we have not gone through the 
 full tale of the antiquities of this 
 strange little mountain-city. Outside 
 
134 irtals. 
 
 the Ninfa gate, spanning at a vast 
 height the deep gorge which on that 
 side forms the foss of Cori, rises a 
 bridge, of days which we call ancient, 
 but which we are tempted to call 
 modern so near to the Cyclopean wall. 
 Not a few fragments of columns may 
 be marked here and there in the 
 streets. We light too on inscriptions. 
 Besides the duumvirs — one might call 
 them the bailiffs — of the Roman Muni- 
 cipium, whose names are carved on 
 the frieze of Hercules, another com- 
 memorates two Praitors ; surely these, 
 with their archaic spelling, are the 
 abiding magistrates of the Latin Com- 
 monwealth — as Cicero's Milo was 
 dictator of lyanuvium — dependent on 
 Rome, but not fully incorporated in 
 her substance. Then, besides the 
 chief temple, other Pagan buildings 
 and objects have been turned to Chris- 
 tian uses. In the church where St. 
 Peter has supplanted Hercules, an 
 
Cotl. 135 
 
 altar, if altar it be, bearing rams with 
 horns and the Gorgon's head, has been 
 hollowed out to make a baptismal font. 
 The church of St. Oliva bears a dedica- 
 tion dating only from the sixteenth 
 century ; but it is a lovely cloister of 
 that better kind of Renaissance which 
 was in truth only a falling back on 
 Romanesque. In the church are 
 memorials of earlier times, classical 
 columns used again, fitted some of 
 them with capitals of the very rudest 
 Romanesque, whose fellows may be 
 found in Worcester and at Hildesheim. 
 Altogether Cori is emphatically a 
 place for a visit. But a word of warn- 
 ing must be given. Cori and Norba 
 cannot be combined so as to see both 
 worthily in a single day. I^et the 
 traveller either make two distinct out- 
 ings from Velletri, or let him take his 
 chance of sleeping at Cori ; it may not 
 be a worse chance than sleeping at 
 Frosinone, where sleep may be had. 
 
136 irtali?» 
 
 Then let him rise up early in the 
 morning and saddle his ass, or, if 
 able-bodied, let him rather make his 
 way on his own feet along the moun- 
 tain-path to Norba. 
 
IRorba* 
 
 \17E will suppose that, the mutual 
 " ^ curiosity of natives and stran- 
 gers having been fully gratified at Cori, 
 the strangers have set out on their 
 way, on mule-back or otherwise. The 
 mountain-track up and down, skirting 
 the lower heights of the Volscian 
 range, opens noble views of the higher 
 mountains inland, of the wide flat 
 below, and • of the sea beyond. But 
 these views are perhaps, on the whole, 
 better enjoyed when the traveller has 
 found a firm foothold within " Norba's 
 ancient wall ' ' than while he has per- 
 sonal experience how 
 
 The patient ass, up flinty paths, 
 Plods with his weary load. 
 137 
 
138 Iftali?. 
 
 Still worse indeed is it when the flinty 
 paths have to be plodded down, and 
 when the weary load needs all his 
 theoretical philosophy to persuade him 
 how thoroughly safe he really is, while 
 the weakness of the flesh surrounds 
 the descent with terrors which he 
 knows to be unreal. At last the ancient 
 wall rises immediately before him ; 
 the hill-side, a small height straight 
 above the path, is climbed on his own 
 feet, and he can presently contemplate 
 at his ease both the wall itself and 
 the prospect which it commands. The 
 last part of the ass-track has become so 
 like a lane anywhere else that we are 
 amazed when we reach the other side 
 of the immediate height of Norba, and 
 find how far below lies the plain from 
 w^hich the almost perpendicular cliffs 
 spring to bear up the forsaken city. 
 For at Norba the curiosity will be al- 
 most wholly on the side of the stranger; 
 in cannot be returned in kind, as at 
 
IRorba* 139 
 
 Cori ; a lone shepherd or two may 
 come to look at him ; he cannot bring 
 together the least approach to a trium- 
 phal procession. For within the wall 
 all is, we cannot say desolate or for- 
 saken, for the crops are there, full and 
 green — '' segetes, ubi' Norba fuW'' — 
 but the ancient circuit is at least empty 
 of all dwelling-places of man. We 
 would fain believe that the space has 
 stood as empty as it now does ever 
 since the people of Norba — less wise, 
 as the event showed, than their neigh- 
 bours of Cora — embraced the cause of 
 Marius with such desperate zeal that 
 they slew themselves and burned their 
 houses rather than let either themselves 
 or their goods fall into the hands of 
 Sulla. This inference might possibly 
 be rash ; for the ancient wall fences in 
 at least one ruin which may be later 
 than the days of the fortunate dictator. 
 But it is clear that Norba, if it recov- 
 ered from this great single blow, 
 
I40 Iftali?. 
 
 gradually dwindled away, to the profit, 
 first of Norma by its side, which still 
 abides, and of Ninfa, at its foot, which 
 has perished only less utterly than 
 Norba itself. 
 
 Cori and Norba are alike cities set 
 on hills, and neither of them has any 
 fear of being hid. But they are set on 
 hills in different senses. Cori occupies 
 the upper part of the sloping hill, and 
 the houses spread down the slope. 
 Norba occupies a large table-land on 
 the edge of the mountains, and its 
 outer wall is carried along the upper 
 rim of a steep and lofty cliff. No 
 dwellings could ever have spread them- 
 selves downwards on the side which 
 looks toward the marshes and the sea. 
 But we should hardly have said the 
 outer wall ; for the height was so care- 
 fully fortified that outlying defences 
 were placed at various points on the 
 side of the cliff wherever the primitive 
 engineers deemed such defences need- 
 
florba* 141 
 
 ful. Within the circuit, again, the 
 arx rose on several terraces ; its high- 
 est point — crowned, we may believe, 
 as usual, by a temple — must have 
 formed a proud object indeed from the 
 vast extent of land and sea which it 
 looks down upon. No other of its 
 ancient neighbours looks down so im- 
 mediately on the great Pomptine flat 
 as Norba does, as none looks down 
 from so great a height. Cori rather 
 occupies a hill thrown out in front of 
 the mountain ; Norba sits on the edge 
 of the mountain itself, though of course 
 at a much lower elevation than the 
 huge masses further inland. The 
 towers and temples of the city must 
 have had a wonderful effect from the 
 lands below ; as it is, there is nothing 
 to mark the place but the line of wall 
 itself, which does not always stand out 
 in a very marked way from the cliff. 
 It is then perhaps in some sort well 
 that the later Norma has taken the 
 
142 irtali^. 
 
 place of Norba. On the hill of Norba 
 we see that Norma and Norba by no 
 means join one another ; there is a gap 
 between them which, while we are on 
 the mountain, might pass for a valley. 
 But as we look from below, the wind- 
 ing outline of the hills puts this gap 
 out of sight, and Norma and Norba 
 become in appearance one whole. 
 Norma looks like a continuation of 
 Norba ; it might pass for its still in- 
 habited part, perhaps, as at Syracuse 
 and Girgenti, for the elder stronghold 
 within which the city had again shrunk 
 up. From the points where the eye 
 can take in ruined Ninfa at the foot of 
 the cliff, and the further town of Ser- 
 moneta crowning a hill-top far lower 
 than the height of Norba, the whole 
 grouping is wonderful. The view from 
 Norba itself takes in points with which 
 we have become familiar since we first 
 gazed on them from the height of the 
 I^atian Jupiter. But we see them in 
 
IRorba* 143 
 
 new groupings and new proportions ; 
 the islands, prisons for dangerous or 
 discreditable members of the Imperial 
 house, stand out in special prominence 
 in front of the Circsean height — a 
 height so nearly cut off from the main- 
 land that it seems like the greatest of 
 the island group. Nowhere do we 
 better understand what men looked on 
 as a great and strong city in days 
 when they had not yet learned that 
 an element of truer might lurked in 
 what, judged by the standard of Norba, 
 would seem a mere group of molehills 
 by the yellow Tiber. 
 
 As the whole city lay on the top of 
 the hill, the space taken in by the walls 
 is necessarily greater than in those 
 towns where the hill stands distinct, 
 the arx alone crowns the top, and where 
 the town walls are placed lower down. 
 The nature of the construction adapts 
 itself to the needs of the different parts 
 of the circuit. The mass of the wall 
 
144 1Itali5» 
 
 is of polygonal stones, rude, but far 
 less rude than the rudest at Cori. 
 Without being actually laid in regular 
 order, they have a certain tendency to 
 fall into courses as it were of them- 
 selves, and it is not always easy to tell 
 how far the roughness of the stone has 
 been from the beginning, and how far 
 it is due to the action of the weather 
 on stones cut perhaps somewhat less 
 carefully than the finer stones at Cori. 
 But the Norban builders could, when 
 it was worth their while, do something 
 more than this. They could, when 
 they had to make a corner, put 
 together squared stones cut with a 
 good deal of exactness, and when it 
 was convenient that a corner should be 
 rounded off, they could do that too with 
 equal skill. This last was done at 
 the greatest gateway looking towards 
 Norma. Here there is no sign of 
 either lintel, arch, or attempt at arch, 
 to span the opening ; it would almost 
 
Morba. 145 
 
 seem that the gate itself was simply 
 placed across the opening with nothing 
 over it, much as at Tusculum the gate 
 was hung between two pieces of native 
 rock. That the arch was not known 
 to the first builders of Norba, but that 
 they had reached the stage in which 
 men began as it were to stretch forth 
 their hands towards that great inven- 
 tion, is shown by a ruined building 
 — one of the few things within the wall 
 of Norba which can be called even a 
 ruined building — a little way beyond 
 the arx. Here we have a distinct 
 attempt at a vault for the roof ; but it 
 is not the apparent cupola of Mykene 
 and New Grange, nor the apparent 
 barrel- vault of Tusculum. The build- 
 ing is oblong, and the attempted arches 
 rise on both sides, from the small ones 
 as well as from the longer. The ruined 
 state of the building, whatever it was, 
 most unluckily hinders us from seeing 
 how the four vaults, so to call them, 
 
 VOL. II.— 10 
 
146 Iftals^ 
 
 were made to meet in the middle. It 
 must have been a strange problem in 
 construction. Hard by is the other 
 building at which we have already 
 hinted as being of later date. It has 
 real arches and masonry, like that 
 which at Cori is attributed to Sulla's 
 time. But it may as well come before 
 the overthrow of Norba in his day as 
 after it. 
 
 From primaeval and forsaken Norba 
 we go down the hill-side, learning as 
 we go how high Norba stands, to 
 hardly less forsaken, though only 
 mediaeval, Ninfa. Ninfa, unlike Norba, 
 has a few inhabitants ; there is a house 
 and a mill, if not within the fortified 
 enclosure, at least just outside it, and, 
 if the enclosure itself contains no actual 
 dwelling-places of man, it contains 
 abundance of buildings which have 
 once been so. One can hardly fancy 
 a greater contrast than that which 
 strikes us between the stern primaeval 
 
IRorba* 147 
 
 wall of Norba, fencing in the thick- 
 standing corn, and the wall of Ninfa, 
 with its towers, its varied and pictur- 
 esque outline, fencing in a crowd of 
 houses, churches, and buildings of 
 every kind, the oldest of which could 
 not have arisen till a thousand years 
 after Norba became desolate. All are 
 now forsaken, roofless, shattered, form- 
 ing one of the most singular gatherings 
 of ruins to be seen anywhere, the 
 mummy, as it has been well called, of 
 a dead town. Ninfa was once a place 
 of some consequence, which played its 
 part in local history ; perhaps the most 
 notable event suggested by its name is 
 that here Alexander III., a Pope who 
 had so much to do with our own his- 
 tory, was consecrated after his famous 
 disputed election. But its position in 
 the deadly flat, close by a stream, led 
 to its ruin ; the malaria was too much 
 for it, and Ninfa ceased to be reckoned 
 among the cities of articulate-speaking 
 
148 irtali2» 
 
 men. Some freak might restore the 
 greatness of Norba ; for there is noth- 
 ing to hinder men living there 
 if the fancy took them ; they cannot 
 Hve at Ninfa without greater changes 
 than a Marius or a Sulla can work. 
 There is something specially striking 
 in a town, whose remains are so exten- 
 sive, standing so utterly desolate. There 
 is something Irish in the look of things 
 at Ninfa, as indeed there is in the look 
 of a good many of the ruined mediaeval 
 sites which often meet us in this 
 region. It is not merely the fact of 
 their being ruined, though there is 
 something Irish in that ; the tall, 
 slender towers, of which there are 
 many both at Ninfa and elsewhere, 
 have a real likeness to many buildings 
 in Ireland. But, though the general 
 look of Ninfa is singularly striking, 
 there is less to be learned from the 
 particular buildings than might have 
 been looked for. They are spread over 
 
IWorba, 149 
 
 several centuries, some of the houses 
 reaching even into Renaissance times. 
 The church of most pretension lies 
 without the walls ; several within them 
 keep their apses and the paintings on 
 them, but little more. The whole 
 is a wilderness of ruins, strange, im- 
 pressive, but hardly venerable. As the 
 ruin of a town, the wreck of many 
 buildings crowded close together, fallen 
 Ninfa has little of the solemnity of our 
 own ruined castles and abbeys. As 
 for the elements of wonder and mys- 
 tery, they dwell in this region on the 
 hill-top, among the mighty masses of 
 stone which the men of an unrecorded 
 age piled together to make Norba. 
 
ScQnt 
 
 TTHE visitor to Segni will find diffi- 
 ^ culties in studying the history on 
 the spot second only to those which he 
 finds at Norba. It is quite certain that 
 he will find no books at Norba, save 
 such as he may take with him, which 
 are not likely to be many. It is possi- 
 ble that there may be books at Segni ; 
 there may lurk in some odd corner 
 erther a hidden scholar with his treas- 
 ured library, or a bookseller of that 
 class, sometimes to be found in old- 
 fashioned places, who dislikes nothing 
 so much as parting with his books. 
 But, if such there be, they do not force 
 themselves on the eye on one's en- 
 trance into Segni. A natural and im- 
 150 
 
QCQWL 151 
 
 portant question is sure to present 
 itself, and — without wings to fly at once 
 to the libraries of Rome — there is no im- 
 mediate means of answering it. Is the 
 name of Signia — now by a very slight 
 change Seg7zi—io be found in any of 
 the lists of the Thirty Cities of Latium ? 
 The lists are many, and the traveller 
 is not likely to carry them all in his 
 head. He may perhaps be able to re- 
 peat the lines in which Macaulay draws 
 the picture of many of them ; and, if 
 so, every step that he takes among 
 the lyatin cities will make him more 
 fully admire the fitness and force of 
 the points and epithets picked out in 
 each case. But at Segni the Lay of 
 Regillus fails him ; he has his quota- 
 tions for Cora and Norba ; he has no 
 quotations for Signia. Still Macaulay 's 
 verses are not a full or formal list of 
 the cities; while, if he argues that 
 Signia lies too much in the heart of the 
 Volscian and Hernican land to have 
 
152 irtali2» 
 
 belonged to the Latin name, he is met 
 by the fact that ' ' Ferentinum of the 
 rock," yet further on, has its place in 
 them alongside of *' Gabia of the pool." 
 He turns to his guide-book — and the 
 guide-book of Gsell-fels, though it 
 sometimes leaves things out, is almost 
 always to be trusted for what it puts 
 in ; he there finds only the entry of 
 the alleged Roman colony of the days 
 of the Tarquins, with the remark that 
 the existing walls seem to point to an 
 earlier origin. And again a thought 
 may occur to him, if not at Segni 
 itself, yet in the later course of the 
 journey of which Segni forms a part — 
 Were the people of ancient Signia 
 specially skilful in the making of 
 mosaic pavements ? There is a kind 
 of work called opus Signinum, a pat- 
 tern of black spots on a white ground, 
 of which there is a good deal at 
 Pompeii, and of which the visitor to 
 Segni will most likely see an example 
 
QCQWU 153 
 
 a few days later at Anagni. The ques- 
 tion is hardly so exciting as the ques- 
 tion as to the position of Signia in the 
 days of the I^atin lycague. But it is 
 one which may suggest itself, and it is 
 one which it will be hard to answer 
 with only the resources which are to 
 be had at Segni itself. The visitor to 
 Segni is thus likely to find himself a 
 little uncomfortable as to more than 
 one point in the history of the place 
 where he stands. And he will feel 
 most uncomfortable of all as to the 
 great point of all with regard to its 
 earliest history. Still, he may for the 
 moment comfort himself by thinking 
 that there are those who might be 
 unkind enough to hint that he would 
 still be equally uncertain if he had a 
 hundred quotations on the tip of his 
 tongue, or if he were in a library with 
 thousands of volumes to turn to. 
 
 But whether Signia was ever a 
 Thirty-city or not — we may be allowed 
 
154 Utal^, 
 
 to follow the local usage of Canterbury, 
 which speaks of "a Six-preacher" — 
 there is no doubt as to its geographical 
 position ; there is no doubt as to the 
 grandeur of its remains. In starting 
 from Velletri, with Algidus and its 
 holm-oaks and its memories of -^quian 
 encampments on our left hand, on the 
 right we turn the corner of the Vol- 
 scian mountains, and the railway 
 carries us along the valley between 
 them and their Hemican rivals. We 
 reach the station of Segni ; we mark 
 more than one town perched on the 
 opposite heights ; we have close by us, 
 in the low ground — reminding us of 
 Ninfa on a smaller scale — the walls of 
 a forsaken fortress, with a shattered 
 tower of wonderful height and slender- 
 ness ; but the walls of Signia still keep 
 themselves hidden among the moun- 
 tains. It is not from the side of Vel- 
 letri, but, as we afterwards learn, from 
 the side of Anagni, that Segni on its 
 
ScgnU 155 
 
 mountain height, and its satellite of 
 Gavignano, perched on a smaller de- 
 tached hill in front, form striking fea- 
 tures in the landscape. 
 
 Segni belongs to the same class of 
 hill-fortress as Norba, not the same 
 class as Cori. It occupies, not the top 
 of a conical hill, but a table-land, if 
 we may apply that name to so narrow 
 a space, on the mountain itself. The 
 distinction is well marked by compar- 
 ing it with Gavignano just below, 
 which is one of the chief objects in the 
 immediate view from the height of 
 Segni. The difference is just the same 
 as the difference between Norba and 
 Sermoneta, though Gavignano has 
 more the air of being an outpost of 
 Segni than Sermoneta has of being an 
 outpost of Norba. The hill-top which 
 Segni crowns is long and narrow, at 
 some points very narrow indeed, so as 
 to give to the space within the walls 
 nearly the shape of a figure of eight. 
 
156 1Ftali2. 
 
 The space within is neither wholly 
 forsaken, as at Norba, nor all crowd- 
 ed with dwellings, as at Cori. The 
 modern town has withdrawn into one 
 quarter of the old enclosure ; but it has 
 not, as in so many other cases, with- 
 drawn into the ancient citadel. The 
 site of the arx of Signia, rising but 
 little above the general level of the 
 hill-top, but placed well so as to com- 
 mand what we may call the isthmus 
 between the two parts of the town, 
 forms no part of the dwelling-place of 
 the modern Signians ; but under the 
 name of Passegiata it does form part 
 of their pleasure-ground. The modern 
 town has retreated into the other loop 
 of the figure of eight, that which lies 
 furthest from the traveller as he 
 draws near from Velletri, but to 
 which the course of the road will neces- 
 sarily take him first. He may enter 
 by a gateway of Roman date, and if he 
 so does his eye will soon be struck by 
 
ScQnU 157 
 
 the great number of graceful fragments 
 of mediaeval work to be found within 
 the narrow streets of Segni. The town 
 has most likely been for ages too poor 
 to follow the example of its richer 
 neighbours in replacing beauty by ugli- 
 ness. But he will do better to keep 
 for a while from entering the inhabited 
 part of the town. I^et him first make 
 the circuit of the ancient walls. And 
 he can hardly doubt whether to turn 
 to the right hand or to the left. The 
 claims of the left are in this case over- 
 whelming. I/)ng before he has reached 
 the town, he must have seen far away 
 on the hill the most precious of the 
 remains of Signia, the gateway which 
 stands, forsaken but still untouched, 
 beckoning him, as it were, to make his 
 way first of all to the most instructive 
 thing which the primaeval city has to 
 show him. 
 
 But before he can reach either the 
 Roman or the primaeval gate he will 
 
158 irtai^. 
 
 have begun to notice the character of 
 the wall. The construction is hardly 
 so rude as the rudest parts of the wall 
 at Cori, but a great deal of it belongs 
 to the same general stage of engineer- 
 ing progress. The huge polygonal 
 stones are heaped together ; but one 
 might note perhaps two stages, yet 
 often intermingled — one, where the 
 sides only of the stones are cut so as to 
 fit their neighbours ; another, where the 
 outer faces are also smoothed of what 
 is called ' ' rustication ' ' in late Renais- 
 sance work. In the first they are not 
 left so utterly in a state of nature as 
 they are at Cori. Their sides have been 
 cut to the shape which was thought 
 best for the work of piling them to- 
 gether. In a later stage, also seen at 
 Cori, the outer sides, those which stand 
 free from the scarped wall, are also cut ; 
 but it is not always easy to' say how 
 much of the change of the surface is 
 due to art and how much to weather. 
 
SegnL 159 
 
 A.t Segni the peculiar shape of the 
 enclosure makes it somewhat hard to 
 follow the line of the walls without a 
 ground-plan, and a ground-plan is not 
 to be had at Segni merely by asking for 
 it. But it is plain that, in many parts 
 at least, on the whole side of the hill 
 which lies exposed to the open valley, 
 and on the head of the whole promon- 
 tory, there was, whenever the ground 
 allowed and required it, a double wall, 
 one on the edge of the hill, the other 
 at some distance down its side. The 
 most famous of the gates of Segni, 
 locally known as Porta Saracenesca, 
 leads from the outside world into the 
 outer enclosure, at a point well 
 chosen for military purposes, close to 
 the edge, and commanding the path 
 by which the traveller will most likely 
 make his way to it. And a mighty 
 gate it is, and one that holds no small 
 place in the history of the art of con- 
 struction. It is one of those instances 
 
i6o Iftal^. 
 
 which show that their builders were 
 still ignorant of the principle of the 
 arch, but that they were, so to speak, 
 in search of it. They had not yet 
 learned how to make the top of an 
 opening out of stones really so arranged 
 as to stand by mutual support ; but 
 they were striving after something 
 beyond the mere horizontal lintel rest- 
 ing on two vertical supports. The 
 builders of Segni had not got so far as 
 those of Veii or Tusculum ; as they 
 had no idea of the true principle of the 
 arch, so they had no idea of its form ; 
 all they could do was to place two 
 horizontal stones with sides sloping 
 inwards immediately under the lintel. 
 In truth, the construction is still purely 
 that of the lintel, and nothing else ; but 
 the form chosen shows a certain vain 
 striving after something different. As 
 such, it is no small lesson which it 
 teaches ; and the effect of the great 
 stones thus piled together to form the 
 
SCQWU I6l 
 
 entrance is striking and solemn. It 
 carries us back from days which on 
 our side of the Alps we deem ancient, 
 but when the arts of construction were 
 as well known as they are now, to 
 days when men were making the first 
 rude attempts towards the greatest of 
 constructive inventions. Attempts of 
 this kind, simply because they are mere 
 attempts, failures and not successes, 
 have a more ancient look than those 
 examples where the builders were 
 fully satisfied with the lintel construc- 
 tion and attempted no other. In point 
 of fact, whatever their relative date, 
 they are later in idea, as showing a 
 desire to innovate on the received form, 
 some instances of which were at last 
 crowned with success. 
 
 It is not easy to see how this gate 
 came by its local name. One can 
 understand the process of thought by 
 which the roofing at Tusculum, which 
 has the outward shape of the pointed 
 
i62 irtali5» 
 
 arch, came to be called arco Gotico ; 
 it is harder to guess why the great 
 primaeval gate of Segni should be 
 attributed to Saracens. It is far from 
 being the only primaeval gateway in 
 the whole circuit. No less than five 
 have been counted between the outer 
 and inner walls, and two more in the 
 part of the enclosure occupied by the 
 modem town, where the two lines of 
 wall coincide. Hard by Porta Saracen- 
 esca itself is a small sally-port ; of the 
 others, the larger ones, like Porta 
 Saracenesca itself, stand at right angles 
 to the wall. Some of them at least 
 show the same strivings after the arch 
 as their greater neighbour. The nature 
 of the ground forbids the arx from 
 reaching any great height above the 
 rest of the city ; but its place is easily 
 marked. It contains a singular large 
 cistern of Roman work, and close by 
 is one of those junctions of different 
 ages which always preach to us a liv- 
 
Scgnl 163 
 
 ing historic lesson. Here is the terrace 
 of a temple wrought with stones of 
 the primitive construction. On this 
 primitive work rise the remains of the 
 cella in Roman masonry, and the 
 Roman wall of the cel/a is now carried 
 up to form a church. Now, at least 
 the church is of no architectural value, 
 but it is none the less a witness to the 
 greatest of all the changes which the 
 hoary walls of Signia have looked 
 upon. 
 
 lyanded, then, in Christian Segni, 
 we may, perhaps, remember that one 
 of the greatest of the Popes was born 
 either in the town itself or in its satel- 
 lite of Gavignano. But which was 
 the actual spot ? Our one guide avail- 
 able at the moment seems to doubt 
 between the two. In either case we 
 see, if we do not tread, the place which 
 gave birth to the third and greatest of 
 the Innocents. We find, too, that a 
 Papal palace of Segni was swept away 
 
i64 Iftal^. 
 
 by the Duke of Alva in that strange 
 war which the Catholic King Philip 
 waged, not, of course, against the 
 Vicar of St. Peter, but against the tem- 
 poral Sovereign of the Roman States. 
 We are thus, even at Segni, plunged 
 among Papal memories ; we look over 
 the valley of the Trerus across to 
 Anagni, and they press upon us with 
 double force. We hasten to the spot 
 where a lesser Pope than Innocent, but 
 still a mighty one, died like a dog after 
 his fox-like entrance and his lion-like 
 reign. 
 
liter ab Brunbisium. 
 I. Hnagni* 
 
 LI E who goes steadily from Rome to 
 ^ * Brindisi, seeing what comes in 
 his way by the easiest manner of 
 going, will not come very much 
 oftener on the track of Horace and his 
 friends than he to whom Brindisi is 
 the haven for Egypt or India, and 
 who rushes thither as fast as he can 
 along the Italian side of the Hadriatic. 
 The three routes will of necessity co- 
 incide at Bari. To Bari the traveller 
 who starts from Rome must add Bene- 
 vento, and he may, without much 
 trouble, add Aricia. But the sites 
 that lie around the Alban mount, the 
 Alban lake, and its lesser fellow— the 
 165 
 
i66 irtal^. 
 
 relics in short of so many volcanoes, 
 wet and dry, the possible place of 
 Alba, the more certain relics of its 
 child Albano, the path by which the 
 chariot of Marcellus climbed to the 
 temple of which the last Stewart swept 
 away what time had left — all these 
 seem naturally to form a group and a 
 subject by themselves. So may the 
 objects for which Velletri supplies the 
 best centre, — the hill, the walls, the 
 temples of Cori, ''Norba's ancient 
 wall," with neither an inhabitant nor 
 an habitation within it — Ninfa's more 
 modem wall, equally without an in- 
 habitant, but with ruined habitations, 
 ruined churches, in abundance — all 
 these may be connected with an iter 
 ad Brujidisium, but they hardly form 
 an actual part of it. Let our traveller 
 design to start in modern fashion by 
 railway — we were going to say in 
 prosaic modern fashion, only noway of 
 going could well be more prosaic than 
 
Bnaank 167 
 
 that followed by Horace ; let him study 
 his time-tables, and he will find that he 
 can, if so minded, visit Segni and go 
 back to Rome in a single day ; he can 
 hardly do so by Anagni. Not that we ' 
 should counsel such a way of dealing 
 with the walks, the gates, the temple- 
 foundations, that crown the height of 
 Signia. It would most likely be found 
 possible to sleep at Segni. Gsell-fels, 
 prince of guidebook-makers, recom- 
 mends the locanda there as ' ' reinlich 
 und eidlich," and the second adjective 
 does not mean that the traveller will 
 be in any danger of being sworn at. 
 Still some may be more inclined to go 
 to Segni and back again from Velletri, 
 where there is no doubt as to living 
 quite happily at the sign of the Cock. 
 Anagni, Anagnia of the Hernicans, is 
 the beginning of something new. It 
 is the first point distinctly beyond the 
 neighbourhood of Rome. It is not 
 unlikely then that such a traveller as 
 
i68 fltnl^. 
 
 we have supposed may make Anagni 
 his first halting-place. And at Anagni 
 he may certainly rest for the night, 
 though his quarters may be a come- 
 down not only from Rome but from 
 Velletri. But if, by any chance, he 
 takes the earlier points in some other 
 course ; above all, if he visits Segni by 
 any course, he will be all the more 
 open to visit Anagni. The city of 
 Boniface VIII., almost beckons to him 
 to cross the valley and the stream. 
 For it is as the city of Boniface VIII., 
 the place where he so strangely met 
 his end, the prisoner — not the last 
 Pope who was fated so to be — of a 
 French ruler, that Anagni will most 
 likely present itself to the mind. In 
 mediaeval history Anagni is a thorough- 
 ly Papal city, and to this day it keeps 
 a Papal impress on its buildings, a 
 Papal impress meaning something 
 different at Anagni from what it means 
 at Rome. Anagni did not remain a 
 
Bnagni. 169 
 
 favourite Papal dwelling-place ; it 
 Lherefore did not suffer at the hands 
 of Renaissance Popes as Rome lived to 
 suffer. But, even in the first glimpse 
 of the hill-city, we may well go back 
 to much earlier times. We may re- 
 member that first Pyrrhos, then Han- 
 nibal, halted thither, each on his vain 
 march towards the Rome which neither 
 was to conquer. And when we have 
 reached Hannibal and Pyrrhos, we 
 may go back to earlier ages. There is ' 
 a point of view in which Anagnia is, 
 before all things, the head of the con- 
 federation of the Hernicans. There 
 is no people of ancient Italy of whom 
 it is harder to get any distinct idea 
 than this stout hill folk. In treading 
 Old-I^atin or Volscian ground we can, 
 even without book, call up a few per- 
 sonal names, a few personal figures, 
 of particular Volscians or Old-Iyatins ; 
 we cannot ca^l up the name of a single 
 Hernican, historical or legendary. All 
 
170 irtal^. 
 
 that we know of them is their geo- 
 graphical position, and the one great 
 event in their political history ; and 
 those tell us a great deal. They must 
 have been a people of no small account 
 whom Spurius Cassius thought worthy 
 to fill the third place in the great 
 Triple I^eague along with Rome and 
 Latium. And this, though, as having 
 neither one great city like Rome, nor 
 a crowd of cities like I^atium, they 
 hardly seem to form a power on the 
 level with their two comrades. But 
 their geographical position gave them 
 a special importance. Thrust in as 
 they were between ^quians and Vol- 
 scians, no alliance could be more prec- 
 ious than theirs to Rome and lyatium. 
 They were the most exposed member 
 of the League, the outpost of Latium, 
 as Latium itself was the outpost of 
 Rome. Of all the three, the brunt 
 of the struggle must hav.e fallen most 
 fiercely upon them ; the hills of An- 
 
Bna^ni. 171 
 
 agni must have looked down on many 
 a fierce struggle with the invading 
 occupants of the opposite range of 
 mountains. The walls of Anagni 
 must have endured or yielded to many 
 a fierce attack of their ever-threatening 
 neighbours. As we look out from one 
 of the heights of this region to another, 
 we better understand the political 
 relations of the endless little com- 
 munities which thus lived on in one 
 another's sight. The ally or the 
 enemy was close at the door ; there 
 was not even any need to climb up an 
 akropolis to see what was coming 
 in the way of attack or deliverance. 
 Rome and Veii could not see one 
 another ; between them therefore 
 there could be long periods of simple 
 peace, without warfare and without 
 alliance. Rome and Tusculum could 
 see one another ; but they were not, so 
 to speak, ostentatiously thrust into 
 one another's sight. But look out 
 
172 ftal^^ 
 
 from Segni, and your chief business is 
 to look at Anagni ; look out from An- 
 agni, and your chief business is to look 
 either at Segni or at Ferentino, ac- 
 cording to which way you are looking. 
 If in some lights the long circuit 
 of Segni on its mountain-top is less 
 clearly seen, the lesser hill of Gavig- 
 nano shows itself in front as its symbol 
 or substitute. Cities standing in this 
 relation to one another could not fail 
 to be either bitter enemies or close 
 allies. They must be always doing 
 something to one another in the way 
 either of friendship or of enmity. It 
 was then no small stroke of policy 
 when Spurius Cassius, of whom it has 
 been so truly said that he was the first 
 Roman whose greatness is really his- 
 torical, won the Hernican land and 
 its head Anagnia to the alliance of 
 Rome and Latium. He did indeed 
 put a bit in the mouth of the advanc- 
 ing Volscian. 
 
Bnagni. 173 
 
 We come then to Hernican Anagnia, 
 Papal Anagni, to a hill-city girded in 
 by mighty walls. The hill of Anagni 
 is not, like the hills of Segni and 
 Norba, an actual piece of the mountain 
 itself; it is a hill, an isolated hill, a 
 hill so large that, no less than at Segni 
 and Norba, the city is wholly on the 
 height ; the walls merely fence in the 
 hill- top. That hill -top is in some 
 parts wonderfully narrow ; in the mid- 
 dle of the town there is hardly more 
 than the width of the chief street be- 
 tween the slopes on either side. And 
 at its eastern end the hill rises to form 
 a truer akropolis, with a steeper path 
 up to it, than can be seen at Segni or 
 Norba. Round the whole of this space, 
 allowing for some late patchings, run 
 the ancient walls of Anagnia, and a 
 mighty and wonderful work they are. 
 But who built them ? We must con- 
 fess that we walked round about them 
 and, as we thought, marked well their 
 
174 irtai^» 
 
 bulwarks, in the full belief that we 
 were studying the works of the ancient 
 Hernicans. ]>t no one fancy that we 
 did not mark the difference between 
 the walls of Anagnia and the strange 
 and mysterious forms which may be 
 seen at Cori and Segni. The walls of 
 Anagni bring us back within the or- 
 dinary range of wall-building as prac- 
 tised by ordinary mortals. Hernican 
 Anagnia did not come within either 
 Ivord Macaulay's Latin or his Ktruscan 
 catalogue ; but, had it done so, there 
 would have been no temptation to 
 speak of its bulwarks as ' ' no work of 
 earthly men,'' or as — 
 
 Reared by the hands of giants 
 For godlike kings of old. 
 
 The walls of Anagni are wonderful 
 only as the great works of Rome are 
 wonderful. They are built by men to 
 whom it was more natural to put to- 
 
Bna^ni. 175 
 
 gether rectangular stones with some 
 kind of regularity than it was to 
 pile together huge polygons anyhow. 
 They were built by men who 
 thoroughly understood the principle 
 of the arch, and knew how to use it 
 with all boldness. They remain, in 
 various degrees of preservation, round 
 the greater part of the circuit of the 
 town. In some parts they are broken 
 down altogether ; in some they are 
 supplanted, in others merely patched, 
 by walls of later date ; in short, they 
 have gone through all the casualties 
 which a wall is likely to go through 
 in the course of two millenniums or 
 so ; but the wall of modern Anagni, 
 as a whole, is still the old wall of An- 
 agnia. The construction differs a good 
 deal in different parts as to the size 
 of the stones and as to their nature, 
 and as to the degree of rudeness or 
 finish in the work. In some parts 
 the wall stands single ; in others it is 
 
176 ftal^» 
 
 strengthened by further defences, but- 
 tresses rather than towers — defences, 
 by-the-way, which must be carefully 
 distinguished from the additions of 
 later times. But one general charac- 
 ter reigns throughout. The stones, 
 greater and smaller, smoother and 
 rougher, are always rectangular, and 
 always laid with some measure of regu- 
 larity. In some cases ranges of larger 
 and smaller stones alternate ; in one 
 part of the wall stones of two natures 
 and colours almost alternate. The 
 chief material is a light-coloured stone 
 exactly like the puff-stone of Glouces- 
 tershire, the material of Berkeley Cas- 
 tle and of not a few other buildings 
 in that neighbourhood. This is eked 
 out here and there by the dark vol- 
 canic peperino, which, towards the 
 south-eastern part of the wall, is used 
 much more freely. The general effect, 
 wherever the wall is at all perfect, is 
 
BnagnU 177 
 
 statel}^ and striking in the extreme, 
 both in form and colour. 
 
 Now was it only a dream when we 
 tracked out these walls, and took a 
 certain pleasure in speaking of them 
 as Hernican walls? We come back 
 to our library ; we take down the 
 Dictionary of Geography ; we turn to 
 the article ' ' Anagnia, ' ' and we find 
 that by far the best contributor to the 
 series, Mr. E. H. Bunbury, has 
 another tale to tell. Our feelings are 
 damped when he says, ' ' The only 
 remains extant there are of Roman 
 date and of little interest." As to the 
 ' ' little interest, ' ' we venture to have 
 our own opinion in any case ; we 
 should hold that so great an extent 
 of ancient wall still bounding an in- 
 habited town was an object of high 
 interest, even if it could be shown to 
 belong to the latest days which could 
 come under the definition of ' ' Roman 
 
 VOL. II. 12 
 
date." But what is Roman date? 
 Mr. Bunbury sends us to the corre- 
 spondence of the Emperor Marcus 
 with CorneUus Fronto. We hope he 
 does not ask us to believe that the 
 walls are later than the days of the 
 philosophic Emperor. For, if he will 
 allow them to be as old as that, we 
 can call the Emperor himself to wit- 
 ness that they must be a good deal 
 older. For Marcus himself read an 
 inscription over one of the gates, ''Fla- 
 men same samentumy He did not 
 know what ' ' sa?nentum ' ' meant, and 
 we cannot find the word in our Latin 
 dictionary. But a native explained to 
 him its meaning in the Hernican lan- 
 guage ; it meant the skin of the victim 
 which the flamen put on his head 
 when he entered the town. We do 
 not want to be unreasonable in our 
 dates, if only we can let in our Her- 
 nicans at some comer. When we 
 looked at the walls, we saw at once 
 
Bna^nL 179 
 
 that they had no fellowship with the 
 primaeval works at Cori and at Segni ; 
 they did seem to us to have fellow- 
 ship with the works of the Tarquins 
 at Rome. We shall be quite happy if 
 Mr. Bunbury will allow us to put the 
 walls as early as the year B.C. 307. 
 The next year Anagnia sank from a 
 Hemican city, a free ally of Rome, 
 into a town whose people were bur- 
 thened with Roman citizenship without 
 the Roman franchise. If we may 
 carry back walls over whose gates 
 Hernican inscriptions could be read 
 between four and five hundred years 
 later, to a date as nearly as that, we 
 shall have done all that we could wish. 
 They will be walls of the days of Her- 
 nican independence, walls on which 
 Hannibal and Pyrrhos have looked. 
 
 One thing is plain, that the builders 
 of the walls of Anagnia, like the buil- 
 ders of the cloaca at Rome, but most 
 unlike the elder builders of Cora and 
 
i8o ftali2» 
 
 Signia, knew as well as any men how 
 to turn arches. On the highest point 
 of the town, by the modern gate which 
 looks out towards Ferentino, within 
 the circuit of the ancient arx, we may 
 still see, blocked, partly hidden by the 
 modern gate, disguised by the arrange- 
 ments of the mediaeval castle, the 
 double gate of the ancient wall. It 
 is perfectly plain, but with arches 
 thoroughly well turned, with a double 
 range of voussoirs. A smaller arch of 
 the same workmanship beside them 
 looks almost as if it had been blocked 
 from the beginning. The arx itself, 
 it should be remembered, had its sepa- 
 rate wall within that of the city, a 
 noble fragment of which, of exactly 
 the same character as the town wall, 
 is still to be seen in a narrow street a 
 little lower down. 
 
 When we actually reach Anagni, 
 there can be no doubt that the charac- 
 ter in which it chiefly strikes us is 
 
Bna^nt i8i 
 
 that of the city of the Hernican walls, 
 if Hernican walls we may call them. 
 But historically Anagni is so far more 
 famous as the city of mediaeval Popes 
 that it is fitting that it should have 
 something to show in that character 
 also. The town is rich in mediaeval 
 fragments. The main street, in its 
 winding courses, displays long ranges 
 of blocked arcades, round and pointed, 
 which, when open, must have given it, 
 narrow and often dim as it is, no small 
 measure of stateliness. Not a few 
 buildings stand out with arches of 
 vast height, and boldness, suggesting, 
 as it is fit that one papal city should 
 suggest to another, the mighty works 
 of Rome's absent Bishops at Avignon. 
 Not remarkable for height, but most 
 remarkable for their span, are the ex- 
 ceedingly bold arches which support 
 the communal palace, once, it is said, 
 the dwelling of the Popes, a building 
 which, on its northern side, shows a 
 
i82 1ftal^. 
 
 range of windows which savour of 
 France or England rather than of 
 Italy. The houses with their stair- 
 cases often present highly picturesque 
 shapes, which in one house in the 
 main street, where the outside stair- 
 case is sheltered by two arches resting 
 on a graceful column, grow into a 
 form of genuine beauty. And an ele- 
 gant form of double window, two 
 round arches divided by a slender 
 shaft, is characteristic of the architect- 
 ure of Anagni. It is needless to add 
 that at Anagni, as everywhere else in 
 Italy, most of these relics of the skill 
 of former times have been mercilessly 
 disfigured and mutilated. 
 
 In the ecclesiastical line the other 
 churches supply a few good fragments 
 of the same character as those in the 
 domestic building ; but the cathedral 
 church within the arx is the onl}^ one 
 which has the least claim to be looked 
 
Bnagnu 183 
 
 on as a striking whole. It stands boldly 
 on the edge of the hill with its east 
 end — that is, what would be east ac- 
 cording to northern rules, for it is in 
 truth nearly west — rising up nobly with 
 its three apses in good Romanesque 
 style, while a stately bell-tower of the 
 more massive sort, though sadly 
 marred on two sides, stands near the 
 east end which should be west. The 
 crypt is in a somewhat ruder form of 
 the same style. The whole outside 
 of the church is worth study ; the in- 
 side is of an early and massive type of 
 the Italian Gothic, always, unless in 
 the case of some unusual merit, less 
 satisfactory than Italian Romanesque. 
 The sacristy contains the vestments of 
 Innocent III. and Boniface VIII., and 
 a good many other curious objects. 
 The church is just now suffering 
 restoration ; let us hope that nothing 
 very dreadful will happen to it. There, 
 
i84 Iftali^. 
 
 at least, seems no disposition to pull 
 down the apse, after the pattern of the 
 church which Popes and Emperors 
 alike have decreed to be the mother- 
 church of Rome and of the world. 
 
II. fcvcntino. 
 
 TTAlyY contains two places bearing 
 * the name of Ferentinum or Feren- 
 tino, as England contains two places 
 — ^perhaps more — bearing the several 
 names of lyceds, Stafford, Birmingham, 
 Hereford, Cambridge, Washington, 
 Rochester, and others more obvious. 
 And as the Northumbrian Rochester 
 is also very conveniently written jRut- 
 chester, so the Etruscan Ferentinum is 
 also conveniently written Ferentia. On 
 an iter ad Brundisium we cannot pos- 
 sibly have anything to do with Etrus- 
 can Ferentia ; our business lies with 
 that Ferentinum which, according to 
 the Itineraries, was to be found on the 
 Via Latina between Anagnia and 
 
 f ^^ Of TM( 
 
 tJNIVERSITl 
 
 $ll^WN^ 
 
 / 
 
i86 fftali?. 
 
 Frusino, and which is to be found 
 there still. But if the name of the 
 southern Ferentinum is more certain 
 than that of its fellow, its ancient na- 
 tionality is less certain. Its historical 
 position is Hernican ; it lies between 
 Hernican Anagnia and Hernican 
 Frusino ; yet it is also spoken of as 
 Volscian, as it may well have become 
 in the endless warfare of those ever- 
 shifting nations. Yet it is in other 
 company that we should be best pleased 
 to find it. Our earliest remembrance 
 of the name places '' Ferentinum of 
 the rock'' among the Thirty Cities, 
 and gives it no mean place among them. 
 We go to the spot with the lines ring- 
 ing in our ears which place its warriors 
 under the rule of proud Tarquin him- 
 self, on the spot where — 
 
 ... in the centre thickest 
 Were ranged the shields of foes, 
 
 And from the centre loudest 
 The cry of battle rose. 
 
ffcrentino, 187 
 
 Yet, even without book, we may have 
 been a little surprised both to find a 
 Thirty-city so far in the heart of the 
 Volscian and Hernican hills, and to 
 find its warriors marshalled along 
 with such distant comrades as Tibur 
 and Pedum and ' ' Gabii of the pool. ' ' 
 And, when we come back to our 
 books, a horrible thought presses it- 
 self upon us more and more, a thought 
 that Ferentinum may have no right to 
 any place in that list at all. The name 
 seems to be I^ord Macaulay's guess — 
 among a hundred other guesses — at 
 the manifestly corrupt name which 
 comes next before Gabii in Dionysios' 
 list of the I^atin cities. Some read as 
 near to our mark as Fortinei ; so we 
 may hope for the best ; but remember- 
 ing where Ferentinum stands, very far 
 from Gabii, we confess that our hopes 
 are small. 
 
 In obedience to the Itinerary, it is 
 from Anagni that we make our way 
 
i88 irtal^, 
 
 to Ferentino. And as we go from 
 Anagni to Ferentino, we better take in 
 the special position of Anagni on the 
 top of its isolated hill. Till we have 
 gone some little distance, we are hard- 
 ly conscious that Anagni is there at 
 all ; gradually the bell-tower rises into 
 view, and the rest of the city follows. 
 A few miles only lead us from the hill 
 of Anagni to the hill of Ferentino. At 
 the first glance it may be that the 
 spot which we have reached does not 
 specially strike as ' ' Ferentinum of the 
 rock.'' It does not seem to stand on 
 such steep cliffs as many other hill- 
 fortresses, Norba pre-eminently among 
 them. But, when we begin to follow 
 the line of the walls, we find out that, 
 whether I^ord Macaulay is right or 
 wrong in speaking of Ferentinum at 
 all, he has at least chosen his epithet 
 wisely. Ferentinum is Ferentinum of 
 the rock. Large parts of the wall 
 stand directly on vast masses of rock, 
 
ffetenttno. 
 
 and sometimes rock and wall almost 
 lose themselves in one another. And 
 the walls of Ferentino certainly yield 
 in interest to none of our series. They 
 are still standing through the greater 
 part of their ancient circuit, and for the 
 most part they are of two manifest 
 dates, differing in material and con- 
 struction. There is an original lower 
 part of the wall, built of huge blocks 
 of lias which we may describe as rude, 
 but less rude than the rudest work at 
 Cori. The height to which this earliest 
 construction of all reaches differs in 
 different parts, but it has in most parts 
 been patched and raised, not only by 
 later repairs of all manner of dates, but 
 long before then by a construction 
 of very respectable antiquity, which 
 would seem venerable if it were not for 
 the elder and more massive stones be- 
 neath it. The later work has a gen- 
 eral likeness to the walls of Anagnia 
 both in construction and material, and 
 
it is distinguished from the more primi- 
 tive work by the same mark. The 
 pilers of the elder stones had no notion 
 of the arch ; the builders of the later 
 wall were perfectly familiar with it. 
 The only complete opening of the 
 earlier work is a small postern with 
 merely inclined sides ; but in one of 
 the ancient gates, not far from the 
 modern gate by which the visitor is 
 most likely to enter, stones of the ear- 
 lier date support an arch of the second 
 date. This ancient entrance is, as usual, 
 warily placed ; the giants, or whoever 
 they were, from the days of Tiryns 
 onwards, knew perfectly well how to 
 take a military advantage of any en- 
 emy who might attack their strong- 
 holds. Another gate, now known as 
 Porta Maggiore, is a much more elab- 
 orate work, with its inner and outer 
 arch still remaining. Here the gate is 
 placed with great skill, advanced in 
 front at a point where the wall turns 
 
fferentino* 191 
 
 at an angle. The wall may be followed, 
 and followed to great advantage, 
 through the more part of its circuit. 
 One hardly knows whether to count it 
 gain or loss that the path becomes 
 most difficult just at the point where, 
 through large later repairs, the wall 
 becomes least interesting. When we 
 have to scramble — all at least save Alp- 
 ine climbers — with constant thoughts 
 for the safety of our legs and feet, we 
 are less able to take in the differences 
 in the various forms of construction, or 
 to consider the dates to which we may 
 be inclined to refer each. In the more 
 instructive parts of the walls of Feren- 
 tino no such necessity is laid upon us ; 
 they may be studied with perfect ease, 
 and the outlook from the various points 
 of their circuit may be enjoyed at the 
 same time. And at one point, not far 
 from the Porta Maggiore, it will be 
 well to go down the hill a little way to 
 study the long inscription cut in the 
 
192 ftal^^ 
 
 rock in honour of a local worthy and 
 magistrate, Aulus Quinctilius by name, 
 who seems to have played much the 
 same part at Perentinum in pagan 
 days which Sir William Harpur played 
 ages later at Bedford. He founded 
 everything that, according to the no- 
 tions of his day, could be founded. 
 Among other things he ordained that 
 thirty bushels of nuts should be yearly 
 given to be scrambled for by the boys 
 of Ferentinum, without distinction of 
 bond or free. Now is the will of this 
 pious founder carried out ? Are there 
 any Italian Charity Commissioners to 
 look into these matters, and to see 
 that the boys get their nuts ? Or, if 
 the scrambling for nuts be deemed a 
 nuisance — yet many well-remembered 
 scraps of I^atin plead on its behalf- 
 will they devise a scheme for the better 
 employment of the funds ? Or has the 
 benefaction of the benevolent Quinc- 
 tilius, like some benefactions nearer 
 
Jerentino. 193 
 
 home, been lost altogether? Two or 
 three years ago the Times was filled 
 with letters complaining how a chari- 
 table foundation in Somerset had 
 vanished altogether, and how the 
 founder's monument, once standing in 
 the church, had been buried under a 
 neighbouring barn. In one point at 
 least the benevolent Aulus of Feren- 
 tinum has been more lucky. When 
 Ferentinum had quatuorviri, they did 
 not bury people in their temples, still 
 less did they set up monuments in 
 their temples to people who were not 
 buried in them. So the monument 
 which commemorates the bounty of 
 Aulus Quinctilius stands in the open 
 air clear enough to be seen, well fenced 
 in withal, which the visitor may per- 
 haps regret, as a little time may be 
 wasted in searching for the key. But 
 do his benefactions go on? We will 
 not hint at their having been alienated 
 by Goths or Vandals, by East- Roman 
 
 VOL II.— 13 
 
194 irtai^. 
 
 exarchs or Lombard princes. Can we 
 trust the really dangerous characters 
 in these parts of the world, Popes, 
 Popes' nephews, Roman princes, and 
 Roman cardinals, who pull down 
 buildings and steal their columns to 
 make their own palaces and villas? 
 Perhaps some of them may have swal- 
 lowed up the funds which should go in 
 nuts to the boys of Ferentinum. 
 
 We have been writing as we 
 dreamed on the spot. As at Anagni, 
 we wish — we must confess the weak- 
 ness — to see independent Hernicans 
 wherever we can. It gives us therefore 
 a little shock when we come back and 
 turn to our books, and find the walls 
 of Hernican Ferentinum spoken of, 
 without any special emotion, as '' Ro- 
 man.'* We look up again in a mo- 
 ment, and ask. What is Roman ? At 
 Ferentinum the word certainly means 
 something quite different from what it 
 commonly means in Britain and North- 
 
jfercntino, 195 
 
 em Gaul. There we are happy if we 
 light on anything earlier than the 
 third century a.d. Here no one asks 
 us to accept any date later than Sulla ; 
 some will allow us to go as far back as 
 the middle of the second century B.C. 
 We are allowed to think that the walls 
 of Ferentinum were in being when old 
 Carthage and old Corinth were still 
 standing. But we have not yet got to 
 our great piece of evidence. Ferentino 
 contains inscriptions much older and 
 more important — though about the 
 comparative importance some might 
 raise a doubt — than Aulus Quinctilius 
 and his nuts. But we must get to them 
 by the proper road ; we must get into 
 what once was the arx, what is now 
 the ecclesiastical quarter. Now, at 
 places like Ferentino, ecclesiastical 
 and domestic buildings seem like some- 
 thing kindly thrown into the bargain. 
 We go to look at walls, not at churches 
 or houses ; so we get something more 
 
196 "fftali^* 
 
 than we asked for when we find that 
 Ferentino contains many houses which 
 are worth at least a glance, and several 
 churches which are worth much more 
 than a glance. Indeed at Ferentino 
 the study of walls and that of churches 
 cannot be kept asunder. That some 
 of the great stones have been taken to 
 build the small and now disused church 
 of Saint lyawrence is a slight matter. 
 The most striking feature of Ferentino 
 in any distant view consists of the mass 
 of buildings which is formed by piling 
 the cathedral church, the bell-tower, 
 and the Bishop's palace, on the walls 
 of the arx, as a mighty sub-structure. 
 The walls of the arx show the same 
 two dates as the walls of the tower. 
 In one part we have only the vast rude 
 stones of the first period ; at another 
 part they support the upper range of 
 the second. The first no one will re- 
 fuse to our Hernicans, to Hernicans 
 older than Spurius Cassius ; but how 
 
fferentino. 197 
 
 about the second, the *' Roman " date ? 
 This is claimed in several inscriptions 
 as the work of the censors Aulus 
 Hirtius and Marcus lyollius — censors, 
 that is, not of Rome but of Ferentinum. 
 The inscription may be seen in the 
 first volume of the great Corpus In- 
 scriptionum Latinarum, p. 238, and its 
 closer likeness is given at fol. Ixvii., 
 Ixviii. of the Priscae Latinitatis Monu- 
 menta Epigraphica. Now Aulus Hir- 
 tius and Marcus lyOllius are names of 
 a frightfully modern sound, suggesting 
 well-known persons of the days of 
 Divus Julius and Divus Augustus. 
 But no one asks us to think of them 
 here, though we may likely enough 
 have got hold of the Hernican fore- 
 fathers of those better-known Romans. 
 They had no such need to change their 
 names and the alphabet in which they 
 are written, as when the son of the 
 Etruscan Avle Felimne became the 
 Roman Publius Volumnius. Now our 
 
Hirtius and Ivollius claim to have built 
 what they built from the foundation ; 
 but they must at the outside only 
 mean that they built the later work on 
 the top of the primaeval wall. And to 
 a zealous eye even the work of Hirtius 
 and lyollius has an archaic look about 
 it. There are no columns against the 
 wall, as in the Tabularium of Catulus 
 at Rome ; the work is finished with a 
 row of triglyphs, not unlike those on 
 the tomb of ' ' Cornelius lyucius Scipio 
 Gnaivod patre prognatus.'' But we 
 need not go back quite so far as his 
 day. The further back we can go the 
 better, but any time before Sulla will 
 do. The history of Ferentinum allows 
 us to carry our Hernicans of Feren- 
 tinum, like our Etruscans of Perusia, 
 down to the Social War. Ferentinum, 
 it must be remembered, was one of 
 those Hernican towns which were true 
 to Rome when Anagnia fought against 
 her. What follows is most instructive. 
 
fctenxiwo, 199 
 
 The men of Ferentinum, steady allies 
 of Rome, refused the proffered reward 
 of Roman citizenship, and chose rather 
 to remain a distinct, even if a depend- 
 ent, community. That is to say, the 
 old Hernican city went on, as long 
 doubtless as to the days of the Social 
 War, a self-ordering commonwealth, 
 with its own laws and magistrates — 
 Aulus Hirtius and Marcus I^ollius 
 among them — subject only to the de- 
 mands of military service which were 
 needed in the wars of Rome, and some- 
 times perhaps to the unlawful excesses 
 of powerful Romans. 
 
 This last fact comes out in a strange 
 story told by Aulus Gellius (x. 3). It 
 is an extract from a speech of Gains 
 Gracchus, setting forth the wrongs 
 of the Italian allies. The wife of a 
 Roman praetor suddenly wished the 
 public baths of Ferentinum to be 
 cleared and made ready for herself. 
 The thing was not done so fast as the 
 
200 fltali?, 
 
 great lady wished ; so her husband 
 bade the two quaestors of the town to 
 be seized ; one was scourged, the other 
 threw himself over the wall. This 
 tale, told in the words of Gracchus, 
 proves a good deal as to the arbitrary 
 way in which Roman magistrates are 
 not ashamed to deal with the depend- 
 ent cities even of Italy, whatever might 
 be their formal relation to Rome. 
 
 It is of less importance that Gellius 
 casually speaks of the town as a mu- 
 nicipiurn, while lyivy also casually 
 implies its possession of the I^atin 
 franchise. Such obiter dicta do not go 
 for very much. Scholars sometimes get 
 astray in these times from forgetting 
 that, not only casual sayings, but even 
 formal documents, may sometimes err. 
 Thus not long ago we saw a solemn 
 paper in which a public officer, bound 
 to accuracy, a clerk of the peace, had 
 to describe several towns in the West 
 
fferentino. 
 
 of England. We here read of ' ' the 
 county of the city of Bristol," the 
 ' ' borough of Gloucester, ' ' the ' ' bor- 
 ough of Bath," and the '' borough of 
 Taunton." An inquirer some ages 
 hence might be misled into forgetting 
 that Bath is a ' ' city ' ' and Gloucester 
 even a "county of a city." May we 
 not sometimes get wrong about muni- 
 cipia and I^atin colonies from the same 
 kind of cause ? Ferentinum was not, 
 in the strict sense, a municipium^ but 
 an allied Hernican commonwealth. In 
 the like sort, we once saw an official 
 document from a high sheriff calling 
 on the electors of a county to elect, 
 not a "knight of the shire," as they 
 had done for six hundred years, but a 
 hitherto unheard-of being called a 
 ' ' member of Parliament. " Is it not 
 possible then that lyivy, and even 
 Cicero, may sometimes use a wrong 
 phrase in talking of tribes, curiae, and 
 
202 fital^. 
 
 centuries, in ages long before their 
 own day ? 
 
 The walls then, though called '' Ro- 
 man " in a vague sense — that is, it 
 would seem, simply not primaeval, like 
 those of Cori and Segni — are doubtless 
 Hemican in the sense of being built 
 while Ferentinum was still a separate 
 Hernican community. The walls that 
 we see are most likely the walls over 
 which the unlucky quaestor threw him- 
 self. The walls of the arXy where we 
 read the legend of Hirtius and lyollius, 
 connect the Hernican town with later 
 times. Just at the point where the in- 
 scription is they are carried up to form 
 the Bishop's palace, and from the 
 middle of one side rises the bell-tower 
 of the cathedral — a very good example 
 of the usual Romanesque type of such 
 buildings. The church of Ferentino 
 is small and unpretending, and a good 
 deal damaged within, but it still keeps 
 its main features, not only its bell- 
 
fferentino. 203 
 
 tower, but its west front, its apses, its 
 ranges of windows. A little restora- 
 tion, in the true sense of the word, 
 would soon make it into as good a 
 specimen of its own class as could be 
 needed. But, unless we altogether 
 misunderstood the words of one of its 
 own clergy, antiquity and simplicity 
 are not esteemed at Ferentino. The 
 little minster is convicted of the crime 
 of being old, a charge which, except 
 by comparison with the walls beneath 
 it, cannot be denied. Only, if the 
 church be an offender on this score, 
 how fearful must be the crime of the 
 walls? Unless we misunderstood in 
 the most amazing way what we heard 
 with our own ears, the church of 
 Ferentino, convicted of the crime of 
 old age, is sentenced to destruction. 
 A new church is actually begun ; when 
 it is finished the old one is to go. 
 Happily the new one as yet stands 
 still for want of funds ; let us hope 
 
204 irtal^. 
 
 that funds may refuse to drop in till a 
 wiser Bishop and Chapter shall rule 
 at Ferentino. 
 
 The church at Ferentino is dedicated 
 to Saint Ambrose, who may be seen 
 there in the worldly garb of the un- 
 baptized prefect, before the infant voice 
 greeted him as Bishop of Milan. And 
 in the inner buildings ofth^arx — build- 
 ings most worthy of a visit on their 
 own account — strange tales lurk of the 
 sufferings of the saint, which seem to 
 find no place either in history or in 
 received legend. Among other things 
 he was thrown into a boiling caldron. 
 Down below is another church Sa7ita 
 Maria Maggiore, some centuries 
 younger than the cathedral, and a 
 very pretty example of its style ; which, 
 as far as we know, no one designs to 
 destroy. Singularly graceful, but sin- 
 gularly un- Italian, it strikes by the 
 power of contrast, as it rises above the 
 walls, or as we go up to it from the 
 
jferentlno. 205 
 
 gate which shares its surname. A few 
 other ecclesiastical and domestic scraps 
 may also be picked up in the city of 
 the rock. The primitive remains are 
 the great object in all these places ; 
 but it is always a gain when the walls 
 shelter something which has an inter- 
 est of another kind. The walls of the 
 stout-hearted people who chose rather 
 to be citizens of Ferentinum than citi- 
 zens of Rome lose nothing by having 
 been turned to an unlooked-for use as 
 the holy places of their successors, per- 
 haps descendants, of another age and 
 another creed. 
 
III. matvU 
 
 'X'HE tale of those Hernican cities, 
 * fenced in with primaeval walls, 
 among which we have been lately so- 
 journing, is worthily brought to an 
 end at Alatri. Among its immediate 
 Hernican fellows that town must cer- 
 tainly claim the highest place ; it 
 might on some grounds claim the 
 highest place, even if we throw in 
 Old-Iyatin and Volscian rivals. Yet it 
 is the one which has the least history. 
 There is very little to say about it, 
 except that Alatrium, like Ferentinum, 
 was faithful to Rome, but preferred 
 to keep its separate Hernican being 
 rather than accept the proffered reward 
 of Roman citizenship. It therefore 
 206 
 
Blatri. 207 
 
 doubtless remained a distinct common- 
 wealth down to the Social War. And 
 here at least there can be no question 
 about dates. Alatri is not especially 
 rich in mediaeval antiquities ; it has 
 still less claim to be called rich in 
 Roman antiquities. Nor does it sup- 
 ply us with the work of more or less 
 Romanized Hernicans, like the cen- 
 sors of Ferentinum. At Alatri nearly 
 everything that we care about is strictly 
 primaeval. We cannot reasonably 
 doubt that both the circuits of wall 
 at which we now look were there in 
 the days of Spurius Cassius, and were 
 by no means new then. 
 
 Alatri seems to have been somewhat 
 of an out-of-the-way place in all ages. 
 Not lying on any of the great roads of 
 Italy, it has no place in the Itineraries, 
 and now it lies much further than 
 Anagni or Ferentino — nay, even than 
 Cori and Norba, from common tracks 
 of going and from the common haunts 
 
2o8 1ftali2. 
 
 of men. Yet it cannot be looked on 
 as seriously inaccessible ; it may at 
 least be reached without calling in the 
 help of asses and mules. The party 
 whose track we are now following — a 
 party, be it noticed, numbering two 
 ladies among them — reached Alatri in 
 a carriage from Frosinone, having slept 
 there after seeing Ferentino. The old 
 Hernican town of Frusino had scant 
 justice done to it by our wayfarers ; 
 as no man or book had pointed it out 
 as a seat of primitive walls, it was 
 treated merely as a resting-place be- 
 tween the wonders of Ferentino and 
 the wonders of Alatri. Frosinone was 
 slept in, but was not examined ; yet a 
 glance from its railway station, the 
 point which connects Alatri with the 
 modern world, shows that it at least 
 possesses a by no means contemptible 
 bell-tower. From Frosinone then our 
 travellers made their way to Alatri, 
 and, as Alatri gradually rose before 
 
Blatrl. 209 
 
 them, they were for a while puzzled, 
 perhaps for a while even disappointed, 
 with what they saw. But it was not 
 for lack of a striking object to crown 
 the Alatrian hill-top. Of all the walls 
 of our series, the inner range of the 
 walls of Alatri, the walls which fence 
 in the arx, are the most prominent in 
 a distant view. Even the circuit of 
 empty Norba, beyond our immediate 
 range, hardly outdoes these defences 
 of a still inhabited town. At Alatri 
 indeed the primaeval walls are so prom- 
 inent that in the distant view no one 
 would suspect them of being primaeval 
 walls at all. They are still so nearly 
 perfect that they can and do discharge 
 what may be looked on as a survival 
 of their original function. They still 
 fence in the innermost and loftiest 
 quarter of the town, where, as in so 
 many other cases, the ancient citadel 
 has become the episcopal precinct. 
 But at Alatri the episcopal precincJt 
 
2IO Utal^. 
 
 puts on a distinct and central charac- 
 ter which is rarely found in Italian 
 cities. The arx is not in a corner, but 
 in the middle ; the lower town, fenced 
 in by the wall of its own outer circuit, 
 lies around it on every side. The arx 
 forms an open, lofty, and airy platform, 
 looking forth from every point of the 
 compass on the mountains which keep 
 watch around — on the little towns, 
 Veroli among them, perched here and 
 there on their heights — on the houses 
 and churches of Alatri, covering the 
 slope of the hill which the arx crowns. 
 It is seldom that we find in an Italian 
 town a church or any other building 
 standing in this way free on a com- 
 manding site, not hemmed in on any 
 side by parasitical buildings. These 
 hill-towns are perhaps better off in this 
 respect than most others ; at Anagni, 
 at Ferentino, the cathedral churches 
 stand grandly on their heights, com- 
 paratively free from all buildings ex- 
 
BlatrL . 211 
 
 cept their own proper companions. 
 But there is not the wide, open space 
 around them which surrounds the 
 church of Alatri. One cannot help 
 wishing that some more worthy build- 
 ing, either the primaeval temple itself 
 or some more fitting successor, occu- 
 pied so noble a site, a site in truth 
 which needs — let us say either the 
 Parthenon of Athens or the Parthenon 
 of I^incoln to do it justice. But the 
 only thing that can be said for the 
 cathedral church of Alatri is that the 
 lower part of its wall is part of the 
 cella. of the primaeval temple. Here 
 we have something even more than 
 can be seen at Segni. We know not 
 what may have been added in the way 
 of a pillared front ; but it is plain that, 
 as far as the main walls are concerned, 
 the building which was transformed 
 into a Christian church was actually 
 the house of pagan worship itself. And 
 it was a house going back, not to 
 
212 ^ 1ftali5. 
 
 dated Emperors or consuls, but to the 
 unrecorded age which reared these 
 cities great and fenced up to heaven. 
 There is the terrace, there is the wall 
 of the cella, wrought of the same won- 
 derful masonry as the walls of the 
 surrounding arx, as the walls of the 
 yet again surrounding city. It is 
 strange indeed to see the ordinary 
 rites of Christian worship, the ordinary 
 accompaniments of a Christian church, 
 dwelling, as at Rome and Syracuse, 
 within the temples of a creed, fallen 
 indeed but perfectly familiar. But 
 here we see them within walls reared 
 in honour of we know not what — gods 
 of unchronicled days, gods alongside 
 of whom Jupiter of the Capitol may 
 have seemed as strange and foreign as 
 Mithras and Serapis now seem along- 
 side of Jupiter of the Capitol. 
 
 Where the praehistoric temple has 
 thus become the cathedral church, it 
 is not out of keeping that the wall of 
 
BlatrL 213 
 
 the praehistoric arx should become the 
 wall of the cathedral close. This is 
 the wall which we see from afar, a wall 
 which seems so straight and regular, 
 so clearly furnished with a modern 
 finish at top, that it is not till we can 
 distinguish the mighty blocks of which 
 it is formed that it has the air of a 
 wall even of Roman, even of mediaeval, 
 antiquity. Shall we say it ? As we 
 looked up at no very amazing distance, 
 the wall of the arx of Alatri had a 
 good deal of the air of the wall of 
 a modern prison. We could not yet 
 see the construction, and the outline 
 seemed more regular and rectangular 
 than it proves to be. Nowhere do we 
 better see than at Alatri the nature of 
 these primitive walls. They are sel- 
 dom walls in the same sense as the 
 later walls of Rome or of other places, 
 walls built on the ground and standing 
 up clear on both sides. Their business 
 commonly is, as is perhaps more clear 
 
214 irtal^, 
 
 at Alatri than anywhere else, to 
 strengthen by masonry the scarped 
 side of a hill. Hence they have little 
 or no height within, and the gateways 
 are necessarily reached from within by 
 a steep descent. The open space at 
 Alatri allows this arrangement to be 
 studied with unusual ease. The wall 
 is eminently a wall against a hill, and 
 its arrangements are made with no 
 small art. The weak corner has its 
 double defence ; the way up from the 
 town at this point is carefully sheltered. 
 And what stones they are with which 
 the hill of Alatri is strengthened ; 
 above all, what stones they are which 
 are piled together to form its main 
 gateway. Nowhere indeed in the walls 
 of Alatri, whether of temple, arx, or 
 city, do we find anj^thing quite so rude 
 as the rudest part of the wall of Cori. 
 All the stones, of whatever shape — and 
 they are of many shapes — have clearly 
 been cut ; they are all laid according 
 
BlatrL 215 
 
 to some kind of system, though the 
 system according to which they are 
 laid is not the same in every part of 
 the wall. In some parts they seem 
 almost to take the shape of construc- 
 tive arches, at least of attempts at 
 arches, such as may be seen in gate- 
 ways and roofs at Segni and elsewhere. 
 The true arch, it is hardly needful to 
 say, is nowhere found in the original 
 work ; nor do we find even any of the 
 attempts at the arch in that position 
 where we should have most naturally 
 looked for them, in the gateways. The 
 great gateway of the arx at Alatri is 
 indeed a wonderful work. Its build- 
 ers either knew the arch and despised 
 it, or else the thought of the arch had 
 not come into their heads. It is as 
 pure an example of the lintel-construc- 
 tion as any gateway at Athens or 
 Mykene. We suppose that the lintel- 
 stone of the great treasury is yet vaster 
 than the huge lintel-stone at Alatri ; 
 
2i6 ftalij. 
 
 but the Anakim of Alatri were at least 
 rivals whom those of Mykene could 
 not have despised. But, except in 
 vastness of construction, we must not 
 compare the gateway at Alatri, per- 
 fectly plain, a mere piling, though a 
 very skilful piling, of huge blocks with 
 the really artistic work of the Myke- 
 naian treasuries. It goes rather with 
 the lion-gate ; only there are no lions. 
 The builders of Alatri could carve, 
 as is shown over one of the smaller 
 gateways of the arx. But they chose 
 to carve quite other subjects than 
 lions. On the great gate however 
 they carved nothing ; that is left in 
 the stern majesty of the vast blocks 
 which form it. And here we may dis- 
 tinguish between the cut blocks of the 
 gateway itself and the far ruder blocks 
 just within it, which merely formed 
 part of the foundation, and which, 
 when the steep path went down to the 
 gate, would not have stood above 
 
Blatri. 217 
 
 ground. Even the builders of primae- 
 val walls clearly drew a line between 
 what was meant to meet the public eye 
 and what was not. 
 
 But we must remember that the walls 
 of which we have been speaking, the 
 walls which first catch the eye, are not 
 the whole of the walls of Alatri. 
 They fence in only its inner and higher 
 circuit. Their effect in the distant 
 view is so imposing that the visitor 
 will most likely be tempted to go to 
 them first, instead of doing things in a 
 more regular order by first tracking out 
 the walls of the town itself. But these 
 last, except that they do not supply 
 anything like the primaeval gate, are 
 just as well worthy of study as the 
 walls of the arx itself. They remain 
 perfectly round the greater part of the 
 circuit of the city, and they are of the 
 same general construction as the walls 
 of the arx. At some points a singular 
 contrast is made by mediaeval addi- 
 
2i8 Iftal^. 
 
 tions to the defences ; good thirteenth 
 century work, with the characteristic 
 windows of the time, stands out as 
 projections from the primaeval wall. 
 And, as in some of the other places, 
 we have something thrown in in the 
 way of what the walls contain, besides 
 the attractions of the walls themselves. 
 From the arx of Alatri we look down 
 on several bell-towers and rose-win- 
 dows, and one church at least, that of 
 Sayita Maria Maggiore, though hardly 
 equal to its namesake at Ferentino, is 
 quite worthy of examination. But, 
 next to its walls, the strong point of 
 Alatri lies in its domestic buildings. 
 Very seldom, in Italy or out of it, do 
 we see graceful windows, chiefly coup- 
 lets with a divided shaft, more thickly 
 gathered together, than in its crooked 
 and narrow streets. Alatri, in short, 
 is, to the antiquarian eye, satisfactory 
 in every point save one. There 
 should have been some decent build- 
 
Blatrl. 219 
 
 ing, pagan or Christian, crowning the 
 noble site of its arx, the noblest in our 
 whole range. 
 
 With Alatri we end one main stage 
 of our iter, that of the hill-cities. We 
 shall henceforth pass by places which 
 lie more in the world, some of them in 
 the thick of modem communication. 
 But if we had turned back at Alatri, 
 we should have done a good stroke of 
 work. A journey to the walls of the 
 Hernicans is in every way pleasant 
 and profitable. And in truth, even if 
 we throw in the Old-Latins and the 
 Volscians, it is not a journey of hard- 
 ships. The little inns are very hum- 
 ble, very simple, but they may be fed 
 in and slept in without anything very 
 frightful to endure. It may perhaps 
 be well to mention that the Locanda 
 d' Italia, at Anagni, recommended in 
 various guide-books, has ceased to ex- 
 ist for some years. Still a day and a 
 night at Anagni are no hardship, and 
 
220 Utal^* 
 
 a guide may be found, shirtless and 
 letterless, who knows what is really- 
 worth going to much better than many 
 in Kngland who boast at once more 
 clothes and more learning. Indeed, 
 the men of the walls seem altogether 
 a kindly and well-disposed race. Some 
 say that is because they are said to be 
 reclaimed brigands, perhaps on the 
 principle that a reformed rake used to 
 be said to make the best husband. 
 There are indeed more beggars among 
 them than need be ; but on this head 
 a wise rule was laid down by a young 
 Volscian, or he might be a Hernican 
 — we cannot always be exact among 
 these obsolete nationalities — '' Give to 
 the halt and the blind ; but not to 
 anybody else." 
 
IV. jf rom Hlatri to Capua* 
 
 \1 7E have done for a while with the 
 ^ ^ hill-cities, though it would not 
 be hard to find several other spots of 
 the same kind, rivalling in historical 
 interest, and, by all accounts, rival- 
 ling also as to existing remains, any 
 of those which we have gone through. 
 But the special necessities of an iter 
 ad Brundisium carry us to quite 
 other parts of the Italian peninsula, to 
 parts where the sources of interest are 
 fully equal to those of Etruscan or 
 Latin cities, but where they are wholly 
 different in kind. We leave the hills, 
 or touch only their lowest slopes. For 
 a while the mountains still soar above 
 us, while our work is in the plains. 
 
 221 
 
222 1ftali5. 
 
 Presently we lose the mountains even 
 as distant companions ; but before long 
 we have the blue waves of Hadria as 
 their substitute. At last we reach our 
 goal ; we go for a season even beyond 
 it. And when we have gone as far 
 as the devices of modern science can 
 carry us, when we have reached the 
 very end of the general railway sys- 
 tem of Central Europe, our landscape 
 again takes in both the sea and the 
 mountains. But the eye now ranges 
 beyond the bounds of Italy, beyond 
 the bounds of Western Europe. We 
 see across the narrowed waters to the 
 heights of another peninsula. With- 
 out seeking for more than a chance 
 likeness between the names — a name 
 that ranges from the Euxine to the 
 Hudson — without seeking in any sort 
 to identify the 'AX/3avoi of Dionysios 
 and the 'A\/3avoi of imperial Anna, it 
 is still with a curious feeling of coinci- 
 dence that the eyes which not many 
 
ffrom Blatri to Capua. 223 
 
 days before were looking up to the 
 mount of Alba, now look across the 
 sea to the wilder mountains of Albania. 
 Some of those who now looked across 
 had already learned something of those 
 heights from earlier and nearer experi- 
 ences. Still it is a new feeling to look 
 out on them from Italian ground, 
 above all to look out on them from the 
 spot where the Turk made his entrance 
 into the western world, and where 
 the signs of his short presence have 
 stamped themselves deep on local 
 memory. Standing at Otranto, look- 
 ing on the Albanian heights, the fore- 
 most thought is how near Otranto 
 came to being to the West of Europe 
 all that the Thracian Kallipolis was to 
 the East. But we are as yet far from 
 Otranto, far from the heel of the boot, 
 far even from any point of the Hadri- 
 atic coast. We are still on the western 
 side of the great backbone of Italy ; 
 we have still to catch glimpses of the 
 
224 1[tal^» 
 
 Tyrrhenian waters, to look, as at distant 
 objects, on the bold outline of Ischia 
 and on Vesuvius crowned with his 
 pillar of cloud. But this time we do 
 not obey the seemingly inflexible law 
 which decrees that he who goes to 
 Rome and does not turn back from 
 Rome must go and see Naples, whether 
 he dies after the sight or not. This 
 time we have no call either to Naples 
 itself or to the far more attractive 
 range of objects of which Naples is 
 the centre. Our errand is to pass 
 from the primaeval cities of the I^atin 
 and the Volscian to the cities of south- 
 eastern Italy. Their chief present at- 
 traction lies in the series of churches 
 raised in the days of the Norman and 
 Angevin kings ; but their memories 
 carry us back through a long series of 
 stirring ages, not indeed to the hoary 
 antiquity of Cori and Alatri, but to the 
 days when Southern Italy, the earliest 
 Italy, was counted for a part of Hellas. 
 
Jrom Blatri to Capua. 225 
 
 It is not for nothing that we look out 
 from thence on those eastern lands 
 which then perhaps were the less Hel- 
 lenic of the two. 
 
 Greek influence indeed begins — 
 some say that it historically began — 
 on the western, not the eastern, shore 
 of Italy, in lands which, in the present 
 journey, we leave to the west of us and 
 see only in glimpses. We hurry on, 
 passing by much that we might well 
 stop and study, from Frosinone to 
 Caserta. And we are luxurious enough 
 to rejoice at finding ourselves there. 
 We have proved that a few days and 
 nights may be passed among Volscians 
 and Hernicans without damage or even 
 serious discomfort ; but we trust that 
 it is not an avowal to be ashamed of 
 that it is a pleasing exchange to find 
 ourselves in thoroughly civilized quar- 
 ters in the plains of Campania. We 
 have found our Capua ; not, however, 
 at Capua itself, but under the shadow 
 
 VOL n, — 15 
 
226 irtal^» 
 
 of the royal palace a few miles off. 
 But we desert Capua only because Cap- 
 uan comforts — we will not talk of lux- 
 uries — ^have fled from Capua and have 
 found their new home at Caserta. 
 Those who have tried a night at Capua 
 itself, Santa Maria di vetere Capua, 
 not the newer Capua on the site of 
 Casilinum, report that, if Hannibal's 
 army could be quartered there again, 
 they would certainly not be corrupted 
 by anything excessive in the way of 
 creature comforts. Anagni and Frosi- 
 none are said to be far in advance of 
 the city which long was to Rome what 
 Paris long was to London. The ex- 
 cuse doubtless would be that Capua is 
 Capua no longer. The name of Capua, 
 and with it the stirring history of early 
 mediaeval Capua, has wandered from 
 the true Capua to Casilinum. It is 
 not at the town now called Capua, but 
 at the village — it is hardly more — of 
 Santa Maria, that we must look for 
 
ftom Blatri to Capua* 227 
 
 what is left of Etruscan Vulturnum, 
 of Samnite, Campanian, and Roman 
 Capua, the special city of pleasure, the 
 city where, before all others, pleasure 
 was sought for in scenes of blood. 
 
 On our present course we have no 
 special call to either Capua, old or new. 
 We have in times past seen both the 
 amphitheatre of the elder Capua and 
 the cathedral portico of the newer. 
 But, when Caserta has been chosen as 
 a convenient halting-place, it would be 
 a shame for the historic traveller to 
 pass by two such famous spots without 
 a glance at either, while in their neigh- 
 bourhood lies a third object, of no 
 small value in its own line, which will 
 have the further charm of novelty. It 
 is well, while still fresh from the 
 Flavian amphitheatre at Rome, to look 
 again on the amphitheatre of Capua — 
 Capua, the mistress of Rome in the 
 sports of slaughter. There is a certain 
 special lore of amphitheatres, the mas- 
 
228 Utal^. 
 
 tery of which does not fall to the lot 
 of all, even of those who look on the 
 monuments either of Rome or Capua 
 with a general historical eye. But it 
 is easy to see that in the Capuan am- 
 phitheatre the underground arrange- 
 ments can be studied as they hardly 
 can be studied anywhere else. The 
 walls, the seats, are far less perfect 
 than at Rome ; much more then are 
 they less perfect than at Verona. But 
 the substructure seems wholly un- 
 touched. In the Roman Coliseum the 
 underground work is onljr partially 
 brought to light, while of what has 
 been brought to light it is not always 
 clear how much is the work of the 
 Flavian Emperors, and how much of 
 the mediaeval barons who turned the 
 amphitheatre into a fortress. Here, 
 better than at Rome, we may study 
 what really happened when the lions 
 came up from underground to be 
 slaughtered by the imperial hands of 
 
^rom Blatri to Capua. 229 
 
 Commodus. If any question is raised 
 as to the date of the building, one who 
 is not a special Capuan topographer 
 may be satisfied with the fact, that the 
 inscription of Hadrian claims for that 
 prince only a renovation and enrich- 
 ment of the building with columns 
 and statues. This seems to imply that 
 the shell is older ; it may be far older. 
 In idea at least, the amphitheatre of 
 Capua is far older than that of Rome. 
 It illustrates a strange but well-known 
 law of human nature, that the taste for 
 luxury and the taste for blood should 
 find a common home. 
 
 Besides the modernized basilica, be- 
 sides the tombs of various sizes and 
 designs which line the road — one of 
 which is indeed singularly like a 
 model of an amphitheatre — the true 
 Capua has little to show besides the 
 amphitheatre itself. It is strange to 
 see so great a city, one which for some 
 ages must have been far greater, far more 
 
230 irtal^. 
 
 splendid than Rome, so utterly gone 
 — or rather to see the little that is left 
 of it translated to another site. But 
 great as Capua undoubtedly was, we 
 begin to doubt its extreme antiquity. 
 Capua, once Etruscan Vulturnum, re- 
 mained Etruscan Vulturnum till the 
 fourth century of Rome. It was the 
 last remnant of the great Etruscan 
 dominion in that region of Italy. As 
 such, it represents a state of things far 
 older than Rome. But the city itself 
 may well be of later date than Rome. 
 At all events, we may be sure that it 
 is of far later date than Cori and 
 Alatri. The city by the Vulturnus, 
 down in the plain, taking its name 
 from its guardian river, marks an ad- 
 vance not only on the mountain strong- 
 holds of Segni and Norba, but on Veii, 
 on Rome itself. It must be far older 
 than Florence ; but it is the fellow of 
 Florence ; it marks an equal forsaking 
 of the oldest type of a city. It is hard 
 
3from Blatri to Capua. 231 
 
 to see where the arx of Capua could 
 have stood, if we are to understand by 
 an arx something set upon a hill. But 
 what a position that of Capua was, ac- 
 cording to later ideas, is shown by its 
 revival after the Hannibalian war. 
 The Samnite settlement, parted away 
 from their kinsfolk of the mountains, 
 had become Campanians, and, to seek 
 shelter against their kinsfolk of the 
 mountains, they had been fain in some 
 sort to become Romans. 
 
 *' Cives Romani tunc facti sunt Campani," 
 
 says the line which comes as such a 
 relief after the involved constructions 
 of later Latin writers, a line w^hich 
 records a fact as simply worded as it 
 could be in a mediaeval chronicle, 
 which gives us a true leonine rime, and 
 which makes its way through six feet 
 without a single dactyl. To the Cam- 
 panian knights their Roman citizen- 
 ship was doubtless pleasant enough ; 
 
232 Ktal^. 
 
 it may have been less so to the com- 
 mons, who had the private rights only, 
 and who were burthened with a pay- 
 ment to the knights. Yet we find 
 that the revolt of Capua to Hannibal 
 was largely the work of noble leaders. 
 The truth doubtless is that the large 
 amount of independence which Capua 
 still kept only made any measure of 
 dependence more galling. Then came 
 the blow which made Capua for a 
 while cease to be a city. Its lands 
 became the property of the Roman 
 people ; its walls were left simply as a 
 shelter for those who filled them. Yet 
 the great city of Campania arose again, 
 to be once more a great city till the 
 second blow, when men of Semitic 
 speech came not as deliverers but as 
 destroyers, when Capua moved to 
 Casilinum, and when all that was left 
 of the elder city put itself under the 
 keeping of a heavenly protectress as 
 Santa Maria di Capua. Among those 
 
fftom Blatrl to Capua» 233 
 
 remnants of what was, the walls of 
 Capua, the arx of Capua, are not to be 
 found ; at all events they do not strike 
 the traveller on his first or his second 
 visit. For something faintly answer- 
 ing to a Capuan arx, he takes himself 
 to the neighbouring mountains There, 
 on their lowest slopes, looking out on 
 Vesuvius and Ischia, looking down on 
 the Campanian plain, with its river, 
 with its older and its newer Capua, we 
 come to a spot where a famous temple 
 of the older faith has given way to a 
 less famous one of the new. A jour- 
 ney from Caserta to the Capuan am- 
 phitheatre in the plain may well take 
 in a journey to the slope of Tifata, the 
 slope of the hill on which Hannibal so 
 often pitched his camp, and where the 
 church of Sant' Angelo in Formis has 
 supplanted fhe holy place of Diana 
 and Jupiter, which took its name from 
 the mountain which rises above its 
 massy tower. 
 
V. H Cburcb b» tbe Camp of 
 IbannibaL 
 
 \17E reach Tifata, the very centre 
 of the marching and counter- 
 marching of Hannibal, the spot from 
 which we may best call up a picture 
 of beleaguered Capua, of Fulvius 
 waiting for his prey, of the stout fight- 
 ing on either side of the enclosing 
 lines, of Hannibal, as his last hope, 
 turning aside to threaten Rome, in the 
 chance that the danger of Rome might 
 lead to the relief of Capua. The name 
 Tifata, in some tongue, most likely in 
 the old Oscan, describes the evergreen 
 oaks which doubtless formed the sacred 
 grove of Diana. The goddess had no 
 lake here, as she had at Aricia, nor do 
 234 
 
:Bi? tbe Camp of IbannibaL 235 
 
 we hear of any such grim legend on 
 Tifata as grew round — 
 
 Those trees in whose dim shadow 
 The ghastly priest doth reign, 
 
 The priest who slew the slayer, 
 And shall himself be slain. 
 
 Yet beside the rites of Canaan, the rites 
 of the gods who had sent forth him 
 whose name proclaimed him as the 
 Grace of Baal, the darkest forms into 
 which any kind of Italian or Hellenic 
 worship strayed might well seem mild. 
 In tracking the career of Hannibal, 
 we are ever disappointed at the utter 
 lack of means to call up a picture of 
 the man himself apart from his public 
 acts. He had human weaknesses, for 
 he found a mistress at Salapia. He 
 had his sallies of merriment, for he 
 could raise a laugh at the grave Gisgo. 
 But the course of his inner life is 
 hidden from us. Still we can at least 
 see that he was, in his own belief, 
 
236 Iftali^. 
 
 charged with a mission from the gods 
 of his own city. And it needs an 
 effort to bear in mind that the gods of 
 Hannibal were Baal and Moloch. The 
 goddess to whom he would have reared 
 a temple would have been, not a Diana, 
 but an Ashtoreth. Yet, among the 
 many, and mostly false, charges of 
 cruelty brought against the great 
 Phoenician by Roman writers, we do 
 not hear, as we do in the case of some 
 other Carthaginian commanders, of 
 captives being made to pass through 
 the fire to the gods of Carthage. Han- 
 nibal, the friend of Capua, would at 
 Capua honour Diana of Tifata ; but it 
 was not Diana that had sent him. 
 With what thanks did he honour his 
 own gods, when Capua, second city of 
 all Italy, welcomed the victor of Trebia, 
 Trasimenus, and Cannae? Is it too 
 bold a flight to fancy the mount of 
 Tifata the scene of the same form of 
 Baal-worship as the mount of Carmel ? 
 
JSi5 tbe Camp ot IbannibaL 237 
 
 But the gods of Italy lived on, un- 
 disturbed by the momentary presence 
 of Semitic rivals. Diana was not the 
 only power worshipped on Tifata ; 
 Jupiter also had his holy place. And 
 it may be that the venerable church 
 which now forms the chief attraction 
 of the hill-side represents the holy 
 place of Jupiter rather than the holy 
 place of Diana. It is curious to see 
 how a kind of appropriateness was 
 often sought after in the nomenclature 
 of Pagan temples when turned into 
 Christian churches. Thus, at Athens, 
 the Parthenon remained the Parthe- 
 non, while the temple of the warrior 
 Theseus or Herakl^s became the 
 church of the warrior George. We 
 should look for a Santa Maria or a 
 Santa Lucia at the least, on the site of 
 the sanctuary of Diana. Had we here 
 a San Pietro, we should have very 
 little doubt in setting down the prince 
 of the Apostles as having supplanted 
 
238 1ftal^. 
 
 the father of gods and men. But at 
 Sanf Angela m For mis we feel some- 
 what less certain ; St. Michael sug- 
 gests the Norman, and the Norman 
 has been there. It may well be that 
 the name is no older than his day. 
 
 But St. Michael on the slope of 
 Tifata did carry us back in thought to 
 a church of St. Peter seen some months 
 before under a widely different state 
 of outward things. We then made a 
 somewhat difficult journey to a great 
 and solitary Tuscan basilica in time of 
 snow. The outward aspect of nature 
 had certainly changed a good deal be- 
 tween the bleak day in January when 
 it was found a hard task to follow the 
 way from Pisa to the basilica of the 
 prince of the Apostles in Grado and 
 the sunny day in May when the same 
 travellers found their way without 
 difficulties of any kind to the basilica 
 of the prince of the archangels in 
 Formis, And there certainly can be 
 
M^ tbe Camp of Ibanntbal. 239 
 
 no likeness of position, even if both 
 were seen in January or both in May, 
 between the basiHca standing low in 
 the flats by the mouth of Arno and the 
 basilica which nestles against the 
 mountains which form a wall to the 
 rich plain of Vulturnus. But in see- 
 ing any one of these great churches, 
 left, not ruined, like our Cistercian 
 abbeys, but still living on a kind of 
 life in places forsaken or nearly so, 
 something always brings up the mem- 
 ory of some other of its fellows. Aqui- 
 leia is perhaps the greatest case of all ; 
 but Aquileia, with its special position 
 in the history of the world, stands by 
 itself. If Aquileia itself is dead, it has 
 lived on a wonderful after-life in the 
 shape of its Venetian colony. We go 
 to see Aquileia, because it is Aquileia ; 
 but even a well-informed traveller may 
 know nothing of San Pietro in Grado 
 and SanV Angela in Formis, till either 
 his guide-book or some earlier visitor 
 
240 1ftal^. 
 
 points them out to him as places which 
 he ought not to pass by. Aquileia 
 again has other things to show besides 
 the great basihca and its surroundings. 
 St. Apollinaris in Classe is as nearly 
 forsaken as a church that is still kept 
 up can be ; but the basilica of Classis 
 does not stand by itself ; it forms part 
 of the wonders of Ravenna, as St. Paul 
 without-the-Walls forms part of the 
 wonders of Rome. St. Peter in Grado 
 might be looked on as standing in the 
 same relation to Pisa ; but it hardly 
 efiters into our general conception of 
 Pisa, as the church of Classis — papal 
 havoc hinders us from adding the 
 church of Caesarea — certainly enters 
 into our general conception of Ravenna. 
 S. Angelo in Formis at all events does 
 not enter into our general conception 
 of old Capua, because there is not 
 enough of old Capua left to form any 
 general conception of it at all. The 
 church and the small surrounding 
 
M^ tbe Gamp ot IbannibaL 241 
 
 village do form a kind of distant arx 
 to the greater collection of houses 
 which surrounds the amphitheatre ; 
 but among the nearer objects which 
 catch the eye from the height, the 
 most prominent is not old Capua with 
 its amphitheatre, but new Capua, 
 Casilinum that once was, with its 
 towers and cupolas, mediaeval and 
 modern. We look on many things 
 from the terrace in front of the portico 
 of the archangel, but that which among 
 artificial objects chiefly draws the eye 
 towards it, is not the elder Capua of 
 Hannibal and Marcellus, but the Capua 
 which succeeded Aversa as the seat of 
 the elder but the less famous of the 
 Norman powers in Southern Italy. As 
 we mark the advance of national union, 
 no less than as we mark the advance 
 of mere dynastic aggression, we have 
 sometimes to think, for a moment per- 
 haps to mourn, that "kingdoms have 
 shrunk to provinces, ' ' though in this 
 
 VOL II— 16 
 
242 1[tal^» 
 
 form of advance and incorporation, we 
 have no longer to add that ' ' chains 
 clank over sceptred cities." Capua, 
 on both its sites, once the head of an 
 Etruscan, once of a Norman dominion, 
 passed, in one age, under the uni- 
 versal rule of Rome. In another 
 age it again sank from its separate 
 headship to become a member of 
 that greater Norman dominion in 
 Apulia and Sicily which, after more 
 shiftings, unions, divisions, transfers 
 to distant rulers, than any other part 
 of Europe, has in our days been 
 merged in the realm of united Italy, 
 with Rome as its head, but not its 
 mistress. 
 
 We reach then the height which, 
 whether that of Jupiter or Diana of 
 old, is now the height of the warrior 
 archangel. The whole history of the 
 church belongs to the independent days 
 of the second Capua ; in its present 
 shape it belongs to the days of inde- 
 
16^ tbe Camp ot IbannlbaL 243 
 
 pendent Norman rule in the second 
 Capua. But the days of independent 
 Norman rule were days when the 
 arts of the earlier rulers of the land 
 still lived on. We see signs of the art 
 of Byzantium, so long mistress of 
 Southern Italy, and of the art of the 
 Saracen, in Italy only a visitor or an 
 invader, while in Sicily an abiding 
 mavSter. The portico in front of the 
 church is Roman in its general idea ; 
 but, instead of the colonnade and 
 entablature of the Laurentian basilica, 
 we see an arcade whose pointed arches 
 at once call up memories of Sicily. 
 They have indeed little of Sicilian 
 grace. Nowhere at Palermo or Mon- 
 reale do we see such massive columns 
 bearing such massive stilts. Columns 
 indeed we should hardly say, as some 
 of them are plainly mere fragments. 
 But here, just as in Sicily, just as in 
 Aquitaine, the pointed arch is no sign 
 of coming Gothic ; the style is still 
 
244 1ftali5, 
 
 wholly Romanesque, and somewhat 
 rude Romanesque too. And in this 
 region of Italy we can hardly doubt as 
 to attributing the almost accidental 
 shape of the arches to the influence of 
 Saracen models, perhaps to the work- 
 manship of Saracen craftsmen. Hard 
 by, but not joining the building, by 
 an arrangement unlike Sicily, unlike 
 Apulia, but the common rule of North- 
 ern Italy, rises a bell-tower, or rather 
 the beginning of a bell-tower, which 
 raises our wonder as to what it would 
 have been if it had ever grown to 
 its full height. Two stages only are 
 finished, the lower of hewn stone, the 
 upper of brick ; but their bulk is so 
 great that the tower, if it had ever 
 been finished, would surely have 
 ranked among the highest of its class, 
 utterly overpowering even the great 
 basilica at its side, except so far as it 
 would have been itself overpowered 
 by the natural heights above it. As 
 
3Bi5 tbe Camp ot IbannibaL 245 
 
 in some other cases, the thought sug- 
 gests itself, were not those who left off 
 building the tower wiser than those 
 who began it ? The tall bell-towers of 
 Italy look well as they rise from the 
 Lombard plain, as they crown the hill 
 of Fiesole, as they skirt the shores of 
 the lake of Como. But we are not 
 sure that a gigantic tower, which, if it 
 was to have any kind of proportion, 
 ought to have been carried up to a 
 height as great as that of Venice, was 
 in its right place when set a little w^ay 
 up a mountain-side, as if simply to 
 show how small man's biggest works 
 look in the midst of the works of 
 nature. But the technical eye is 
 thankful for the fragment that has 
 been built, though mainly on a very 
 technical ground. Professor Willis is 
 gone, but his happy phrase of mid-wall 
 shafts has not died with him. The 
 custom of the elder Romanesque 
 towers, the abiding fashion of Ger- 
 
246 trtal^. 
 
 many and Northern Italy, was to set 
 the little columns which divided the 
 coupled windows in the very middle 
 of the wall ; the latter Norman fashion, 
 whether in Normandy, in England, or 
 in Apulia, was to set them nearly flush 
 with the outer wall. In this tower, 
 Italian by geography, Norman by 
 allegiance, two sides conform to the 
 Italian and two to the Norman fashion. 
 Nothing can show more clearly that 
 even such small matters of detail as 
 the use of a mid-wall shaft were made 
 matters of serious thought, and that it 
 was sometimes thought well to come to 
 a compromise between two rival forms 
 of taste. 
 
 The outside of this church, except 
 so far as it forms an object in the 
 general landscape, is perhaps chiefly 
 attractive to the technical observer ; 
 the inside will surely appeal to every 
 visitor, though the visitor who is tech- 
 nically informed in matters of painting 
 
JB^ tbc Camp of IbannibaL 247 
 
 may possibly look upon it with more 
 of curiosity than of positive admira- 
 tion. But the eye of the more general 
 inquirer will give something like posi- 
 tive admiration to a basilica of eight 
 arches, resting on ancient columns of 
 various marbles, with its original de- 
 sign far less damaged than is common 
 in Italian churches, and with every 
 inch of available space covered with 
 elaborate paintings of the date of the 
 building. I^ike St. Peter by Pisa, the 
 archangel by Capua trusted to paint- 
 ing for his enrichment and not to 
 mosaics ; and though the Campanian 
 pictures are by far the better preserved 
 of the two, ^though nearly all the sub- 
 jects can be made out with the greatest 
 ease, yet Ravenna and Venice rise to 
 the mind to make us think that at 
 least if endurance be the object, there 
 is a more excellent way. 
 
 The walls of this church form 
 almost a pictorial Bible, with a few 
 
248 Iftal^. 
 
 legendary and local subjects thrown 
 in. The Abbot Desiderius, holding, 
 after the usual symbolical fashion, the 
 church in his hand, is to be seen at 
 the east end along with the archangels 
 and evangelists. At the west end is 
 what connoisseurs tell us is one of the 
 very earliest pictures of the I^ast Judg- 
 ment. On the two sides a crowd of 
 scenes and figures from the Old and 
 New Testament cover the whole space. 
 The style of the painting is said to 
 show Greek workmanship ; we look 
 toward the west end and mark, hardly 
 above the ground, a single small shaft 
 with a capital of strictly Byzantine 
 character. The ruling Norman seems 
 on this spot to have pressed into his 
 service the artistic powers of all the 
 inhabitants of the peninsula. Italian, 
 Greek, Saracen, all give their help to 
 adorn the house of the archangel. 
 The Norman himself contributes noth- 
 ing but the position of two small 
 
JS^ tbe Camp of IbannlbaL 249 
 
 columns in the tower windows. We 
 cannot even attribute to him the posi- 
 tion of the house of the archangel, set 
 Norman-fashion in a high place ; for 
 the first church was built before the 
 Norman came. It is not so further 
 east, where a distinctively Norman 
 element is to be seen in the great 
 churches of Apulia. But the gathering 
 together of the best skill of the time 
 from all quarters is a thoroughly Nor- 
 man function, whether in Italy or in 
 England. 
 
 The basilica should be compassed, 
 so far at least as to climb the hill a 
 little way to look at its east end. Its 
 surrounding buildings supply an arch 
 or two to catch the eye on the way up 
 or down. But the essential features of 
 Sant' Angelo are the grand display 
 of painting and the union of elements 
 of so many kinds. It is the first of a 
 great series of churches at which our 
 course will bid us to stop here and 
 
250 1ftali5. 
 
 there. But before we reach them we 
 shall pass by one point where our 
 musings will again be mainly secular 
 and largely pagan. A short journey 
 will lead us from Campania into 
 Samnium, and the valiant men of the 
 Samnite land will claim a tribute on 
 a spot which is Samnite beyond all 
 others. 
 
VI. H Olimpse of Samnium* 
 
 PROM Caserta and what is to be 
 ^ seen from Caserta, our next jour- 
 ney lies by the line of railway which 
 runs right across Italy, connecting the 
 two great lines of the east and west 
 of the peninsula. It leads us from the 
 Campanian plain, with at least its 
 sheltering wall of mountains, with 
 Tifata to guard the great city that 
 once was from the ruder land beyond, 
 to the great plain of Apulia from which 
 every feature of a mountain-land has 
 passed away. But, in so crossing from 
 one side of Italy to the other, we pass 
 through a striking and an historic 
 region. We are in the land of the 
 mightiest Italian rivals of Rome, the 
 251 
 
252 irtal^. 
 
 land of those with whom Rome had to 
 fight, before Pyrrhos and Hannibal 
 came, and ages after Pyrrhos and Han- 
 nibal were gone. 
 
 Our course leads us into the heart 
 of the Samnite land, a land which may 
 well call up endless musings on the 
 hard fate of those ' ' hearts of steel ' ' 
 who bore up so long against Rome, in 
 the days when Rome was really at her 
 greatest. And the memories of the 
 same land in after days are not wholly 
 alien to those of earlier times. Our 
 course brings us, at not a few points, 
 across the memories, if not of nations, 
 yet of men, who had to bear up against 
 the power of Rome, when the power 
 of Rome had taken a far other 
 form than that of the senate and the 
 armies against which the Samnite 
 had to strive. For the old Samnite 
 land holds its place in later story, as 
 the land of princes who felt what the 
 spiritual Rome could do when the 
 
B (Blimpse of Samniunu 253 
 
 powers of the spiritual Rome were at 
 their highest. We pass tlirough re- 
 gions which were the scene of no small 
 part of the history of the Nonnan and 
 Swabian lords of Sicily and Southern 
 Italy. We are deep in the land of 
 the counts, dukes, kings, and emper- 
 ors of the house of Hauteville and the 
 house of Hohenstaufen ; and we are 
 often called on to stop and track out 
 their deeds. At not a few points do 
 we light, on some building, some in- 
 scription, which brings up the memory 
 of Frederick, the Wonder of the World, 
 and of Manfred, whose field of over- 
 throw we shall presently pass by. In 
 both periods the history of these lands 
 has a character altogether different 
 from that of Northern and Central 
 Italy. In the later period this needs no 
 proof : we are dealing with the history 
 of a kingdom, not with the history of 
 a system of separate cities. But some- 
 thing of the same difference extends 
 
254 irtai^» 
 
 to the earlier period also. If we wish 
 to know more of Volscians and Herni- 
 cans, yet more keenly do we wish to 
 know more of Samnites. The part 
 which they played is greater, at all 
 events in scale, and their dealings with 
 Rome belong to a stage of Roman 
 history when we feel that we have a 
 kind of right to know more than we 
 could hope to know in the earlier time. 
 But while we know something of the 
 character of the Samnite people as a 
 whole, while we know something — 
 though much less than in some other 
 Italian lands — of the geography of the 
 Samnite country, we have no clear 
 notion of the political position or the 
 political action of any particular Sam- 
 nite city or canton, such as we ever 
 and anon do get of particular cities of 
 Etruria and I^atium. And again, it is 
 seldom that we can call up any distinct 
 personal conception of any Samnite 
 leader as a living and breathing man. 
 
B Olimpee of Samnium. 255 
 
 This is indeed a grievance which 
 affects Samnites along with the other 
 Italian enemies of Rome. The per- 
 sonal conceptions which we do get of 
 Etruscans and Latins largely belong 
 to legendary times. Of historical Vol- 
 scians we know very few. And we 
 have already complained on Hernican 
 ground that we cannot picture to our- 
 selves the personal likeness of any 
 single Hernican of independent Herni- 
 can days. 
 
 Still, on this particular journey we 
 have small right to complain ; for we 
 pass by the spot which calls up the 
 memories of the most memorable Sam- 
 nites of whom we have any personal 
 knowledge. They are men of one 
 name, most likely therefore of one 
 house, and men of whom we emphati- 
 cally wish to know more than we do 
 know. lycaving Caserta behind, glanc- 
 ing at the Campanian plain and the 
 Campanian mountains, marking Naples 
 
256 1ftali?» 
 
 only by the smoke of the distant city, 
 we pass along through what, in our 
 simplicity, we take to be the vale of 
 Vulturnus, till we light on a more 
 classical friend, armed with a more 
 classical map, who explains that the 
 stream which we are tracing is in 
 strictness not Vulturnus himself, but 
 only his tributary Calor. Anyhow 
 we go along its course into the 
 heart of the Samnite land, and we 
 pass by one spot — a spot which 
 we ought to have treated better than 
 merely to pass it by, a spot round 
 which the greatest memories of Sam- 
 nite history gather, and where they 
 strangely interweave themselves with 
 wholly different memories of the his- 
 tory of our own land. We reach 
 Telesia, the home of the Pontii, and 
 we remember that Telesia was also for 
 a moment the home of Anselm. Our 
 guide-book provokingly fails us ; but 
 the large building on the hill-side 
 
B (3limp0e of Samntum. 257 
 
 must surely be the monastery where 
 he sojourned. There are Roman an- 
 tiquities in the place ; for Samnite 
 antiquities we do not look. But did 
 Samnites build no walls, or do the 
 mighty bulwarks of Cori and Segni 
 mark an earlier state of things than 
 the Sabellian occupation of Southern 
 Italy? Anyhow, we are here at the 
 place which has attached itself as a 
 surname to the two most memorable 
 men in the scanty personal history of 
 Samnium. Here, on his own ground, 
 we remember that Gains Pontius who 
 spared Rome's army at the Caudine 
 Forks, and who lived to be led, twenty- 
 seven years later, as a spectacle in a 
 Roman triumph, to end his days, one 
 might almost say as a martyr, by the 
 axe of the headsman in a Roman dun- 
 geon. So we used to read the tale in 
 our youth ; so moralized the historians 
 of our youth over the special baseness 
 which handed over such a man to such 
 
258 1Ftal^. 
 
 an end. Or are we to adopt the new 
 reading of the tale which at least saves 
 Quintus Fabius Maximus from that 
 special stain of blood-guiltiness which 
 cleaves to the canonized memory of 
 Divus Julius? It may be well if we 
 can believe that one of the worthiest 
 heroes of the old commonwealth, if he 
 could not forestall the magnanimity of 
 Pompeius and Aurelian, at least did 
 not sink to the special and petty spite 
 of the murderer of Vercingetorix. We 
 are now taught that the Gains Pontius 
 who appears twenty-seven years after 
 the first mention of that name, is most 
 likely not the same man as the merciful 
 victor of the Caudine Porks. If this 
 be so, then Quintus Fabius, in consign- 
 ing his Pontius to the axe, merely 
 conformed to the cruel custom of his 
 nation, without the further aggrava- 
 tion of slaying in cold blood one who 
 had dealt with Rome so nobly. And 
 after all some might hint that the 
 
B (Blimpae of Samniunu 259 
 
 oldest Pontius of all was the wisest. 
 It may be that the sage old father of 
 Gains knew human nature best, when 
 he bade his son either to massacre the 
 whole Roman army or else to let them 
 go free without terms. It may be that 
 the son chose a more dangerous path 
 than either, when he took to diplomacy 
 and middle courses. 
 
 But if the earlier Pontius of Telesia 
 should prove — though the guess is a 
 simple guess — to be in truth two 
 Pontii, perhaps a father and a son, no 
 doubt seems to have fixed itself on 
 the identity of the last Pontius at the 
 Colline gate of Rome. The rising 
 again of Samnite life at the last mo- 
 ment of all, when the war with the 
 allies seemed to have lost itself in the 
 deeper whirlpool of the war of Marius 
 and Sulla, is really the most striking 
 thing in the whole history, such as we 
 have it, of the Samnite people. We 
 are taken by surprise when, in days 
 
 \ 
 
26o 1Ftali5» 
 
 when Rome already seems the fully 
 established head, not only of Italy, but 
 of all the Mediterranean world, her 
 power, her very being, is threatened 
 by the leader of a nation which seemed 
 to have been dead and buried for some 
 centuries. But, just like the Volum- 
 nian tomb in one way, so the Samnite 
 resurrection in another way is a witness 
 to the real life which the other states 
 of Italy kept on under a form of 
 Roman dominion which made them 
 externally dependent, which threw its 
 influence into the scale of oligarchy in 
 their external affairs, which ever and 
 anon subjected them to some irregular 
 demand, but which left the general 
 course of their lives to be whatever 
 they themselves chose it to be. In the 
 days of Marius and Sulla, Etruscans 
 and Samnites were still Etruscans and 
 Samnites ; they had not become 
 Romans, nor had they merged their 
 being in any common name of Italians, 
 
B OUmpse of Samndim. 261 
 
 The Social War itself was the first 
 attempt at forming a general Italian 
 nationality. But the last campaign of 
 the last Pontius shows how deep, in 
 Samnite hearts at least, was the earlier 
 feeling, the feeling which knew no 
 greater whole than the federal union 
 of Etruria or Samnium. It shows too 
 how specially deep was the feeling of 
 hatred for the single city which had 
 brought down so many cities and 
 leagues to become its helpless depend- 
 ents. Against Pontius at the Colline 
 gate Rome fought for life, as she had 
 never fought since the old days when 
 she had to guard herself against 
 enemies who lived within sight of her 
 capitol. Foreign invaders, Pyrrhos, 
 Hannibal himself, did not come with 
 the same fixed purpose of rooting up 
 the wood which sheltered the wolves 
 of Italy. We can hardly doubt that it 
 is the hand of Sulla which from that 
 day to this has hindered the south of 
 
262 irtali5. 
 
 Italy from being like the north. But 
 the blow which crushed the Samnite 
 people as the other nations of Italy- 
 were not crushed, was vengeance taken 
 for a moment when it once more be- 
 came a question whether Rome shovild 
 rule over Italy, whether Rome should 
 exist at all. 
 
 At Telesia we look out, and muse on 
 what might have been, if one Pontius 
 had done otherwise than he did by the 
 forks of Caudium, if another Pontius 
 had fared otherwise than he fared at 
 the gates of Rome herself. At our next 
 halting-place we are called on, not to 
 muse on what might have been, but 
 on what was. At Beneventum we 
 tread the battle-ground of Pyrrhos and 
 Manfred, the ground of two of the 
 greatest victories of the Rome of the 
 earlier and the Rome of the later day. 
 There we need not strive to call up the 
 dim figures of men, like the older and 
 the later Pontius, known by one action 
 
B (5ltmp0e of Samnium, 263 
 
 of their lives. The Epeirot and the 
 Swabian stand out as clearly discerned 
 figures in the history of their several 
 ages. And the places where we next 
 halt will show us the place of over- 
 throw for both, the place of death and 
 utter ruin for one. 
 
VII. aBene\>ento* 
 
 \17K follow the stream of Galore till 
 ^^ we reach a city which, without 
 ever having been one of the great cities 
 of the world, without having been even 
 one of the greatest cities of Italy, has 
 always kept up an important historic 
 being. Beneventum is a familiar name 
 in all ages ; yet Beneventum has never 
 been either a mighty commonwealth 
 like Venice or Genoa, or the head of 
 a mighty kingdom like Naples and 
 Palermo. It has had its princes ; if we 
 never heard of them before, we should 
 learn a good deal of them by studying 
 the monuments of their city. That is 
 to say, the monuments will tell us a 
 great deal about princes nine hundred 
 264 
 
JBenevento. 265 
 
 or a thousand years back ; no monu- 
 ment that we remember in Benevento 
 tells us anything about the last prince 
 who bore their title. I^et us suppose 
 a wanderer who began his travels at 
 Autun and who finds himself, in the 
 course of the same wandering, at 
 Benevento. He will feel it as a gro- 
 tesque coincidence that, not so very 
 long ago, a man was living who had 
 once been Prince of Benevento and who 
 before that had been Bishop of Autun. 
 Benevento, among many other things 
 that it is, is also the later city of 
 Talleyrand, as Autun is the earlier. 
 But there is this difference that one 
 thinks of Talleyrand at Autun and one 
 does not think of him at Benevento. 
 At Autun he has his place, though a 
 very strange place, in the long succes- 
 sion of Bishops of Autun ; at Bene- 
 vento, though he bore the style of its 
 prince, he stands all alone ; we cannot 
 find a niche for him in the succession 
 
266 irtal^. 
 
 of the Beneventan princes. Yet a prince 
 of Benevento whose existence marks 
 the ending for a season of the long 
 papal dominion in Benevento reminds 
 us that Benevento had its princes before 
 that papal dominion began. It reminds 
 us of the two distinctive features in 
 the later history of the city. Benevento 
 was first the seat of Lombard princes 
 who, placed on the borders of both 
 empires, contrived to escape all practi- 
 cal submission to either ; it was then 
 the seat of an outlying scrap of papal 
 dominion surrounded on all sides by 
 the Sicilian realm. In both these char- 
 acters Benevento was a kind of curiosity 
 on the historical map of Europe. But 
 the city had its ups and downs before 
 those days, and amongst other things 
 it had gone through a somewhat gro- 
 tesque change of name. It is hard to 
 believe that a city placed so far inland 
 can really have been of Greek origin ; 
 but legend attributed it to a Greek 
 
JSenevento. 267 
 
 founder, and its oldest name had a 
 Greek sound. Greek Maloeis, Samnite 
 Maluentum, had, when it was read into 
 Latin Maloventum^ an ill sound ; so, 
 when the Samnite stronghold was 
 changed into the Roman colony, it 
 took the name of Beneventum, city of 
 welcome. 
 
 Beneventum, marked by Procopius 
 as a strong city in a high place, stands 
 low as compared with the true hill- 
 cities. Still, as compared with Capua, 
 it might itself pass for a hill-city. It 
 has just that amount of rise above the 
 river which there commonly is where 
 there is a river, such a rise as may be 
 seen in many an English town which is 
 not as Durham or lyincoln. We miss 
 the primaeval walls of the hill-cities ; 
 but we find, on the other hand, works 
 of Roman and mediaeval art such as in 
 the hill-cities we do not find. The arch 
 of Trajan has vanished from Rome, 
 except so far as it lives in the sculp- 
 
268 nm^. 
 
 tures which were torn from it to enrich 
 the arch of Constantine. But at Bene- 
 vento, as at Ancona, the memorial of 
 the conqueror of Dacia still abides. 
 The Beneventan arch may indeed fairly 
 take its place in the Roman series. It 
 belongs essentially to the same class of 
 designs as the arch of Severus and the 
 arch of Constantine, while it has little 
 in common with its own tall and slender 
 fellow at Ancona. At the same time, 
 vsince it has, in general effect at least, 
 taken upon itself something of the 
 position of a town-gate, since it bears 
 the name of Porta aurea, to match the 
 golden gate of Constantinople and the 
 golden gate of Spalato, the arch of 
 Beneventum has now a somewhat 
 greater air of reality than triumphal 
 arches commonly have. The weak 
 point of that class of structures is that 
 they are of no use. They do not, like 
 a wall, a gateway, a house, a temple, 
 a hall of council, serve any purpose in 
 
:iBenevento, 269 
 
 the ordinary economy of things. They 
 are purely monumental, set up to com- 
 memorate something or somebody, but 
 in no way to help on men's daily affairs, 
 public or private. And yet they are 
 not mere monuments, like a statue or 
 an inscribed stone. A large building 
 of this kind, having very much the air 
 of a building which does serve some 
 purpose, is a little deceptive. It is so 
 like a real gateway that it calls up the 
 thought of a real gateway, and leaves 
 us a little disappointed at finding that 
 the building, after all, never was of any 
 use to anybody, and was set up simply 
 to be looked at. There is, therefore, 
 something a little unsatisfactory in the 
 whole class of triumphal arches, and 
 it may even be that a slightly ludicrous 
 element is thrown in when we find that 
 the immediate occasion for rearing this 
 record of the life and exploits of the 
 ' ' fortissimus princeps ' ' whom it com- 
 memorates was the repair of the Appian 
 
270 Utali^. 
 
 Way. But it does not become us to 
 find fault with any built and graven 
 monument, specially with one of a time 
 of which we have so few written monu- 
 ments as the memorable reign of 
 Trajan. We are so much the slaves 
 of accidental associations, so apt to 
 draw lines at some altogether unrea- 
 sonable point, that we may doubt 
 whether the reign of Trajan holds the 
 place which it should hold in popular 
 imagination. Suetonius wrote the lives 
 of Twelve Caesars, and this mere acci- 
 dent has caused the notion of a break 
 which has no real existence between 
 the Suetonian Twelve and those who 
 next followed them. The reign of 
 Trajan marks the Empire at its highest 
 pitch of extent and power, at that 
 highest pitch which, in its own nature, 
 comes just before the beginning of 
 decay. His days saw, too, the highest 
 pitch of architectural magnificence ; 
 and with Tacitus and Juvenal to adorn 
 
:S6cncvcnto. 271 
 
 it, one might be inclined to say that, 
 as an age of Latin literature, the age 
 of Trajan might hold its own against 
 any earlier period of the Imperial rule. 
 For we must remember that the great 
 writers of the early days of Augustus 
 are in truth writers of the republican 
 period living on into the Empire. The 
 Flavian period, continued under Tra- 
 jan, is quite as rich as the earlier days 
 of the Empire itself. And we may 
 notice that the arch of Beneventum 
 marks the reign of Trajan, and with it 
 the Roman Empire, at what was really 
 its highest point. It was raised at a 
 time when it could commemorate con- 
 quered Dacia and tributary Armenia. 
 That Dacia and Armenia could be 
 brought within the range of that Ro- 
 man world which is continued in the 
 system of modem Europe is proved 
 by daily witnesses. But the arch of 
 Beneventum was built too early to 
 commemorate its hero's later victories 
 
272 1Ftali5. 
 
 in the further East, momentary victo- 
 ries in lands which neither Alexander 
 nor Trajan could bring within the 
 abiding range of Western influences. 
 
 The arch of Trajan is so distinctly 
 the most famous thing in Benevento 
 that it has carried us out of all chrono- 
 logical order. But the historical interest 
 of Beneventum lies earlier and later 
 than Trajan's day. In truth the Pax 
 Romana forbade that the main interest 
 of any Italian city should lie in Trajan's 
 day. We may believe or not as we 
 please in the presence of Diom^d^s 
 and ^neas ; but Pyrrhos, Hanno, 
 Totilas, and Manfred are visitors who 
 cannot be forgotten. The city has 
 looked out on many battles, from the 
 overthrow of the Molossian to the over- 
 throw of the Swabian. A pleasing 
 tale in its history is when that Tiberius 
 Gracchus who is the first of a name to 
 appear in Roman history led back his 
 victorious slave^soldiers to receive the 
 
3Benex>ento. 273 
 
 reward of freedom, and to be welcomed 
 by the rejoicing people of the faithful 
 colony. For among the Thirty Cities 
 of those days, the Latin colony of 
 Beneventum was not one of the laggard 
 twelve, but one of the faithful eighteen 
 that were ready to endure all hard- 
 ships. In later warfare the city seems 
 to have' been less steadfast. It wel- 
 comed Belisarius, and in after days 
 Totilas took it without any trouble, 
 and if he destroyed the walls it was not 
 out of revenge for any resistance on 
 the part of its inhabitants, but for fear 
 they should supply a post of defence 
 for an imperial army. But the greatest 
 day of Beneventum as an historical city 
 comes later than Totilas and earlier 
 than Manfred. The memory of that 
 day may be studied in the chief re- 
 maining buildings in the city, the two 
 greatest churches and the castle. The 
 west front of the metropolitan church, 
 a grand example of Italian Roman- 
 
274 Iftali^. 
 
 esque, is furthermore a perfect chronicle 
 of local history. There we may read, 
 built up into the wall, a crowd of monu- 
 mental records of the lyombard princes 
 of Beneventum, with their deeds, 
 especially their dealings with the dan- 
 gerous power of the Franks, set forth 
 at length. The bronze doors are 
 famous, with their long array of Scrip- 
 tural subjects ending in a lesson in the 
 ecclesiastical geography of the prov- 
 ince, the figures of the Archbishop of 
 Beneventum and his suffragans. The 
 harmony of the front is a little marred 
 by the single low and massive comer- 
 tower ; but the inscription sums up the 
 history of Beneventum, political and 
 physical, for some ages. The city was 
 laid waste by the Emperor Frederick 
 in 1229 and by an earthquake in 1688. 
 The tower was built after the first 
 overthrow in 1279 ; it was restored after 
 the second in 1690. Destruction 
 wrought by the elements would thus 
 
:Bcncvcnto. 275 
 
 seem to be more easily repaired than 
 destruction wrought by the hand of 
 Caesar. But it is somewhat strange 
 to find Frederick, in his own belief a 
 successor of Trajan, a follower of Trajan 
 in Eastern conquests, branded as a 
 destroyer in the city where Trajan's 
 memory is cherished. But Frederick 
 had to deal with a kind of power which 
 Trajan knew not. The wrath of the 
 later Emperor fell on a city which was 
 too faithful to the Roman Bishop. The 
 course of Trajan's rule was not likely 
 to be interfered with either by the ob- 
 scure chief of the persecuted Christian 
 sect, or by any minister of the creed 
 of which Trajan was himself chief 
 Pontiff. 
 
 Within the church the repairs done 
 after the earthquake have wrought a 
 good deal of mischief. But we can 
 still see the four ranges of columns 
 of a mighty basilica which must once 
 have taken its place among the noblest 
 
276 Utali^. 
 
 of its class. Their capitals are a little 
 nondescript ; but they do not offend 
 the eye ; if they were certified to be of 
 Trajan's day, it would doubtless be 
 the right thing to admire them. The 
 ambones and the Easter-light are 
 lovely work of the early fourteenth 
 century, the days of a real Renaissance^ 
 truer than that which followed. The 
 treasury is rich in vestments and other 
 precious things ; but the reader of 
 Anselm's Life looks in vain for that 
 specially gorgeous vestment which a 
 Beneventan Archbishop of the eleventh 
 century bore away from Canterbury in 
 exchange for the arm of St. Bartholo- 
 mew, and which made its wearer the 
 most splendid object among the as- 
 sembled fathers at Bari. If this miss- 
 ing garment carries our thoughts to 
 England, the round church of St. 
 Sophia — hexagonal in its inner range 
 — carries us to the Eastern world, and 
 reminds us that there was more than 
 
JBenevento. 277 
 
 one line of successors of Trajan, and 
 that Beneventum came under the in- 
 fluences of both. The cloister, with 
 its amazing series of capitals, its birds, 
 its elephants, its hunting scenes, may 
 rank with those of Aosta and of Aries, 
 of which that of Aosta can supply 
 camels to match the Beneventan ele- 
 phants. The castle dates only from 
 Pope John the Twenty-second, far 
 away at Avignon; we look perhaps 
 more carefully at the older fragments 
 built up in its walls and on the lion 
 in front of it. With the lion in our 
 thoughts we may look out for other 
 beasts, graven or molten or abiding in 
 their own relics. Procopius saw there 
 the tusks of the Kalydonian boar, as 
 in later times he might, either at War- 
 wick or at Bristol, have seen the ribs 
 of the dun cow. It is for palaeon- 
 tologists to say what it was that the 
 Beneventan antiquaries really showed 
 him. Failing this natural wonder we 
 
278 Utal^, 
 
 go to pay our respects to another beast 
 whose shape is due to man's device, in 
 quite another part of the city. A 
 rudely carved bovine animal, in which 
 local patriotism sees the Samnite bull — 
 the bull which, on the coins of revived 
 Samnium, so proudly trampled down 
 the Roman wolf — is now cruelly to be 
 ruled as nothing better than a monu- 
 ment of intruding Apis-worship. We 
 have less time to spend at Benevento 
 than at some other cities ; but the 
 Roman arches and vaults of the strange 
 building called Quaranta Santi^ the 
 grand Roman bridge below, must not 
 be forgotten, and we must still give 
 one more thought to the two mighty 
 men whose hopes were shattered at 
 Beneventum. Manfred fell with his 
 faithful Saracens around him ; Pyrrhos 
 lived to fall by a meaner end at Argos; 
 but Beneventum ended the real career 
 of both. It is strange how the two 
 were in some sort the converse of each 
 
JBenevento* 279 
 
 other. Pyrrhos carried the Epeirot 
 arms into Sicily and southern Italy ; 
 Manfred, lord of Sicily and southern 
 Italy, established a Sicilian dominion 
 on the coast of Epeiros. Korkjnra, 
 Corfu, the island which has seen every 
 master except the Turk, formed part 
 of the dominions of both alike. We 
 leave Benevento for another city in 
 which the East and the West of Eu- 
 rope, and a crowd of other elements 
 besides, meet yet more closely than 
 they do at Benevento. At Beneventum 
 the eye of Horace began to be caught 
 by the well-known mountains of 
 Apulia ; Procopius somewhat boldly 
 speaks of inland Beneventum as being 
 opposite to Dalmatia. The city which 
 we take as our next chief goal, if not 
 strictly opposite to Dalmatia, is so 
 marked as being opposite to one Illy- 
 rian port as to have sent its name, so 
 to speak, across the Hadriatic. We 
 will not trouble ourselves to look out 
 
28o -fftal^. 
 
 for Equotuticum, or to regale ourselves 
 with either the bread or the water of 
 Canusium. It is to the walls of Bari, 
 fishy Bari, that we have to make our 
 way ; at Bari, Greek, lyatin, Saracen, 
 even Englishman, are all at home, and 
 Bari is opposite to Antivari. 
 
VIII. iRorman JBuilbings in 
 Hpulia* 
 
 A T Foggia the line of railway which 
 ^^ crosses the Italian peninsula 
 from Naples eastward joins the great 
 European line which for the most part 
 skirts the Western Hadriatic shore. 
 From Rome itself the tfer ad Brun- 
 disium is still made by way of Bene- 
 ventum ; for the great mass of mankind 
 Bologna has in this matter supplanted 
 Beneventum and Rome too. Our east- 
 ward course across the peninsula has 
 done for us much the same as would 
 be done by the like course across our 
 own island. We have undergone the 
 same change as if we had passed from 
 Wales, Devonshire, or Cumberland, to 
 281 
 
282 irtal^. 
 
 lyincolnshire or East-Anglia. We need 
 no longer look out for hill-cities, 
 where the first element in such cities, 
 the hills themselves, is not to be found. 
 At Foggia we have not even the 
 amount of hill which we have at Bene- 
 vento. We are in the great Apulian 
 plain, the plain so precious for sheep- 
 feeding, and the occupation of which 
 has more than once given rise to wars 
 and treaties. Of Foggia itself many 
 perhaps have never heard except as a 
 railway junction. Yet Foggia has a 
 history, and its history has monuments, 
 though we can hardly put them on a 
 level with the monuments and the 
 history of Beneventum. The capital 
 of Apulia, the representative of ancient 
 Arpi, has. a history in some respects 
 the same as that of Beneventum, in 
 some other respects its opposite. Both 
 cities claimed Diomedes as a founder, 
 while Frederick the Second, a destroyer 
 at Benevento, appears as a later founder 
 
Irtorman :©uilDincjg in Bpulia. 283 
 
 at Foggia. One arch of his palace still 
 remains, with an inscription telling us 
 how under him Foggia became a royal 
 and Imperial seat. There died his 
 English Empress Isabel, on the splend- 
 our of whose passage on her way to 
 her marriage our own historians are 
 eloquent. Further than this, the monu- 
 mental attractions of Foggia hardly go 
 beyond what is left of its chief church. 
 Of its front Gsell-fels, gives a somewhat 
 ideal engraving, showing it, not as it is, 
 but as it was before earthquakes and 
 restorers after earthquakes had com- 
 bined to mar it. It was — indeed, with 
 all mutilations, it still is — a fine front of 
 the later Italian Romanesque, with one 
 of the rose or wheel windows which 
 we must now look for wherever we go. 
 More attractive perhaps is the crypt, 
 with its four columns and capitals of 
 singular beauty. They surely belong 
 to the time of the Imperial patron of 
 Foggia, marking as they do a kind of 
 
284 1ltal^. 
 
 earlier and more healthy Renaissance^ 
 which, taking classical form as its 
 general models, took them only as 
 general models, and did not deem it- 
 self bound slavishly to copy every turn 
 of a leaf or every section of a moulding. 
 Such works of the carver's tool are 
 akin to those noble coins of Frederick 
 which seem ages in advance of any- 
 thing that bore the image and super- 
 scription of his grandfather. 
 
 Foggia is however less likely to 
 strike the traveller — at least the trav- 
 eller who comes from the hill-towns 
 by way of Capua and Benevento — ^by 
 any remarkable store of ancient monu- 
 ments, than as being the first to which 
 he will come of a series of cities, most 
 of which at once impress the visitor by 
 their air of modern progress and pros- 
 perity. The heel of Italy, in its cities 
 at least, certainly seems to be the very 
 opposite to a decaying region, or even 
 to a region which stands still. To be 
 
IRorman JSuilDings in Bpulla. 285 
 
 sure, the city whose name is the most 
 familiar of all is something of an ex- 
 ception ; Brindisi, notwithstanding its 
 dealings with the whole world, is not 
 as Bari or even as Trani. But most of 
 the towns at which we tarry, or which 
 we pass by, give quite a different im- 
 pression. We cannot tarry at all. At 
 Barletta we get only a glimpse of the 
 Imperial colossus, and therefore we do 
 not venture to hazard a guess whether 
 it is Heraclius or any later prince 
 whom it represents. Along this coast, 
 any Caesar of the East is in his place, if 
 only as a memorial of the long, though 
 half forgotten, time when Southern 
 Italy bowed to the New Rome and not 
 to the Old. But we do not let these 
 earlier memories wholly shut out the 
 thought of the later combat when the 
 Horatii and Curiatii of legend found 
 themselves multiplied by a process 
 exactly opposite to decimation. The 
 attractions of Trani are irresistible ; a 
 
286 Iftal^. 
 
 bell-tower rising as proudly over the 
 waves as that of Spalato itself would 
 force us to halt even if we knew noth- 
 ing before of what church and city has 
 to show us. The metropolitan church 
 of Trani is certainly one of the very 
 noblest examples of that singular 
 mixture of Norman and more strictly 
 Italian forms — not without a touch 
 both of the Greek and the Saracen — 
 which is the characteristic style of this 
 region, the natural result of its political 
 history. Strange, but striking in the 
 extreme, is the effect of the east end 
 of this church rising close above the 
 sea ; far more truly admirable is the 
 effect of the inside, where the coupled 
 columns of the Saracen have been 
 boldly taught to act as the piers of the 
 great arcades, and to bear up above 
 them a massive triforium, which by 
 itself would make us think ourselves 
 in Normandy or England. All the 
 churches of this district have a good 
 
Borman ^uilDinge in Bpulta. 287 
 
 deal of their strength underground, 
 and the under-church of Trani is 
 worthy of the building which it sup- 
 ports. The smaller church, All Saints* , 
 a charming little basilica with a port- 
 ico of singular grace, as also several 
 good pieces of domestic architecture, 
 and the general effect bf the tower 
 skirted with its dark arcades, all join 
 to make Trani a place which cannot be 
 passed by, though no august form calls 
 on us, as at Barletta, to tarry to pay 
 Caesar his due homage. But Trani 
 has found something to be said for it- 
 self both by pen and by pencil in quite 
 other company. An accident of later 
 times gave it a right to rank, like 
 Brindisi itself, among the Subject and 
 Neighbour Lands of Venice. And 
 Trani has peculiarities of its own. 
 The main features of the style may be 
 studied elsewhere. We long to see 
 Barletta, to tarry to pay Caesar his due. 
 We long to stop at Bisceglia and Mol- 
 
288 irtal^» 
 
 fetta, of which we read attractive 
 notices ; but again we must pick and 
 choose, and Bitonto is the only place 
 on which we can qualify ourselves 
 to speak at all at large, till we come 
 to the head of the whole region at 
 Bari. 
 
 Bitonto shares a station with San 
 Spirito, but it lies further away from 
 the railway, and that on the inland 
 side, than most of the towns along this 
 line. Its main interest is found in its 
 cathedral church, which in some points 
 prepares us for the buildings of Bari. 
 First of all in point of wonder, though 
 latest in point of date, is the treatment 
 which it has undergone at the hands 
 of modern improvers. A dim remem- 
 brance comes to us that we saw some- 
 thing of the same kind in the Dominican 
 church at Perugia ; otherwise we ask 
 in amazement why any man should 
 think it an improvement to cut off the 
 whole upper part of a church as seen 
 
IRorman :©uilMng6 In Bpulia. 289 
 
 inside by thrusting in a roof a great 
 deal lower than the original one, and 
 thereby leaving the upper stages out- 
 side to stand up in the air, serving no 
 kind of purpose. Yet this has been 
 done both at Bitonto and at Bari. Yet 
 perchance the improvers of modem 
 times might retort on the original 
 architects, and ask why, when they 
 had made three apses at the east end, 
 they presently built up a wall to hide 
 them. This is the arrangement both 
 at Bitonto and in the two great 
 churches of Bari. The notion of Nor- 
 mans working in Italy would almost 
 seem to have been to make an Italian 
 front at one end, and something ap- 
 proaching to a Norman front at the 
 other end. Thus the church of Bi- 
 tonto has an excellent west front of 
 Italian outline, with details more 
 Italian than Norman, and with the 
 characteristic round window evidently 
 designed from the beginning, though 
 
290 "fftal^, 
 
 the one which is actually there must 
 be of later date. Also there either 
 has been or has been meant to be a 
 portico over the lower stage of the 
 west front, a thoroughly Italian no- 
 tion. But the east end takes almost 
 the form of a Norman west front ; a 
 Norman founder, it would seem, was 
 not happy unless he could somewhere 
 or other get two towers with an orna- 
 mental wall between them. To this 
 end the apses are sacrificed. Instead 
 of the three curved projections which 
 form the main features of so many 
 Italian, German, and indeed Norman, 
 east ends, the whole east end is flat. 
 The side apses are disguised by 
 towers, one only of which is carried up 
 to any height, while the great apse is 
 hidden by the wall between the towers. 
 Herein is the difference between Bi- 
 tonto and Trani. At Trani there are 
 no eastern towers, and the apses, 
 though of amazing external height 
 
IRorman :BSuUDin00 in Bpulta* 291 
 
 and no less amazing slightness of pro- 
 jection, are still real apses with a real 
 curve. At Bitonto no one could know 
 from the outside that there were any 
 apses at all. As the ordinary ranges 
 of arcades and windows are thus made 
 impossible, the architect, like an Eng- 
 lish architect some generations later, 
 threw his strength into a single east 
 window, and certainly made one as 
 large and as rich as was possible before 
 the invention of tracery. An elaborate 
 round-headed opening is covered with 
 rich devices, and has wonderful mon- 
 sters to bear up its side-shafts. This 
 too is to be seen at Trani, and we shall 
 come again to other examples at Bari. 
 There is something very strange in 
 these attempts to reconcile the ideas of 
 Normandy and of Italy in one build- 
 ing. But in these flat east ends the 
 result is that we get something which 
 is certainly neither Italian nor Norman, 
 and which can hardly be approved ac- 
 
292 irtal^» 
 
 cording to any law of either reality or 
 beauty. 
 
 The same spirit of compromise goes 
 on in other parts. The endless col- 
 umns of the under-church supply a 
 rich study of capitals, largely of the 
 grotesque kind. Men, monkeys, the 
 original ram's horn, leaves, the Impe- 
 rial eagle — ^better suited for the purpose 
 than anything else — all do duty as 
 volutes. The columns in the upper- 
 church too give another rich collection 
 of various kinds of human, animal, 
 and vegetable forms. But here a 
 soberer spirit reigns ; though perhaps 
 no one capital is strictly classical, yet 
 the grotesque does not reign as it does 
 below. Three arches from columns, 
 a solid block, three more arches from 
 columns, make up the nave. Over 
 these Italian elements Norman taste 
 set a triforium ; modern taste has 
 hidden the clerestory. Outside, the 
 Italian has his way in the rich open 
 
IKlorman :©ullDtng6 In BpuUa. 293 
 
 arcades of the parapets and in the 
 windows of various forms, filled, some 
 of them, with that kind of pierced 
 tracery which is neither Italian nor 
 Norman, but distinctively Oriental, 
 and which look as if they had come — 
 as they possibly may have come — 
 from a mosque. 
 
 Altogether there is something singu- 
 larly interesting in this mixture of 
 styles— more strictly this mixture of 
 two varieties of the same style, for 
 Italian and Norman Romanesque are 
 after all members of one great artistic 
 family. Nothing of the kind happened 
 in Sicily, where the Norman kings 
 simply set native craftsmen, Greek and 
 Saracen, to build for them after their 
 several native fashions. Here, in a 
 land where Greek and I^atin elements 
 were striving for mastery, where the 
 Saracen was a mere occasional visitor, 
 the Norman brought in the ideas of his 
 own land to make a new element. But, 
 
294 Iftal^. 
 
 if nothing like this happened in Sicily, 
 something a little like it did happen 
 in England. There is no doubt that 
 Norman architecture was influenced, 
 though very slightly, by the earlier 
 native style of England, a rude imita- 
 tion of Italian models. That Norman 
 architecture in Apulia should be far 
 more deeply influenced by the Italian 
 models themselves was but carrying 
 out the same general process, as was 
 only natural, in a far greater degree. 
 
IX. Bart 
 
 \1 /"E are now at Barium, Bari, the 
 ^^ original Bari of the West, as 
 distinguished from the Bari, Bar, Anti- 
 baris, Antivari, which repeats its name 
 on the opposite coast. There we can 
 now again, as we could have done 
 seventy years back at Cattaro, land at 
 a Montenegrin haven. The distinction 
 between the two bearers of the name 
 of Bari implies an association which is 
 not out of place. The historic interest 
 of Bari gathers wholly round its con- 
 nexion with the lands on the other 
 side of Hadria. In earlier days the 
 place has really no history whatever. 
 Its most memorable day was when the 
 powers of the Eastern and Western 
 295 
 
296 Iftali^, 
 
 Empires — powers which perhaps never 
 again worked in such harmony — were 
 needed to dislodge a Saracen Sultan 
 from its walls. * ' Emir, ' ' some one 
 will say, not ** Sultan," and certainly 
 we are more used in Europe to Sultans 
 of much later date than the days of 
 I^ewis the Second and Basil the First, 
 Sultans coming from quite other lands 
 than any that can have sent forth the 
 Mussulman prince of Bari. But he is 
 called Sultan as well as Emir by his 
 one biographer, the Emperor Constan- 
 tine, and we cannot appeal from those 
 august pages which still form the best 
 guide-book to the eastern shores of 
 the Hadriatic. Anyhow, the Sultan 
 of Bari was a philosopher; he never 
 laughed, except once when he saw a 
 wheel go round ; for that reminded 
 him of the ups and downs of his own 
 fortunes. Then Bari passes to the rule 
 of the Eastern Empire ; instead of a 
 Sultan it has a Katapan, representative 
 
MnvU 297 
 
 of the Eastern Augustus in that Italian 
 dominion which had become so small 
 at the beginning of the ninth century, 
 and which was so great again at its 
 end. Threatened again at the begin- 
 ning of the eleventh century by new 
 Saracen invaders, it is guarded by the 
 fleets of Venice, still the faithful vassal 
 of Constantinople against a common 
 enemy. Seventy years later the arms 
 of Robert Wiscard added the capi- 
 tal of Byzantine Italy to his Norman 
 dominion, and before the century was 
 out, Pope Urban, the great stirrer of 
 the West against the Mussulman East, 
 chose Bari as the scene of the Council 
 called to denounce at once the practical 
 abuses of the Christian West and the 
 dogmatic errors of the Christian East. 
 Once more, in the next age, we find 
 Bari looking across the sea to its old 
 lord, and chastised by the Sicilian king 
 for its disloyalty. Add that Bari, be- 
 fore all saints, still honours St. Nicolas 
 
298 irtai^. 
 
 of the Lykian Myra, and keeps his 
 relics sacred, we are told, from Turkish 
 desecration by the craft of merchants 
 of her own city. Altogether Bari 
 seems, at least in its history, as much 
 Greek as Italian or Norman. It would 
 seem neither unnatural nor unpleasant 
 if Greek were still the tongue of the 
 seafaring folk of Bari, much as a Nor- 
 man in his own land often carries 
 an air about him which would make 
 Danish seem a much more natural 
 speech for him than French. 
 
 But the great buildings of Bari be- 
 long to that mixed Norman and Italian 
 style of which we have already seen 
 something at Bitonto. The architect- 
 ural attractions of the city are chiefly 
 to be found in two great churches and 
 one smaller one. The castle, standing 
 by the sea, should have its landward 
 side walked round, and the walk will 
 reveal much of picturesque outline and 
 a little of good detail. But it is the 
 
:JSaru 299 
 
 churches, above all the great abbey 
 of St. Nicolas, which are the glory of 
 Bari. They all lie in the old town by 
 the sea, the old town of narrow and 
 crooked streets, in which it does not 
 much matter which way you go ; you 
 are sure to come either to the castle 
 or to one of the churches before very 
 long. Very different are things in the 
 new town, which we may rejoice in as 
 we look at it as a sign of Bari's abid- 
 ing or renewed prosperity, but which 
 can raise no feelings of pleasure on 
 any other ground. Its streets, crossing 
 each other at right angles, are indeed 
 carefully dedicated to the worthies of 
 Bari ; but, unless we can always re- 
 member which of several perhaps not 
 very familiar worthies watches over 
 each of several angles which are ex- 
 actly alike, it is easy to take a wrong 
 turn and to put oneself under the care 
 of Andrew of Bari when we ought 
 rather to be commending ourselves to 
 
300 Iftali?. 
 
 Robert. And under either protection 
 we yearn in the wide straight streets 
 for some physical shelter from the 
 Apulian sun, and wonder why modem 
 Rome, modern Athens, and modern 
 Bari should have so much less common 
 sense than Bologna, Padua, and Corfu 
 had in days long past. Still, amid this 
 rectangular labyrinth the sea is a help 
 on one side, while on another the tall 
 tower of the metropolitan church of 
 St. Sabinus beckons us into the older 
 streets, whose narrowness and crook- 
 edness at least supply shade. That 
 tower, one of the tallest and stateliest 
 of Italy, we naturally assume to be a 
 detached campanile, without a fellow 
 and standing apart from its confeder- 
 ate buildings, church and baptistery. 
 So it doubtless would be in a purely 
 Italian city ; but here we are in the 
 city where the Norman displaced the 
 Greek. The two great churches of 
 Bari, like that of Bitonto, have their 
 
MavU 301 
 
 towers wrought into the building in 
 Norman fashion, and at the duomo the 
 great round baptistery is also merged 
 in the same mass with the church and 
 its towers. Both of the great churches 
 of Bari have east ends of the same 
 kind as that at Bitonto ; the apses are 
 swallowed up; the place where the 
 great apse should be is marked by a 
 single splendid Romanesque window. 
 The eastern towers of St. Nicolas have 
 never been carried up ; at St. Sabinus 
 the southern one has perished, but the 
 northern one still soars in all its 
 majesty, thoroughly Italian in its con- 
 ception, but rather to be called Nor- 
 man in its detail. St. Nicolas has also 
 another pair of unfinished towers at its 
 west end, standing at once beyond the 
 aisles as at Wells and Rouen, and in 
 front of them as at Holyrood. They 
 flank a grand Italian front which one 
 would think would be finer without 
 them. These western towers are ab- 
 
302 Utali^, 
 
 sent in the metropolitan church ; but 
 that has a most perfect octagonal 
 cupola over the crossing, the grouping 
 of which with the two lofty eastern 
 towers, if there was any point from 
 which it could really be seen, must 
 have been wonderful. Thus, in both 
 churches, something of a German out- 
 line has either been consciously 
 brought in or has been incidentally 
 stumbled on. The four towers of St. 
 Nicolas, the octagon and eastern tower 
 of St. Sabinus, will easily find Rhenish 
 fellows, though w^e should perhaps 
 have to go as far as Angouleme for a 
 single tower of equal majesty mourn- 
 ing over a vanished brother. In other 
 points the external arrangements of 
 the two great churches of Bari have 
 much in common. The rose windows, 
 the coupled windows, the blank ar- 
 cades, are much the same in both. So 
 is the choice of animal forms for the 
 fanciful supports of columns. In most 
 
:fl5arf. 303 
 
 places the lion discharges that function 
 — in a building designed by lions we 
 should doubtless see something differ- 
 ent. So we do here at Bari, where the 
 solid forms of the pachydermata are, 
 perhaps discreetly, preferred to the 
 lighter carnivora. The elephant, we 
 think, is to be found in both churches, 
 and the huge earth-shaking beast is 
 represented so as to remind us both of 
 Pyrrhos and of Hannibal ; some have 
 the smaller ear of India, some the 
 larger of Africa. The hippopotamus 
 appears only in the west front of St. 
 Nicolas. Had the daring shipfolk 
 who bore away the saint's bones from 
 lyykia made their way to the Nile 
 also? 
 
 When we pass the threshold of the 
 two buildings we see that their fate in 
 modern times has been very different. 
 St. Sabinus has suffered much as 
 Bitonto has suffered. The upper part 
 of the building is hidden in just the 
 
304 1Ftal^, 
 
 same fashion, and ugly tricks have 
 been played with the columns and their 
 capitals. ' St. Nicolas, on the other 
 hand, has been left comparatively 
 alone. The chief changes which it 
 has undergone must have taken place 
 not very long after the original build- 
 ing. The original plan was much the 
 same as that of Bitonto — three arches 
 from columns, a massive pier, then 
 three more arches from columns. But 
 this arrangement was disturbed at an 
 early time by throwing three span- 
 ning arches across the nave. The 
 effect is so striking that we can hardly 
 regret their presence ; but it is per- 
 fectly easy to see that they are inser- 
 tions, and, though they are essentially 
 of the same style, yet they differ in 
 their details from the original columns. 
 These last all approach more or less 
 to the Corinthian type ; in the under- 
 church the patterns are more varied. 
 Here are still the wonder-working 
 
Sart 305 
 
 relics of St. Nicolas, and the balsam 
 or * * manna ' ' which flows from them 
 may still be drunk. In the duomo the 
 under-church has been restored out of 
 all ancient character, but it still keeps 
 an ancient Byzantine picture. 
 
 As so often happens, the secondary 
 church of Bari altogether surpassed 
 the mother church in historic fame and 
 local honour. To ourselves the fact in 
 its history which comes home most 
 nearly is that it was here that Urban 
 held his Council, here that Anselm, to 
 the satisfaction of all Western minds, 
 refuted the creed of the East, here that 
 he interceded with the Pontiff and the 
 assembled fathers on behalf of the king 
 who had wronged him. Here too it 
 was that the keen eye of English 
 Eadmer spied out on the shoulders of 
 the Archbishop of Beneventum the 
 splendid cope which is no longer to 
 be seen at Beneventum. Such little 
 touches in those days often brought 
 
 VOL. II. — 20 
 
3o6 . IFtal^* 
 
 the ends of the world together in a 
 way to which, in our days of more 
 general intercourse, nothing answers. 
 When French was the polite language 
 alike at Dunfermline and at Jerusalem, 
 when the I^atin-speaking clerk was at 
 home in any corner of the West, when 
 the few men of the West who had 
 learned Greek spoke it so that a Greek 
 could understand them, when men 
 passed to and fro between the civil 
 services of England and Sicily, com- 
 munication between distant parts of 
 Europe was in some ways easier than 
 it is now. Bari, one of the chief 
 places for setting out on crusades, 
 must for a long time have been a 
 thoroughly cosmopolitan city. We do 
 feel that the ends of the earth have 
 combined to meet at Bari, when we 
 find the place of honour in the church 
 of St. Nicolas at Bari held by a prin- 
 cess of Bari, who became Queen of the 
 greatest Slavonic kingdom. Emblem- 
 
:fi5ari» 307 
 
 atic figures of Bari and Poland support 
 the tomb of Queen Bona, and her 
 epitaph describes her husband Sigis- 
 mund, the first of that name, as not 
 only the mighty King of Poland, but 
 Grand-Duke of Lithuania, Russia, 
 Prussia, Mazovia, and Samogitia. Yet 
 we might have lighted on Slavonic as- 
 sociations earlier on the road. There 
 is a strange record of a Bulgarian 
 settlement in the parts of Beneventum ; 
 but that would take us yet further 
 afield : it was before Bulgarians be- 
 came Slavonic. But what are we to 
 say to the Samnite Schiavia which 
 sheltered Anselm ? 
 
 The journey is done — 
 
 *' Brundisium longse finis cartaeque viseque." 
 
 Otrantolies yet further ; but Otranto, 
 yet more notably than Bari, comes 
 within the Venetian Notitia. So does 
 Brundisium, city of the stag's horn, 
 of the haven so aptly called, if we 
 
3o8 1Ftal^. 
 
 only knew in what tongue it is that 
 Brentesium has that meaning. But 
 we are tempted to regret that Brindisi 
 and not Otranto is the point for which 
 Hadria has to be crossed. Brindisi 
 has no moral claim. We cannot look 
 thence, as we can from Otranto, upon 
 the mountains of still enslaved Epeiros ; 
 no one is tempted even to dream that ' 
 he looks on free Corfu or on the lesser 
 satellite that stands in front as its 
 outpost. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Alatrt, its alliance with Rome, 206 ; its special inter- 
 est to be found in its primaeval remains, 207 ; 
 not named in the Itineraries, ib. ; its walls, 209, 
 212 et seq. ; position of the arx, 210, 213 ; its 
 cathedral church on the site of the primaeval 
 temple, 211, 212, 219 ; gateway of the ar^c, 215 ; 
 contrasted with Myk^n^, 216 ; mediaeval remains 
 at, 298 ; church of Sta. Maria Maggiore at, ib. ; 
 its domestic architecture, ib. 
 
 Alba, its destruction, no, 112, 120 ; use of the name, 
 ib. ; Roman villas at, in, 112 ; analogy of its rela- 
 tion to Albano with that of Spalato and Salona, 
 112. See Albano. 
 
 Alban Lake, the, no, 114, 119, 165 
 
 Alban Mount, the, no, 119, 165 ; remains of temple 
 of Jupiter I^atiaris on, in, 122, 142 
 
 Albania, use of the name, 108, 109 
 
 Albano (Alba), imperial dwelling-place, 112; its rela- 
 tion to Alba contrasted with that of Spalato and 
 Salona, ib. ; tomb of Pompeius at, 113 ; so-called 
 tomb of Aruns at, ib. 
 
 'AKfiavoL, use of the name, 109, no, 222 
 
 Albanum. See Albano. 
 
 Alexander III., Pope, consecrated at Ninfa, 147 
 
 Ana^ni {Anagnia), its position beyond Rome, 167; 
 the city of Boniface VIII., 168 ; the halting-place 
 
 309 
 
3IO ITnDex. 
 
 of Pyrrhos and Hannibal, 169 ; head of the Her- 
 nican confederation, ib., 172 ; joins the Triple 
 I^eagiie, 172 ; physical position of, 173 ; its ancient 
 walls, ib. ; how they differ from those at Cori and 
 Seg^i, 174, 175, 179 ; Hernican Anagnia not in 
 Macaulay's catalogues, 174 ; variety of construc- 
 tion in its walls, 175-177; question as to their 
 earliest date, 177-180 ; decline of its power, 179 ; 
 separate wall of the arx, 180 ; special character 
 of derived from its walls, ib., 181 ; historically 
 famous for its mediaeval Popes, 181 ; rich mediae- 
 val remains in, ib., 182 ; compared with Avignon, 
 181 ; cathedral church at, 183 ; the Locanda 
 cf Italia no longer exists at, 219 
 
 Ancona, triumphal arch of Trajan at, 268 
 
 Anselm, at Telesia, 256 ; defends the Filioque at the 
 Council of Bari, 305 ; sheltered at Schiavia, 307 
 
 AntemncB, lack of remains at, 88, 94-96 ; its legendary 
 story, 92 ; derivation of its name, 93 
 
 Antivart, Kastern Bari, 280, 295 
 
 Anxur (Terracina), 120, 121, 128 
 
 Appian Way, the, its namesake at Perugia, 28 ; re- 
 mains of, 115 ; arch of Trajan at Beneventum 
 commemorates the repair of, 269 
 
 Apulia, plain of, 251, 282 ; mixture of architectural 
 styles in, 293, 294 
 
 Aquileia, its special position in history, 239, 240 
 
 Arch, the, early striving after, at Norba, 145 ; at 
 Signia, 160-162 ; its principle known at Anagni, 
 I75> i79j 180 ; the true form not found at 
 Alatri, 215 ; the pointed arch in Southern Italy, 
 Sicily, and Aquitaine Romanesque, not Gothic, 
 243 
 
 Arches, triumphal, their purely monumental char- 
 acter, 268, 269 
 
1[n&cj. 3" 
 
 Arco Gotico, at Tusculutn, origin of the name, i6i, 
 162 
 
 ArezzOy its historical and physical position, 1-7, 13; 
 its Medicean walls, 4, 5 ; lack of domestic archi- 
 tecture in, 8; the Duomo and church of Sta. 
 Maria della Pieve, 6, 7, 9-11 
 
 Aricia, old and new, 114, 115, 126, 165 
 
 Aries, Roman theatre at, compared with that at 
 Ostia, 103 
 
 Assist, prse-Franciscan, its analogy with prse-aca- 
 demic Oxford, 48 ; the birth-place of Propertius 
 and Metastasio, 48, 49 ; Roman and mediaeval re- 
 mains in, 49, 52-57 ; its physical position, 50-52 ; 
 so-called temple of Minerva at, 52-54 ; its dedica- 
 tion to Castor and Pollux, tb. ; Roman inscrip- 
 tions, 54 
 
 Athens, her sea-port of later origin than Ostia, 99 
 
 Aurelius, Marcus, Kmperor, at Anagnia, 178 
 
 A versa, Norman county of, 241 
 
 Avignon, its papal buildings compared with those 
 of Anagni, 181 
 
 B 
 
 Bari, Western, as opposed to Antivari, 279, 280, 295 ; 
 under Mussulman rule, 296 ; won back by both 
 Empires in 871, ib. ; under the EJastem EJmpire, 
 ib. ; protected by Venice, 297 ; Norman conquest 
 of, ib. ; council at, held by Pope Urban, ib., 305; 
 Greek character of, 298 ; mixed Norman and 
 Italian style of architecture in, ib. ; Abbey of St. 
 Nicolas and cathedral church of St. Sabinus at, 
 299-305 ; its cosmopolitan character, 306 ; tomb 
 of Bona, Queen of Poland, in church of St. 
 Nicolas, 306, 307 
 
 Barletta, 285, 287 
 
312 IfnDcj* 
 
 Basilicas, 238-241 
 
 Belisarius, at Beneventum, 273 
 
 Beneventum (Benevento), the battle-ground of Pyr- 
 rhos and Manfred, 262, 272, 278 ; its position in 
 history, 264 et. seq. ; principality of, ib. ; lyom- 
 bardy duchy of, 266 ; papal possession of, ib. ; its 
 change of name, ib., 267 ; described by Procopius, 
 ib., 279 ; arch of Trajan at, 268, 271, 272 ; among 
 the Thirty Cities, 273 ; Belisarius at, ib. ; taken 
 by Totilas, ib. ; monumental records preserved 
 in its metropolitan church, ib., 274; overthrown 
 by Frederick the Second, 274, 275 ; Canterbury 
 cope worn by archbishop of, 276, 305 ; the castle, 
 277 ; Quaranta Santi, 278 
 
 Bitonto, mixture of Norman and Italian elements in 
 its cathedral church, 288-294 
 
 Bona, wife of Sigismund, King of Poland, her tomb 
 at Bari, 306, 307 
 
 Boniface VIII., Pope, his end at Anagni, 164, 168 ; 
 his vestments kept at Anagni, 183 
 
 Brundisium (Brindisi), 285 ; final point in the journey 
 of Horace and Maecenas, 307 ; whence the mean- 
 ing oi Brentesium. ? ib., 308 
 
 Bunbury, Sir P). H., on Anagnia, 177 
 
 Calor (Calore), tributary stream of Vultumus, 256, 
 264 
 
 Campo di Annibale , 119, 122 
 
 Capua (Vulturnum), old and new, 226, 227, 240 ; 
 amphitheatre, 227-229 ; contrasted with the Ro- 
 man coliseum, 228, 229 ; date of the ancient city, 
 230 ; its Roman citizenship, 231 ; fts revolt, 232 ; 
 Roman conquest of, ib., 242 ; taken by the Sara- 
 cens, ib. 
 
IFnDej. 313 
 
 Caserta, 226, 227 
 
 Casilinum, new Capua, ancient Capua moved to, 
 226, 232, 241 ; Norman principality of, 241, 242 
 
 Cassius, Spurius, wins over Anagnia to the Triple 
 I<eag^e, 170, 172 
 
 Castel Gandolfo, 118, 119 
 
 Castel Giubeleo, 77, 83. See Fidencs. 
 
 Castiglione Fiorentino, 13 
 
 Chiana, tributary of the Arno, 3 ; valley of the, 
 local tradition assigned to its fossil elephants, 
 8,9 
 
 Circeii (Monte Circello), 120, 128, 143 
 
 Colline Gate, the, its historical associations, 79-81 ; 
 259, 261 
 
 Constantine PorphyrogenHos, his description of the 
 Sultan of Bari, 296 
 
 Cora (Cori), its primaeval walls, 129, 132, 166, 174 ; 
 later walls, 131 ; temple of Hercules, 132, 133, 166 ; 
 supplanted by church of St. Peter, 132, 134, 135 ; 
 church of St. Oliva at, 135 ; its physical position 
 contrasted with Norba, 140, 141 
 
 Corinth, later stage of her havens, 98 ; her colonies, 
 ib., 99 
 
 Cortona, its physical position compared with that 
 of Argos and Corinth, 13, 14 ; compared with 
 Perugia, I^aon, and Girgenti, ib. ; owes its dis- 
 tinctive character to its walls, 15, 16, 19-21 ; its 
 early greatness, 15 ; its decline, 16 ; ecclesiastical 
 and municipal buildings in, 17-19 ; Myk^naian 
 character of its Etruscan gate, 20 ; the Etruscan 
 Muse, 21, 22 ; contrasted with Perugia, 23-28 
 
 Cosmo de' Medici, Duke of Florence and Siena, his 
 inscription at Arezzo, 6 ; his later title, ib. 
 
 Creighton, M. (present Bishop of Peterborough), 
 quoted, 123 
 
3M ITnDe?^. 
 
 Documents, official, errors in, 200, 201 
 
 Eadmer, at Bari, 305 
 
 Emissarius, the, of the Alban I,ake, 117 ; contrasted 
 with that of the Fucine I^ake, ib. 
 
 Etruscans, their cities remain free until the days of 
 Sulla, 20 ; their analogy with Freemasons, 34, 35 ; 
 their tongue remains a riddle, 36 ; their sculpture 
 derives more force from the absence of literature, 
 37-40 ; analogy of Etruscan and Roman change 
 of nomenclature with English and Norman, 43, 
 44 ; Christian and modern character of their 
 sculpture, 44, 45 
 
 Felimna, Avle, Etruscan tomb of, 42, 43, 197 
 
 Ferentinum (Ferentino), whether a Thirty-city, 186, 
 187, 188 ; its position, 188 ; its walls and gateways, 
 189-192, 202 ; monument of Aulus Quinctilius at, 
 193 ; question as to the date of its walls, 194 et seq. ; 
 inscriptions on the arx, 195, 197 ; alliance of with 
 Rome, 198, 199, 205, 206 ; wrongly called a muni- 
 cipium by Aulus Gellius, 200, 201 ; cathedral 
 church at, 202, 205 ; inner buildings of the arx, 
 204 ; church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, ih. 
 
 FidencB, the ally of Veii, 78 ; destroyed by Rome, ib., 
 85 ; position oi'xt^arx, 83, 84 ; desolation of, 85, 87 
 
 Foggia, the capital of Apulia, 282 ; palace of Frederick 
 //., at, 283 ; death of Empress Isabel at, ib. ; 
 church at, ib. 
 
 Frederick II., Emperor, destroys Benevento, 274, 275 ; 
 remains of his palace at Foggia, 283 
 
IfnDej. 315 
 
 Freemasons, modem, their analogy with ancient 
 
 Etruscans, 34, 35 
 Frosinone (Frusino), 208 
 
 G 
 
 Gavignano, 155, 163, 172 
 
 Gellius, Aulus, his story about Ferentinum, 199 
 
 Girgenti, compared with Cortona, 14 
 
 Gracchus, Gaius, his speech quoted by Aulus Gellius, 
 
 199 
 Gracchus, Tiberius, his reception at Beneventum, 
 
 272, 273 
 Gregoriopolis , 105 
 Gsell-fels, guidebook of, referred to, 59, 152, 167, 283 
 
 H 
 
 Hannibal, son of Hamilkar Barak, at Anagnia, 169, 
 179 ; at Capua, 226, 236 ; revolt of the city to, from 
 Rome, 232, 234; his camp at Tifata, 233, 234; 
 scanty records concerning, 235 
 
 Harpur, Sir William, Aulus Quinctilius compared to, 
 192 
 
 Hernicans, the, scanty records concerning, 170, 255 ; 
 importance of their geographical position, 170, 
 171, 172 
 
 Hirtius, Aulus, censor of Ferentinum, 197, 199, 202 
 
 Innocent III., Pope, his birthplace, whether at Segni 
 
 or Gavigfnano, 163 ; his vestments kept at Ana- 
 
 gni, 183 
 Isabel, wife of Frederick II., dies at Foggia, 283 
 Italy, Southern, a part of Hellas, 224, 225 ; use of the 
 
 pointed arch in, 243 ; interest maintained in its 
 
 cities, 284 
 
3i6 Ifn^ex. 
 
 Korkyra (Corfu), held by Pyrrhos and Manfred, 279 ; 
 never under the Turk, ih.^ 308 
 
 Laon, compared with Cortona, 14 
 
 Lollius, Marcus, censor of Ferentinum, 197, 199, 202 
 
 M 
 
 Macaulay, I^ord, his verses on the Thirty Cities, 151, 
 152 ; Signia not named by, ib. ; Anagnia not in 
 his catalogues, 174 ; whether Ferentinum is 
 rightly placed by, 187 ; fittingness of his epithet 
 for Ferentinum, 188 
 Manfred^ King of Sicily, 253. 262, 272, 278, 279 
 Marcellus, Marcus Claudius, his triumph by the 
 
 Alban Mount, 11 1, 166 
 Marcius, Ancus, traditional founder of Ostia, 97, gii 
 Maxim, Volscian or Hernican , on beggars, 220 
 Member of Parliament, misuse of the name, 201 
 Milvian Bridge, the, its historical associations, 89 
 Monte Cavo, see Alban Mount. 
 Monte Parioli, 91 
 Muse, the, of Cortona, 21, 22 
 
 N 
 
 Nemi, I^ake of, 114-116, 234, 235 
 
 Ninfa, 126, 140, 142, 146 ; its striking desolation, 146- 
 
 150, 166 ; its mediaeval wall, 147 
 Norba, its ancient wall, 137 et seg., 147, 149, 166; its 
 
 position contrasted with Cora, 140, 141 ; early 
 
 strivings after the arch at, 145 
 Norma, 140-142 
 
IFnDej. 317 
 
 opus Signinum, theory suggested as to its origin, 152 
 
 Ostia, the haven of Rome, 96, 97, 99, 121 ; its traditional 
 foundation, 98 : an integral part of Rome, 99, 100 ; 
 its remains endangered by the Tiber, 100, loi, 106, 
 107; contrasted with Pompeii, loi, 102; not 
 destroyed by the Saracens in the fifth century, 
 102 ; Roman remains in, 103 ; how described by 
 Procopius, ib. ; its early walls, 104 ; new Ostia, 
 105 
 
 Otranto, the entrance -place of the Turk into Western 
 E)urope, 223 ; view of enslaved Kpeiros from, 307 
 
 Oxford^ prse- academic, its importance, 47 ; its analogy 
 with prae-Franciscan Assisi, 48 
 
 Parthenbn, the, its continuance as such, 237 
 Perugia, contrasted with Cortona, 23-28 ; its historical • 
 position, 23-25 ; physical position, 26 ; walls of, 
 ib., 28; Roman gateways at, 28-31 barbarous 
 treatment of mediaeval houses in, 31 ; the interest 
 of its churches not only due to their paintings, 
 
 31-33 
 Pius IX., Pope, his viaduct between Albano and 
 
 Aricia, 114 
 Pompeii, contrasted with Ostia, loi, 102 
 Pompeius Magnus, Cnaeus, his villa and tomb at 
 
 Alba, III, 113 
 Pomptine Marshes, the, 128 
 Ponte Sodo, the, at Veii, 74 
 Pontius, Gains, spares the Roman army in the second 
 
 Samnite War, 257, 262 ; whether the Pontius of 
 
 the triumph of Quintus Fabius, 258, 259 
 
3i8 1[nC)ej» 
 
 Porta Saracenesca, at Segni, 157, 159 ; shows the arch 
 
 in its constructive form, 160-161 ; origin of its 
 
 name uncertain, 161, 162 
 Portus, harbour of Rome transferred to, from Ostia, 
 
 102 
 Procopius, his description of Ostia, 103 ; of Beneven- 
 
 tum, 267, 279 
 Puff-stone of Gloucestershire, its likeness to the stone 
 
 of Anagnia's walls, 176 
 PyrrhoSf King of Kpeiros, 169, 179, 262, 272, 278, 279 
 
 Quinctilius, Aulus, his foundation of nuts to Feren- 
 tinum, 192 ; his monument, 193 
 
 Robert, son of Godwin, his analogy to Publius 
 Volumnius, son of Felimna, 44 
 
 Robert Wiscard, takes Bari, 297 
 
 Rocca di Papa, 119 
 
 Roman, use of the word, 194, 197, 202 
 
 Roman Empire, the, important era marked by Tra- 
 jan's reign, 270, 271 
 
 Rome, how her local history should be studied, 67; 
 rivalry of Veii with, 69-72 ; her conquest of Veii, 
 68, 75, 76 ; her origin, 70, 72, 143 ; Fidenae destroyed 
 t>y, 78, 85 ; taken by Alaric, 80 ; her incorporation 
 of Antemnae with, 92 ; her haven of Ostia, 96, 97, 
 99 ; contrasted with Corinth and Athens, 98, 99 ; 
 her harbour removed from Ostia to Portus, 102 ; 
 Alba lyonga destroyed by, no, 120; her physical 
 and historical position, 119-122 ; alliance of Fer- 
 entinum with, 198, 199, 205 ; her arbitrary dealing 
 with her Italian allies, 199, 200 ; her wars with 
 
IfnDej. 319 
 
 the Samnites, 251, 252 ; her army spared by 
 Gaius Pontius, 257 ; final struggle of the Samnites 
 against, 259-261 
 Po/xatot, use of the name, 109, no 
 
 S 
 
 Saint Ambrose, cathedral church of Ferentino dedi- 
 cated to, 204 
 
 Saint Angela in Formis, basilica of, near Capua, 238, 
 240 et seg. ; frescoes at 247-249 
 
 Saint Apollinaris in Classe, basilica of, 240 
 
 Saint Francis o/Assisi, 48, 49 
 
 Saint Nicolas of Myra in I^ykia, patron saint of Bari, 
 297, 298 
 
 Saint Peter in Grado, basilica of, near Pisa, 238, 239, 
 240 ; contrasted with Saint Angelo in Formis, 
 239 ; frescoes at, 247 
 
 Salarian Gate, the, its historical associations, 79-81 
 
 Salona, its relation to Spalato contrasted with that 
 of Alba to Albano, 112 
 
 Samentum, meaning of the word, 178 
 
 Samnites, the, 248, 251, 254, 259-262 
 
 Schiavia, Samnite, Anselm at, 307 
 
 Segni (Signia), whether a Thirty-city? 151-154; its 
 physical position analogous with that of Norba, 
 155 ; the arx of Signia forms the modem Passe- 
 giata, 156 ; fragments of mediaeval work in, 157 ; 
 ancient walls and gateways of, ib.,etseq., 172, 174 ; 
 Roman remains on the arx, 162, 163 ; whether 
 the birthplace of Innocent III., 163 ; locandcB at, 
 recommended by Gsell-fels, 167 
 
 Sicily, use of the pointed arch in, 243 ; the architect- 
 ural characteristics of Norman rule in Apulia 
 not found in, 293 
 
320 IfnOej 
 
 Signia. See Segni. 
 
 Social War, the, its significance, 261 
 
 Spalato, its relation to Salona contrasted with that 
 
 of Albano to Alba, 112 
 Spello (Hispellum), its local description, 58 ; its walls 
 
 and towers, 60 ; Romanesque churches and 
 
 Roman remains at, 61-63 ; Roman gateways, 
 
 63, 64 
 Stewart, Henry, Cardinal of York, temple of Jupiter 
 
 I^atiaris destroyed by, iii, 166 
 Strabo, his description of Fidenae, 85 ; on Ostia, 102 
 Sulla, restores Cora, 133 ; Norba destroyed by, 139 
 
 Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun and Prince of Bene- 
 
 vento, 265 
 Tarlati, Guy, Bishop and lyOrd of Arezzo, his tomb, 
 
 7,8 
 Telesia (Telese), the home of Gains Pontius, 256, 257, 
 
 262 ; Anselm at, ib. 
 Terracina. See Anxur. 
 Thiseton, re-dedicated to Saint George, 237 
 Tiber, the, its early importance as a boundary 
 
 stream, 90 ; its destructiveness, 100-103, 106, 107 
 Tifata, Hannibal at, 233, 234 ; meaning of the name, 
 
 234 ; whether the scene of Semitic worship, 236 ; 
 
 worship of Diana and Jupiter at, 237 ; church of 
 
 Sant' Angelo in Forrais at, 233, 238, 240 et seq. 
 Topography, historical, variety of interest offered by, 
 
 86 
 Totilas, Beneventum taken by, 273 
 Traja7i, his arch at Rome survives in the arch of 
 
 Constantine, 267, 268 ; his arch at Benevento, 
 
 268-273 ; important era of the Roman Kmpire 
 
 marked by his reign, 270, 271 
 
•ffnDej. 321 
 
 Trani, special interest of its metropolitan church, 
 286, 287, 290, 291 ; church of All Saints at, 287 
 
 U 
 Urban II., Pope, council at Bari held by, 297, 305 
 
 Veil, its site and desolation, 68, 69, 72-75, 87 ; con- 
 quered by Rome, ib., 75 ; rivalry of with Rome, 
 69-72 ; Etruscan tombs at, 74, 75 
 
 Velletri (Velitrse), 126-129, 166, 167 
 
 Venice, vassal of the Eastern Empire, protects Bari 
 against the Saracen, 297 
 
 VeroHy 210 
 
 Volumnian Tomb, the, 40 et seq. 
 
 Volumnius Avle Felimna, Publius, his analogy to 
 Robert, son of Godwin, 44, 197, 
 
 W 
 
 Willis, Professor, his use of the phrase mid-wall 
 shaft, 245 
 
 VOL. II. — 21 
 
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