NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY V^;' ;l#^ ^^ ON THE ROAD TO SAN FILI NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY BY EDWARD BUTTON WITH 12 ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY FRANK CRISP AND l6 OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS > NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1915 l1> \ ^^v a 31 > ^ sdtf*' po TO THE DEAR MEMORY OF FRANCIS EDWARD FITZJOHN CRISP PAINTER SOMETIME CORPORAL, F. COY., 28TH LONDON REGT. (aRTISTS' RlFLES) AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH, 2ND LIEUT., KING's COY. 1ST BATT. GRENADIER GUARDS KILLED IN ACTION JANUARY 5, 1 91 5 AGED 32 YEARS ^^ Dtilce et decorum est pro patria morV CONTENTS I. Naples . . . . . i II. PosiLipo . . . . '57 III. The Gulf of Pozzuoli . . '65 IV. Vesuvius and Pompeii . . -79 V. Castellammare, Sorrento, and Capri . 96 VI. The Coast Road from Sorrento to Vietri, Amalfi, and Ravello . . .108 VII. La Cava and Salerno . . .119 VIII. Eboli and P^stum . . . .128 IX. Into Calabria . . . .137 X. From Paola to Cosenza , . -151 XI, To Catanzaro and Reggio . . .160 XII. Magna Gr^cia . . . .170 XIII. Reggio, Gerace, and the Gulf of Squillace 180 XIV. Crotona . . . . .190 XV. The Gulf of Taranto . . . 202 XVI. Taranto . . . . .211 XVII. Terra d'Otranto — Lecce . . .222 XVIII. To Brindisi and Bari . . . 232 XIX. Terra di Bari — Bitonto, Ruvo, Corato, Castel del Monte, Andria, Barletta, Trani, Bisceglie, and Molfetta . 244 XX. Le Murge ..... 254 XXI. Le Tavoliere — Foggia, Troia, Lucera . 267 XXII. Manfredonia and Monte S. Angelo . 278 XXIII. Benevento ..... 288 Index ..... 300 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR On the Road to San Fiij Naples Street Scene Naples : Porta Carmine Pompeii with Vesuvius Modern Pompeii Amalfi .... Tiriolo .... Calabrese Peasant Girl Piazza S. Oronzo, Lecce Apulian Olive Garden Pilgrims at a Shrine on the Road to Monte S Angelo .... Benevento .... Frontispiece FACING PAGF i6 32 80 92 TIO 162 192 228 236 282 288 IN MONOTONE Map From a drawing by B. C. Boulter The Harbour, Naples From a photograph by C. & H. Front End Paper 24 X NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY FACING PAGE Torso di Venere — Museo Nazionale, Naples . 46 From a photograph by Alinari Apollo — Museo Nazionale, Naples . . .50 From a photograph by Alinari Portrait of Cardinal Farnese by Raphael — Museo Nazionale, Naples . . . .68 From a photograph by Anderson SOLFATARA . . . . . .68 From a photograph by C. & H PUTEOH From a photograph by C. & H The Lake of Avernus From a photograph by C. & H Pompeii From a photograph by C. & H Gospel Ambone, Ravello From a photograph by Alinari 68 72 86 116 Facade of Cathedral, Salerno . . .124 From a photograph by C. & H. Temples of Demeter and Persephone and of Poseidon, P^estum . . . -134 From a photograph by Alinari San Fili ...... 154 From a:\photograph by C. & H. COSENZA from the CaSTELLO . . . . I58 From a photograph by C, & H. The Port, Manfredonia .... 278 From a photograph by C. &. H, LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi FACING PAGE A Wayside Shrine, Monte S. Angelo . . 284 From a photograph by C. & H. The Pilgrim's Way, Monte S. Angelo . . 284 From a photograph by C. & H. S. MicHELE, Monte S. Angelo . . . 286 From a photograph by C. & H. La Posta, Monte S. Angelo . . . 286 From a photograph by C. & H. Arch of Trajan, Benevento. . . . 292 From a photograph by Alinari NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY I NAPLES TO come to Naples from Rome through the noble and tragic majesty of the Campagna, along that sombre and yet lovely road under Anagni and Monte Cassino, or to enter it first without warning out of the loneliness, the silence, and the beauty, of the sea, is to experience an astonishing disillusion. For there is nothing, I think, in all the South — nothing certainly in Italy — quite like Naples in its sordid and yet tremendous vitality, a vitaUty that is sterile, that wastes itself upon itself. The largest and most populous city in the peninsula, it might seem, on first acquaintance at least, to be rather a pen of animals than a city of men, a place amazing if you will, but disgusting in its amazement, whose life is merely life, without dignity, beauty or reticence, or any of the nobler conventions of civiUzation ; a place so restless and noisy and confused that it might be pande- monium, so parvenu and second rate that it might be one of those new American cities upon the Pacific slope. All this is emphasized and accentuated by the unrivalled beauty of the world in which the city stands, the spacious and perfect loveliness of the great bay sjuning and yet 2 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY half lost in all the gold of the sun, between the dreaming headlands of Sorrento, of Posilipo, of Misenum, the gracious gesture, the incomparable outline of Vesuvius, the vision of Capri, of Procida and Ischia rising out of the sea, the colour of sea and sky, of valley and mountain and curved shore. For this is Campania, the true arcady of the Romans, and here more than an5rwhere else, perhaps, the forms of the past clothed in our dreams are indestructible, and will outface even such a disillusion as Naples never fails to afford. In this incomparable landscape Naples stands not like Genoa nobly about an amphitheatre of hills, not like Palermo in an enchanted valley, but in the deepest curve of her vast and beautiful bay at the foot of the hills and upon their lower slopes, beneath the great and splendid fortress of Sant' Elmo, which towers up over the city in shining beauty and pride, the one noble feature of a place that, but for it, would be without any monumental splendour. Sant' Elmo towers there over the city upon the west ; farther away and to the north, upon a scarcely lesser height, lies the great Bourbon palace of Capodimonte, while to the east, upon the far side of the fruitful valley of the Sebethus, rises the violet pyramid of Vesuvius with its silver streamer of volcanic smoke. Seen from afar, and especially from the sea, there can be but few places in the world comparable with this ; the vast and beautiful bay closed on the west by Capo Miseno, with its sentinel islands, Ischia and Procida, and on the east by the great headland of Sorrento more than twenty miles away as the gull flies, and defended, as it were, seaward by the island of Capri, is dominated in the very midst by the height and beauty and strangeness of Vesuvius. Divided by many lessef headlands into numerous smaller bays, such as that of Baia upon the west and Castellamare upon the east, its deepest inlet lies in a double curve within the headland of Ppsjlipo, divided by the Pizzofalcone, upon NAPLES 3 the tip of which, rising out of the waves, the Castel dell' Ovo stands. To the west of this point lies the bay of Posilipo, the Riviera di Chiana, the Villa Nazionale, the park of Naples, and the aristocratic and wealthy quarter of the city ; to the east Hes Naples itself, the great harbour with the city behind it sprawling over the shore, the valley and the lower slopes of the hills, held and ennobled by the Castel Sant' Elmo behind it on an isolated height of Vomero. The bay of Posilipo, the Riviera di Chiana with its beautiful pleasure-ground, its luxurious villas upon head- land and height, offers a vision of modern luxury and wealth in the most perfect surroundings of scenery and climate, and, save that its buildings are wholly without character, it might seem to have nothing in common with the city which lies to the east of the Pizzofalcone and the Castel dell' Ovo. It is indeed wholly cut off from Naples by nature, and in fact the city can only be reached from it by two narrow ways — the Strada S. Lucia, which passes through the modern slum erected upon the filled-in bay of S. Lucia, of old the fishermen's quarter, and the steep and crowded Strada di Chiaia, one of the narrowest and most characteristic streets of the city. It is by one of these narrow ways that you come, and always with a new surprise, into the witches' cauldron of the city of Naples. Those long streets the colour of mud, built from the kva of Vesuvius, lined with tall, mean houses balconied with iron ; those narrow alleys climbing up towards Sant' Elmo or descending to the harbour and S. Lucia, crowded and squaHd and hung everjrwhere with ragged clothes drying in the fetid air ; the noise that here more than in any other city in the world overwhelms everything in its confusion and meanness, the howHng of children, the cries of the women, the shouting of the men vainly competing with the cracking of whips, the beating of horses' hoofs, the hooting of steamers, the innumerable bells — not only 4 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY those, here so harsh, of the churches, but the brutal gongs of trams, the bells of cows and goats ; the mere hubbub of human speech that seems more deafening than it is by reason of the appalling emphasis of gesture : all this horrifies and confuses the stranger perhaps chiefly because he can find nothing definite in its confusion for the mind to seize upon — the mind indeed being half paralysed by the mere flood of undistinguishable things, not one of which is characteristic, but rather all together. The mere extent of the place, too, shapeless as it is, stretching for miles in all its sordidness along the seashore, appals one, for its disorder is a violent disorder ; its voice the voice of the mob, cruel, blatant, enormous, signifying nothing. In this boiUng cauldron there is neither happiness nor enjojnnent, but after a little, when one's first disgust is passed, there remains an extraordinary fascination. The life of Naples is the life of the streets, of the salife, scale, rampe, of which it is full ; everything takes place there in these narrow ways, even the toilet ; and little by little one is compelled by the obscene spirit of the city to wander continually, and, only half ashamed, to watch these poor people in all their pathetic poverty and animalism, their amazing unself consciousness, their extra- ordinary and meaningless violence of gesture and speech. For there is, of course, in all this noisy confusion that fills Naples like a cup running over a certain shameful- ness that the people do not feel, of which perhaps only we who are strangers are aware. All that one means by human dignity and self-respect is lacking here, and this is felt wherever one goes, not only outside the Galleria at evening, when not only beautiful girls are offered in a baleful hiss by the innumerable pimps that infest the place — ima ragazza, fresca, hella, hellissima, di quindici anni — but everywhere one goes, where everytliing is hawked at the top of the voice and always at a false price. This lack of human respect, of all that one means by decency is surely due to something more than the soft- NAPLES 5 ness and luxury of the climate as Chateaubriand thought. Centuries of oppression, of the most shameless exploitation of the people by their always foreign rulers are answerable for the moral anaemia, the want of honour, that have made of the Neapolitans something less than men, a true canaille that has never possessed enough virility for suc- cessful rebellion, and of Naples itself a city without a monument, a sprawling mass of houses, churches, palaces, streets all built of grey lava, scarce one of which has any distinction or beauty. What are we to say of these churches, French or Spanish, all alike engulfed in the tawdry splendour of the baroque or worse ? What are we to say of these piazzas not one of which has a noble memory, and only one of which, the Mercato, can be said to bear witness to any national event ? What are we to say of that palace cheek by jowl with a theatre of which, indeed, in its pretentious make- believe it might seem to be properly a part ? For us, indeed, when the astonishment of Naples, the confusion and noise and disorder, the spawning life of the place, have passed into weariness, there remains nothing to see ; the tombs of her foreign rulers, the museum, the wonderful aquarium in the Villa Nazionale, not the least interesting thing in this city, and the glory of her situa tion, of the world which she dishonours and in which she lies, to be best enjoyed, as it were at a glance, from S. Martino on the height of Sant' Elmo, the great Carthusian monastery founded by Duke Charles of Calabria in 1325 and rebuilt in the seventeenth century. It is because that world is so fair and full of delight that one returns to Naples again and again. II The Story of Naples The name of Naples, Neapolis, the new city, indicates at once her Greek origin, and indeed she was one of the 6 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY oldest of those Greek settlements which hundreds of years before our era scattered Southern Italy and Sicily with a noble and fruitful civilization. Perhaps the earliest ^ of all these city states was that founded, it is said, by a mixed colony of Chalcidians from Euboea and of Cymseans from ^olis, at Cumse, just without the beautiful gulf of Pozzuoli some six miles to the north of Capo Miseno. Now whether, as happened more than once later in Magna Grsecia,^ the two different peoples that had thus founded the city of Cumae quarrelled, so that the Chalcidians were expelled and proceeded to found another state, or whether the colony as a whole, having increased and grown rich, decided to establish a daughter city, we do not know, but it was from Cumse that Parthenope was founded, " where the Siren Parthert pe was cast ashore," that is to say, under the headland of Posilipo, where to this day Pozzuoli stands. Presently either Cumae or Parthenope, her daughter, founded another city, within the headland of Posilipo, upon the banks of the Sebethus, that is to say, where the Castel Capuano stands to-day. This '' new city " was known as Neapolis to distinguish it from Parthenope, the old city thenceforth known as Palaepohs. With those Greek cities founded upon the more southern coasts of the peninsula of Italy, which all together formed what Polybius ^ first calls Magna Grcecia, I shall deal later in this book. This is not the place to speak of them. Indeed, though Cumae was probably the earliest of all the Greek settlements in Italy and Sicily, Neapolis and Cumae were never among the cities which came under that title, the most northern of which, Poseidonia (Paestum), was a colony of Sybaris, and all of which upon the Tyrrhene coast, save Veha only, were colonies of the cities upon the Italian shore of the Ionian Sea. Isolated as they were, Cumae and her daughters formed a little group apart that ^ Strabo, Lib. v. * As, for instance, with Locri (Pol. xii. 5). ^ Polybius, ii. 39. THE STORY OF NAPLES 7 had almost no connection with the later Greek settlements farther south, which came to be known as Magna Graecia. The position of these two Greek cities isolated thus on the coast of Campania seems, as far as the barbarians in whose midst they stood were concerned, to have been fairly secure. All the Greek settlements in Italy were apparently at first in friendly relations with the Italian tribes of the interior whose land they did not covet and whom they were willing to admit, to some small extent at any rate, to the benefits of their wealth and civilization. Later, however, this was not so. The most formidable of the barbarian tribes in the fourth century B.C. in Southern Italy were the Samnites. The Samnites were bent upon conquest, and especially upon the conquest of Capua, at that time the richest and greatest city of Southern Italy according to Livy.^ For in 343 B.C. the petty people of the Sidicini (Teano) had appealed for aid to Capua against the Samnites, and the Samnites had been victorious. Capua then applied to Rome for assistance, and Rome sent the Consul Valerius Corvus with an army and defeated the Samnites at Mount Gaurus, Monte Barbaro, near Puteoli. About a year later, however, the Campanians, but not Capua, strongly espoused the cause of the Latins against Rome, and in 340 B.C. both were defeated by the Consuls T. Manlius and P. Decius at the foot of Vesuvius. Capua itself received the rights of Roman citizenship, but the other cities, among them Cumae, but not apparently Palaepolis or Neapolis, obtained only the civitas sine suffragio. The prosperity and wealth of Campania, always great, increased, but in 323 B.C. the second war of the Romans with the Samnites broke out, and among those who espoused the cause of the Samnites, whom they appear to have admitted into their city as a garrison, were the people of Palaepolis. Thus it appears that in 327-326 B.C. Palae- polis was still in existence. It was taken by the Consul 1 Livy, vii. 31. 8 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY Publilius Philo, and that indeed is the last we hear of the " old city " whose name does not again appear in history. Neapolis apparently had not aided the Samnites ; at any rate the fate of Palaepolis led the Neapolitans to conclude a treaty with Rome, who, by the victories of Nola in 313 and of Nuceria in 308, securely established herself in Campania. From this time Naples was in fact a dependency of Rome, though she enjoyed the title of an ally ; so favourable indeed was her position that when at the end of the Social War all the Italian cities obtained the Roman franchise, Naples and Heraclea refused it and petitioned in vain to remain as she was aforetime. It is not, therefore, wonderful that Naples was loyal to Rome. She would have nothing to do with PjTrhus when in 282 B.C. he approached her, and she steadfastly opposed Hannibal, though he continually ravaged her territory. Indeed, save for the riot and massacre by the adherents of Sulla during the Civil War, in 82 B.C. until the fall of the Re- public, Naples was a prosperous provincial and municipal town still largely Greek in its culture, institutions, and population. Perhaps it was the essentially Greek character of the city as much as its luxurious climate that made it even in the last years of the Republic, and more and more after the establishment of the Empire, a favourite residence of the wealthy Roman nobility. Its gymnasia and public games, over which the Emperors often presided, were famous, scholars flocked there, and little by little the whole glorious bay, especially the gulf of Pozzuoli between Cape Misenum and Posilipo, where Baiae rose, was en- crusted and built up with sumptuous villas often thrust out into the sea on foundations which remain half marvel- lous to this day. Marius had a great villa there which LucuUus bought, where Tiberius died and the last Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, retired, by the clemency of Odoacer, to end his days ; but Lucullus had many THE STORY OF NAPLES 9 villas here, his gardens covered the Pizzofalcone and Posilipo, where Virgil finished his Georgics, and whither his body was brought from Brundusium for burial. Indeed, even before the Claudian Emperors made Naples fashion- able, before Nero appeared upon the stage there, or Cahgula contrived and built his bridge of boats across the bay of Baiae, this was the most famous pleasure resort in the Empire. With the decline of the Empire the prosperity of Naples, of course, decreased, till at last, when upon Alaric's march towards Sicily after the sack of Rome in 410, all Campania was ravaged and Capua and Nola burnt, Naples did not escape any more than she did later when the Vandals passed by under Genseric in 455. Indeed we may perhaps understand something of the change which had come upon the city when we read that the Villa of Lucullus, where Tiberius had died, had become a fortress, so that it was in a castle that Romulus Augustulus hid himself when he let fall the Imperial crown in 576. Naples was, however, by no means overwhelmed in these disasters. In the thirty years of peace which the Ostrogothic barbarian Theodoric gave to Italy, she re-arose, so that Cassiodorus tells us that in his time she still rejoiced in every kind of pleasure and delight both by land and sea. The years that followed — the long years of the re-conquest of Italy by Constantinople — were perhaps the most disastrous the city had known. Theodoric died in 526, and ten years later Belisarius was thundering at her gates. Naples was, of course, held by a Gothic garrison, and though the people would gladly have surrendered the city, the 800 Goths prevented them, so that they had to beg Belisarius not to insist. But the great general would not hear them. His march from Sicily had been a triumphal progress ; Naples was the first city that had opposed him. The common people as I say would have done his bidding, but the principal citizens and the garrison and the Jews, always on the side of the Arians, refused, 10 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY and a long siege seemed inevitable. A way was found, however, to gain an entry through the broken aqueduct.^ When this was opened Belisarus again summoned the city to surrender, again to be refused. Then he sent a company in by the way of the aqueduct, and they from within let down ladders up which the Imperialists swarmed and took the city and put many to the sword. But the Goths returned. Six years later, in a.d. 543, Totila retook the city and dismantled the walls ; but the defeat of Teias, his successor, under Vesuvius, ended the Gothic power, and Naples came into the administration of the Byzantine Empire, receiving a Dux, dependent upon the Exarch of Ravenna. In spite of all these miseries Naples was still exceedingly rich, and presently became prosperous. From the early part of the eighth century she was to all intents and pur- poses independent, facing successfully the Lombard invaders who had established their duchies all about her, at Benevento, Capua, and Salerno : she was not less success- ful in facing the Saracen pirates, but they oppressed her, though they could not ruin her as they did so many other places in Southern Italy. At last she shamefully allied herself with these Orientals, and on this account was excommunicated by Pope John viii. It was in the first years of the eleventh century that the Normans first appeared in the South, and their advent here as elsewhere was full of astonishment, for they were men of steel, aU lords and all warriors ; every act of theirs has the force and the inspiration of an act of genius and whatsoever they achieved endured. The story of their advent is exceedingly romantic. According to one version, it was when a certain company of them were on pilgrimage to that cavern upon Monte S. Angelo in Gar- gano that they were accosted by the leader of the anti- Byzantine party in Bari, Melus by name, who, seeing what ^ The aqueduct was the Ponti Rossi north-east of the city below Capodimonte. THE STORY OF NAPLES ii manner of men they were, sought them as allies and promised them Apulia as a brave inheritance. They returned to Normandy to persuade, if they could, their countrymen to cross the Alps. In this they were success- ful. Crossing the Alps in small companies and by separate roads, they assembled in the neighbourhood of Rome, were there met by Melus, who supplied them with horses and all that was needful. Then they rode down into Apulia. Three battles followed. In the first at Arenula, on the river Fortore, they were successful, as they were also in the second, near Troia, but in the following year, 1018, they were woefully defeated on the plain of Cannae by the Catepan, the Byzantine head of the "Capitanate" Basil Bojannes. Melus was taken prisoner, and the Normans seem to have wandered as a great band of free- lances ready to seU their aid to the various princes of Capua, Benevento, Salerno, and Naples for any under- taking whatsoever. So formidable was their prowess that with them went victory. In the year 1030, in the service of the Duke Sergius iv of Naples, their leader, Rainulf, who first married the sister of Sergius, was assigned the town of Aversa always in dispute between Naples and Capua, and this the Normans made their eyrie and their fortress. Thence they issued forth to make them- selves masters of aU Calabria and Apulia, and though in 1030, upon the visit of the Emperor Conrad to Southern Italy, they lost Aversa, which was united with the princi- pality of Salerno, they had achieved this with the excep- tion of the sea-board towns by the year 1041. After the loss of Aversa they established their capital at Melfi and divided their conquest into twelve counties. The two Empires with the Pope were leagued against them, but without effect, and by 1052 the Papacy had decided to recognize their conquests, and in its turn to use their valour and genius.^ Therefore Robert Guiscard was created " By the grace of God and S. Peter, Duke of ^ See infra, p. 260. 12 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY Calabria, Apulia, and hereafter of Sicily " ; for Sicily was not yet in Norman hands. All these lands were held as fiefs of the Holy See, and as such they were held there- after for more than seven hundred years. Robert Guiscard became thus the first Duke in 1059 » in 1060 he seized Reggio, in 1068 Otranto, in 1071 Bari and Brindisi, in 1073 the Repubhc of Amalfi, in 1077 the Duchy of Salerno, the last remnant of the Lombard power, and by 1091 his successor, Roger (1035-1111), had acquired from the Saracens the whole island of Sicily. Roger i was succeeded by William (1111-1127), ^^^ i^ ^^3^ Roger II, who made Palermo his capital, was entitled king by the Antipope Anacletus 11, a title confirmed in 1139 by Pope Innocent 11. It was this man who at last, in the very year Innocent acknowledged him king, entered Naples — the first Norman to hold it — the city throwing its gates open to him. His reign was glorious. No state in the world at that time was better administered than his ; he reconciled his sub- jects the one to the other, and after ages of something like anarchy he established and maintained peace in his realm. He expected and received loyalty from Mussulmans and Greeks and Catholics among his subjects, and equally permitted the official use of the several tongues. And from this strange harmony arose the beautiful cathedral of Cefalu and the Palatine chapel of Palermo, where above the glorious Byzantine mosaics rises the wooden Saracenic roof below which runs an Arabic inscription. To this great man succeeded William i (1154-1166). This man, sumamed the Bad, had none of the intelligence of his father, and his violence and cruelty imperilled all that Roger had done. He was excommunicated by Adrian iv, but took his part against Barbarossa and reconciled himself at last by agreeing to pay the Holy See an annual tribute. It was he who founded in Naples the Castel Capuano which Frederick 11 finished, and which became not only his favourite residence, but that of the THE STORY OF NAPLES 13 Angevins after him. He was succeeded by William 11, sumamed the Good (1166-1189), whose heiress was his Aunt Constance, married to Henry vi, the future Emperor, against the wishes of the Pope and the people of Italy, who did not wish the Kingdom to pass into the hands of the Hohenstaufen. Therefore the nobles assembled at Palermo, proclaimed Tancred of Lecce, the illegitimate son of Roger, king. Now appears in Sicily, on his way to the Holy Land, our Coeur de Lion, with a fantastic claim to the island, so that all were glad to see him depart (1191). But before the end of that year Henry vi had begun to make war. In this affair Constance fell into the hands of Tancred, who treated her with honour and sent her with presents to her husband, who was busy with Coeur de Lion. Tancred died in 1194 without a friend in Europe. His son and successor, William iii, was an infant of three years. On came Henry vi, and all the Kingdom lay at his mercy ; he pillaged and took it. By the treaty of 1 195 only the principality of Taranto was reserved to William, but the Emperor was not satisfied ; he seized the young King and, like a true Hohenstaufen, put out his eyes and imprisoned him in a fortress of the Orisons till his death. The bloody, treasonous, and heretical race of the Hohenstaufen thus possessed themselves of the Kingdom. Henry was crowned at Palermo, and there in 1197 he died, poisoned by his wife Constance, moved to this horror by his oppression and cruelties to his usurped subjects. He left as his heir Frederick 11, whom she made the ward of Pope Innocent iii, named by her regent of the Kingdom. The Pope allowed Frederick to occupy both the throne of the Empire and that of the Kingdom on condition that the two governments should remain separate and in- dependent the one of the other, and that upon the death of Frederick the two crowns should not be inherited by the same prince. It is needless perhaps to say that these conditions were not kept. Frederick would promise any- 14 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY thing ; not once did he keep his word. He wearied Pope Innocent, he wearied Pope Honorius ; Gregory ix, tired of being deceived, excommunicated him. Then the half Mussulman Emperor marched on Rome. He should have remembered the fate of his predecessor, who stood in the snows of Canossa. The Pope went to Viterbo, and Frederick, who had chased the vicegerent of God from his seat, departed for the Orient, where he was crowned king of Jerusalem. But such a man, learned, but un- balanced, a romantic poet, an unappeasable but not a great soldier, above all more than half a Mohammedan, in those days certainly as appalling a treason to Europe as to Christ, could have no peace. His life was war, his son rebelled against him, all Italy was weary of him. In 1230 he reconciled himself with the Pope only to be ex- communicated again for violence against the Holy See. A general coalition of Christian princes was on the point of forming itself against him when the Pope died, to be followed by Frederick in 1250. Frederick was succeeded in the Kingdom by his son Conrad, already king of the Romans, and thus the promise given to Pope Innocent iii was broken. Between him and his half-brother Manfred the Kingdom was torn to pieces, till Conrad died at twenty-six years of age in 1254. There remained Manfred and Conradin, Conrad's son, against whom, as a Hohenstaufen, Innocent iv thundered, himself entering Naples in the year of Conrad's death, where he died and was buried in the Duomo, as we may still see. In the days of Pope Alexander iv (1254-1261) Manfred dominated Southern Italy, and was crowned king in 1258. But in 1261 Pope Alexander died, and a Frenchman, Urban iv, reigned in his stead. To him especially, the Hohenstaufen were accursed, and he had no intention of allowing them to remain as his vassals in the Kingdom. He therefore offered the two Sicilies to whomsoever would free the Holy See from their domination. THE STORY OF NAPLES 15 It was the brother of S. Louis of France, the great Charles of Anjou, who offered himself. He levied an army in Provence, and to his standard flocked the Guelfs of Italy. Down he came, thundering into the Kingdom to break and to slay Manfred upon January 26, 1266, at Benevento. It was fifteen-year-old Conradin who would avenge his uncle. He, too, came thundering into Italy, but on the 23rd August 1268, the French broke him in pieces at TagUacozzo, and an Itahan traitor, Frangipani, took him as he fled, and in the words of Villani, " he led him captive to King Charles, for which cause the king gave him land and lordship at Pilosa, between Naples and Benevento. And when the king had Conradin and those lords, his companions, in his hands, he took counsel what he should do. At last he was minded to put them to death, and he caused by way of process an inquisition to be made against them as against traitors to the Crown and enemies of Holy Church, and this was carried out ; for on the . . . day were beheaded in the market-place of Naples, beside the stream of water which runs over against the church of the Carmelite friars, Conradin and the Duke of Austria and Count Calvagno and Count Gualferano and Count Bartolomeneo and two of his sons and Count Gherardo of Pisa. . . ." Thus perished the last of the Hohenstaufen. A column of porphyry now in the sacristy of the church of S. Croce, ill the Piazza del Mercato, once marked the spot where the execution took place. It bears this inscription — Asturis ungue leo, pullum rapiens aquilinum Hie deplumavit, acephalumque dedit. Charles i of the House of Anjou reigned in the Kingdom. The Pope blamed him for his cruelty in executing so mere a boy as Conradin, but at least by that act the Papacy and Italy were rid of the Hohenstaufen. In commemoration of his victory over Manfred King Charles built in Naples the i6 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY church of S. Lorenzo, nor was this the only splendour which this great and ambitious ruler bestowed upon his capital. By the hands of Giovanni Pisano he built S. Maria Nuova, which was rebuilt, alas, at the end of the sixteenth century. He laid the foundations of the Duomo, finally built by his successor, Robert the Wise, and the Castel Nuovo, which the kings of his house and of Aragon were to make their chief residence. But in spite of his essential greatness, his indomitable purpose and adventur- ous spirit, his life ended in disaster. In 1282 the violent revolution against his government known as the Sicilian Vespers destroyed the security he had so laboriously con- structed. Pedro of Aragon, who had married a daughter of Manfred, appeared on the island and held it. The fleets of Anjou were beaten, and Charles's son, the Prince of Salerno, made prisoner. The King was indeed preparing to reconquer Sicily when in 1285 he died of fever. He appears, if you will, as cruel, tyrannical, and essentially an adventurer in a country where every riiler save the Popes was just that, but also as incomparably the greatest of the house he founded and perhaps the greatest ruler the Kingdom was ever to see. He was succeeded by his son, Charles 11 (1285-1309), who, made prisoner in Sicily, was in Aragon when the news of his father's death reached him. Pope Martin iv and the king of France insisted upon and obtained his release, and he took possession of Provence, Anjou, Maine, and the Kingdom, but not of Sicily, which in 1302, after the defeat of Falconera, he abandoned to Federigo, the son of Pedro of Aragon, on condition that after his death the island should come back to the descendants of Charles i. Indeed he was no soldier as his father was ; a good man, but weak, he busied himself, and perhaps wisely, rather in the administration of the dominion he possessed than in conquest or reconquest. Naples owes to him the church of S. Domenico Maggiore, which in spite of restoration remains one of the finest churches in the city. NAPLES STREET SCENE THE STORY OF NAPLES 17 To this sober and unadventurous man succeeded his third son, Robert the Wise (1309-1343). Charles i, the founder of the Hue, had certainly been at one moment of his career the arbiter of Italy ; it was Robert's dream to regain that position and to crystallize it. He was a Guelf, the champion and first the protege, and then the tyrant of the Holy See, from whom he obtained lordships all over Italy, in Piedmont, Ferrara, and Romagna, while the Genoese in 1318 called him in to deal with their Ghibellines. In 1314 he attempted, but unsuccessfully, to regain Sicily, and for many years he remained in Avignon, where the Pope then was, as the power behind the Apos- tolic throne. In 1324 he returned to Naples, and again unsuccessfully attempted to reconquer the island with an expedition commanded by his son, Charles,Duke of Calabria. It was upon this youth that Robert placed all his hopes. When the Florentines turned to him and besought his assistance against Castruccio Castracani of Lucca the price he asked was that they should receive Charles as their Prince for ten years from 1326. But in 1328 Charles was dead and his dreams foundered. He then turned and staked his hopes upon the daughter of his beloved son, Giovanna, whom he married to Andrew of Hungary, his cousin, who had certain claims upon the throne of Naples ; but here too he was unfortunate. In his old age more than ever he turned to learning and art for consolation. He had always rejoiced in them, had patronized Petrarch and presented him with the royal mantle in which he was crowned poet laureate upon the Capitol, and Naples owes many churches to him, among them S. Chiara, which Giotto and Simone Martini painted, and where he with so many of his house lie. Other churches of his foundation or building are the SS. Annunziata, S. Pietro Marcella, and the glorious Carthusian monastery of S. Martino and the great fortress of Cast el Sant' Elmo over it. When Giovanna (1343-1361) succeeded her grandfather in 1343 she was but eighteen years old. Exquisite, beauti- 2 t8 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY ful, and voluptuous, the young Queen hated her husband, the cold and ambitious Andrew of Hungary, to whom her grandfather had married her for reasons of state. He wished to govern alone, and both Giovanna and her Neapoli- tans were determined that he should fail. A conspiracy inspired by the Queen was formed against Andrew, who was strangled in the Castle of Caserta in September 1345, and two years later Giovanna married her cousin, Louis of Taranto, to whom indeed Andrew owed his death. But Andrew was not without champions, though they were not to be found in the Kingdom. His brother Louis of Hungary descended upon Italy to avenge him; and the Queen was compelled to flee to Avignon, where she bought the Pope's assistance at the price of that city and its territory and 80,000 florins of gold. The Holy See stopped the war, and Giovanna returned to Naples in 1348. In 1362 she was again a widow, and at once married the king of Majorca; who presently fearing for his life fled away to Spain, where he died in 1375. I^ "^^^ following year the Queen, aged now fifty-one, again married Otto of Biiinswick; but this disgusted both the Papacy and the Kingdom, neither of which desired to see German influence again in the South. The Queen indeed had no heirs, her only child, a son of Andrew's, having died. She had therefore adopted Charles of Durazzo, beloved by the people, as her successor, and in 1369 married him to her niece. This did not suit Otto her new husband ; but the Pope, Urban vi, when she would have broken with Charles, dethroned her and crowned him as King. But in Avignon there was Pope Clement vii. To him she turned. He advised her to adopt Louis of Anjou, and she followed his counsel. Therefore in 1350 Charles of Durazzo marched upon Naples. He broke Otto of Brunswick and took him prisoner, besieged Giovanna in the Castel Nuovo, and to such good purpose that presently she opened the gates to him. At that very moment a Proven9al fleet appeared in the bay to aid her ; but it was too late. Charles had the THE STORY OF NAPLES 19 Queen in his power ; he imprisoned her in the Castel di Murano in the BasiUcata, where upon May 22, 1381, he had her suffocated. Giovanna's reign was in many ways glorious. Her court was the centre of art and letters, attended among others by Petrarch and Boccaccio. Indeed it is said that it was for her the Decameron was written. Among the churches which she built were those of S. Giovanni a Carbonara and the Incoronata, founded to commemorate her marriage with Louis of Taranto. The chapel in which she had been married to Louis was incorporated into the new building and painted by a pupil of Giotto's with frescoes in which we see portraits not only of Giovanna but of her father Charles, and her grandfather, Robert the Wise. For two years after the Queen's death Louis of Anjou and Charles of Durazzo (1381-1386) disputed the Kingdom till in 1383 the former died. In 1386, however, Charles was called to the throne of Hungary, and in the following year was assassinated. His short reign is scarcely com- memorated by any building in Naples. Only the church of S. Angelo a Nilo, built in 1385 by Cardinal Brancaccio, serves to remind us of it. To him succeeded his son Ladislas (1386-1414), a child who presently showed not only a fine courage but military ability. He too dreamed of the domination of Italy ; he invaded the Papal States and Rome itself in 1410, and was in arms against the Florentines when he died. He, or rather his favourite, Guerello Origlia, began the beautiful church of S. Anna dei Lombardi. His sister, Giovanna 11 (1414-1435) , succeeded him. More dissolute and unscrupulous than Giovanna i, she, widow on her accession of William of Austria, married Jacques de Bourbon, who, on account of her numerous infidelities, locked her up. Presently she reconciled herself with her husband, and on being liberated managed to imprison him in Naples. He escaped, and at last entered a Franciscan 20 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY convent, while she enjoyed herself with her latest lover, Caracciolo, to whom she gave all the power of her govern- ment. Childless, surrounded on all sides by claimants to her throne, she at last adopted Alfonso of Aragon as her successor, who already held not only Sicily but Sardinia. Upon this war broke out between the claimants, and Alfonso was victorious. But what had happened in the time of Giovanna i happened again. Alfonso, on entering Naples, seized the government. The Queen, jealous of her prerogative, disowned him and adopted as her heir Louis of Anjou. The whole Kingdom was involved in civil war and became the mere loot of various condot- tieri. Finally the Angevin cause was victorious, Alfonso was recalled to Spain by events there, and Louis of Anjou reigned in Naples as Regent while the Queen amused her- self with her favourites. He died, but upon the death of the Queen soon after, in 1435, it was found that she had named as her heir his brother Rene. Rene was the last of the Angevins to reign in Naples. He fell into the snare of the Visconti of Milan. Facing Alfonso of Aragon for the Kingdom, he sought and obtained Visconti' s aid and took his enemy prisoner. Alfonso was taken to Milan, and there he and Visconti came to an under- standing for their mutual benefit, the result of which was the loss of the Kingdom by the House of Anjou. For Alfonso was presently set at liberty, and with Visconti's assistance set out to conquer Naples, which he was able to do in 1442. Rene fled to Provence, where he wasted himself in the national quarrel, and died at last a lonely and pathetic figure spoiled and deserted by all. Thus Alfonso paramount in Sicily ^ re-estabhshed the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1442. This, it is true, only endured for his lifetime, for on his death in 1458 his brother Juan inherited Aragon, Sicily, and Sardinia, while his heir in Naples was his bastard, Ferdinand ; but he established ^ Sicily in 1409 had upon the extinction of the local Aragon dynasty been reconciled to the Crown of Aragon THE STORY OF NAPLES 21 the Spanish rule, which was in one form or another to endure till 1707. Although Alfonso broke his people with taxes, he was known as the Magnanimous, and his court was perhaps the most brilliant that Naples was to know. A great patron of the humanists, who flocked to him after the fall of Constantinople, he was a true Prince of the Renaissance, thoroughly Italian, if not by birth by culture, a prodigal Maecenas, a distinguished soldier and a fine scholar. It is said that he knew Virgil and Caesar by heart, and certainly he was passionately interested in everything concerning antiquity. The noble Triumphal Arch that he built in 1455-1458 before the Castel Nuovo, and which remains perhaps the noblest work of art of that time in Naples, was largely due to his study of Vitruvius. He surrounded himself with artists, and knew how to appreciate iEneas Silvius Piccolomini when he came to Naples as ambassador of the Sienese. He was succeeded in Naples, as I have said, by his bastard son, Ferdinand i (1458-1494), whose character was as mean, tyrannical, and contemptible as his father's had been generous. His reign was full of every sort of trouble. Jean of Anjou, a son of King Rene, broke him at Samo ; he quarrelled with his suzerain the Pope, conspired with the Pazzi to murder Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici in Florence, and saw the Turk invade Otranto and massacre the inhabitants. His poor political ability, however, by no means interfered with his love of the Arts, which he inherited in full measure from Alfonso. He is best represented in Naples by the Porta Capuana, built in 1484, and by the Castel del Carmine, which he began in the same year ; and to him also is due the church of SS. Severino e Sosio, built in 1490. Ferdinand's son, Alfonso 11, had already, before he suc- ceeded him in 1494, given splendid proofs of his courage and military ability in repulsing the Turks from Otranto ; but although he was so fine a soldier he was not less a cruel 22 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY voluptuary, hated and feared by his people, and surnamed by them dio delta came. Therefore when Charles viii of France appeared, called into Italy by the Sforza of Milan and claiming the Kingdom as the representative, so he said, of the House of Anjou, Alfonso in 1495 abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand 11, but did not thereby save his Kingdom, for Charles entered Naples almost without striking a blow. In 1496, however, upon the retreat of Charles, who saw all Italy leagued against him at last, Ferdinand returned only to die, leaving no issue. He was succeeded by his uncle, Federigo iii, the last of the Aragon House. He appealed for aid against the French to Spain, but Ferdinand the Catholic and Louis xii had already decided to divide the Kingdom of Naples between them. They invaded Italy, but soon quarrelled, with the result that Gonzalvo of Cordova drove the French out, and thenceforth Naples was ruled by viceroys of the Spanish Crown. The first of these was Gonzalvo himself, but in 1507 he was recalled to Spain by his jealous master, and died while making up his mind to revolt. He was but the first of an undistinguished and often nameless crowd of governors which fills the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. To some of them Naples owes noble buildings — for instance, the great street called till yesterday the Toledo was built by and named after the Viceroy of the Emperor Charles v, Don Pedro de Toledo (1532-1554). To the same man are due the sculptures of the Porta Capuana, placed there on the occasion of the visit of the Emperor ; he also rebuilt the Castel deU' Ovo and the church of S. Giacomo degli Spagnuoli. In 15 14 the Duke of Osuna was appointed Viceroy, and to him Naples owes the Gesu Nuovo, the Trinita, and S. Paolo Maggiore ; while the Conde de Lemos, Viceroy under Philip 11 of Spain, built in 1607 the Palazzo Reale. Against the Spanish domination, or rather against the brutal excesses of the viceroys, almost the only revolt of the Neapolitan people of which any news has come down THE STORY OF NAPLES 23 to us took place in the middle of the seventeenth century. This was the rising led by the Amalfi fisherman Masaniello in 1647 against the new heavy taxation of fruit. The people, led by Masaniello, seized the Castel del Carmine, defeated the regular troops, and put to death the nobility and the partisans of the Viceroy, the Duke of Arcos. In fear of a final overthrow, the Duke conceded their demands, and Masaniello was appointed dictator. But unfortunately he was not capable of government ; he became mad, and the reaction carefully prepared by the Duke declared itself in 1647, when Masaniello was safely murdered and his head displayed over the portico of the Palazzo Reale amid the applause of the populace. This episode — for it was little more — -would seem to give us the secret of the shameful history of Naples. We are wont to say that a people gets the government which it deserves, and this is perhaps more true of the Neapolitan than of any other people in Europe. Incapable of any real action, without sincerity, loyalty, or honour, the canaille that called itself a people fell after a few futile gesticulations back into the power of the viceroys of Spain. Such a people can have no history worthy of record. In the war of the Spanish Succession Naples was con- quered by the Austrians for Charles iii, son of the Emperor Leopold and claimant of the Spanish throne. But in 1734 Charles of Bourbon, son of Duke Philip of Parma, assisted by the Spanish general Montemar, easily con- quered Naples and became King Charles iii. The Austrians tried to retrieve their loss, but were defeated at Velletri in the following year. Charles introduced certain reforms, but he could not make men of the Neapolitans. When he ascended the Spanish throne he left Naples to his third son, Ferdinand iv (1759-1825). This man having failed to drive the armies of the French Republic out of the Papal States in 1798 retired to Sicily, and in came the French, not the Neapolitan, Revolution in 1799. That glorious and virile government in its love of antiquity pro- 24 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY claimed, with a naivete almost pathetic in its ignorance of the stuff of Naples, the Parthenopean Republic ! It endured by a miracle for something under seven years, till by the efforts of Cardinal Fabricius Ruffo Scilla — mark this, a priest ! — the Kingdom was restored. In 1806 Naples was again conquered by Joseph Bonaparte, who became King, but on ascending the throne of Spain was succeeded at Naples by Murat, dethroned and killed in 181 5. The last years of the Kingdom were as wretched as it deserved and as we might expect. Then by God's grace, out of the north came Garibaldi, who, having conquered Sicily and taken Calabria too by violence, entered Naples upon September 7, i860. On October i the battle of Voltumo was fought, and won by the Piedmontese ; Francis of Bourbon retired to Gaeta, where after a fine resistance he capitulated on February 12, 1861. Piedmont had made a free gift of liberty to Naples, which became part of the Kingdom of United Italy upon November 7, i860. Ill Classical Naples The strange confusion of Naples — of its life, which seems to be without purpose ; of its history, which seems to be without meaning — is found too in the city itself in its topography : there is no city in Italy more difficult to see in any sort of logical way proceeding from what is old to what is new. And this is not altogether due to the fact that each government she has endured, for the most part with so shameful a patience, has been anxious for political purposes to destroy or to transform the work of its pre- decessors ; the city seems to have no will of its own. Naples appears, at first sight at any rate, to have no com- mon centre in which all the life of the city meets. Such an impression, excusable enough, is, however, only true in part. Certainly we shall not find the heart of Naples in CLASSICAL NAPLES 25 the Piazza del Municipio, over which the Castel Nuovo presides; nor, in spite of the Bourbons, in the deserted royal square before the Palazzo Reale, surrounded though it be with official buildings ; nor even in the market-place, the Piazza del Mercato, so full of terror and shame, where the last of the Hohenstaufen, a boy of seventeen, perished with his knights, and where the lazzaroni crowned and killed their king. Not in any of these lies the heart of the city, but in the harbour. Naples radiates from her port like an open fan from its pivot, spread out east and west about the great bay upon the slopes of Vomero and the great and fruitful plain between it and Vesuvius. It was the harbour which made Neapolis ; it is the harbour which is the true centre and heart of the city to-day ; and it remains the one thing which in all the three thousand years of her history has not fundamentally changed but is still the true source of her life and well-being. Indeed, of that old Greek city of Neapolis the. harbour is the only thing which in some sort is left to us, the Piccolo Porto behind the Immacolata Vecchia ; apart from that, all that remains to us not only of Greek Neapolis but of classical antiquity in Naples is a few ruins, the merest fragments, the best of which are perhaps the remains of the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the fagade of S. Paolo Maggiore. S. Paolo occupies what may well have been the centre of the Greek city whose confines upon the east are fairly well represented by the Corso Garibaldi. The Duomo, which lies to the east of S. Paolo, is said to occupy the site of the two temples dedicated respectively to Neptune and Apollo, from which it obtained the columns and marbles we see. Nearly opposite the Duomo in the Via Anticaglia are two arches and other fragments of the theatre in which Nero is said to have made his debut ; while S. Giovanni Maggiore, to the west of S. Paolo behind the University, is said to occupy the site of a temple erected by Hadrian to Antinous. 26 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY The remains in the fagade of S. Paolo, in the Duomo, and the arches in the Via AnticagHa are almost all that is left to us of the Naples of antiquity, but upon the southern slope of Capodimonte the Ponti Rossi still preserves remains of the Aqua Julia, which Augustus erected to supply the naval harbour of Misenum with water from the Sebethus. By far the most impressive monument that is left to us of the Imperial time in Naples, however, is not to be found in any ruin above-ground, but in the Catacombs which open upon the western slope of Capodimonte ; they are perhaps the most amazing in the world. They stretch for miles, certainly as far as Pozzuoli ; and though they have been very little opened, they would seem to consist of a vast series of immense halls beside which the Catacombs of Rome are mere passages and rooms. They are entered from the churches of La Sanita, in which is the tomb of S. Gaudiosus, and of S. Gennaro de' Poveri, in its founda- tion a building of the eighth century erected upon the site of a chapel of the time of Constantine where the body of S. Januarius, the patron of Naples, was buried. These Catacombs were perhaps originally a burial-place for the poor, but like those of the Campagna they became a refuge for the early Christians, and are worth some effort to see if only because they present the same touching spectacle of faith as those at Rome. Here are similar numerous loculi and sepulchral niches ; the same symbols are used — the dove, the fish, the olive branch ; the same representa- tion of Christ as the Good Shepherd. And when we have seen them we have seen the last of classical Naples ; in the city to-day there remains, I think, less of antiquity than in almost any other great town of the South. And yet, though materially all that would remind us of Greece and Imperial Rome has disappeared, it is of them we continually think as we make our way about the foot of these hills where Naples lies so restless beside the Tyrrhene Sea, NAPLES 27 IV The Fortresses, Palaces, Gates, and Harbour OF Naples Everyone, I suppose, begins his exploration of Naples with a visit to the Cast el dell' Ovo, which stands really in the midst of the waves where the Pizzofalcone, a spur of Vomero, thrusts itself into the sea to form till yesterday the western arm of the little bay of S. Lucia. Castel deir Ovo was the oldest fort which dominated and defended Naples ; its sisters younger than she were the Castel Capuano, founded by William i and completed by Frederick 11 ; the Castel Nuovo, begun by Charles i of Anjou and enlarged by Alfonso of Aragon ; the Castel del Carmine, erected by Ferdinand i of Aragon in 1484 ; and the mighty fortress upon the height that still commands the whole city and bay, Castel Sant' Elmo, built by Robert the Wise but enlarged by the Spaniards. The fortress of Castel dell' Ovo that we see, now a prison, was begun by William i, the grandson of the great Roger and the son of the first Norman king of Naples and Sicily, in 1154. His work was completed by the Emperor Frederick 11 and used as a treasury, and after the battle of Benevento the children of Manfred were here imprisoned, only one of them issuing out alive, Beatrix, who owed her deUverance to the Sicilian Vespers. King Charles i of Anjou had strengthened the place and often lived there, and we read that it was from these battlements that his daughter watched the naval battle in which her father's fleet was broken and her brother taken prisoner. She saw the two Sicilian galleys speed towards the fort, and it was she who heard Admiral Ruggiero Doria demand the sur- render of Manfred's daughter, her prisoner within. She refused ; but when he threatened to take her brother's life she surrendered Beatrix, who had spent eighteen years in her prison. 28 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY Castel deir Ovo was the favourite fortress of the Angevins. Robert the Wise brought Giotto from Florence to paint its chapel in fresco, nothing of which of course remains, and Charles iii of Durazzo in 1381 here kept King Robert's granddaughter, Giovanna i, prisoner, as she did him when her turn came. In 1495 Charles viii of France besieged and took the place, and Ferdinand 11 of Aragon in 1479 dismantled it. But it is really of none of these mighty or beautiful or infamous people we think when we look upon the Castel deir Ovo to-day, but of Rome ; of Lucullus, who had built his villa here upon the little island of Megaris — for it was an island — and whose gardens stretched so far over the shore and the hills ; of Cicero, who here met Brutus after the murder of Caesar in 44 B.C. ; most of all of Virgil, to whom, so it is said, the place owed its being, for he built it upon an egg anchored to the bottom of the sea, and so it shall stand until the egg be broken ; and a little of the last Emperor in the west, Romulus Augustulus, who is said here to have ended his days by leave of Odoacer the barbarian. To the west of the Pizzofalcone, upon the tip of which, as it were rising out of the waves, the Castel dell' Ovo stands, lies the Villa Nazionale, which is the Cascine or Villa Borghese of Naples, a pleasure-ground behind which lies the fashionable quarter and about which are the fashionable drives and promenades and in which stands the Aquarium, perhaps the finest and most various in the world, that no one must fail to visit whatever else is left unseen. To the east lies about the great harbour the city of Naples. Till yesterday between the Castel dell' Ovo and the Mola San Vincenzo the bay of S. Lucia opened, the fishermen's quarter, the most picturesque part of the city. This has, however, been filled in and a squalid quarter, the Rione S. Lucia, has been built, which it is anything but delightful to pass through. He who is wise, and is bent on exploration and has time for pleasure, PALAZZO REALE 29 will do well, therefore, to climb up from the Castel dell' Ovo into the Strada Chiatamone, and, turning to the left westward, to make his way through the Piazza dei Martiri, the Strada S. Caterina, and the Chiaia, the last a narrow, characteristic, and crowded way over which passes the Strada Monte di Dio from the Pizzofalcone northward to S. Elmo by the Ponte di Chiaia. The Strada di Chiaia comes to an end in the Piazza S. Ferdinando, which may perhaps be considered as the nucleus of the modern city, for it is closed upon the east by the Palazzo Reale and the Teatro S. Carlo, behind which, reached by the narrow Strada S. Carlo, stands the Castel Nuovo and the long Piazza del Municipio, leading down to the Porto Militare and the Porto Mercantile. Out of it northward proceeds the Toledo, the greatest thorough- fare in Naples; to the south opens the fine Piazza del Plebiscito ; while from the west by the narrow Chiaia all the life of the new quarters on the Vomero comes into it to pass into the city. The Piazza del Plebiscito is the most finely ordered square in Naples. It is entirely closed on the east by the fagade of the Palazzo Reale, while opposite upon the west it is filled by the great semicircular colonnade and front of the nineteenth-century church of S. Francesco di Paolo. Upon the south stands the old Palace of the Prince of Salerno, now the Commandant's residence, while upon the north is the Prefettura. The Palazzo Reale, with its long fagade adorned with modern statues of Roger of Sicily, Frederick 11 of Hohen- staufen, Charles i of Anjou, Alfonso i of Aragon, Charles v the Emperor, Charles iii of Bourbon, Murat, and Victor Emmanuel, was begun in 1600 by the Spanish Viceroy, the Count de Lemos. The architect was Fontana, but his design has been spoiled by the fiUing up of the open arches and by other rebuildings and restorations. Within the impression is less cold, the staircase of white marble dating from 1651 being especially fine ; and the palace is 30 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY worth the trouble of getting a permesso to visit it, if only because it contains a fine gallery of pictures with two masterpieces, the portrait of Pietro Luigi Famese by Titian, somewhat spoilt by repainting, and a fine portrait by Vandyck. Beside the Palace on the north, and characteristically joined to it by a gallery, stands the Teatro San Carlo, built by Charles iii of Bourbon in 1737. Within it has been entirely rebuilt after a fire in 1816, but it remains perhaps the largest opera-house in the world, its only rivals being those at Milan and Barcelona. Here many of the works of Pergolesi and Paesiello, of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, were heard for the first time. Following the way under the arcades in the Strada S. Carlo, where the public writers have their little tables, one comes to a fine garden on the right, and so past the Cast el Nuovo into the Piazza del Municipio, which slopes somewhat steeply down towards the sea. Here one gets perhaps the best view within the city of Vesuvius and of Castel S. Elmo and S. Martino on the noble hill over the city, things to which Naples owes so much of her reputa- tion for beauty. From the Piazza del Municipio we turn to the Castel Nuovo, the fortress that Charles of Anjou built in 1279 by the hands perhaps of Pierre d'Agincourt, and that Alfonso of Aragon enlarged in 1442, as did Don Pedro de Toledo, the Spanish Viceroy, in 1546, and Charles iii of Bourbon in 1735. It was the fortress-palace of the kings of Naples from the time of the Angevins until the Count de Lemos in 1600 began the Palazzo Reale ; but its walls and ramparts have for the most part been destroyed, and from without the place does not impress us as it should. The entrance is from the Piazza del Municipio, and it is mean enough until we come to the Castle itself, where the glorious Triumphal Arch of Alfonso i of Aragon, built to commemorate his entry into Naples in 1442, stands before the gate. CASTEL NUOVO 31 It was indeed with the advent of the House of Aragon that the art of the Renaissance took the place of the Gothic introduced by the House of Anjou. Alfonso of Aragon called to Naples the Florentine Giuliano da Majano, who in 1414 built the Porta Capuana ; but before then he had summoned from Milan Pietro di Martino, who first raised in Italy a monument in direct imitation of the antique, to wit this Triumphal Arch begun in 1453. This noble and beautiful work, the somewhat capricious com- position of which betrays the experimentalism of its builder, Pietro di Martino, is said to have been designed in the first instance by Francesco Laurana. It is richly adorned with sculptures and reliefs by various artists. The bronze doors were the work of a Frenchman, Guillaume Monaco, and are splendidly adorned with reliefs represent- ing the victories of Alfonso. In that on the left a cannon ball is embedded, a relic of the time of Gonsalvo da Cor- dova. In the courtyard within stands the church of S. Barbara, a work of Charles of Anjou, transformed in the end of the fifteenth century, as we see, when the beautiful early Re- naissance door was built by Francesco Laurana, who also made the lovely statue of the Madonna and Child above it. The best thing within the church is the view to be had from the balcony above the elaborate little chapel at the top of a flight of steps. On coming out of the Castel Nuovo he is wise who strolls down to the Porto and wanders along the quays crowded with shipping, the view dark with masts quite round the Porto Mercantile, built first in 1302 by Charles II of Anjou, as far as the Villa del Popolo and the Porta del Carmine. Nothing in Naples is more interesting than the life of the harbour, and no monument in the strait ways of the city more beautiful than these living ships moving and sighing against the quays, longing for the open sea. And if life will not content one, there is to the south beyond the Castel Nuovo and the Porto Militare the old 32 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY Arsenale di Marina and the Darsena erected and con- trived in 1577 by the Viceroy Don Inigo de Mendoza ; there is the Faro, founded in the fourteenth century at the end of the Molo Angoino ; and there is the Porto Piccolo, the repre- sentative perhaps of the Greek harbour of Neapohs ; while at the east end of the Port stands the Castel del Carmine, which Ferdinand i of Aragon built in 1484, which was seized by Masaniello when he led the revolt of the people in 1647, ^^^ which now has come to nothing — a military bakehouse. Close by the Castello is the Porta del Carmine, through which one re-enters the city and comes into perhaps the most famous of all the piazzas of Naples, the Piazza del Mercato, where Conradin, his knights and friends were slain by Charles of Anjou upon October 29, 1268, after the battle of Tagliacozzo, and where Masaniello began his rebellion in July 1647. Conradin was but seventeen when he died, and he was the last of the Hohenstaufen. His body was buried without pomp, and indeed secretly, behind the high altar in the church here, S. Maria del Carmine, which has so noble a tower, but now nothing else noble about it, for it was rebuilt in 1769. There may still be seen the inscrip- tion R. C. C, which is to say. Regis Conradini Corpus, the body of King Conradin. Over the spot where he and his friends were put to death there now stands a fountain, but of old this place was marked by a column of porphyry now in the sacristy of the little church of Santa Croce in the midst of the piazza. From the Castel del Carmine and the famous piazza one passes by the picturesque and characteristic Strada di Lavinaro or the broad Corso Garibaldi to the Castel Capu- ano and the great gate Porta Capuana close by. This fortress is as old as the Castel dell' Ovo, for it was founded by William I and completed by Frederick 11. It served as the residence of the Hohenstaufen in Naples, and was used by Charles of Anjou until the foundation of the Castel NAPLES : PORTA CARMINE THE ANGEVIN CHURCHES 33 Nuovo. It remained the occasional residence of the Kings of Naples until in 1540 Don Pedro de Toledo, the Viceroy, made it the Palace of Justice, which it still re- mains. The Porta Capuana close by is not only the finest gate in Naples, but, being as it is the entry to the oldest and most crowded part of the city, affords such a spectacle of the life of the people as is not to be matched in the peninsula. The whole street within and without the gate is a continual fair and pandemonium of noise ; josthng carts, barrows, caravans of mules, herds of goats, ox- wagons, and innumerable companies of peasants throng in and out ; the fruiterers, the sellers of sheU-fish and of nauseous coloured sweet drinks, of pottery, of images and rosaries of every kind and sort, of sweetmeats and biscuits, of chestnuts and the unknowable deHcacies of the people, drive a furious trade accompanied by a universal yelling and gesticulation that in the dust and the blazing sun make certainly one of the most amazing sights the city affords. The great and beautiful gate was built in the end of the fifteenth century by Giuliano da Maiano for Ferdinand i of Aragon, whose arms still adorn it. By this way Charles v entered the city in 1535, when it was splendidly decorated with statues by Giovanni da Nola. The Angevin Churches From the Castel Capuano it is but a httle way down the broad Strada de' Tribunali to the Strada del Duomo in which upon the right stands the Duomo, the Cathedral church of Naples. This church originally dedicated in honour of the Madonna now bears the name of the patron of the city, S. Januarius, whose body lies in the Confessio beneath the high altar, and whose blood is conserved in two phials over the altar of the third chapel in the south aisle. 3 34 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY The church was begun in 1272 by Charles i of Anjou perhaps on the site of the Temples of Neptune and Apollo. His son, Charles 11, continued it, and his son again, Robert the Wise, completed it in 1323. The church was thus built by three generations of Angevin kings and in the Gothic style of France, having pointed arches upheld by columns of ancient marble from the Temples upon whose site it stands. The church of the Angevins was very badly damaged in 1456 by an earthquake, and was unfortunately almost entirely rebuilt by Alfonso i of Aragon with the assistance of the greater Neapolitan families whose arms may be seen upon the pillars. Still more unfortunately in 1837 the whole building was restored by Archbishop Giudice Caracciolo. The church, as we see it, is chiefly interesting, at any rate to us, on account of its monuments. Over the main door to the right is that of the founder of the Angevin dynasty, of the great Charles of Anjou. To the left is that of the eldest son of Charles 11, Charles Mart el, King of Hungary, and in the midst that of his wife, Clementina, daughter of Rudolph of Hapsburg. All three were erected in 1599 by the Spanish Viceroy Olivarez. In the north transept lies that Andrew, King of Hungary, the first husband of Giovanna i. Queen of Naples, the grand- daughter of Robert the Wise. Close by are the tombs of two Popes — Innocent iv, who died here in Naples in 1254, and Innocent xii, who died in 1696 and was a Neapolitan. Apart from these tombs the church possesses really but little interest. In the second chapel in the north aisle there is an altarpiece of the Incredulity of S. Thomas by Marco da Siena, and beneath it a relief of the Entombment by Giovanni da Nola. In the fourth chapel in the same aisle is an Assumption of the Virgin asserted bj^ Vasari to be by Perugino, but obviously only from his workshop. It was commissioned by Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, and represents the Madonna in a mandorla with two angels above placing a crown upon her head while others make S. JANUARIUS 35 music about her. Beneath the twelve Apostles and S. Paul stand in worship, while to the left are Cardinal Carafa presented by S. Januarius. Cardinal Carafa had a very great devotion to this saint, the patron of Naples. To contain the body of S. Januarius brought from S. Gennaro dei Poveri upon the slope of Capodimonte in 1497, he caused to be built the exquisitely lovely chapel of the Confessio, which is upheld by beautiful ancient columns of marble. There we see not only the tomb of the saint, made by Tommaso Malvito of Como, but the kneeling figure of the Cardinal beside it made by the same master. Above, Domenichino has painted in fresco angels in adoration. Nor is this the only shrine of the saint in this church. In the third chapel in the south aisle is the Cappella del Tesoro erected by the Neapolitans ill 1608 in fulfilment of a vow made in 1527 during the plague. In this too gorgeous sanctuary, which is said to have cost a quarter of a million sterling, the blood of S. Januarius is conserved in two phials in the tabernacle over the high altar, and is said to liquefy twice in the year. This popular event, which would seem to have extra- ordinary significance in the eyes of the Neapolitans, occurs in May and September. Upon the first Saturday in May the phials containing the blood are carried in procession to the Church of S. Chiara. There the liquefaction begins, and the phials having been conveyed back to the Cathedral, the miracle is repeated in the mother church during some seven days. Upon the 19th September, the Feast of S. Januarius, the blood begins to liquefy again, but this time in the Cathedral, and continues to do so during the octave. S. Januarius is said to have been thrown to the lions in the amphitheatre of Pozzuoli in the first years of the fourth century. The beasts, however, would not touch him, so his captors led him away to Solfatara, where he was beheaded. The body was buried at Pozzuoli, but was removed in the time of Constantine to the sanctuary at the mouth of the Catacombs, which now bears the name of 36 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY the martyr S. Gennaro de' Poveri. Later, during the Saracen raids the body was borne away to Benevento, where S. Januarius had been bishop, and in the time of Frederick ii it was taken to Monte Vergine, near AveUino, whence Cardinal Carafa in 1497 brought it to Naples and laid the body in the tomb he had prepared for it here in the Conf essio. The church is full of fine tombs besides those I have named, and in the Minutoli chapel in the south transept, a Gothic work of the fourteenth century, there is beside some fine works of this sort a beautiful triptych over the altar by Paolo di Giovanni Fei of Siena, a Crucifixion with Saints. And close by in the Cappella Tocca is the tomb of S. Asprenas, an early bishop of Naples. The Cathedral, however, in spite of its tombs is a curiously uninteresting building. Far more attractive in itself is the old church of S. Restituta, originally the Cathedral, and, though sadly restored, still dating from the seventh century, which we enter from the north aisle of the Duomo upon payment of a small fee. This is a basilica with pointed arches, said to occupy the site of the old Temple of Apollo. As we see it, it is a restoration of the seventeenth century, but it still contains an interesting fourteenth- century mosaic of Our Lady with SS. Januarius and Restituta in the chapel at the end of the north aisle, and two parts of an altar screen of the twelfth century, each containing fifteen reliefs, of the life of S. Januarius, of Joseph, of Samson, and S. George. Something older than the seventh-century church itself would seem to remain to us in the Baptistery, which appears to date from the fifth century. Here we may see some restored mosaics, fifth- century works, of Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and the Four Evangelists. It was Charles of Anjou himself who founded the Duomo of Naples, as he did more than one other church in the city, as we shall see. Before passing on to examine them, we may glance at a little desecrated sanctuary close to the S. LORENZO 37 Duomo, the church of S. Maria Donna Regina founded by Maria of Hungary (1308), the consort of Charies 11 of Anjou. The old church was deserted in the seventeenth century when a new one was built, and is now a Museum — the Museo Donna Regina. In the seventeenth- century church we find the tomb of the founderess to the left of the high altar, a fourteenth-century work by Tino di Camaino ; but in the old sanctuary, now the museum, we find some magnificent frescoes ascribed to Pietro Cavallini painted to the order of Charles 11, which no one should fail to see. Like the works by the same master at Rome, these frescoes are very much damaged, but no one can doubt that they are largely from Cavallini's hand, doubtless assisted by pupils. Here are fragments of scenes from the Apocalypse, with figures in pairs above between, palm trees, of Prophets and Saints which remind us of Byzantine mosaics. There we see SS. Stephen, Laurence, Joseph, Peter, Elias, Thomas, and others. Farther on, we find on the left fifteen scenes from the Passion of Christ and five from the life of S. Elizabeth of Hungary. Opposite are many spoiled scenes from the lives of S. Agnes and S. Catherine. Over the triumphal arch of the sanctuary we see the hierarchy of angels, while on the entrance wall is the Last Judgment. From S. Maria Donna Regina one turns back past the Duomo, and coming into the Strada de' Tribunali turns left so far as the church of S. Lorenzo. S. Lorenzo was a refoundation of Charles i of Anjou, and though the church has been largely rebuilt, the choir and the doorway still remain to us from his time. There, too, in the seventh chapel on the right we may see a precious work by Simone Martini, the Coronation of King Robert the Wise, grandson of Charles of Anjou, by S. Louis of Toulouse, painted about 1317, a very noble and lovely thing. Below in the predella, also from Simone's hand, we see five small scenes of the life of the saint. This chapel also contains some early frescoes much in 38 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY Simone's style. The church boasts, too, of other paintings, perhaps by Simone Napoletano, in the chapels of the north and south transepts. They represent S. Anthony and S. Francis, for this was a Franciscan sanctuary, to which order the Angevin house was, of course, devoted, since it had produced two Franciscan saints. Behind the high altar we come upon the Angevin tombs. There are three monuments of Catherine of Austria (d.1333), the first wife of Charles, Duke of Calabria, the son of Robert the Wise, of Johanna of Durazzo (d. 1393) and her husband, Robert d'Artois (d. 1383), and of Charles i of Durazzo, who was executed at Aversa in 1348 for the murder of Andrew of Hungary. Close by lies the two-year- old daughter of Charles iii. So much for the Angevins. For, after all, the Franciscan church of S. Lorenzo has another and a greater interest for us than the fact that they founded it and there lie buried. It was here that Boccaccio first saw Fiammetta on the vigil of Easter in the year 1331 or 1336.^ He had gone to Mass, it seems, about ten o'clock in the morning, the fashionable hour of the day, rather to see the people than to attend the service, and there amid the great throng of all sorts and conditions of men he first caught sight of the woman who was so profoundly to influence his life and shape his work. '' I found myself," he says, " in a fine church of Naples, named after him who endured to be offered as a sacrifice upon the gridiron, and there was a singing compact of sweetest melody. I was listening to the Holy Mass celebrated by a priest, successor to him who first girt himself humbly with the cord, exalting poverty and adopting it (S. Francis). Now, while I stood there, the fourth hour of the day, according to my reckoning, having already passed down the eastern sky, there appeared to my eyes the wondrous beauty of a young woman come hither to hear what I too heard attentively. I had no sooner seen her than my heart began to throb so * See my Giovanni Boccaccio (Lane, 1910), p. 27 ef seq. S. CHIARA 39 strongly that I felt it in my slightest pulses ; and not knowing why, nor yet perceiving what had happened, I began to say, * Ohime, what is this ? . . / But at length, being unable to sate myself with gazing, I said, ' O Lord, most noble Lord, whose strength not even the gods were able to resist, I thank thee for setting happiness before my eyes ! . . .' I had no sooner said these words than the flashing eyes of that lovely lady fixed themselves on mine. . . ." Thus began that bitter romance to which we owe so much of Boccaccio's work. Not far fromS. Lorenzo, at the end of Stradade' Tribunah, is the church of S. Pietro a Macella, built by the favourite of Charles ii of Anjou, Giovanni Pipino di Barbetta. He died in 1316, and is buried in his church in the left transept ; but to-day one cannot visit his tomb, for the church is closed, and about to be destroyed. From this threatened sanctuary we may pass on the left past the church of S, Domenico, which Charles 11 refounded, but which is full of Aragon tombs, into the Largo di S. Domenico, and so by the Strade S. Trinita to the vast Church of S. Chiara. This is a true Angevin sanctuary, a Franciscan church, a French building in which behind the high altar, beneath a magnificent Gothic monument, King Robert the Wise lies buried. The vast affair towers some forty-two feet into the air, and is the work of Pace and Giovanni da Firenze. The King, who like all his house was a great patron of the Franciscan Order, is represented in effigy dressed in the habit of a Friar Minor lying upon a sarco- phagus adorned with reliefs. Angels draw aside the curtains which hang about the figure, and above towers a huge canopy, over which in a niche the King appears seated on his throne in his majesty. There Petrarch wrote the inscription : '' Cemite Robertum regem virtute refertum." On either side are frescoes by some pupil of Giotto's. Close by this magnificent tomb, in the south transept, lies King Robert's eldest son, Charles, Duke of Calabria, who died before his father in 1328. This beautiful tomb 40 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY is the work of Tino di Camaino of Siena. To the right, in another fine tomb, Hes Charles' second wife, Mary of Valois. Upon the other side of King Robert, in the north tran- sept, hes in another fine tomb his granddaughter, Mary, daughter of Charles, Duke of Calabria, in her imperial robes as Empress of Constantinople. Beside her are her two daughters, Agnes and Clementia, and beside them two children, a daughter and a grandson of Charles of Calabria. All these tombs are of the fourteenth century and of the House of Anjou. Beside these French Princes in a chapel in the south transept many of the last princely house of Naples are buried, for it is the Bourbon chantry. Apart from these Angevin tombs, S. Chiara has now little interest. Once it possessed frescoes by Giotto, so Vasari tells us, for Boccaccio persuaded King Robert to bring the master to Naples, and here he set to work to cover the Angevin chapel, and indeed the whole church, with his work. Nothing at all, however, remains to-day, except the small Madonna delle Grazie on a pillar to the left of the nave. To the left of the entrance to the church in a fine tomb, under a fresco by Francesco di Simone Napoletano of the Madonna enthroned with the Blessed Trinity, lies the secretary of King Ladislaus, the son of Charles iii of Durazzo. Here Baboccio carved a relief of the Madonna and Child with certain friars. Before the organ the masters of the tomb of King Robert have carved in relief eleven scenes from the life of S. Catherine. It is possible that they also made the reliefs in the pulpit. We have thus seen the tombs and monuments of the first three Angevin princes : Charles i and Charles ii lie in the Duomo, King Robert the Wise lies in S. Chiara ; the church of the Incoronata belongs to King Robert's granddaughter and heir, the famous Giovanna, Queen of Naples. Charles ii of Anjou had built here the Cappella di THE INCORONATA 41 Giustizia, and there Giovanna was married to her second husband, Louis of Taranto, in 1347. To commemorate this event and her later coronation,^ and perhaps to appease Heaven for the murder of her first husband, Andrew of Hungary, the beautiful Queen founded the church of the Incoronata, in which was incorporated the old Cappella di Giustizia. The church is well below the present level of the street, the Strada Medina, in which it stands, and though nluch of it has been spoilt it still retains its fine old roof and several Gothic chapels. Here in the groined vaults of the choir, and best seen from the staircase on the left, are frescoes of the middle of the fourteenth century, representing the Seven Sacraments of the Church. In the Marriage we may think to see the portrait of Giovanna, while in the Baptism, it is said, we see portraits of Petrarch and Laura, but this is obviously ridiculous. Close by is the apotheosis of S. Louis of Toulouse, with portraits of King Robert and his son Charles, the grandfather and father of the Queen. Who painted these works ? It is possible we may never know ; they might seem to be the work of some local master who had felt the influence both of Giotto and Simone Martini, perhaps that Robertus di Oderisio of whom Crowe and Cavalcaselle were the first to tell us. In the Cappella del Crocefisso, at the end of the left aisle, are other somewhat similar paintings, attributed to Gennaro di Cola, a very feeble master. They represent again the marriage of Queen Giovanna, and other events of her so various life, that life full of beauty and lust and crime, which ended so brutally at the Castle of Muro, where in 1382 she was suffocated by order of Charles iii of Durazzo, who had seized her kingdom. Neither Queen Giovanna nor her successor and murderer, Charles iii of Durazzo, lie in Naples ; but Ladislaus, who reigned from 1386 to 1414, whose favourite, Guerello ^ The coronation did not take place here, it would seem, but in the Palace of the Princes of Taranto, near Castel Nuovo, and this in 1352. 42 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY Origlia, founded Monte Oliveto, lies in S. Giovanni a Car- bonara, which Queen Giovanna had begun in 1344. This church Hes quite on the other side of Naples from the Incoronata, near the Porta Capuana. Its chief treasure, if not its only one, is the magnificent monument of King Ladislaus, which his successor, the infamous Giovanna 11, his sister, built in his honour behind the high altar. There he is buried in a sarcophagus upon which, in imitation of that of King Robert, he hes in effigy, receiving the benediction of a bishop, for the ex- communication of the Pope was only removed after his death. Above stands a fine equestrian statue of the king ; beneath we see him and his sister, while the tomb itself is supported by statues representing the four cardinal virtues. This tomb is the work of Andrea de Florentia, who perhaps also made the tomb in the Cappella del Sole behind it, in which Giovanna ii's favourite, the Grand Seneschal Ser Giovanni Caracciolo, lies. Another tomb by the same master is in the Congregazione di S. Monica close by. It holds the dust of Ferdinando di Sanseverino> and dates from 1432. The two later chapels of the Carac- cioli are worth examining, if only for the sixteenth-century sculpture there. Giovanna 11, who raised so splendid a tomb for her brother and predecessor upon the throne of Naples, herself, for all her splendour and luxury, hes in an unpretending grave. This stands before the high altar in the SS. Annunziata, which Robert the Wise had built in 1316, but which was rebuilt in the eighteenth century. She was the last of the Angevins to lie in Naples, and seven years after her death her house ceased to hold the Kingdom. Undoubtedly the noblest work of art, dating from her reign in Naples, is the glorious monument of Cardinal Brancacci by Donatello and Michelozzo in S. Angelo a Nilo. It consists of a sarcophagus borne by three figures ; upon this hes the effigy of the Cardinal, and on either side THE ARAGON CHURCHES 43 stand angels drawing aside the curtains. In front is a glorious relief of the Assumption from the hand of Dona- tello, and above a relief of the Virgin. This is the finest work of art left to us in Naples outside the Museums. VI The Aragon Churches The Angevins had stamped Naples with a Gothic character in the noble churches they built; it was the Aragon house that brought in the Renaissance. Nothing more splendid is to be found in Naples than the early Renaissance Triumphal Arch of the Castel Nuovo which Alfonso i caused to be built, but the tombs of the house are disappointing. The Angevins had patronized and supported the Franciscan Order, and for the most part lie in glorious tombs in Franciscan sanctuaries. It was the Dominicans that the House of Aragon favoured. The church of S. Domenico had been erected in 1287 in the Gothic style by Charles 11 of Anjou. It has been much rebuilt and restored, but it remains one of the nobler churches of the city, of very great size and some splendour. Here in the sacristy, in ten large wooden sarcophagi covered with velvet, lie the Princes of the House of Aragon, Ferdinand i, Ferdinand 11, and others of their house. In the north transept lie Giovanni di Durazzo and Filippo di Taranto, the sons of Charles 11 of Anjou. The church is fuU of the sixteenth- century monuments of the most famous Neapolitan families, and there are several works by Giovanni da Nola. But apart from its tombs of the House of Aragon, its chief interest for me at least lies in its monastery, once the house of the Angelical Doctor S. Thomas Aquinas. Here he lived in 1272, when he lectured at the University, to the wonder of Italy and the delight of the great Charles of Anjou, who came to hear him. His 44 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY little cell, now a much overcrowded little chapel, is shown. Perhaps the best Aragon tomb in Naples is to be seen in the Benedictine church of Monte Oliveto. Here behind the high altar, in a fine tomb by Giovanni da Nola, Alfonso II of Aragon lies, while in the first chapel on the left is a beautiful altar by Antonio Rossellino of Florence, with charming reliefs of the Nativity and the Four Evangelists, and there lies Maria of Aragon, the natural daughter of Ferdinando i. This is also a work of Rossellino' s, and is a copy of his masterpiece in S. Miniato at Florence, the tomb of the Cardinal of Portugal. He did not live to complete Maria of Aragon's tomb, which was finished by Benedetto da Majano. The whole church is typically Aragonese, and almost a museum of the work they patronized in the sixteenth century. But the tombs of the House of Aragon in Naples are but poor things in comparison with those of the House of Anjou, nor is their influence architecturally upon the city comparable at all with that of their predecessors. Some few fine things Naples owes to them, such as the Triumphal Arch, the rebuilding of the Cast el del Carmine, the Porta Capuana, and indeed all the gates, but few churches and few monuments. Greater benefits indeed were bestowed upon Naples by the Spanish viceroys than by the House of Aragon. The first of these viceroys, the famous Gonzalvo da Cordova, II Gran Capitano, built the great chapel of S. Giacomo della Marca in the church of S. Maria Nuova, and his nephew, Ferdinand, Duke of Sueca, raised upon either side the high altar there, monuments to the memory of his most formidable enemies, Pietro Navarro, who hanged himself in the Castel Nuovo, and Lautrec, the general of Francis i, who besieged Naples in 1528, and died of plague before he took the city. But undoubtedly the finest monument that the viceroys left in Naples, if not the noblest relic of Spanish rule here, THE MUSEO NAZIONALE 45 is the great thoroughfare of the Toledo, now so absurdly called the Via Roma. This was the work of the great Pedro de Toledo (1532-1554). He lies in a very gorgeous tomb in S. Giacomo degli Spagnuoli, which is also due to him, in the Piazza del Municipio. It is a work of the famous school of Giovanni da Nola. The Viceroy and his wife are seen kneeling upon an enormous sarcophagus covered with reliefs ; at the angles are four allegorical figures. The work is exquisitely wrought, but decadent in its over- elaboration and lack of simplicity. That tomb and church are indeed but the forerunners of such unquiet sanctuaries as the Gesu Nuovo, S. Paolo Maggiore, and S. Filippo Neri. They serve with the Palazzo Reale, however, and the great Carthusian monastery of S. Martino and the Palazzo di Capodimonte, begun by Charles iii in 1738, with its fine Goyas, portraits of Charles iv and his consort, to mark the Spanish dominion, as S. Carlo, built in 1737, and S. Francesco da Paola, built in imitation of the Pantheon by Ferdinand iv, and the Municipio, built by Francis i, mark the rule of the Bourbons. They at least have some char- acter of their own, but what are we to say of the buildings of our own time, the Galleria in the Toledo and the numerous statues of Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel, and Umberto i, that represent in Naples the dominion of Savoy and the unity of Italy ? VII The Museo Nazionale My happiest hours in Naples have always been those spent in the two Museums of the place, the great Museo Nazionale in the city itself and the Museo di San Martino, the old Carthusian monastery upon the height of S. Elmo, where after all the only thing to be seen is the view ; but that beggars description. The Museo Nazionale has not the wonderful environment 46 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY of the monastery of S. Martino. The vast building in the Piazza Cavour, begun by Fontana in 1586, in the time of the Viceroy, the Duke of Osuna, was built for a cavalry barracks, but, left uncompleted for more than twenty years, was given by the Conde de Lemos to the University, and in 1616 was known as the Regii Studii. When the Palazzo Tribunali was rendered unsafe by the earthquake of 1688 it was used for a time as the law court of Naples, and only in the Revolution of 1701 did it serve its original purpose of a barracks. It again came into the hands of the University in 1767, when it was arranged as a Museum, and in 1790 King Ferdinand iv removed the royal collec- tions to it from Capodimonte and Portici. The Museum indeed owes a great deal to the Bourbons, who continually enriched it with treasures, though claiming everything, and rightly, as their own private property. They called it the Museo Reale Borbonico ; but when in i860 Garibaldi became the very helpless dictator of Naples that he proved to be, he proclaimed the Museum national property, and this was confirmed later by Victor Emmanuel. The greatest treasures of the Museum thus established are to-day the antiquities from Pompeii, from Paestum, and the cities of Magna Grsecia, the bronzes from Her- culaneum, and a few works in marble, genuine masterpieces of Greek art, which most happily have found here a secure, if gloomy, home. It is easiest to visit first the collection of marble sculp- tures where, amid a vast mass of work of the time of the Empire, for the most part copies, as in the Vatican and the Capitoline Museums, of lost Greek originals, may be found a few works from the hands of the Greeks themselves. Though in such a great collection as this he is wise who confines himself to the best of all, it is impossible to pass by certain works which greet us even in the first room, the Portico dei Mami Arcaici, copies though they be. Those noble figures of Harmodius and Aristogeitus, the two Athenian youths who slew the tyrant Hipparchus, and TORSO DI VENERE Micseo Nazioiiale, Naples THE MARBLES 47 sacrificed their lives for the good of the state ; it is im- possible to pass them by without a salute, though these figures are but fine copies of those carved by Critics and Nesiotes, and re-erected by the Athenian people after the two earlier statues carved by Antenor had been carried off by Xerxes. One may pass by the Famese gladiator, however — it is but the copy of a copy — but the statuette of Artemis in the same room (6008) comes from Pompeii, and the colour is still on it. It is a small but fine copy of the chryselephan- tine statue of the end of the sixth century, and was brought to Italy from Calydon by Augustus after the battle of Actium. The adjoining rooms are full of fine copies — the bust of Athene, the beautiful Aphrodite in a clinging transparent robe, the majestic so-called Juno Famese, the poor Dory- phorus from Pompeii ; it is not indeed till you enter the seventh room that you come to an original Greek work, the exquisite relief of Orpheus, Eurydice, and Hermes (6727), replicas of which are in the Louvre and the Villa Albani at Rome. This is one of the loveHest things in Naples, an almost untouched work of the fourth century B.C., perfect alike in beauty and quietness. As much cannot be said for the Head of Apollo (6393), fine though it be, for it has been spoilt by polish and re- storation, nor for the Athena (6024), which is but a poor copy after Pheidias, as is the Bust of the Bearded Dionysos (6306) after Praxiteles. We come upon something better, however, in the so-called Banquet of Icarius (6713), a genuine Greek work, in which we see Dionysos appearing to some victorious poet, while the splendid technique of the torso of a man in the next room redeems it from the mediocrity of most copies. The glorious torso of Aphrodite (6035) by the window is of the most tender beauty. I know not what to say of the Famese Hercules, nor of the various works in the small rooms adjoining that in which it stands, the statuettes of the Pergamenian school 48 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY and the Venus Callipyge ; they mean nothing to me. Before them all I prefer that lovely relief of the Persuasion of Helen, a true Greek work, in which Aphrodite tries so hard to persuade Helen to follow Paris, while Eros stands by helpless, and Peitho, as a dove, waits with certainty the decision of her for whom Troy must fall. In the Museum of Naples one wanders as in a city, caught here by something beautiful, there by the face of a friend, now by something familiar, now by something strange. Not the least delightful rooms, indeed, are those devoted to the Greek and Roman Portraits, the Portico Iconografico, and the Portico degli Imperatori. Undoubtedly the finest of all these is the beautiful herma of a Greek Philosopher in the middle of the latter room ; indeed, there is no finer portrait bust in the world. With it, though not so fine, may be compared the noble bearded Hermes (6155), and also in the first room the splendid statue of iEschines (6018), the champion of Philip of Macedon against Demosthenes, from Herculaneum, the copy of an ideal portrait of Homer (6023), the Lycurgus (?) (6136), and another (6132), the Sophocles (?) (6139), the headless portrait statue, a very noble thing in the middle of the room, and the Philetaerus of Pergamum (6148). Of the Roman portraits in the second room undoubtedly the finest is the bust of Cahgula (6033). In going from the Portico degli Imperatori to the Sculture di Bronzo we pass through eight rooms full of indifferent works, but in the fourth is the splendid mosaic of the Battle of Alexander, which comes from the House of the Faun in Pompeii. It represents the Battle of the Issus at that moment when Alexander charges the Persians at the head of his cavalry. It is a fine thing, and reminds us of a great episode in the history of Europe. It is not in marbles but in bronzes, however, that the Museum here in Naples is pre-eminent. These come for the most part from Pompeii and Herculaneum, the former being of a Hght green, almost blue, colour, the latter of a THE BRONZES 49 very dark and sober green, owing not to any difference of material but to the totally different volcanic substance in which they were hidden for so long. Of the five rooms full of bronzes the first two are devoted to those from Pompeii. Undoubtedly the finest of these Pompeian treasures is the archaic statue of Apollo playing a lyre (5630) which comes from the Casa del Citrasta, so named after it at Pompeii. It is perhaps the most beautiful work of art in the Museum, a masterpiece of the first half of the fifth century B.C. It originally stood in the market- place of Sparta, and is one of the noblest things left to us by that great people. The Apollo stands in the second room ; in the first is the famous bronze statuette of the bearded and tailed Dancing Faun (5002), which comes from the House of the Faun, so named after it, at Pompeii. Close by is the equally delightful Silenus crowned with ivy, the base adorned with the vine and inlaid with silver (5001), and the young Satyr with a wine-skin (iii, 495), drunken and staggering, a figure for a fountain discovered in Pompeii in 1880. In the middle of the room is the so-called Narcissus, properly perhaps a Dionysos, twenty-five inches in height, a master- piece of Praxiteles' school. The grave and sleepy beauty of this delicious figure is beyond description. Restoration has done its worst here, but with httle effect, though the pose is no longer the one designed by the sculptor and the empty eyes were once filled with silver. The glory of the second room, and indeed of the Museum itself, is, as I have said, the archaic Apollo with a lyre (5630), but here too is the charming winged Victory (4997), a gold bracelet upon her left arm, and the interesting statuette of a Boy, a poor but genuine work of the fifth century B.C. The third, fourth, and fifth rooms are devoted to the deep-toned bronzes from Herculaneum, the finest and loveliest of which is the fifth- century Head of a Boy (5633). More famous and exceedingly lovely is the Hermes in Repose (5625), perhaps the most celebrated work of art in Naples, 4 50 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY discovered in Herculaneum in 1858, a work of the school of Lysippus. Everything in this room is worth notice, but to the two works I have named I must add for dehght the two busts (4885 and 5618), the first the only signed bust of antiquity, the work of the Athenian ApoUonius, son of Archias, a copy of the famous Doryphoros of Polycletus, the second the glorious head of Dionysos in meditation, a copy of a work of Myron's. The fourth and fifth rooms have nothing so lovely as any of these works I have named. The best to be had in the fourth room is the Wrestlers (5626-5627) and the merry Drunken Satyr (5628), while in the fifth room there is nothing else so fine as the beautiful head of L. Calpurnius Piso Cesoninus, formerly called Seneca, unless it be the head of a woman (4896) called Sappho, a rarely lovely thing of the fourth century B.C. Upon the first floor of the Museum in the east wing are six rooms filled with small bronzes, many of them of con- siderable beauty and interest, the collection as a whole being without a rival anywhere. To the left of the landing between the two staircases leading to the rooms of the upper story are ten halls con- taining wall-paintings for the most part from Pompeii with some few from Herculaneum and Stabiae. These delightful paintings are scarcely the work of artists, but rather of artisans ; they are decorative works which lightened the walls of the little houses of Pompeii, and would seem to assure us of the happiness and light-hearted- ness of a society which could produce and enjoy such things, full as they are of a naive delight. Consider the beauty, the dignity, the daintiness of such a decoration as that in which Briseis is led away from the tent of Achilles (9105), or that in which Chiron is teaching the great hero the lyre (9109), or the Wedding of Zeus and Hera (9559), or that happy scene called Pan and the Nymphs (iii, 473). A more serious beauty is perhaps to be found in those paintings, six in all, on white marble in one of which Latona APOLLO Miiseo Xasiotiale, Xaples THE MURAL PAINTINGS 51 prepares to destroy the Niobids, little unconcerned children playing all unaware of their dreadful fate. The works in the second room seem all to possess this hint of tragedy : there we see Orestes and Pylades as captives before Thoas and Iphigeneia coming out of the temple towards them (9111) ; and Medea about to murder her little children (9976) ; and less sombre, but not less fair, Dionysos and his company, among whom is Ariadne sleeping (9286) and Heracles with Omphale and Priapus (8992). The third and fourth rooms are full of similar if less beautiful pictures, the best of which is perhaps that in which we see Dionysos and Ariadne (9278) ; and the fifth room is crowded with famous things — the Loves for Sale (9180) on the threshold, and the no less well-known figures of the Bacchantes and Satyrs floating as in a frieze in their wild dance (9295-9307). Close by are the four centaurs and a Maenad (9133-9136), the story of the Loves (9176- 9179), in which we see them hunting, fishing, playing, and working. These come from Herculaneum, and have nothing to do with the Loves for Sale (9180), exquisite in its pretty sentiment, which comes from Stabise. Last of all are the pictures of the Rope Dancers (9118-9121), in which we see Satyrs performing feats on the tight- rope. These delightful paintings show us in some sort perhaps the art of painting in antiquity at its culminating point ; but it must be remembered that they come from an un- important provincial city, and that they are but decorations after all, not individual works of art, which were certainly of a finer design and a more delicate finish than anything we have here in Naples. For the most part, no doubt, these works are conventional ; they follow great Greek designs as far as their authors were able, designs learned by heart and repeated over and over again with more or less exact- ness. In any case, they have a delight all their own, and though they can never mean to us what the architecture and sculpture of their time must always do, they give us 52 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY a most intimate insight into the everyday Hves of a people who seem to have been always of a light heart and filled with a curious pleasure in beauty of any sort, that we have long since failed to attain to or to understand. VII The Picture Gallery The Pinacoteca of the Naples Museum, though it does not rival in wealth of masterpieces the galleries of Florence, Siena, Venice, or the Vatican, is nevertheless an important gallery of paintings only second to these in the peninsula. The Neapolitan school of painting, in so far as it was a native school, never came to have much importance. The Angevin kings, perhaps because there was little or no native talent, patronized the Florentine and Sienese masters, Giotto and Simone Martini ; the Spaniards, too, often looked to the Netherlands or to Spain itself for their pictures ; and thus without patronage the Neapolitan people produced no native school properly so called. And indeed, with few exceptions, it may be said that every picture painted in the Kingdom was the work of a foreigner, or at any rate painted under foreign influence. Thus when we find in the first room of the Naples Gallery the works of Andrea da Salerno (c. 1480-1543) — the Miracle of S. Nicholas of Bari, and the Adoration of the Magi, for in- stance — it is necessary to remember that though he worked in Naples and died at Gaeta, he was bom in Bologna, and was therefore not a south Italian at all. He was, however, the master of a native-born painter, that Criscuolo whose works are still to be seen in the churches of Naples, in S. Maria Donna Regina, for instance, whose younger brother, Giovanni Angelo, the pupil of Marco di Pino da Siena, has a picture here in the gallery, an Adoration of the Magi. These were painters, however, of the early sixteenth THE PICTURE GALLERY 53 century. Of earlier masters we know very little. The S. Jerome extracting a thorn from the paw of a lion in the first room (84480, Sala iii) was long attributed to a certain Colantonio del Fiore, a half-mythical Neapolitan master, but is now given to the school of Roger Van der Weyden ; and indeed most of these early so-called Neapolitan paintings are the work of foreigners in the pay of the Angevins. The best of the later masters of which Naples boasts was Luca Giordano, a painter of the seventeenth century ; several of his works are to be found here in the Naples Gallery, but they have little interest for us. Indeed, in so far as painting was practised in Naples at this time, it owed everything to such foreigners as Ribera, whose son Sebastian painted in 165 1 two pictures of S. Jerome and a S. Bruno, which redeem from hopeless mediocrity Sala xvii of this gallery. But Ribera cannot be claimed by Naples as a native master any more than can El Greco, whose two fine works, a portrait of Giulio Clovio and a Boy with a firebrand, are among the best things to be found here. But if the Gallery of Naples can show us but few and mediocre works of the native masters, and that for the excellent reason that they do not exist, it can boast of a respectable collection of the works of every other school in Italy, not a few of which are masterpieces. To begin with Florence : the only fourteenth-century picture here is a smaU altarpiece by Taddeo Gaddi, painted in 1336, representing the Madonna and Child ; but the two great masters of the beginning of the fifteenth century, Masolino and Masaccio, are well represented, the former by two works painted about 1423, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin (84186) and the Founding of S. Maria Maggiore (84195), and the latter by a fine Crucifixion (125489), both in Sala xv. An early work by Amico di Sandro, the Madonna and Child and Two Angels (84193), of old attributed to Botticelli, brings us to Filippino Lippi, from whose hand there is an early Annunciation with S. 54 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY John Baptist and S. Andrew (84198) in the same room, while by his pupil Raffaelino del Garbo there is a tondo, a Madonna and Child with the infant S. John (84209) close by. Andrea del Sarto contributes a copy of Raphael's Leo X (84002) in Sala xiv, and Fra Bartolommeo an Assump- tion of the Virgin (84044 in Sala vi) painted in 15 16. Here too is that noble fifteenth-century bronze bust of Dante that everyone knows so well. The Sienese works are at least equally noteworthy. Perhaps by Lippo Memmi is a fine Noli me Tangere (84313). By the prolific master Taddeo Bartoli Naples boasts but one picture, a small S. Sebastian, but by Giovanni di Paolo it has two works, a Noli me Tangere and a S. Eleutrio and Adorers ; and of the beautiful work of Matteo di Giovanni it has one great example, the notable Massacre of the Innocents, painted in 1488 (84192) ; a tondo by the late Sienese master Andrea del Bresciano, the Madonna and Child with the infant S. John, closing the examples here of the school. The Umbrian and March masters are less well repre- sented. A Madonna and Child by Caporali, painted in T484, is a surprise in Sala vi ; it is the only work by an early Umbro-March master in the city. In the same room is an Assumption (84017) designed by Pintoricchio, but painted by Eusebio di S. Giorgio his pupil. The Madonna with the Bird (83994), painted by their con- temporary Antoniazzo Romano in 1484, is of fine quality. This master has a later work in S. Paolo Maggiore, a Madonna and Child with SS. Peter and Paul. By far the finest work by any Umbrian here in Naples is the splendid portrait by Raphael of Cardinal Famese, afterwards Pope Paul III (84004 in Sala xiv), and it is the only work by the master in the south of Italy. His pupil Giulio Romano is well represented here by the Madonna della Gatta (83988) in the same room. Undoubtedly the finest works in the gallery, however, taking them altogether, belong to the Venetian school. THE PICTURE GALLERY 55 This fine series begins with a noble Bartolommeo Vivarini, a Madonna and Child Enthroned (83906, Sala xv), painted in 1469, a beautiful early example by the master. By his nephew and pupil Alvise Vivarini there is a good altar- piece of the Madonna and Child with SS. Francis and Bernardino (839067) in the same room, where too Giovanni Bellini is represented by a very beautiful early work, painted about 1460, a Transfiguration (83990). The influence of the Vivarini and Bellini is felt in the work of Antonello da Messina, by whom is the Portrait of a Man here which must not be passed by, and in the Bust of a Cardinal by Jacopo Barbari. Nor is it easy to forget the two early works by Lotto, the Madonna with S. Peter Martyr (83956), painted in 1503, and the some- what doubtful bust of a man in a white coat, nor the Santa Conversazione with donors (8401 1) by Palma Vecchio. These men were all pupils of Giovanni Bellini, as indeed was the greatest master Venice produced, Titian. The Naples Gallery happily possesses five portraits by Titian, of which one is the famous group of Paul iii and his nephew Ottaviano and Cardinal Famese. This glorious work was probably painted in Rome, but it remains unfinished. It only came to Naples in 1734. An earlier portrait of Pope Paul III by the same master is in the same room (Sala xiii) ; this was painted in Bologna in 1543. A slightly later work is the Danae here, painted in Rome in 1545 for the Farnese, as was the S. Mary Magdalen also in this gallery. This work bears Titian's signature, as does the Portrait of Philip ii, a replica from Titian's hand of the work in the Pitti Palace. Titian's younger contemporary, Sebastiano del Piombo may be seen here in three late works, the Holy Trinity in Sala XIV and the two portraits in the same room, one representing Pope Clement vii. The North ItaHan schools are in most cases well repre- sented in Naples. That of Padua boasts here of two works 56 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY by Mantegna, the damaged S. Euphemia of 1454 (83946) and the portrait of Francesco Gonzaga (83964). Nor is the school of Parma poorer, for there are three fine Correggios, one an early work, S. Anthony Abbot, painted in 1514 (131060), another the Betrothal of S. Catherine, painted four years later, similar to but smaller than the work in the Louvre (83972), and the exquisite '' Zingarella " (83969), the Madonna and Child in the wilderness weary on the road to Egypt. There are also, by Correggio's pupil Parmigiano, two pictures of the Madonna and Child, and no less than five portraits. The school of Ferrara gives us three pictures of the Madonna and Child by Dosso Dossi, a late work of his pupil Ortolano, a San Sebastian and a Circumcision by Garofalo. The great portrait-painter of Brescia, Moretto, is, un- fortunately, only represented here by an Ecce Homo, an early work. Even the school of Milan is not without examples here, uninteresting though they be, nor Leonardo's followers, Luini, Oggiono, and Gianpietro, the first being seen in two works, a Madonna and Child and a S. John Baptist. But when all is said, it is not among these lesser works that we choose to spend our time, but rather here with the beauty that Tuscany, Umbria, and Venice have lent to a city that needs it more than any other place in Italy, being herself so poor in dehght. II POSILIPO THE true delight of Naples, the beauty which has confounded her name with itself, and which is so astonishing and really incomparable that for ages men have repeated the old adage: Vedi Napoli e poi muori, is not to be found in the city itself ; it belongs wholly to its environment, the wonderful country in which it stands a beggar by the wayside. The beauty of this comer of Campania, so full of marvels over which the smoking pyramid of Vesuvius towers and broods, a true symbol summing up all its character ; of the glorious bay between Capo Miseno and the headland of Sorrento, with its delicious islands, is not to be seen or understood in Naples, nor, in all its fulness, even from the monastery of S. Martino under S. Elmo over the city. To enjoy Naples, the beautiful world in which she stands, it is necessary to leave the city and to pass everywhere about that vast bay, to explore all its shores and headlands, to visit Sorrento, Castellamare, and Pompeii upon the one side, and Pozzuoli, Baia, and Capo Miseno on the other ; and first of all, for it gives you all at a glance, to climb and explore the headland of Posilipo, the narrow volcanic ridge of no great height but everywhere steep and abrupt which runs south-west from S. Elmo into the sea, and which forms a barrier between the immediate surroundings of Naples and those of Puteoli and Baia. Perhaps the best way to do this is to pass out of the city by the Villa Nazionale, at the far end of which is the Piazza 57 58 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY Principe di Napoli. Out of this piazza two roads proceed westward, the Strada di Piedigrotta and the Mergellina. The first of these roads leads in a few yards to the Piazza di Piedigrotta, in which stands the old thirteenth-century church of S. Maria di Piedigrotta, now spoilt by restoration. Within is a fine picture, perhaps by some Flemish painter, of the Piet^, the wings painted it might seem under Sienese influence; and an ancient picture of the Madonna, whose aid Charles iii invoked when upon September 7, 1744, he met the Spaniards at Velletri and defeated them. In commemoration of this victory the king reinstituted the ancient Festa di Piedigrotta, which took place annually upon the birthday of the Blessed Virgin, the morrow of the battle. This huge fair continued to be held every year with considerable magnificence until the fall of the Bourbon dynasty in 1859, ^-nd to it we owe many of those delightful songs which are the only artistic glory of Naples. To-day the fair has degenerated into an uproarious merry-making that takes place for the most part after dark, when the Grotta Nuova is illuminated. The Grotta Nuova di Posilipo is a vast tunnel more than 800 yards long, bored through the hill of Posilipo as a short cut upon the level from the western bay of Naples, the Riviera di Chiaia, to the bay of Pozzuoli. It was opened in 1885 and took the place of the Old Grotto, which was not quite so long. This was constructed in the first years of the Empire, and probably by Augustus, who made Misenum his chief naval port. It is a magnificent piece of engineer- ing and well worth seeing for all its gloom and narrowness, of which Seneca complains. The Dark Age, face to face with so Roman a thing, attributed it to the magic of the sorcerer Virgil, whose tomb was built upon the hillside above it. That Virgil had a villa upon the hill of Posilipo is certain, and thither by his own wish his ashes were brought from Brundusium, where he died on September 21, B.C. 19. We have no means of knowing exactly where this villa stood, POSILIPO 59 but in spite of criticism it is well to remember that the spot shown to-day has been traditionally the site of his tomb for at least fifteen hundred years. There seems indeed no real reason to doubt that the ancient Roman columbarium above the old road is the tomb of the great poet, and that there of old stood his villa, in which he wrote so much of the Georgics, signing them indeed from '' the lap of sweet Parthenope." lllo Vergilium me tempore dulcis alebat Parthenope studiis florentem ignobilis oti, Carmina qui lusi pastonim, audaxque juventa Tityre, te patulae cecini sub tegmine fagi. Not much more than a century after Virgil's death his tomb was visited by the poet Statins, who was bom at Naples in A. D. 45, and who describes himself as composing his poems beside the tomb — Lo ! idly wandering on the sea-beat strand Where the fam'd Syren in Ausonia's land First moored her bark, I strike the sounding string ; At Virgil's honoured tomb I sit and sing ; Warm'd by the hallowed spot my Muse takes fire And sweeps with bolder hand my humble lyre.^ About the same time another Latin poet, Silius Italicus, bought the place and restored or guarded the tomb from neglect, and even performed certain rites there, according to Martial— Silius haec magni celebrat monumenta Maronis, Jugera facundi qui Ciceronis habet. Haeredem dominumque sui tumulive larisve ; Non ahum mallet, nee Maro, nee Cicero. ^ And in the following epigram we read that the tomb till then had only been cared for by a poor peasant — Jam prope desertos cineres, et sancta Maronis Nomina qui coleret, pauper et unus erat. Silius optatae succerrere censuit umbrae, Silius et vatem, non minor ipse, colit. ^ Statins, Silv. iv. 4, 50. Trs. by Eustace. 2 Martial, Ep. xi. 48. 6o NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY " News has just come," writes Pliny, '' that Silius Italicus has starved himself to death at his villa near Naples. Ill-health was the cause assigned. . . . He owned a number of villas in the same neighbourhood, and used to neglect his old ones through his favourite passion for his recent purchases. In each he had any quantity of books, statues, and busts, which he not only kept by him but even treated with a sort of veneration, especially the bust of Virgil, whose birthday he kept up far more scrupulously than he did his own, principally at Naples, where he used to approach the poet's monument as though it were a temple." Nor is that all ; for it is said that even S. Paul came to the tomb of him who had prophesied of the Son to be bom of a pure Virgin, and this was long remembered at Mantua in the hymn they used to sing there at Vespers on the feast of the saint — When to Maro's tomb they brought him. Tender grief and pity wrought him To bedew the stone with tears ; What a saint I might have crowned thee Had I only hving found thee. Poet first and without peers.^ Of what befell the tomb in the Dark Age we know nothing, but with the revival of Italian letters it at once appears ; Dante speaks of it, for Virgil says to him in Purgatory — It now is evening there where buried Hes The body on which I cast a shade, removed To Naples from Brundusium's wall . . . ^ Ad Maronis mausoleum Ductus, fudit super eum * Pise rorem lacrymae ; Quantum, inquit, te fecissem, Vivum si te invenissem, Poetarum maxime. The translation is by J. A. Symonds, POSILIPO 6i and Petrarch upon his first visit to Naples was taken to the almost sacred place by his host, King Robert the Wise. There it is said he planted a laurel, the successor to that which had always stood there, and had died after more than a thousand years in the year of Dante's death ; Petrarch's tree was still flourishing in the eighteenth century, when it was destroyed by relic-hunters. Petrarch was not alone in the homage he paid to the ashes of the great Roman poet. Boccaccio at the lowest ebb of his fortunes — his Fiammetta unfaithful, his father ruined — retired in poverty from the life of the Angevin court to live outside the city, " sub monte Falemo apud busta Maronis," whence he dates his letters, and there, amid a tempest of ill, turned to the verse of the Mantuan, and vowed upon Virgil's grave to give himself to letters. As we see it to-day, the tomb is a small vault having three windows. In the sixteenth century an urn stood in the midst containing, so it was said, the ashes of the poet. This has now disappeared, having, according to some, been sent to Mantua, while others assert that King Robert the Wise removed it to the Castel dell' Ovo for safer keeping. In front of the entrance to the now empty tomb is a copy of the epitaph, composed, it is supposed, by Virgil himself — Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope, cecini pascua, rura, duces. . . . Upon the sepulchre itself we read the epitaph placed there in the sixteenth century- — Cui cineres ? Tumuli hsec vestigia ? Conditur olim Die hie qui cecinit pascua, rura, duces. It is easy to assert that in spite of all this we have no evidence whatever that it was here the ashes of Virgil were laid, and no doubt we must admit such an assertion to be true ; but on the other hand the tradition is so strong that we cannot ignore it if we would. At any rate, no one who has ever visited the place — and it is almost a duty to visit it — but must have hoped in his heart that here indeed the 62 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY dust of the greatest of Roman poets lay through the cen- turies above a world so lovely that the view of it hence catches the breath. It is such a place, naturally hallowed by divine beauty between Latin earth and sky and sea, that is the rightful shrine of the Mantuan. From that holy place, hallowed at least by the love, the faith, and the tears of so many generations of men, you descend to the Strada di Mergellina and the little church of S. Maria del Parto, the Chiesa del Sannazaro. This little sanctuary was built by the poet Sannazaro for the Servites upon the site of a villa given to him by Frederick ii of Aragon in 1496 and destroyed in 1529 by the French. Its very dedication, S. Maria del Parto, speaks of him, for it was chosen from his famous Latin poem '' De partu Virginis." The poet, born in Naples in 1455, lies behind the high altar, where a monument of his own design executed by Gerolamo da S. Croce, a pagan affair, the decoration of which is taken from his poem " Arcadia," supports his sarcophagus, upon which is graven his " Academic " name Actius Sincerus. From the Chiesa del Sannazaro you follow the Strada Nuova, the road which Murat built during his brief reigUj over the headland of Posilipo. The views all the way are of an indescribable glory and magnificence, embracing as they do the whole gulf between the Capo di Posilipo, the headland of Sorrento, the island of Capri with Naples and Vesuvius in the middle distance. By many a fair villa the roads climb for some three miles from the ruins of the Palazzo di Donna Anna by the sea, the palace begun in the seventeenth century by Donna Anna Carafa, wife of the Viceroy Duca de Medina, and never finished, up past the Capo di Posilipo, the Phalerum of the ancients, till at the top of the great ridge the wonderful view of the Gulf of Pozzuoli within the beautiful headland of Misenum breaks suddenly upon you in all its dreamy loveliness. There by the Villa Thalberg a path descends seaward to the fishing village of Marechiano, below which is the little church of S. Maria del Faro, marking the site of an ancient POSILIPO 63 Pharos. Here to the west stood the great villa of Vedius Pollio, the famous Pausilypum — the ** end of sorrow," or, as we might say, Sans Souci, which he bequeathed to Augustus Caesar, and which named the whole ridge. All about are the ruins of this villa, along the shore and rising out of the sea, known now by fantastic names such as the Scuola di Virgilio and the Casa degli Spiriti. In ancient times the whole of this headland seems to have supported this estate, its buildings as often as not standing right in the sea, constructed doubtless at immense cost and with great skill. This immense and beautiful villa had its fish ponds, into which it is asserted Vedius Pollio once had a slave who had broken a glass thrown to be devoured by the fish ; here was a theatre and an odeon, of which we may still see considerable remains, as we may too of numerous other buildings, as porticoes, columns, and reservoirs, even the rock of La Gajola being covered with debris. Nothing to be seen anywhere about Naples gives one so clear an idea of the great wealth and splendid life of the Romans along this coast ; we in our days have nothing comparable to the luxury of such a place built really in the sea, adventurously about this headland. One returns to the high road with regret. There, however, the noble view still rewards one at every step of the way, as the road descends past the Villa Sans Souci. Not far from the bottom a great tunnel opens in the hill above the Punta di Coroglio. This is the Grotta di Sejano. It was, according to Strabo, who saw it, the work of the engineer Marcus Cocceius, who had already constructed the Grotta di Posilipo and the tunnel or passage-way from the Lake of Avemus to Cumae. The work here upon Posilipo was made by order of Sejanus, the favourite of Tiberius, so it is said. It is more than half a mile long — ^longer, wider, and loftier indeed than the Grotta di Posilipo — and doubtless served the great Villa Pausilypum as a means of communication with Puteoli, for the eastern end of it opens close to the island rock of La Gajola. 64 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY The island of Nisida, the Nesis of Strabo, which stands up so high off Capo CorogHo, is but a mile and a half in circumference. Of old, before the beginning of history, it was part of a crater, but as we know from Cicero in his day it was the site of a villa belonging to Brutus, and there, shortly after the death of Caesar, the great orator conferred with his host and Cassius and Libo upon their future plans. Little of this famous place remains, but the island is still famous, as Pliny tells us it was in his day, for its asparagus, though it no longer boasts the beautiful bosco of which Statins speaks. To-day between it and the shore, upon a rock connected with the island by an ancient mole, is the Lazzaretto Vecchio. Upon the island itself is a prison, but the most interesting sight is the curious harbour sea- ward, Porto Paone, a delicious pool opposite Capo Miseno. From the Grotto of Sejanus one may either descend into the plain and make for Bagnoli and thus return to Naples by train, or climb again up to the Villa Thalberg, and there, taking the road on the left, the Strada Belvedere, come back into Naples along the ridge of Posilipo between garden walls which now and then allow one an exquisite glimpse of the bays of Naples and Pozzuoli, and more especially towards the end of the way under an arch upon the right appears that famous view of Naples and Vesuvius with the stone pine in the foreground. Ill THE GULF OF POZZUOLI TO understand at a glance the nature of the country to the west of the ridge of PosiHpo, the bay of Pozzuoli and the Phlegraean fields, it is necessary, I think, to visit Camaldoli, the monastery founded in 1585 by the Marquis of Pescara, the victor of Pa via. It stands upon the eastern summit of the loftiest hill to the north-west of Naples, and is best reached out of Porta S. Martino. Apart from the view, there is little or nothing to see, but from the Belvedere, reached by a shady path through the garden of the monastery, there is suddenly spread out before you all that beautiful coast, the bays of Naples, Pozzuoli, and Gaeta, the great headlands and islands, Vesuvius in all its majesty, S. Elmo with Naples at its feet, the plain of Campania Felix with its cities, and beyond, the great chain of the Apennines. More especially before and beneath you is spread out that strange, restless country of the Phlegraean fields with its craters and lakes, on the beautiful seashore of which stand Puteoli, Baia, and Cuma, once so famous. It is from Camaldoli that all this strange country is best seen at a glance, but to visit it from Naples, one must go to Piedigrotta, and pass through the long tunnel under Posilipo, at the western end of which stands the little town of Fuorigrotta. Fuorigrotta is a miserable huddle of houses, and would have for us no interest at all, but that in the church of S. Vitale there, the poet Leopardi, bom at R^canati in 1798, 5 66 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY lies, his grave marked by a wonderful monument in the portico of the church. Evelyn, who came this way, but through the old Grotto, which he well describes, in 1644-1645 speaks with enthusi- asm, as who would not, of all this plain on the threshold of which Fuorigrotta stands. **We were delivered," he writes, " from the bowels of the earth into one of the most delicious plaines in the world ; the oranges, lemons, pome- granates, and other fruits blushing yet on the perpetually green trees ; for the summer is here eternal, caused by the natural and adventitious heate of the earth, warm'd through subterranean fires." The first hint we receive of the volcanic nature of this country is in the Lago d' Agnano, now drained and scarcely worth a visit. It is an old crater four miles in circum- ference, about a mile from Fuorigrotta upon the beautiful road to Pozzuoli. Here on the south side of the crater are the old Stufe di San Germano, still full of sulphurous fumes, and a little beyond is the once famous Grotta del Cane, now happily no longer used. Evelyn well describes the cruel exhibition of its properties as practised till our own time. '' We now came," says he, '' to a lake of about two miles in circumference environ' d with hills ; the water of it is fresh and swete on the surf ace but salt at botome . . . and 'tis reputed of that profunditude in the middle that it is bottomlesse. The people call it Lago d' Agnano, from the multitude of serpents which, involved together about the spring, fall down from the cliffy hills into it. It has no fish, nor will any live in it. We tried the old experiment on a dog in the Grotta del Cane or Charon's Cave ; it is not above three or four paces deepe, and about the height of a man, nor very broad. Whatever having life enters it presently expires. Of this we made tryal with two dogges, one of which we bound to a short pole to guide him the more directly into the farther part of the den, where he was no sooner entered but, without the least noyse or so much as a struggle, except that he panted for breath, lolling out THE GULF OF P0Z2U0LI 67 his tongue, his eyes being fixed, we drew him out, dead to all appearances ; but immediately plunging him into the adjoining lake, within less than half an hour he recovered, and swimming to shore ran away from us. . . . The ex- periment has been tried on men, as on that poor creature whom Peter of Toledo caused to go in ; hkewise on some Turkish slaves ; two souldiers and other foole-hardy persons, who all perished and could never be recovered by the water of the lake as are dogs, for which many learned reasons have been offered, as Simon Majolus in his book of the Canicular-dayes has mentioned. ..." It was certainly a needless brutality to prove the quaUties of an exhalation of carbonic acid gas upon living creatures. To-day the guide or attendant supphes a torch, which is promptly extinguished ; but the draining of the lake, to say nothing of the protection of the abuse of living creatures, make the place not worth a visit. From the Lago d'Agnano one follows the beautiful road over the hills, whence many a lovely view opens towards Nisida and Capri, or of the great bay of PozzuoH and the headland of Misenum, past the Capuchin convent of S. Gennaro, which marks the site of the martyrdom of S,. Januarius, to the crater of the half-extinct volcano of Solfatara. This is worth any trouble to see. The broken crater is an irregularly shaped plain, enclosed by paUid hills of tufa, scored with fissures and smeUing of sulphur. The whole plain is pitted with vents which bubble and steam, and in the surrounding hillsides many smoking fumaroli may be visited. Perhaps the most active of these holes lie towards the south-east, where there is one full of hot water, some thirty-five feet deep, and where are two great smoking fissures that become especially active when a hghted torch is held near them. The whole place is most weird and disturbing, a lake of mud which one feels may at any moment become a boihng cauldron under one's feet. The only eruption within historic memory, however, took place in 1198, though from time out of mind Solfatara 68 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY has been about as active as it is to-day. The ancients knew it well, and called it Forum Vulcani ; the hills about it, which still produce the white potter's clay, were known to them as the Colles Leucogsei, and the aluminous and boiling waters in the holes as the Pontes Leucogaei. From this curious and disquieting place the road descends past the great amphitheatre to Pozzuoli, founded in the sixth century B.C. by the Greeks, and called Dicae- archia, and renamed by the Romans during the second Punic War Puteoli. The place was famous as a port long before the Romans used it, but under their administration it greatly developed in commercial importance, for it was the first really good port to the south of Rome, and in 194 B.C. they established a colony there. Thereafter it became one of the most considerable places of trade in Italy, a port of general embarkation for the East, for Egypt, Africa, and Spain. Among the more famous travellers who we know landed here are Cicero, on his return from Sicily, and S. Paul, upon his journey to Rome. He had landed at Syracuse, and had tarried there three days. " And from thence we fetched a compass, and came to Rhegium : and after one day the south wind blew, and we came the next day to Puteoli : where we found brethren, and were desired to tarry with them seven days : and so we went toward Rome." ^ S. Paul came as a prisoner in the Castor, an Alexandrine ship, and landed here upon May 3, in the year a.d. 59. He found brethren in Puteoli, perhaps slaves, in the service of the wealthy Romans, who frequented the baths here in the spring and summer seasons, and whose villas lined all this coast. For Puteoli was, in the time of the Empire, not only perhaps the greatest emporium of foreign trade in Italy, it was famous too as a pleasure resort, the capital of all this bay to which it gave its name. In those days a vast mole ran out into the bay from the town, 1 Acts xxviii. 13, 14. PORTRAIT OF CARDINAL FARNESE RAPHAEL J/ieseo Xazidhzle, Xaples THE GULF OF POZZUOLI 69 supported on stone piles with arches between them. Here the people, according to Seneca, used to assemble to watch for the ships from Alexandria, and it was from the extremity of this mole that Cahgula built his famous bridge across the bay to Baia. This, of course, was but a temporary structure, and the remains still pointed out at Pozzuoli as belonging to it are in truth the ruins of the mole. Suetonius describes the bridge graphically enough : " Caligula," says he, " invented a new kind of spectacle, such as had never been heard of before. For he made a bridge about three miles and a half long, from the mole of Puteoli to Baiae, collecting trading vessels from all direc- tions, mooring them in two rows by their anchors, and spreading earth upon them to form a viaduct, after the fashion of the Appian Way. This bridge he crossed and recrossed for two days together ; the first day he was mounted on a horse richly caparisoned, wearing on his head a crown of oak leaves, armed with a battle-axe, a Spanish buckler, and sword, and in a cloak of cloth of gold ; the following day, dressed as a charioteer, standing in a chariot, drawn by two high-bred horses, having with him a young boy named Darius, one of the Parthian hostages, and attended by a cohort of Praetorian guards, and a number of his friends, in cars of Gaulish fashion. I know that most people believe that this bridge was designed by Caius in imitation of Xerxes, who, to the amazement of the world, laid a bridge across the Helles- pont, which is somewhat narrower than the distance between Baiae and Puteoli. Others, however, think that he did it to excite alarm in Germany and Britain, which he was just about to invade, by the report of some stupendous work. But for myself, when I was a boy, I heard my grandfather say that the reason assigned by some of the courtiers who lived in greatest intimacy with him was that when Tiberius was in doubt about the nomination of a successor, and inclined to choose his grandson, Thrasyllus, the astrologer, had assured him that 70 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY Caius would no more be Emperor than he would ride on horseback across the Gulf of Baiae." Pozzuoli still keeps very many ruins of its ancient greatness. Of these, the greatest and the first one comes to on the way from Solfatara is the imposing Amphitheatre, tier above tier, standing upon three series of arches with remains of the external portico and triple colonnades of the two great entrances. It is an oval structure 482 feet long, the arena itself measuring 336 feet by 138 feet. The whole is honeycombed with passages and chambers for the gladiators and for the beasts and their victims. Here Nero in the Imperial seat, which was adorned with Corinthian pillars of black marble, entertained the King of Armenia, himself killing two bulls with a single lance snatched from one of the guards, and here in the time of Diocletian S. Januarius was exposed to the beasts, who would not harm him. Near the Amphitheatre are some ruins commonly known as the Temple of Diana, but more probably belonging to a range of Thermae. Near them are the remains of an Aqueduct. Within the town itself there is little to see. The Cathedral, indeed, is in great part constructed out of the remains of a Roman Temple dedicated to Augustus, and there are some fine columns, but nothing there may now compare with the Amphitheatre or the ruins commonly called the Serapeum. These celebrated remains are found not far from the shore upon the road to Baia. They are usually called the ruins of a Temple of Serapis, but it is far more likely that they belonged to a Bath served by the hot springs close by. The general plan would seem to have been that of a large quadrangular atrium or court surrounded internally by a portico of forty- eight columns with chambers at the sides and a circular hall in the midst. This circular structure was upheld by sixteen columns of giallo antico now at Caserta. Three of the columns of the portico, of cipolhno, The gulf of pozzuoli ^t remain, and are of great interest as well as of considerable beauty, for they would seem to bear witness to repeated changes in the level of the soil, since their middle portions are all covered with the borings of some shell-fish, the lower parts being untouched. It is therefore thought that the whole building must at some time have been buried to a depth of not less than eleven feet, perhaps by the volcanic upheaval which created the Monte Nuovo. Not far from these remains are the ruins of two other buildings, both of them under water. One of them is said to be the Temple of Neptune, of which Cicero speaks. The road now proceeds round the bay towards Monte Nuovo and the Lucrine Lake. Above the road upon the cliff near the Stabilamento Armstrong are the ruins, it is said, of Cicero's villa, which as Pliny tells us was situated between Puteoli and the Lucrine Lake. The road then climbs the lower slope of Monte Nuovo, a volcanic hill heaved up thus out of the earth upon September 30, 1538. It seems that for tw^o years before that date this whole district had suffered severely from earthquakes, and these shocks gradually grew more frequent, till upon Sep- tember 28 and the following night more than twenty violent upheavals were felt. The whole coast appears to have been upheaved, and eye-witnesses assure us that the sea retired not less than two hundred paces, strewing the shore with dead fish. Upon S. Michael's day, a new crater suddenly opened where Monte Nuovo now stands, from whicn huge clouds of steam laden with volcanic debris burst forth, covering the countryside with ashes, lapilli, and black mud, some of which was carried as far as Naples. In the early morning of the following day, with a thunderous explosion, the crater began to cast up amid dense volumes of stinking smoke huge boulders, which were flung more than a mile and a half up into the air, and the whole coast was buried deep in ashes. Thus was formed Monte Nuovo, the pyramidal hill not less than a mile and a half in circum- ference, and nearly five hundred feet high, beneath which lie 72 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY a village, baths, many villas, and about half the Lucrine Lake. The volcano has never since been active. At the foot of the Monte Nuovo the road divides, the way on the right leading past the Lake of Avernus to Cumse, that on the left still along the seashore past the Lucrine Lake to Baia and Misenum. The Lucrine Lake, the Styx of Virgil, lies, as I have said, half under Monte Nuovo : it was and is separated from the sea by a causeway called the Via Herculea, because, as Propertius asserts, Hercules constructed it to bear him and the oxen of Geryon across the swamp. It was famous of old and still is, I think, for its oysters, which are plentiful, but so amazingly expensive to strangers that it is wiser to forego them, in spite of the praise of the poets. Indeed, it must be said that the rapacity of all the tratforie and hotel-keepers along this coast is such that no one would willingly deal with them twice. Let the traveller bring his luncheon with him from Naples and defy the rascals. At the western end of the Lucrine Lake the high land bluffs out into a sharp headland, the Punta dell' Epitafho, over which the road to Baia climbs. Here are the so-called Bagni di Nerone, a really amazing series of low narrow tunnels in the rock, at the end of which are hot springs. The whole point is honeycombed with these passages, and is ever3rwhere strewn with ruins. Scarcely five hundred yards to the north of the Lucrine Lake, and surrounded by pleasant hills, vineyards, and orange groves, lies the Lake of Avernus, an old crater full of water, which according to the ancients was the gate of the Infernal regions. In its smiling aspect of to-day, at any rate in early summer, it is impossible to recognize the dark- ling lake, the " pestilent Avernus " of the poets. Where are the Tartarean woods, the infernal vapours of Virgil ? Was it Augustus who felled the one and dispelled the other when he built the Portus Julius for the Roman fleet ? Here Ulysses and ^Eneas after him descended to the shades. Their passage is still shown by the natives, a long grotto THE GULF OF POZZUOLI 73 on the southern side of the lake, the grotto of the Cumaean Sibyl, similar to the Bagni di Nerone. This passage, dark and half full of v/ater, is perhaps worth inspection, if only in order to hear the farago of nonsense the custodian pours into your willing ears, in which Virgil and Dante, the Sibyl and Cerberus, are all mixed up in an obscene confusion.^ The road which passes high above Lake Avernus by a most pleasant way presently brings you to the Arco Felice, a lofty arch of brick across the old road from Puteoli to Cumae. Hence the road descends towards the old Greek city. Cuma was, as I have said, the oldest Greek colony in Italy. It and its daughters Dicsearchia (Puteoli), Palae- polis (Posilipo), and Neapolis (Naples), did not form apart of Magna Graecia, but were a group of colonies apart. The old writers tell us that the Euboean ships were guided hither by a dove and the sound of brazen cymbals. The city would seem to have been founded about 800 B.C., and the period of its greatest prosperity and wealth would seem to have been from 700-500 B.C. At this time it was the greatest city of the south, and had extended its dominion over a large part of the country ; and undoubtedly it rivalled at a later time the glory and wealth of Sybaris and Croton on the Ionian Sea. From about 420 B.C., how- ever, it ceased to be a great city, though it retained many of its Hellenic customs even to the Augustan age. It appears at this time as a half-ruined Campanian town, and after 388 B.C. came within the power of Rome. It was in two senses of the word a sacred city ; it was the refuge of Tarquineus Superbus, the last of the Roman kings, who here ended his days in the court of Aristodenus, the tyrant of Cumse, and from it Rome received the Sibylline Books, for, as I have said, the Sibyl was supposed to have here her home, as the poets testify, and as was certainly believed well into historic time. Little, however, ^ According to this fellow, Dante slept here \vith the Sibyl — he shows their couch of stone — ^who was presently brought to bed of Cerberus. 74 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY remains of the ancient town and its temples. From the ruined acropolis you may enjoy, indeed, a glorious view over the sea, but where are the great Temples of Demeter and Persephone, the two goddesses more especially wor- shipped in Cumae ? Almost nothing remains save a few stones. The acropolis itself, however, is apparently honey- combed with caverns, and one of these opening upon the south-east of the hill is now thought to be the true Grotta of the Sibyl. According to Virgil this had a hundred mouths whence one might hear, in as many voices, oracles of the prophetess. It may well be that this is indeed the place of which he speaks. From the utter desolation of Cumae the road turns south past an ancient amphitheatre half hidden among the vines, about the hills of Avemus to Baia, passing on the way the Lago del Fusaro between it and the sea. This perhaps was the ancient harbour of Cumae ; it is now a mere lagoon, celebrated still for its oysters, the Acherusia Palus of the Romans. From the lake the road climbs over the high neck of land which connects Monte de' Salvatechi and Misenum with the mainland, and with all the bay of Pozzuoli spread out before you, you descend into Baia. There is nothing lovelier upon all this coast than Baia, with its beautiful bay under its mighty castle just within the great headland of Misenum. Horace loved it well, and thought it lovelier than any other place in the world — Nullus in orbe sinus Bails praelucet amoenis . . . and Martial speaks of this bay as the golden shore of Venus — Litus bcatse Veneris aureum Baias, Baias superbae blanda dona naturae Ut mille laudem, Flacce, versibus Baias, Laudabo digne non satis tamen Baias. Baia seems to have been known as a port long before it boasted a town, and indeed derived its name from Baius, THE GULF OF P02ZU0LI 75 one of the companions of Ulysses who was buried here. But it never won any fame until it became the favourite resort of the wealthy and luxurious Roman nobles towards the end of the Republic, when it became fashionable on account of its hot springs and its exceeding beauty. From the time of Caius Marius, who had a villa here, the whole shore was gradually lined with sumptuous palaces and gardens, often, as at Posihpo, built right on the sea, and indeed such was the splendour and luxury that Seneca sneers at it as diversorium vitiorum, a place where one enjoyed oneself without restraint of any sort. LucuUus certainly had a great villa in this neighbourhood, and the Emperors, especially Nero and Caligula, delighted in the place, as did Hadrian,who died here, and Alexander Severus, who built more than one villa upon the shore. But how little, alas, of all these splendid buildings, temples, and thermae and villas remains to us ! The chief are the vaulted ruins of the great and sumptuous Baths now called Temples, because, I suppose, of their shape and splendour. One visits them and then steals away to the beautiful quays by the blue water among the ships and the ropes and spars and poles and chains, where there is always a wind, to rest a little before climbing up to the Rocca on the hill built by Don Pedro de Toledo, the Viceroy. Lying there by the sea one remembers that it was not only the Romans after all who enjoyed and praised Baia. In the time of the Angevin kings it was again a place of great resort, and here Boccaccio won and lost his Fiam- metta, by this very sea. Certainly nothing upon this coast is lovelier than this bay shaped like a cup or the breast of a fair woman, and the old Roman buildings which pass under the names of various temples — of Diana, of Mercury, of Venus — but which are, as I have said, the various chambers of the great Thermae, for which the place was famous, lend it an interest and a charm which never fail to hold the traveller. For the most part, indeed, such a visitor is content with 76 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY Baia, and goes no farther. In this he does himself wrong. Everyone who comes this way should follow the old road about the bay up past the ancient Columbaria to the picturesque castle of Don Pedro de Toledo, now in private hands ; and if he has not time and inclination to explore the beautiful coast in a boat, let him follow the road on to Bacoli, a village in the midst of the vast and scattered ruins of the villa of Hortensius, the great orator famous for his " Asiatic " style, who had no rival in the Forum until he encountered Cicero ; where, after the plot to drown her had failed, Agrippina was assassinated by Nero her son. Dum petit a Baulis mater Caerellia Baias, Occidit insani crimine mersa freti. Gloria quanta perit vobis ! hsec monstra Neroni Nee quondam jussae praestiteratis aquae : ^ Her supposed tomb, the Sepolcro di Agrippina, is really the ruin of an ancient theatre. The villa of Hortensius, indeed, was the scene of more than one tragedy before Nero's matricide. There Marcellus, the adoptive son of Augustus, the husband of his daughter Julia, died in the twentieth year of his age, to the intense grief of the Emperor : Heu miserande puer, si qua fata aspera rumpas, Tu Marcellus eris. Manibus data lilia plenis ; Purpureos spargam flores, animamque nepotis His saltem accumulem donis, et fungar inani Mumere.^^ Upon the headland beyond Bacoli is a great building known as the Carceri di Nerone. This would seem to have been a vast reservoir of water, supplying the fleet in the great Augustan naval harbour of Misenum ; it was connected with the piscena mirahile at the top of the hill, 1 Martial, Ep. iv. 63. 2 Virgil, Mn. vi. 882. " Alas hapless boy ! yet may be that you break through your hard fate, you shall be a Marcellus. Give me handsfull of lilies ; I would strew bright flowers and plenteously with these gifts at least honour the spirit of my descendant and discharge an unavailing duty." THE GULF OF POZZUOLI ^^ the end of the Sermo conduit, a vast reservoir 230 feet long by 85 broad, covered with a vault borne by forty- eight vast pillars. Hence we look down upon the Mare Morto, which, with the recently embanked Porto di Miseno seaward, formed the great naval harbour constructed by Augustus, the greatest naval station in the Empire, taking precedence even of Ravenna. The remarkable promontory of Misenum, an almost isolated headland forming a double hill of some height, in shape pyramidal, and joined to the mainland only by a narrow strip of low land, must always have been famous. It is said to get its name from one of the companions of Ulysses, and the low land or valley between the double height was the site of the Elysian fields, those '' pleasant places " and '' smiling lawns " the " homes of the blessed." For Misenum enters history long before Augustus turned its harbour to such good account. Certainly the Cumaeans knew it, and if it were not very populous before the end of the Roman Republic, it was there that Augustus, Antony, and Pompey met on board Pompey's ship to divide the world between them after the death of Caesar. It was there that Pompey's admiral, Menas, proposed to his master to cut the cables, and to carry Augustus and Antony out to sea, helpless and prisoners. To which suggestion Pompey gave the memorable answer : " Thou shouldst have done this, Menas, and not have asked me concern- ing it." It is to Augustus, however, that the place owes its great repute. He established here at vast expense the greatest of his naval ports, and the town of Misenum was his arsenal, a purely naval city. Here the Elder Pliny was in command when in a.d. 79 Vesuvius suddenly awoke, and destroyed so many of the towns along the gulf, and chief among themJHerculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae. In that awful eruption Pliny lost his life. Here, too, in the time of the Republic, Caius Marius had his famous villa, which came into the hands of LucuUus 78 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY for two and a half million denarii. LucuUus adorned the place with every conceivable magnificence, and later it came into the possession of Tiberius, who in a.d. 27 died there. The villa was situated upon the summit of the eastern hill, and indeed comprised the whole of the pro- montory, and some assert that it was here and not in the Castel deir Ovo that Romulus Augustulus, having fore- gone the Imperial crown in 576, came to pass the remainder of his days, by leave of Odoacer the barbarian. Some ruins of considerable extent still mark the place ; but of the town of Misenum upon the Cape itself almost nothing remains ; it appears to have been utterly destroyed by the Saracens in the ninth century. Indeed, to-day, the great promontory is a desolate place, which has but one thing to offer us of surpassing delight, the glorious view of sea and seashore, mountain and island, all the beauty and all the pleasure of the most beautiful corner of the world. Here, in the quietness that Naples, Posilipo, and Pozzuoli never knew, far from the crowd, one may look as long as one will over this classic sea towards those shores and islands that all the heroes have known, and of which, because of them, we too have dreamed since childhood. For this cause, then, at least, no other ItaHan coast is so sacred as this, or shall ever be so beautiful in our eyes. There over the wine-faced sea came great Ulysses upon his adventures ; hither into this port, past cape after cape, came not less great Mnea.s to found a people and an Empire, and so lightly in those Elysian fields passes, eternally and ever young, our childhood, full of all the glamour and delight of our poets, so that here above all we may say : Deus, auribus nostris audivimus et patres nostri ann untiaverunf nobis opera ad miranda, quce operatus es in diebus eorum et in diebus antiquis. IV VESUVIUS AND POMPEII IF upon the west of Naples lies the wonder of the Phlegraean fields in the paradise of the bay of Pozzuoli, to the east there stands a marvel at once much more astonishing and infinitely more beautiful — I mean the great burning mountain of Vesuvius, the greater of the only two continuously active volcanoes in Europe. Vesuvius, indeed, fills the mind and the imagination in Naples of native and stranger alike; it dominates and gives its character to the whole of this comer of Campania, and there is no moment of the day or night but men lift their eyes to it in fear or wonder. Goethe has spoken of it as ''a peak of hell rising out of paradise," but at least we must admit that it is all the same the most beautiful thing therein, the one thing of which we can never have enough, whose image remains always in our minds, and lends to this great bay its unique interest, and more than half its strange beauty. Without Vesuvius, Naples — the bay of Naples — would lose its identity, would become almost as any other gulf upon the Tyrrhene Sea, and the proverb which sums up the absolutely imique splendour of the city would lose all its meaning, and appear as a mere empty boast signifying nothing but vanity. This being so, to visit Vesuvius, to ascend the cone, and gaze down into the restless crater, which continually delights and threatens Naples and aU her villages with beauty and terror, would seem to be encumbent upon the traveller, and yet I think no QaQ has ever made that 79, So NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY journey without great weariness and some disappointment. Vesuvius is best appreciated from afar, from Naples itself, from the Forum of Pompeii, or the Baths of Queen Giovanna at Sorrento. Thence it appears of so marvellous and strange a beauty, a great purple pyramid smoking in the sun, breathing fire in the darkness, exquisite at all times alike in form and colour, that nothing else in Europe I think is to be compared with it, for nothing else that we know is at once so beautiful and so evil, so suggestive of those half-realized forces latent within the body of the earth, which we have always regarded as malign, whose action is always catastrophic and tragical for us and our world, the expression of the hatred and ill-will of the spirit of evil, of chaos, towards God, and the beauty He has made for our delight. To visit Vesuvius, as one does to-day, and after driving for hours through the dingiest suburbs of Naples, through the dreariest of the old lava fields, to arrive at the foot of the funicular railway, which takes one within a few hundred feet of the top, is to lose all one's sense of wonder in the mere vulgarity of the surroundings, the crowd of touts and tourists, the insatiable guides, hawkers, singers, beggars, and general rascaldom, which has always infested this mountain, as it does now- adays most of the great sights of the world. To avoid all this weariness and noise is not easy, but it is not impossible. Let him who has set his heart on seeing Vesuvius, and would avoid the common way, take train from Naples to Portici, thence, having put food and drink in his satchel, he may climb by the old mule track without a guide and without seeing a beggar, a tout, or a singer all the way to the summit in something over three hours ; the path is almost straight, and always unmistak- able, and though it is fatiguing, it is by no means so exhaust- ing as the long drive from Naples, and the scrimmage and fight with the rascaldom of the mountain which the usual route by road and funicular invariably entails. Such, at any rate, was the plan I made and followed '^ D VESUVIUS 8i with complete success. Leaving Naples by the morning train, I reached Portici about nine o'clock, and before one o'clock I was at the summit. There I spent some two hours, descending at last by Casa Bianca and Bosco Trecase to Pompeii, which I reached just before dark. I thus saw a good deal more of the mountain than the traveller by the usual route from Naples and back by carriage and funicular can hope to do, and upon the way down I skirted and crossed the last fields of lava, the beds of the 1906 erup- tion, which seemed to me to be especially worth seeing. That terrible eruption, the latest, and among the greatest on record, was apparently the culmination of the new period of activity which began in May 1905. For eleven months Vesuvius had been very active, when upon the morning of 4th April a new locca opened close to the path from the summit to Casa Bianca upon the south-east of the cone, near the base of it, at a height of nearly 4000 feet. Later upon the same day, the top of the cone fell into the crater, and the famous Pine Tree cloud appeared at a vast height over the mountain. On the following days other bocche opened lower down and farther to the east, and from them a vast stream of lava issued out, rapidly descending towards Bosco Trecase, part of which was destroyed. On the night of 7th April, the Pine Tree cloud of ashes over the crater rose to a height of some 15,000 feet ; huge rocks and stones were flung as far as Ottajano to the north-east. The Pine Tree cloud remained over the mountain, growing higher and higher, and at last reaching a height of some 30,000 feet, till on 20th April, Naples — for the wind blew that way — ^was lost in darkness, the streets were covered in ashes to a depth of two inches, and the roof of a market-house, where the new General Post Office is to stand, was broken down by the weight. This was the end of the eruption ; but its severity was such that over one hundred persons lost their lives, and the whole country to the east of Vesuvius was devastated. Nothing of all this is seen by 6 82 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY the ordinary route to Vesuvius from Naples. It is only upon the descent to Pompeii that some small idea may be gained of the appalling horror of such a disaster ; and with Pompeii there at the foot of the mountain, the best witness of all to the dreadful power of the mountain, one cannot but think that a route which gives one all this is the best by which to leave Vesuvius. Though continually active — that is to say, never really quiescent or extinct — Vesuvius would seem to be subject to periods of increasing activity, culminating in a vast eruption followed by some four hundred years more or less of inactivity, after which the mountain begins to stir ominously and the whole phenomenon is again repeated. The first and by far the most famous of these eruptions of which we have record fully bears this out. In the year a.d. 63, in the time of the Emperor Nero, Vesuvius first began to give signs of life. In the early part of that year the whole of the shores of Campania suffered severely from the earthquake, which, according to Seneca, destroyed at least in great part the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In the following year another earthquake convulsed the country, and during the following sixteen years these appalling shocks were of frequent oc- currence. Then upon August 24, a.d. 79, in the reign of the Emperor Titus, the first eruption of Vesuvius took place, which, as we know, buried Pompeii and Herculaneum, and stands out in history as one of the most dramatic and appalling natural disasters which has ever occurred in Europe. That tremendous affair cost the lives of a host of poor people, among the few well known to us being the Elder Pliny, who was with the Roman fleet at Misenum, and the best account we have of it is found in two letters which his nephew, the Younger Pliny, wrote at the time to Tacitus — ** Your request that I would send you an account of my VESUVIUS 83 uncle's death, in order to transmit a more exact relation of it to posterity, deserves my acknowledgments ; for if this accident shall be celebrated by your pen, the glory of it, I am well assured, will be rendered for ever illustrious. And notwithstanding he perished by a misfortune which, as it involved at the same time a most beautiful country in ruins and destroyed so many populous cities, seems to promise him an everlasting remembrance ; notwith standing he has himself composed many and lasting works ; yet I am persuaded, the mentioning of him in your immortal writings will greatly contribute to eternize his name. . . . He was at that time with the fleet under his command at Misenum. On the 24th of August, about one in the afternoon, my mother desired him to observe a cloud which appeared of a very unusual size and shape. He had just returned from taking the benefit of the sun, and after bathing himself in cold water, and taking a slight repast, was retired to his study ; he immediately arose and went out upon an eminence, from whence he might more distinctly view this very uncommon appear- ance. It was not at that distance discernible from what mountain this cloud issued, but it was found afterwards to ascend from Mount Vesuvius. I cannot give you a more exact description of its figure than by resembling it to that of a pine tree, for it shot up a great height in the form of a trunk, which extended itself at the top into sort of branches ; occasioned, I imagine, either by a sudden gust of air that impelled it, the force of which decreased as it advanced upwards, or the cloud it left being pressed back again by its own weight, expanded in this manner ; it appeared sometimes bright, and sometimes dark and spotted, as it was either more or less impregnated with earth and cinders. This extraordinary phenomenon excited my uncle's philosophical curiosity to take a nearer view of it. He ordered a light vessel to be got ready, and gave me the liberty, if I thought proper, to attend him. I rather chose to continue my studies ; for, as it happened, he had given me an employment of that kind. As he was coming out of the house he received a note from Rectina, the wife of Bassus, who was in the utmost alarm at the imminent danger which threatened her ; for her villa being situated at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, there 84 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY was no way to escape but by sea ; she earnestly intreated him therefore to come to her assistance. He accordingly changed his first design, and what he began with a philo- sophical, he pursued with an heroical turn of mind. He ordered the gallies to put to sea, and went himself on board with an intention of assisting not only Rectina, but several others ; for the villas stand extremely thick upon that beautiful coast. When hastening to the place from whence others fled with the utmost terror, he steer' d his direct course to the point of danger, and with so much calmness and presence of mind as to be able to make and dictate his observations upon the motion and figure of that dreadful scene. He was now so nigh the mountain that the cinders, which grew thicker and hotter the nearer he approached, fell into the ships, together with pumice- stones, and black pieces of burning rock ; they were likewise in danger not only of being a-ground by the sudden retreat of the sea, but also from the vast fragments which rolled down from the mountain, and obstructed all the shore. Here he stopped to consider whether he should return back again ; to which the pilot advising him, Fortune, said he, befriends the brave; Carry me to Pomponianus. Pomponianus was then at Stabiae, separ- ated by a gulf, which the sea, after several insensible windings, forms upon the shore. He had already sent his baggage on board ; for tho* he was not at that time in actual danger, yet being within the view of it, and indeed extremely near, if it should in the least increase, he was determined to put to sea as soon as the wind should change. It was favorable, however, for carrying my uncle to Pom- ponianus, whom he found in the greatest consternation ; he embraced him with tenderness, encouraging and exhort- ing him to keep up his spirits, and the more to dissipate his fears, he ordered, with an air of unconcern, the baths to be got ready ; when after having bathed, he sate down to supper with great cheerfulness, or at least (what is equally heroic) with all the appearance of it. In the mean while the eruption from Mount Vesuvius flamed out in several places with much violence, which the darkness of the night contributed to render still more visible and dreadful. But my uncle, in order to sooth the appre- hensions of his friend, assured him it was only the burning VESUVIUS 85 of the villages, which the country people had abandoned to the flames ; after this he retired to rest, and it is most certain that he was so little discomposed as to fall into a deep sleep ; for being pretty fat, and breathing hard, those who attended without actually hear'd him snore. The court which led to his apartment being now almost filled with stones and ashes, if he had continued there any time longer, it would have been impossible for him to have made his way out ; it was thought proper therefore to awaken him. He got up, and went to Pomponianus and the rest of his company, who were not unconcerned enough to think of going to bed. They consulted together whether it would be most prudent to trust to the houses, which now shook from side to side with frequent and violent concussions ; or fly to the open fields, where the calcined stones and cinders, tho' light indeed, yet fell in large showers, and threatened destruction. In this distress they resolved for the fields, as the less dangerous situa- tion of the two ; a resolution which, while the rest of the company were hurried into by their fears, my uncle embraced upon cool and deliberate consideration. They went out then, having pillows tied upon their heads with napkins ; and this was their whole defence against the storm of stones that fell round them. It was now day every where else, but there a deeper darkness prevailed than in the most obscure night, which, however, was in some degree dissipated by torches and other lights of various kinds. They thought proper to go down farther upon the shore to observe if they might safely put out to sea, but they found the waves still run extremely high and boisterous. There my uncle having drank a draught or two of cold water, threw himself down upon a cloth which was spread for him, when immediately the flames, and a strong smell of sulphur, which was the forerunner of them, dispersed the rest of the company, and obliged him to rise. He raised himself up with the assistance of two of his servants, and instantly fell down dead ; suffocated, as I conjecture, by some gross and noxious vapor, having always had weak lungs, and frequently subject to a diffi- culty of breathing. As soon as it was light again, which was not tiU the third day after this melancholy accident, his body was found intire, and without any marks of 86 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY violence upon it, exactly in the same posture that he fell, and looking more like a man asleep than dead. During all this time my mother and I, who were at Misenum But as this has no connection with your history, so your enquiry went no farther than concerning my uncle's death ; with that therefore I will put an end to my letter ; suffer me only to add, that I have faithfully related to you what I was either an eye-witness of myself or received immedi- ately after the accident happened, and before there was time to vary the truth . You will chose out of this narrative such circumstances as shall be most suitable to your purpose; for there is a great difference between what is proper for a letter, and an history ; between writing to a friend, and writing to the public. Farewell." "The letter which, in compliance with your request, I wrote to you concerning the death of my uncle, has raised, it seems, your curiosity to know what terrors and dangers attended me while I continued at Misenum ; for there, I think, the account in my former broke off. Tho' my shock'd soul recoils, my tongtie shall tell. " My uncle having left us, I pursued the studies which prevented my going with him, till it was time to bathe. After which I went to supper, and from thence to bed, where my sleep was greatly broken and disturbed. There had been for many days before some shocks of an earth- quake, which the less surprised us as they are extremely frequent in Campania ; but they were so particularly violent that night, that they not only shook every thing about us, but seemed indeed to threaten total destruction. My mother flew to my chamber, where she found me rising, in order to awaken her. We went out into a small court belonging to the house, which separated the sea from the buildings. As I was at that time but eighteen years of age, I know not whether I should call my behaviour in this dangerous juncture, courage or rashness ; but I took up Livy, and amused myself with turning over that author, and even making extracts from him, as if all about me had been in full security. While we were in this posture, a friend of my uncle's, who was just come from Spain to pay him a visit, joined us, and observing me sitting by my ir^i POMPEII VESUVIUS 87 mother with a book in my hand, greatly condemned her calmness, at the same time that he reproved me for my careless security ; nevertheless I still went on with my author. Tho' it was now morning, the light was exceed- ingly faint and languid ; the buildings all around us tottered, and tho' we stood upon open ground, yet as the place was narrow and confined, there was no remaining there without certain and great danger ; we therefore resolved to quit the town. The people followed us in the utmost consternation, and (as to a mind distracted mth terror, every suggestion seems more prudent than its own) pressed in great crowds about us in our way out. Being ^ got at a convenient distance from the houses, we stood still, in the midst of a most dangerous and dreadful scene. The chariots which we had ordered to be drawn out, were so agitated backwards and forwards, tho' upon the most level ground, that we could not keep them steady, even by supporting them with large stones. The sea seemed to roll back upon itself, and to be driven from its banks by the convulsive motion of the earth ; it is certain at least the shore was considerably enlarged, and several sea- animals were left upon it. On the other side, a black and dreadful cloud bursting with an igneous serpentine vapor, darted out a long train of fire, resembling flashes of lightning, but much larger. Upon this our Spanish friend, whom I mentioned above, addressing himself to my mother and me with greater warmth and earnestness : If your brother and your uncle, said he, is safe, he certainly wishes you may be so too ; but if he perished, it was his desire, no doubt, that you might both survive him. Why therefore do you delay your escape a moment ? We could never think of our own safety, we said, while we were uncertain of his. Hereupon our friend left us, and with- drew from the danger with the utmost precipitation. Soon afterwards, the cloud seemed to descend, and cover the whole ocean ; as indeed, it entirely hid the island of Caprea, and the promontory of Misenum. My mother strongly conjured me to make my escape at any rate, which as I was young I might easily do ; as for herself, she said, her age and corpulency rendered all attempts of the sort impossible ; however, she would willingly meet death if she could have the satisfaction of seeing that she 88 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY was not the occasion of mine. But I absolutely refused to leave her, and taking her by the hand, I led her on ; she complied with great reluctance, and not without many reproaches to herself for retarding my flight. The ashes now began to fall upon us, tho' in no great quantity. I turned my head, and observed behind us a thick smoke, which came rolling after us like a torrent. I proposed, while we had yet any light, to turn out of the high road lest she should be pressed to death in the dark, by the crowd that followed us. We had scarce stepped out of the path, when darkness over-spread us, not like that of a cloudy night, or when there is no moon, but of a room when it is shut up, and all the lights extinct. Nothing then was to behear'd but the shrieks of women, the screams of children, and the cries of men ; some calling for their children, others for their parents, others for their husbands, and only distinguishing each other by their voices ; one lamenting his own fate, another that of his family ; some wishing to die, from the very fear of dying ; some lifting their hands to the gods ; but the greater part imagining that the last and eternal night was come, which was to destroy both the gods and the world together. Among these there were some who augmented the real terrors by imaginary ones, and made the frightened multitude falsely believe that Misenum was actually in flames. At length a glimmering light appeared, which we imagined to be rather the forerunner of an approaching burst of flames (as in truth it was) than the return of day ; however, the fire fell at a distance from us ; then again we were immersed in thick darkness, and a heavy shower of ashes rained upon us, which we were obliged every now and then to shake off, otherwise we should have been crushed and buried in the heap. I might boast, that during all this scene of horror, not a sigh or expression of fear escaped from me, had not my support been founded in that miserable, tho' strong consolation, that all mankind were involved in the same calamity, and that I imagined I was perishing with the world itself. At last this dreadful darkness was dissipated by degrees like a cloud or smoke ; the real day returned, and even the sun appeared, tho' very faintly, and as when an eclipse is coming on. Every object that presented itself to our eyes (which were extremely weakened) seemed VESUVIUS 89 changed, being cover' d over with white ashes, as with a deep snow. We returned to Misenum, where we refreshed ourselves as well as we could, and passed an anxious night between "hope and fear ; tho' indeed, with a much larger share of the latter ; for the earthquake still continued, while several enthusiastic people ran up and down, heighten- ing their own and their friends' calamities by terrible pre- dictions. However, my mother and I, notwithstanding the danger we had passed, and that which still threatened us, had no thoughts of leaving the place, till we should receive some account from my uncle. . . . *' And now, you will read this narrative without any view of inserting it in your history, of which it is by no means worthy ; and indeed you must impute it to your own request, if it shall appear scarce to deserve even the trouble of a letter. Farewell." The value of these letters which Pliny modestly de- precates is really inestimable, for they contain the only account that we have by an eye-witness of the first and greatest eruption of Vesuvius. It wiU be noted that Pliny does not speak of any flow of lava, and it seems certain that none issued from the mountain on that occasion ; the crater spewed up ashes, stones, and great clouds of dense vapour, which presently descended upon the earth as torrential rain charged with mud. This especially deluged Herculaneum, which was quite covered with it, while Pompeii was buried under stones and ashes. After this appaUing awakening Vesuvius seems to have been quiet for near four hundred years ; at least we have no record of any further eruption until the year 472, when Procopius notes that after an eruption of Vesuvius even Constantinople was littered with ashes. This occurred again in 512, when the same writer tells us that even upon the littoral of Africa the ashes and dust spewed up by Vesuvius were to be seen. In 1036 and in 1500 other eruptions occurred, but thereafter no other is recorded until the calamity of December 1631. In 1538, however. 90 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY in the midst of this period of quiescence, the volcanic forces threw up Monte Nuovo on the Phlegrsean fields, as we have seen. The eruption of December 1631 was the most appalling, after that of a.d. 79, of which we have any knowledge. It was upon i6th December, after nearly six months of earth- quakes, that the crater poured out upon the south-west a huge volume of smoke, loaded with ashes and charged with lightning, which, after assuming the Pine Tree form over the mountain, spread all over the country, carrying death and destruction. No less than seven streams of lava poured out upon this occasion, one towards Torre Annun- ziata, as we may still see, one towards Torre del Greco, which was largely destroyed, another upon Resina and the old site of Herculaneum, and another towards Portici, where it streamed into the sea. The earthquake which accompanied this awful visitation caused the sea to retire for over half a mile, and to return with such disorder and violence that the whole coast was inundated. In all, more than 18,000 people perished. Less violent eruptions occurred in 1660 and in 1707, and indeed the eighteenth century is full of the minor activities of the mountain, the worst of which was that which began in February 1793 and continued till June 1794, in which Torre del Greco again suffered so terribly that Ferdinand iv attempted, though without success, to forbid the people to rebuild the town on the old site. During the nineteenth century Vesuvius was com- paratively quiet. Eruptions occurred in 1822, 1855, 1861, and 1 87 1, but the worst eruption within living memory was that of 1906, in which the country suffered severely, as I have said. After each eruption the whole form of the cone has been changed : thus in 1632 it was over 1500 feet lower than its companion Monte Somma, and in 1832 the great cone, which had piled itself up again, fell in with a sound like thunder, the vapour and dust rising to a height of 10,000 feet. A similar phenomenon POMPEII 91 occurred in 1906. The beautiful pyramidal cone, which no one who saw it can forget, and which reigned in superb beauty over the paradise of sea and valley and mountain, was truncated, so that to-day you look from Naples upon what appear to be twin peaks, the crater being indeed only distinguishable by the exquisite feather of smoke streaming from its summit. And so the ascent of Vesuvius must always be full of fascination, almost irresistible in its attraction ; but it can never be anything but fatiguing, however it be achieved, and it is perhaps the dirtiest business that modem methods of travel have left us. The loose ashes of the cone, fine black dust, penetrate alike boots and clothes, and ruin both ; and indeed the only drawback to the descent into Pompeii, instead of the return to Naples, is the fact that it is so difficult to get a proper bath at Pompeii. No one will think, I should hope, to climb Vesuvius and to visit Pompeii in one day ; but if there should be one with such a hope, let him prepare for disappointment. No one can do it with any sort of satisfaction. The almost aimless wandering about the '' city disinterred " is if anything more fatiguing than the ascent of the mountain, and he who is wise will come into Pompeii prepared to spend a night at the Hotel Diomede, or the humbler Albergo del Sole, which in spite of everything is a charming hostelry. Nothing, I think, to be seen an5Avhere else in Europe is at once so monstrously dreary and so moving as this strange city of broken hovels and narrow-paved lanes, which once boasted some 20,000 inhabitants. It is, of course, a great misfortune for us of the modern world that Pompeii was not overwhelmed by Vesuvius in a.d. 63, when she was overthrown by an earthquake, rather than in A.D. 79, when the final catastrophe actually happened. What we see is not the ruin of the town that Cicero loved, but the town half rebuilt by the ruined inhabitants in the Roman style, upon the old site, and largely with the 92 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY old remains. It is, partly for this reason, then, very disappointing. And yet what else in aU Europe can we compare with it ? Pompeii was one of the most ancient cities of Campania, situated in the Bay of Naples at the mouth of the Samus, intermediate between Herculaneum and Stabiae. Tradition ascribes its foundation, like that of Herculaneum, to Hercules, who along this shore, as we have seen beside the Lucrine Lake, drove the bulls of Geryon. Strabo says that the town was first in the possession of the Oscans, later of the Etruscans, and at last, before the advent of the Romans, in the hands of the Samnites. It seems always to have been a flourishing place, probably on account of its situation at the mouth of the Sarnus, in the rich valley watered by that stream. It appears in history for the first time in 310 B.C., when a Roman fleet under Publius Cornelius anchored there, and disembarked troops to ravage the territory of Nuceria ; but we hear nothing further of it until the time of the Social War, in which it took a prominent part against Sulla, who besieged it, with what result we do not know, but that the city came into his hands is certain ; and this was probably by sur- render, for its inhabitants were presently admitted to the Roman franchise. It was then its famous career as a Roman pleasure resort began. The great villas of the wealthy in its immediate neighbourhood were many, and among the most famous of them was that of Cicero, called Pompeianum, which he loved as dearly as he was capable of loving anything. In the time of the Empire, doubtless its wealth and amenities increased. Seneca praises its delicious situation, and both he and Tacitus speak of it as a populous place. In the reign of Nero a riot broke out in the amphitheatre of the town, a sort of faction fight between a colony of Nucerians, which Augustus had established there, and the citizens, in which many were killed ; and in punishment for this disturbance of the public peace, the Pompeians were forbidden all gladiatorial POMPEII 93 shows or theatrical entertainments during ten years. Not four of these had passed when the whole town was overthrown by the great earthquake of a.d. 63, the public buildings suffering especially severely ; and as we have seen, the place had not recovered itself when, in a.d. 79, the famous first eruption of Vesuvius befell, in which Pompeii as well as Herculaneum was buried, only to be brought to light seventeen hundred years later. When that appalling calamity fell upon the city the people, it is said, were assembled in the amphitheatre, though, remembering the prohibition, for what purpose we cannot say. The greater number of them seem, there- fore, to have escaped, and very few bodies have been dis- covered. We really know nothing of the disaster. Pliny does not speak of it in his account of the eruption, and no one else has left a record. All we know has been won from the earth httle by little, by excavation, and this in our own and our fathers' time. For so complete and over- whelming was the disaster, so utterly was the city lost, that Pompeii from that time disappears from history. Perhaps a small village may have risen upon the site, but in the Middle Age even the site was forgotten ; no one, not the most learned, could say where it might be, for the very river had changed its course, as we may still see, and the whole countryside had been transformed by the disaster. Excavation, however, has confirmed us in what history had taught us to suspect — to wit, that Pompeii was but a third-rate provincial town, though now its name is as famous as that of the greatest of cities. Thus, too, we have learned that it was not overwhelmed by a torrent of lava, nor, as Herculaneum was, embedded in a vast deposit of mud which has hardened into tufa ; it was simply buried under ashes and dust and lapilli, light and porous and easily removed, though this covering lies some fifteen feet thick over the ruins. And it seems certain that so little of intrinsic value has been found under this pall which has preserved so perfectly things of the utmost artistic value 94 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY and interest to us, because the earthquake of a.d. 63 had already destroyed the place, which had by no means re- covered from that calamity when the final disaster of a.d. 79 overwhelmed it for ever. I do not know how to express what one feels when one comes along the alley way behind the Hotel Diomede and enters into this " city disinterred," as Shelley called it, by the Porta Marina, following the way uphill into the Forum between the Temple of Jupiter and the Basilica, the Temple of Apollo and the Temple of Vespasian. One's eyes turn first, I think, almost instinctively to Vesuvius, still smoking there, in all its beauty of colour and form like some lovely evil thing watching still over the bones of its victim. But presently one turns away to pass, with what weariness at last, through this little city which seems so vast, so endless ; where there is nothing — a toy city of hovels and styes, of houses so small and so ill-lighted for the most part that not the wretchedest of our industrial slums nor the poorest cottages of our peasants can com- pare with them. And yet in some curious way this toy city strangely resembles Naples itself, its unbreakable silence is as oppressive as her ceaseless noise ; it is as though one wandered endlessly nowhither, without object and without rest, in a dream, a dream in which one had stepped over an awful chasm in whose annihilation lie twenty centuries, and the mind staggers before the reality of what we had thought to be so great. Hither men came from Imperial Rome, as to a pleasure resort — to these little mean houses. It is the reality, not the dream, which overwhelms you at last. Here are the very ways up which Cicero went, the ruts of the wagon wheels still deep in the stones — these narrow ways across which you may leap without effort from side to side. Here cheek by jowl stand the two public edifices, the Temple and the brothel ; here men worshipped under the blue sky, there . . . And everywhere you see the little houses, sometimes POMPEII 95 just drawn as it were from the grave, the frescoes still fresh on the walls, the little images in their places beside the fountain, and about the courtyard even flowers. Here they lived. If you go out by the Herculaneum Gate you may see their tombs, all beside the way, a long avenue where lie the ancestors of those who saw the catastrophe. And if you have the courage to creep into that ghastly museum by the sea gate you may see even those who suffered it, who fled too late from the amphitheatre by the Porta di Samo to the east of the city, who returned for their gold or their treasure, to look for their children or to find a friend, or who never left home upon that tragic day when the mountain bellowed with thunder and the darkness and vileness of the heart of the earth rose suddenly and de- scended upon this place in the face of the sun. There they lie, the young matron beside the slave, the mother by the daughter, close together. . . . Ah, why should our curiosity demand so horrible an outrage as this ? V CASTELLAMMARE, SORRENTO, AND CAPRI THE road from Pompeii to Castellammare di Stabia crosses the broad valley of the Sarno, the Valle di Pompeii, as it is called, the easternmost part of the great plain of Campania on which Vesuvius and the Neapolitan hiU stand up like two great lonely islands, not far from the shore. It is a way without interest in itself, and indeed would be without beauty but for the great hiUs, the Monti Lattari, which rise ever before one in all their various loveliness, and form at last the steep and lofty promontory of Sorrento. Nor is CasteUammare itself of much interest, though its situation in the curve of the bay where those hills first meet the sea is of much beauty. A busy fishing village that has become a royal dockyard where ships for the Italian navy are built, a favourite resort of the Neapolitans in summer-time, Castellammare di Stabia would be without interest for us, would depend, and wisely, only upon the beauty of its surroundings for its dehght, if its very name did not establish it as the late successor of the ancient city of Stabiae which was destroyed by the calamity of a.d. 79. The old city stood perhaps a Httle to the north of the present town, at the foot of the Mons Lactarius and a mile from the sea. We know nothing of it till it suddenly appears in the Social War, 90 B.C., when it was taken by the Samnite general Caius Papius; and indeed it would seem to have given itself to him, for in the following year Sulla retook the place, and utterly destroyed it, nor did 96 CASTELLAMMARE 97 it ever recover itself. At the time of the famous eruption, Pliny tells us it was a mere village, and though doubtless it boasted of many a fair villa, of which probably the greatest was that of Pomponianus, where the Elder PHny took refuge in vain, for he perished there upon that terrible night, the only other writer who mentions its name is Ovid, who speaks of it incidentally with other towns in this neighbourhood in his Metamorphoses — Inde legit Capreas, promontoriumque Minerva, Et Surrentino generosos pal mite colles, Herculeamque urbem, Stabiasque, et in otia natam Parthenopen, et at hac Cumaese templa Sibyllse. The awful calamity buried the village of Stable under its ashes and cinders, though less completely, for it was farther off, than Herculaneum or Pompeii. Its site never ceased to be inhabited, and it appears all through the Imperial period as a resort for invaUds, in part on account of its mineral waters, which are still sought after, and in part for the milk of its cows, which grazed upon the Mons Lactarius. In 1750 the site of the ancient city was dis- covered by accident, and since then a certain amount of excavation has been accomplished, but with little result save for a few wall-paintings now in the Naples Museum. The modern, or rather the mediaeval, town of Castellam- mare dates from the thirteenth century, when the Emperor Frederick II built a castle here, Charles 11 of Anjou walling the town which had grown up about it, fortifications enlarged and strengthened by Alfonso of Aragon. Besides thus fortifying the town, Charles 11 built a palace on the hillside, which was a favourite residence of Queen Giovanna II. But this old royal palace of the Angevins perished. The Bourbons, to whom the town owes the estabhshment of its arsenal and docks, erected in its place the delicious Casino of Quisisana, now an hotel. It is this Casino with its park and woods which is the greatest deUght of Cas- tellammare ; apart from its delicious walks, indeed, the 7 98 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY place has little to show, in spite of its busy quay and arsenal. Castellammare, however, makes with its good hotel and delicious surroundings by far the best centre for excur- sions in this part of the bay. Pompeii is most easily reached from it, and Monte S. Angelo, with its great view beyond Terracina, of the Central Apennines and of the mountains beyond Psestum, with all the great bays of Gaeta, of Naples, of Amalfi, of Salerno, of Policastro, may be climbed thence in about four hours. But undoubtedly the greatest delight which Castellam- mare has to bestow upon the traveller is the coast road to Sorrento, of which she holds the key. There are in all Europe but three other routes corniches with which this can be compared — that between Nice and Mentone upon the French Riviera, that between Genova and Sestri upon the Riviera di Levante, and that, really a continuation of this from Castellammare to Sorrento, the coast road from Sorrento to Amalfi and on to Vietri. Each of these has its own peculiar charm and delight, and one is inclined to declare each in turn the most beautiful ; but knowing them all, I think at least this may be said, that for variety and astonishment, for beauty of colour and old romance, those of the south surpass altogether those of the Rivieras. Nothing could well be more different from the road between Sorrento and Vietri than this between Castellammare and Sorrento, and here at any rate one may well refuse to be sure which he prefers. The road climbs up out of Castellammare under the old convent of Pozzano, founded by Gonsalvo de Cordova in the sixteenth century upon the site, it is said, of a Temple of Diana. The church still contains a venerable image of the Blessed Virgin miraculously discovered as long ago as the eleventh century in a well in the crypt, but notliing else of interest. It is here the glory of the road begins beside the sea, passing Capo d' Orlando under the great cliffs covered with cyticus, where Ruggiero d'Oria broke the fleet of Frederick ii in 1299, through many a little SORRENTO 99 village crossing about^ half-way to Sorrento into Vice Equense, the twin towns Vico and Equa, which the Romans too called Vicus iEquanus. Vico, founded by Charles ii of Anjou on the ruins of the old Roman town which the Goths had destroyed, is most picturesquely set upon a round and isolated hill amid beautiful olive gardens and orange groves, and is best seen farther on from the next hill- top village, Seiano. Hence the road climbs to the Punta di Scutolo, whence one may see the whole of the Piano di Sorrento, the lofty, tableland 300 feet over the sea which forms the great headland. Descending through the love- liest groves of olive, pomegranate, and orange to Meta, where the church of the Madonna del Lauro is said to occupy the site of a Temple of Diana, the road enters by a deep ravine the great plain of the headland, passing through every sort of delicious grove and garden at last into the city of Sorrento, which in all ages has been famous for its health, its beauty, and its wine. The city of Sorrento, the city of S. Antonino, the seat of a bishop, is one of the most curiously situated towns in Europe. It stands upon a great platform 300 feet or more over the sea out of which the great cliffs stand up sheer with only the narrowest of beaches, where are two small fishing harbours — the Marina Grande to the south, the Marina Piccola to the north. The town is wholly delightful and full of the happiness of busy people straw- plaiting, lace-making, or carving the olive wood here so plentifully provided by nature. The whole place is a garden enclosed, Saracen in appearance with its white houses and flat roofs and shining cupolas, and especially in this that every garden is enclosed within a white wall, every orange grove is hidden, and so completely that but for the overpowering scent of orange blossom which fills all the by-ways you would not suspect the gardens you cannot see. Certainly there is something secret — how shaU I say ? — something sacred and withdrawn about Sorrento, so that you are not surprised to learn that of 100 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY old it with its territory, all this plana, was consecrated to Minerva, whose especial sanctuary was the great and famous temple set upon the promontory which bore her name, Minervae Promontorium, and which we to-day call the Punta della Campanella, because Charles v erected there a Martello tower and hung a bell in it, which it was the business of the watchmen to strike with a great mallet, and thus to give warning of the approach of the Barbary pirates who constantly raped all this coast. That Temple of Minerva is said to have been founded by Ulysses, but it remains extremely doubtful whether Sorrento was ever a Greek city. Strabo certainly calls it Campanian, and though for all that it may have received Greek settlers from Cumse or elsewhere, we know nothing of it till the time of the Empire, when Augustus planted there a colony. It too became a resort of the wealthy Roman nobility, especially it would seem on account of its climate, sheltered as it is from the south wind and the sun ; and we learn from Stabius that his friend Pollius Felix had a villa there, upon which he writes a delightful poem. But the real fame of the Roman Surrentum was due to its wine, which did not attain to perfection till it had been kept for twenty-five years, and of which all the poets sing, as Martial when he asks — Surrentina bibis ? nee myrrhina picta, nee aurum Sume ; dabunt calices haee tibi vina suos . . . and Horace, when speaking of dinner parties, strangely bids us to " mix skilfully wine of Surrentum with the dregs of Falernian and thoroughly collect the sediment with a pigeon's egg, for the yoke sinks to the bottom, carry- ing with it all foreign substances." Martial and Horace may have been right, but the traveller to-day will be more likely to agree with Tiberius Csesar, who is said to have declared that the wine of Surrentum owed its reputation entirely to the physicians, being in reality no better than vinegar. SORRENTO loi The Roman remains in Sorrento in spite of all this are negligible, consisting merely of fragments built into the archbishop's palace, the Cathedral and S. Antonino, and to the ancient Piscina opposite the Hotel Victoria which still supplies the town with water. In the Middle Age Sorrento became an independent republic, but its records are scanty ; it never had the fame or the prosperity of Salerno or Amalfi, and subsequently came into the power of the Dukes of Naples, and has shared the fate of that city ever since. I suppose its chief claim to celebrity in the Renaissance was the fact that Torquato Tasso was born there in a house where now stands an hotel — the Albergo Tasso — upon March ii, 1544 ; but nothing of the old house would seem to remain. Miserable and half mad, Tasso returned to Sorrento in disguise in 1592 after his unhappy experience in Ferrara. He appeared in the dress of a peasant at the house of his sister Cornelia in the Strada S. Nicola. He represented himself as a messenger come from her brother, and frightened her nearly out of her senses with a long story of the poet's ill-treat- ment. Then he revealed himself, and the gentle lady took him in and cared for him. To-day Sorrento owes everything to her surroundings, which are so full of delight that a whole summer spent here cannot exhaust them. First among these stands the Capo di Sorrento, the western point of the great headland, which is still covered with Roman ruins, the villa perhaps of PoUius, which Statins describes as looking upon this western bay, and where the picturesque remains called the Bagno della Regina Giovanna, an ancient arched piscina, afford one of the no blest views of the great bay with Vesuvius rising beyond the blue sea. Thence eastward you may wander along the cliffs or up to the Deserto, the old Franciscan convent, whence there is another glorious view embracing the two bays of Naples and of Salerno, with Capri before you and Monte S. Angelo in the background. There too in the bay of Salerno you may §ee the Islands 102 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY of the Sirens, Li Galli as they are called to-day. There was undoubtedly here on the headland a famous sanctuary of the Sirens from which Surrentum itself was supposed to derive its name. It is amusing, though in vain, to seek a place so famous, but you find., by the way, how much un- looked-for beauty, which indeed is the best of all. But the great excursion from Sorrento must always be that to Capri, only an hour away by steamer. Starting in the morning at ten when the steamer comes in from Naples, a whole day may be spent on the island and the return made at four o'clock ; but no one who gives thus but a few hours to Capri can really expect to see anything with pleasure, not even the Blue Grotto. It is far better to spend at least one night upon the island, where in Capri itself at any rate there are excellent hotels ; by this means something at least may be had in quietness and apart from the crowd. Capri stands but three miles from Capo Sorrento and, as Pliny knew, is about eleven miles in circuit. It is like the mountain range here to the south of the bay of Naples, of which it is indeed a part, formed wholly of limestone, a great precipitous limestone rock rising abruptly out of the sea, and in many places to a con- siderable height, especially in the western part, now called Anacapri, a name thought to be derived from the Greek at avo) KaTT/oeat, where it attains at least 1600 feet. The eastern part is a vast precipitous hill especially steep towards the mainland, and between it and the western highlands is a saddle upon which the little town of Capri stands with its two landing-places, the only ones on the island east and west. Of the history of Capri before the Imperial period we know really nothing. Virgil in the seventh ^neid alludes to it : '' Nor shall you pass untold in my verses (Ebalus, the son of Telon by the nymph Sebethis, as tradition teUs, in the days that he ruled Capreae of the Teleboans, now advanced in years . . ." ; but who the Telebo^ were CAPRI 103 we are uncertain, though we may connect them with the pirates who dwelt on the islands of the Echinades off the coast of Acarnania. But whatever of Greek customs and culture the people of Capri may have possessed might seem really to be due to the Neapolitans, into whose hands the island came. It was Augustus who first made Capri known. He landed, took a fancy to the place, because he met with a favourable omen there, and at length made it a part of the Imperial dominion, giving the Neapolitans instead the larger and wealthier island of Ischia. Capri he visited repeatedly, going there indeed but four days before his death. If Capri owes thus her introduction to the world to Augustus, she owes all her fame to Tiberius, or rather to the scandalous stories that Tacitus, Suetonius, and Juvenal have not scrupled to invent or to repeat con- cerning this much-libelled prince. Tiberius, they tell us, established himself permanently upon the island in a.d. 27, and there spent the last ten years of his life in every sort of debauchery. Tacitus, indeed, always a curious psy- chologist, asserts that it was not the perfection of the climate, so much more temperate than that of the main- land, which charmed the Emperor, but the seclusion and inaccessible nature of the island, in which he was secure from danger and observation to deliver himself up to the most extraordinary debaucheries enhanced by an in- famous cruelty. It is well to remember, when listening to the malicious gossip of these writers, that when Tiberius took up his residence in Capri and deserted Roman society, he was more than sixty-eight years old. A great soldier, the better part of his life had been spent in the field, and when at last, at the age of fifty-six, he succeeded Augustus in A.D. 14, the incorrigible sensuality of youth was far behind him. Even Suetonius, who hated him, admits that the first eight years of his reign were marked by a fine justice and personal frugality ; and though the foUow- 104 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY ing six years were less happy — more than a hundred persons suffering death for conspiracy — there is not any- thing in the character of the Emperor which would lead us to suppose him a victim of a gross animalism that was fast driving him towards insanity. It was unwise to leave Rome in the power of Sejanus, but not idiotic; and the tragedies which had befallen his house — the murder of Agrippa Postumus, the strange death of Germanicus in the East, the poisoning of his son Drusus, the exile of Agrippina — are quite enough to account for his retirement from the world to Capri. Certainly the gloom of his last years suggests a sort of despair, which led him to strike down Sejanus for dreaming of the purple, only to put a worse monster in his place ; and the crimes of Macro seem to have moved him little. He was after all a man of action, unused to the subtle malice and enervating luxury of the Roman world, and it may well be that such a one found in Capri a peace and a quietness which would merely have bored Suetonius or Tacitus, and which certainly they were incapable of understanding. How- ever, this at least is certain, that here upon the island of Capri the Emperor spent the last ten years of his life, and here he erected twelve palaces, each in a different part of the island, the remains of several of which are still visible. The largest of these would seem to have been that on the summit of the cliff facing the promontory of Sorrento, which Pliny calls the Arx Tiberii, but which Suetonius calls the Villa Jovis. The remains of some of these villas have been built into the curious domed church of S. Costanzo. Close by the Villa Jovis are the remains of the Roman Pharos, which guided the ships through the straits on their way to Puteoli. One climbs up from the Marina by the steep and lonely road to the little town of Capri, under its great rock, past the church of S. Costanzo to the Piazza, close to which stands the many-domed Cathedral of the Vescovo delle Quaglie, the Bishop of the Quails, as the Bishop of Capri CAPRI 105 is called, because these birds in their spring and autumn journeys to and from Egypt and the northern plains rest in such numbers upon the island that they far outnumber the inhabitants. In the Piazza is a tablet to Major Hamill, who is buried in the Cathedral, and this serves to remind us that Capri was once held and governed by us for two years and a half, having been captured by Sir Sidney Smith in 1806. In January of that year. Sir Sidney having been promoted Rear-Admiral, hoisted his flag on board the Pompey for service in the Mediterranean, where Lord Collingwood em- ployed him in a detached command upon the coast of Naples. Here he successfully broke the French, incurring at the same time the hostility of the English military officers, and especially of Sir John Moore, who failed to understand the merits of this very egotistical and extrava- gant hero. In the course of his affairs, mostly affairs of outposts, he took in May the island of Capri, which was immediately garrisoned by a detachment of British troops under Sir Hudson Lowe, who thus had considerable experience of an island before he went as Napoleon's keeper to St. Helena. Lowe occupied Capri with head- quarters at the Certosa from June 11, 1806, till October 30, 1808, when after thirteen days' siege, the Malta regiment having been made prisoners at Anacapri and the defences of the town broken, he surrendered the place to General Lamarque, marching out with the garrison and the arms and baggage. Lowe always asserted that this disaster was due to absence of naval support as much as to the misconduct of the Malta regiment. In spite of Napier, who blames him severely, he was probably right, and military opinion would seem to support his contention. Out of the Piazza you pass under an arch to the hotels, and thence by a bridal path up to the ruins of one of the villas of Tiberius, set on a great precipice some 700 feet high, whence, according to Suetonius, Tiberius u§ed to io6 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY have his victims thrown into the sea, where a band of men from the Roman fleet received them, and broke their bones with clubs and oars, lest any life should be left in them. Not far away are the ruins of the Villa Jo vis, above which stands the chapel of S. Maria del Soccorso, which marks the spot where Tiberius, according to Suetonius, had his celebrated encounter with the fisherman. It seems that not long after Tiberius landed in Capri, a fisherman came upon him where he wished to be alone, and presented him with a large mullet, when he com- manded that the man's face should be scrubbed with the fish, for he was terrified when he saw that anyone could approach him unawares. The man expressed his satis- faction that he had not offered the Emperor a large crab which he had also taken ; whereupon Tiberius commanded that his face should also be torn with its claws. I do not know why I am at the trouble of repeating such rubbish, except that to repeat it is to refute it. If the Empire at its very inception had been administered by such methods as these, it would not have endured as it did, nor have been capable as it was of producing the Middle Age and the modern world. Many are the other ruins upon this island and innumer- able are its various delights, and especially its glorious views over the sea and the mainland ; but the most famous spectacle upon the island is the Blue Grotto, usually visited from the steamer, and therefore as good as not seen at all, for it requires time to enjoy it, and that is just what the steamer will not spare. The best way to visit this beautiful cavern and to avoid disappointment, a disappointment most often due to hurry, is to engage a boat at the Marina any tranquil morning and to row past the Baths of Tiberius, whose vast ruins may still be seen from the sea, to the Blue Grotto, a journey of something under an hour. The arch by which one enters the cavern is scarcely three feet high, and it is therefore necessary CAPRI 107 to lie down in the boat as it passes through the low and narrow opening into this cave of marvels. At first nothing remarkable will appear, but little by little, as the eyes accus- tom themselves to the light, the wonderful colour of the grotto will be seen, and after about a quarter of an hour the whole cave will assume an exquisite sapphire blue, especi- ally if the entrance be blocked by another boat. The grotto is about 160 feet by 100 feet, and at its loftiest some 40 feet. To the right is a platform leading to a broken stairway and tunnel in the rock which of old led up to a villa of Tiberius above. This grotto, which is worth any trouble to see in leisurely fashion, is, however, the only one worth a visit upon the island. It makes a delightful giro all a summer morning to voyage in a small boat quite round Capri ; but the Green Grotto, the Red Grotto, and the White Grotto are merely ordinary caves, and require the enlightening imagination to fill them with the various colours of which they boast in their names. He is wise who lets them go and gives himself up to the ordinary delights of the voyage, which, it is needless to'_say, can be extended in what direction you will, to Amalfi or to Ischia, with perfect confidence and safety, so the weather be fair and settled ; for the sailors of Capri are famous, and know the bay as none do on the mainland. And what more delicious way of spending the summer days can there be than in such voyages as these between dawn and ten o'clock, between afternoon and midnight ? VI THE COAST ROAD FROM SORRENTO TO VIETRI, AMALFI, AND RAVELLO IF the road from Castellammare to Sorrento is one of the loveliest in the world, that from Sorrento to Amalfi and on to Vietri beggars description. The way lies first along the road to Castellammare as far as Botteghelle, where it turns uphill suddenly eastward under Vico Alvano, and passing up the loveliest of valleys filled with orange groves and olive gardens climbs through more than one little village till at S. Pietro it suddenly turns the corner of the Colline del Piano, crosses that watershed, and begins to descend towards the Gulf of Salerno. The way so far from Sorrento no words might seem to be lovely enough to describe. It is so full of the softest and most luxurious beauty, heavy with the scent of orange blossom, and noble with groves and gardens, that it seems, what indeed it is, a land of lotus-eaters, where it is always afternoon. All the wonderful luxury and softness disappears, how- ever, immediately the watershed is crossed, and on coming into the Gulf of Salerno, a great rugged and lofty coast stretches out before one, rising steeply and victoriously out of the virile beauty of the sea ; and aloft upon the coast runs the road half-way up between the mountains and the waves, a true corniche suspended as it were over the waters, carved and built out of the cliffs all the way, twenty miles or more to Amalfi, and indeed on to Vietri, within sight of Salerno itself. I know not how best to convey to iq8 FROM SORRENTO TO AMALFI log the reader the vigorous beauty and pleasure of this mar- vellous highway high over the sea winding along the cliffs half-way up, about the mighty headlands and through the steep, half- eastern villages and little towns of this tre- mendous coast. There is nothing else in Italy to compare with it. In its adventurous glory it is to the corniches of the French and Italian Rivieras what the Alps are to the English Downs — it makes a man laugh for joy ; and there the wind comes over the wine-faced sea with all the strength and rapture of old time. Let no one who by hook or by crook can spare two days for complete happiness forgo this glorious way for any other. This is the road to Amalfi : let no one seek out that little great city from La Cava if he can help it, for this is the road at the end of which Amalfi shines like a prize, in the glow of evening, in the pale light of the first stars, in the twilight of the summer night. And there is this too about the road : it alone gives you, and without an afterthought, aU this coast, upon which seems to be graven in white sepulchral hieroglyphic, as upon some marvellous tomb in a garden by the sea, the signature and the epigraph of the Saracen. It is stiU full of the south-east, the white-turbaned pirates, the infidel, and the stranger whose prey it was, it and its city, when Charlemagne was dead or ever the Norman rode into the land. In those little white towns with their shining minarets and their flat roofs and palm trees and agaves you seem to see the ghastly wounds, the cicatrices of the Saracen as certainly as those of the last earthquake. Here Mohammed scrawled his horrid name, and it stiU grins at you like a skull on the forehead of all this country. At Positano, for instance, the first little town upon the road, it is easy to see how first it was all a Marina set about its little bay, a village of fishermen ; but with the advent of the Asiatic once more into this sea, which is the heart of Europe, Positano fled up from the seashore to the summit of the rocky hill, where, though she has in some sort returned to the shore, she still sits enthroned. All no NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY this seems very truly to be summed up and expressed by the curious reHef in the church of S. Maria Assunta there, where was carved a strange sea-monster with the hair of a wolf and the tail of a serpent, swallowing a fish. It is said to be Greek work and to have come from the Temple of Poseidon, which once stood in this place and from which it got its name of Positano ; but since it is so apt and so true in its representation of the pirates, who can believe that it does not refer to them ? Positano in the time of the Angevins became a place of some importance. It was fortified by the great Charles in his struggle with the last of the Hohenstaufen, when the Ghibelline fleet of Pisa attacked the place, stormed and sacked it, and burnt the Angevin shipping ; and thereafter Positano was heard of no more in the greater affairs of the Kingdom. The little town stands high over a great bay round which the road winds in and out and up and down. The head- land which closes this bay upon the east, Capo Sottile, is crowned by the village of Vettica Maggiore and its church of S. Gennaro, in which there is a picture of the Holy Family by some Neapolitan master. Beyond the head- land lies the beautiful village of Prajano amid vineyards and olive gardens, through which the road proceeds still high over the sea under the cliffs of Furore, a wild and romantic village set on the edge of a vast precipice „at the foot of which lies the tiny Marina. Furore stands in a wide rugged bay closed on the east by the curiously shaped Capo della Conca, upon which is piled up the village of Conca with its busy Marina beneath it, whence, it is said, its ships sail to all the ports of the Levant. And so the great adventurous road proceeds along this wild and beautiful coast under the villages of Tovere, Vettica Minore, Lone, and Pastena, down to the shore at last at Amalfi, which it enters through a great tunnel under the Cappuccini. Approached thus at evening, with the last light from the ^ •- ■ «!»;. I I I i I » , I ! i I j-^C^l^^ j>. amat.fi AMALFI III west full upon it, Amalii seems to stand about an amphi- theatre of hills, its churches, towers, and white houses hanging on the face of the great cliff which towers up above it in an awful magnificence, the little white port under the eastern hill, and all before it the enormous and tremulous sea. And on the morrow you find that Amalfi delights you as much in detail as in that great impression in the twilight. The history of the place knows nothing of any Greek or Roman city, and indeed it seems to have had no existence in antiquity. The first we hear of it is in a letter of Gregory the Great's in the year 596, in which he alludes to its bishop. In truth, Amalfi seems to have been founded by — at any rate it first appears under the protection of — the Byzantine Empire. She was then governed by a Prefect chosen apparently by the people, and when by the growth of her population, the activity of her commerce, and the decay of the Imperial power in Italy, the city was able to proclaim herself a Republic, this Prefect is called the Doge. Amalfi is thus one of the first Italian cities to erect herself into a Republic, and indeed she can boast that she gave the signal for the awakening of the municipal spirit, the independence of the cities of Italy. She was able too to defy the Saracens, the Prince of Palermo, and even in some sort the Norman kings of Naples. In the ninth century her great enemy, indeed, would seem to have been Sicardo, the Lombard Prince of Benevento, who in 838 attacked her and carried off her chief treasure, as it was thought, the body of S. Trofimena. It was about this time too that the unbroken line of her bishops began, and in spite of occasional disaster her position grew to be so great that she was not only the fifth city in Italy, but her government extended on the west to the promontory of Sorrento, on the north to Gragnano, and on the east to Cetara, while in 987 Pope John XV raised her See to the rank of an Archbishopric. At this time Amalfi could boast of some 50,000 inhabitants, but the straitness of her territory, and especially its poverty. 112 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY mere rock and mountain, forced her to depend altogether upon trade ; and though this made her wealthy, she was by no means secure. Indeed, though she was able always to face the Norman, in 1131 King Roger received her nominal submission. It happened thus : as long ago as 1075 the little Republic had been oppressed by Gisulfus of Salerno, and had gladly received the aid of Robert Guiscard against her enemy. Robert, however, annexed Amalfi as he did Salerno to his dominions ; but in 1096 the Republic regained her liberty. Then Roger, the son of Robert Guiscard, gathering all his forces, with 20,000 Saracens, laid siege to the place, and failed, owing to the opening of the First Crusade. In 1 1 29, however, he turned again to Amalfi, and sent his Admiral against the Republic, which lost Ravello and all her castles. In 1131 the Amalfitani surrendered, though they guarded carefully their municipal institutions. The Crusades, of which the first had been so lucky for her, offered her her greatest opportunity, and she perhaps gained more than any other Italian city from these adven- tures. She sent expedition after expedition to the Holy Land, and it was a hospital founded by her sons in Jerusalem that was the origin of the Hospitallers of S. John of Jerusalem. In the eleventh century, indeed, Amalfi rivalled Pisa and Genoa, and it was in a quarrel, not her own, with the former of these cities that she lost the most famous of her treasures, the celebrated copy of the Pandects of Justinian. Lothair was in 11 35 at war with Roger of Sicily on behalf of Pope Innocent, and was supported by the Pisans. Roger summoned the Amalfitani with their fleet to attack Naples, and in the course of this attack forty-six Pisan ships sacked Amalfi, Scala, and Ravello ; and though the Norman forces succeeded in breaking them at last, after a hasty return over Monte S. Angelo, they got away, with their famous prize, which they held for three hundred years, until the Florentines took it from them and carried it AMALFI 113 to their city, where it still remains. To this wonderful booty has been attributed the renaissance of Roman law not only in Italy but in all the West. The Pisans had returned from Amalfi discomfited, though with their famous booty ; they were not ready to put up with their defeat. Two years later they returned, and with so great a force that Amalfi made peace and payed tribute without a blow. Ravello, which refused such ignominy, was sacked and pillaged. From this time, indeed from the first surrender six years before to Roger of Sicily, Amalfi began to decline, and this was hastened not by any mortal foe, but by nature herself ; the unstable coast, always subject to earthquake, slowly began now to subside. All through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries this seems to have continued, till more than half the city, all the marina, in fact, was drowned by the sea, and no trace of those once busy quays loaded with the merchandise of the Mediterranean now remains. The one incident of the thirteenth century which calls for any attention was the reception by the Amalfitani of the body of S. Andrew the Apostle, which they placed in their Cathedral. This they did not win in a fight ; it was brought from Constantinople by Pietro Cardinal of Capua, who presented it to his native city. The fourteenth century shows us at least one famous man born in the city, Flavio Gioja, who was the first European to make and use the mariner's compass, which he brought from the East, and in honour of Charles 11 of Anjou, then King of Naples, he placed, as may still be seen, the fleur-de-lis in place of the N. at the top of the dial. Little remains to be seen in Amalfi, which can be said to date from the famous days of the Republic. Perhaps the great round Tower on Monte Aureo is all that may claim that honour, though the convent of S. Trinita and the church of S. Maria Maggiore are said to stand upon the site of two of its public buildings— the mint and the theatre respectively. 8 114 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY The glory of Amalfi, in so far as it is to be found not in her history but in her monuments, is the great Cathedral of S. Andrew, where in the crypt lies the uncorrupt body of the Apostle brought from Constantinople in 1206. The glorious church, marred of course by time, by restoration and rebuildings, stands at the top of a great flight of steps, which lead up to its vestibule, upheld by the antique columns of Paestum. There in the fa9ade are those wonder- ful bronze doors which are said to date from the year 1000, and from which those of Monte Cassino were copied. Upon them we read, however, in the silver inscription which adorns them, that they were erected here by Pantaleone di Mauro in honour of S. Andrew et pro anima sua ; but the body of S. Andrew was only brought to Amalfi in 1206. The church itself is, in spite of all it has suffered, still a beautiful Norman-Byzantine building, rather picturesque than artistic, the antique columns within, modernized and transformed into pillars in the eighteenth century. The two ancient ambones supported by antique columns remain, as does the font, an antique vase of porphyry. Close by are two antique sarcophagi, upon which are to be seen the Rape of Persephone and other pagan stories. From the too sophisticated nave you descend, in the south aisle, to the modernized and over-decorated cr57pt, where lies the body of S. Andrew the Apostle, a precious relic visited through the centuries by innumerable pilgrims, among others by S. Francis of Assisi in 1218, by Queen Giovanna, and by Pius 11, in whose time Cardinal Bessarion carried away the head of the Apostle in a silver reliquary to S. Peter's in Rome, where it still remains. Philip iii of Spain presented the church with the huge bronze statue of the saint, the work of Nacchearino. To the north of the church stands the interesting cloister. The beautiful Campanile of four stories, the last being round, under a cupola upheld by columns, and set about with four little turrets, was the work, of the Archbishop Filippo Augus- tariccio in 1276. RAVELLO 115 The Cathedral, spoiled though it be and crippled too, for the nave has now but three aisles instead of four, is of course the greatest sight in Amalfi, though both S. Gradello and S. Lorenzo are worth perhaps a visit. The only other work of art in the place, however, that no one should miss is the old and, alas, desecrated convent of the Cappuccini, now an hotel, high up to the west of the city. The convent was founded in 1212 by the same Cardinal Capuano who presented the body of S. Andrew to Amalfi. Therein he placed the Cistercians of Fosanova, and later the Emperor Frederick 11 endowed the place. In the fifteenth century, however, the Cistercians abandoned it, and for more than a hundred years it fell into ruin, till in 1583 the people of Amalfi restored it and gave it to the Cappuccini. When they were suppressed in 1815 this convent became a hostelry, but in 1850 they rescued it again, only for a time, however, for with the advent of the Piedmontese the place became a naval college, and is now, as we see, once more a hostelry, and a very charming one to boot. The only monumental interest the place has for us to-day is to be found in the double cloisters, a striking example of thir- teenth-century work, very much influenced, one may suppose, by the work in the cloister of the Cathedral. A far more splendid church than any in Amalfi is to be seen at Ravello, some four miles up the Dragone Valley to the north-east upon the hills. It seems that the RepubUc of Amalfi in its great days was somewhat t57ranni- cal in its domestic government, and especially with regard to the old noble families, which were numerous, and always awaiting an opportunity to make themselves masters. The Government at length turned them out, and they fortified themselves upon this hill-top at Ravello, which presently saw a city of some 36,000 inhabitants, walled and very strong, established here. When the Amalfitani fought with Robert Guiscard the nobles of Ravello took his part, and when at last he was victorious he besought Pope Victor iii to make Ravello into a Bishopric without ii6 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Amalfi, and this the Pope did, making Ravello subject only to the Holy See. The greatest among the noble famihes that had estab- lished Ravello had been that of Rufolo, and in 1087 at the head of it stood that Niccolo Rufolo who was Duke of Dora and Grand Admiral to Roger of Sicily ; to him and his descendants all that is loveliest in Ravello to-day is due. Niccolo himself, it is said in 1087, founded the great Cathedral on the hill-top, which was restored in the eighteenth century, but remains, nevertheless, one of the noblest churches in this part of Italy. A fine Norman Byzantine building, it still preserves its two great central doors of bronze, though it has lost those on either side. These famous doors, with their fifty-four relief s,were given to thechurchby Sergio Muscetola andhiswife in 1179. They are, I think, without equal in the Italian peninsula ; the beauty and delicacy of their work, its extraordinary distinction and style, mark them out as the master- works of their kind in the twelfth century ; indeed, they can only be compared with the doors of the Cathedrals of Trani and Monreale. Nor is this all. Within the church are marvellous ambones encrusted with mosaics. That from which the Gospel was said is supported by six spiral columns set upon the backs of lions, and before it is a small pillar bear- ing an eagle for the book of the Gospels, and there is written In principio erat Verbum. It is reached by a staircase of marble encrusted with mosaics. This ambone was erected, as the inscription records, by Niccolo Rufolo, a descendant of the Admiral of King Roger, and was made by Niccolo di Bartolommeo da Foggia in 1272. Opposite this glorious work is the earlier and finer Epistle ambone with its beautiful Byzantine mosaics of Jonah and the monster. It dates from 1130. Other mosaics are to be found now about the Bishop's throne ; they once formed part of the high altar. Nothing to be seen anywhere else in Campania can com- pare in beauty and splendour and delight with these truly RAVELLO 117 marvellous works, the glorious doors and pulpits of the Cathedral of Ravello. With them in our hearts, the work of later masters seems to have suddenly become common and obvious, and without any right understanding of decoration or beauty. To these great Byzantine works even Giotto might go to school. Scarcely less interesting or delightful in its own way is the beautiful Palazzo Rufolo close by, with its curious twelfth- century court, its gardens and terraces, from which the view is so lordly that even Niccolo Rufolo must have been satisfied with it. Here our English Pope, Hadrian iv of S. Albans, dwelt when in 1156 he came to Ravello and sang Mass in the Cathedral before the six hundred nobles of the place, thirty-six of which were Knights of S. John of Jerusalem. Three other churches in Ravello, which is now a mere village, are worth seeing : S. Giovanni for the sake of its fine ambone, upheld by four columns and encrusted with mosaics similar to those in the Duomo ; the Annunziata for the sake of its curious early frescoes; and S. Chiara for its view down the valley of the Dragon. Nor should you return to Amalfi until you have followed the road by which you have come a mile and a half beyond Ravello to Scala, which of old was walled with a wall of a hundred towers and boasted more than a hundred churches, before it was overthrown by the Pisans in the twelfth century, as I have said. The Cathedral here, for Scala too had a Bishop independent of the Archbishop of Amalfi, has another beautiful ambone, though not half so fine as those at Ravello, and in the sacristy is a beautiful mitre of the thirteenth century, presented to Scala by the great Charles of Anjou in recompense and gratitude for the services of the citizens during S. Louis's expedition against the Moors. Indeed, these hills are very rich in beautiful things, and the traveller who visits S. Pietro a Castagna on the way back to Amalfi, and Pontone, where Masaniello is said to have been bom, or climbs up to S. Maria de* Monti, will not have spent his time in vain. ii8 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY The coast road from Amalfi to Vietri, though by no means so fine as that from Sorrento to Amalfi, is, neverthe- less, a very glorious thing. Here the little towns lie nearer the sea, as does the road itself, and the country lacks the boldness of the more western part of the coast. The first of these little towns is Atrani, upon the eastern side of the Capo di Amalfi, and close to the sea. It was of old a confederate city, strongly walled, with Amalfi, and it perished in the same misfortune. The great church of S. Salvatore in the Piazza has very fine bronze doors, Byzantine work of the eleventh century, though not so fine as those of Ravello. Here the Doges were elected, and here they were for the most part buried. Within are still some beautiful sepulchral stones. Still within the ancient territory of Amalfi you come to a delicious little place called Minori, with some remains of its old fortifications, especially a picturesque tower upon the headland. The church, too, possesses a fine pulpit similar to that at Scala. Farther, but still a part of the old Republic, all about the mouth of the Val Tramonti stands the very eastern- looking town of Majori, with its fine old walls and towers still mor€ or less intact, and above on the hills ruins of Castello di S. Niccolo, of S. Maria dell' Avvocata, a Camaldo- lese monastery founded in the fifteenth century, and of the old Badia, where are still some curious frescoes. The coast beyond Majori becomes bolder and wilder, the finest part of the road lying between Majori and Vietri, where the chief place is Cetara, that nest of the Saracens, which marked the eastern confines of the Republic of Amalfi. After rounding the Capo d'Orso, the city of Salerno shines before you upon the opposite coast of the great Gulf ; but I think the wise traveller will refuse her invitation, and at Vietri, the ancient Marcina, will take the road away from the sea up the valley northward to Cava, a clean and deUghtful place with more than one comfortable hostelry, such as Salerno cannot boast. VII LA CAVA AND SALERNO LA CAVA DEI TIRRENI is a picturesque little place, consisting for the most part of one long arcaded street and a few piazzas, in which stand some rather gaunt churches. The town is set in a vast amphitheatre of broken hills 600 feet above the sea, over a delicious and fruitful valley, and it gets its name of Cava from the famous monastery of SS. Trinita della Cava. This great Cluniac house lies more than an hour away from the town to the south-west, and in another valley, being shut off from Cava by a formidable barrier of hills. The great abbey was founded by Alferio Pappacarbone, of a noble Longobard family of Salerno, in 992. He, it seems, fell ill at Cluny, and there made a vow that if he got well he would become a monk and would build an abbey in honour of the Blessed Trinity and for the glory of the great Order of Cluny, not then a hundred years old. Returning to Salerno he fulfilled his vow, and founded in this place the abbey we see, the older part of which was finished in 1025. Alferio became the first Prior, but did not live to see the consecration of his church by Pope Urban 11 in the presence of Roger of Sicily, the very church which was so brutally rebuilt in 1796. There, however, he was buried, as was Sibilla, the sister of the Duke of Burgundy, the second wife of King Roger ; their sarcophagi may still be seen. Here, too, is a fine ambone and paschal candlestick, noble Cosmati works from the old building. The most interesting part of the monastery to-day, 119 120 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY however, is not the church, but the older parts of the house itself, and the curious cloisters under the great cliff with their pointed vaults and round arches borne by many an antique column. The older part of the house is, as one sees, built under the rock, and is really a part of the great natural cavern which names the place. The great treasure of La Cava, that to which it owes all its fame, is its vast archives, which contain some 40,000 parchments, among them more than 1600 Diplomas and Bulls, and over 60,000 other documents. Many of these concern the primitive and mediaeval history of Italy, and La Cava is at least as rich as Montecassino in historical documents of the first importance from 793 to 1400. In the library, too, is a fine collection of illuminated Bibles and Horae, one of which is said to be the work of Fra Angelico. Attractive as La Cava is with this great religious house and its treasures in the background, it will not keep the traveller long from Salerno, which can be reached from thence in about half an hour by an electric tramway. Salerno to-day is a squalid but picturesque town, beauti- fully situated within the northern curve of the ancient gulf of Poseidonia, now called by its name, the Gulf of Salerno. Little remains of the old splendour of the place, but it is worth some trouble to see on account of its Cathedral, and perhaps most of all for the sake of its ancient renown. For in truth it is a very ancient place, beside which La Cava and Amalfi and Ravello are but newcomers. We know nothing of its origin, but in 194 B.C. a Roman colony was established in what Livy calls Castrum Salemi, so that evidently before that date there was a fortress here. Indeed, the Roman colony was, as Strabo tells us, established there for the express purpose of holding the Picentines in check, for they had eagerly espoused the cause of Hannibal. They had, it seems, a town in this neighbour- hood called Picentia ; its ruins may still be seen or at least its site inspected at Pontecagnano in the plain to the south SALERNO 121 of Salerno.^ This was destroyed, and Salerno became the chief place upon the north of the Gulf, though even so it was not of any great importance. Indeed, its name appears but once in history, and that in the Social War when it was taken by the Samnite General, Caius Papius. Later, Horace speaks of it in writing to his friend, Numonius Vala, and asks about its climate — Quae sit hiemps Veliae, quod caelum, Vala, Salerni . . . It was not indeed until long after the failure of the Roman administration in the time of the Lombard conquest that Salerno became the most important and flourishing city upon this coast, and one of the greatest and richest cities in Campania. This city of the Lombards, like its Roman predecessor, stood not as the modem town does, for the most part in the marshy plain along the shore, but upon the hill at the back of the city, and doubtless its nucleus was the Cathedral. It was here that the Lombards established themselves, and here that upon the dissolution of the Lombardy Duchy of Benevento Salerno became an independent principality. The Duchy of Benevento in the ninth century, it will be remembered, split up first into two parts, an eastern and a western, the western under the name of the Principality of Salerno. But soon after this the Count of Capua threw off his allegiance to the Prince of Salerno, so that the old Duchy of Benevento was presently represented by three independent states. In the awful revolutions of the succeeding two hundred years, when I suppose Europe more nearly foundered than ever before or since, Salerno played a very considerable part. It was then that the Saracens issued from the port of Palermo to raid these Christian coasts, their assistance as often as not invited by the rivals now facing each other in the old Lombard Duchy. A colony of Saracens had been planted at Bari. Their universal depredations united 1 The village of Vicenza still remains there. Its railway station is S. Antonio a Vicenza. 122 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY east and west against them, and Bari was taken, but the alHes soon quarrelled, the Carlovingian house decayed, and the Greeks claimed the fruits of the common victory. Everything south of a line drawn from Monte Gargano to Salerno, that is to say, all Calabria and Apulia, remained under their dominion, and the Lombard princes of Bene- vento, Salerno, and Capua were thus torn from the allegiance of the Latin world, but the Greeks could only hold their own against the Ottos by the help of the Saracen, and in the struggle we find Salerno besieged by these Asiatics in 874, when a Mohammedan Chief spread his couch on the high altar of the Cathedral, and there sacrified each night the virginity of a Christian nun. But we read, " As he wrestled with a reluctant maid a beam in the roof was accidently or dexterously thrown down on his head ; and the death of the lustful emir was imputed to the wrath of Christ, which was at length awakened to the defence of his faithful spouse." Thus the broken provinces of the Greeks, the Lombards and the Saracens submitted to an unspeakable anarchy in which, as I say, Europe and even her Faith was in obvious danger. Little by little the future declared itself. In 1016 it seems a Saracen fleet was besieging Salerno, when forty knights from Normandy arrived in the city, having disembarked in the neighbourhood on their return from the Holy Land. Hearing that the city was hard pressed, they offered their services, and having saved the town, and beaten off the pirates, they returned to Normandy laden with rich presents, promising in return to persuade their countrymen to come down into the South, and to help to redeem Italy from the infidel. They came, as we know, and before the year was out they rode, a great company of them, right into Apulia, and before many years had passed, partly by valour and partly by sagacity, made themselves masters. In 1029 Aversa was their nest, whence they set out to possess Sicily and Southern Italy. They placed themselves and SALERNO 123 their territory at first under the suzerainty of the Prince of Salerno (1042), but the genius of Robert Guiscard wrung from the Papacy a new honour and a new title in 1060, and after a siege of eight months, from May to December, the city of Salerno came into his hands in 1076, and the new Kingdom, that which our fathers knew as the King- dom of the Two Sicilies, was complete, the parliament of Barons which declared him King being held within the walls of Salerno in 1130. When Guiscard possessed himself of Amalfi, his state of course reaped the riches of her trade ; by the acquisition of Salerno he obtained a perhaps not less valuable booty. The treasures of Greek medicine had there found a refuge in the years of the anarchy. They owed nothing whatever to the barbarous Saracens, as has been maintained by many historians. Medicine was a Greek Science, and it probably found a refuge in Salerno, because of the survival of the Greek language in this region, of which that city was the metro- polis. Salerno, indeed, went back to Hippocrates without the insolent assistance of the Arab ; its learning was as famous as the beauty of its women : Urbs Latii non est hac delitiosior urbe, Frugibus arboribus vinoque redundat ; et unde Non tibi poma, nuces, non pulchra palatia desunt, Non species muliebris abest probitasque virorum. . . . And Ordericus Vitalis tells us that the medical school of Salerno existed ah antiquo tempore. Certainly, in the tenth century, the place was famous for its physicians, and we possess works of the medical writers of Salerno, dating from the early part of the eleventh. This school, then, the Norman conquerors, and not least Robert Guiscard, protected, though it was Frederick 11 who first gave it by his edict of 1231 the power of examining candidates for the royal licence, which he made com- pulsory for the practice of medicine. It was a school of medicine, not a university. Mr. Rashdall tells us: 124 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY " Salerno remains a completely isolated factor in the academic polity of the Middle Ages. While its position as a School of Medicine was for two centuries at least as unique as that of Paris in Theology, and that of Bologna in Law, while throughout the Middle Ages no School of Medicine, except Montpelier, rivalled its fame, it remained without influence on the development of academic insti- tutions." If Frederick ii conferred a great benefit upon the school of Salerno, he did no more than was due to her from one of his house, for his father, when he claimed the crown of the Two Sicilies, by virtue of his marriage with Con- stance, daughter of King Roger, razed the city to the ground in 1198. It was rebuilt, but it never again played any great part in history, its claim to honour during the Middle Age being entirely due to its great School of Medicine, which alone could grant, as I have said, the right to practise the art within the Kingdom. To-day the old city of Salerno has but one thing to boast of, its Cathedral. The modern town, the great promenade of the Marina, now called Corso Garibaldi, is more than a mile long, and fine as it is lacks interest. The harbour which Manfred enlarged in 1260, and which was finished by Robert the Wise, has been improved out of all recognition, and the great Castello which Robert Guiscard stormed, some 900 feet up over the sea, is a mere vast heap of ruins. The old town under this enor- mous debris is, however, picturesque and dirty enough to delight anyone, its irregular, narrow, and steep streets, often mere staircases, being full of mediaeval corners, old shrines, and old memories. It is here in the midst, with its great and beautiful atrium before it, is set the Cathedral, at the top of a great flight of steps. This great and glorious church was founded and built by Robert Guiscard in 1084 in honour of S. Matthew, whose body Salerno had possessed since 930, when it is said to have been brought hither from Paestum, and which SALERNO 125 Robert placed in the crypt, where it remains to this day. The Norman, whose works always astonish us, had seen and adored the ruins of Paestum, and these too he plun- dered for the glory of the new church. The great atrium before the Cathedral is entirely surrounded by antique columns brought from Poseidonia, but either from pity or from ignorance the building that was plundered to provide them was not one of those majestic temples we owe to- the Greek genius, but a mere Roman work. Here are its columns and sarcophagi, the latter converted into Christian tombs. The church itself is guarded by marvellous doors of bronze, presented by Landolfo Butromile, and made in Constantinople in 1099. They are wonderfully adorned with the figures of six apostles and with crosses, and were once all inlaid with silver. Within, unhappily, the church we see is altogether unworthy of these glories, for it has been entirely modernized. It still retains, however, certain noble ornaments from of old and its tombs. Over the great doors within is a fine mosaic of S. Matthew, a Byzantine work of the eleventh century. At the end of the nave are two beautiful Byzantine ambones, with a noble paschal candlestick, similar to those at Ravello, though not so fine, dating from the twelfth century. In the choir is a pavement, a balustrade, and a Bishop's throne of similar work, and here are two columns of verde antico from Paestum, now bearing lights. At the end of the left aisle is the very lovely Gothic tomb of Margaret of Anjou, who died in 1412, the wife of Charles of Durazzo, and the mother of King Ladislaus and of Giovanna 11, the work of Baboccio da Pipemo. She Hes under a canopy supported by angels, while a relief upon a sarcophagus shows her enthroned among her children. Above all, the tomb is interesting for its poly- chrome decoration, which is almost entirely preserved. Close by is the tomb of a Bishop of Salerno, Niccolo PisciceUi, by Jacopo della Pila, another work of the 126 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY fifteenth century. The chapel at the end of this aisle to the left of the high altar contains a Pieta by Andrea da Salerno. In the similar chapel to the right of the high altar lies the greatest of all the Popes, Hildebrand Pope Gregory vii. This was he who in the eleventh century conceived that wonderful dream which only the brutality of the time prevented him from realizing to our lasting good. He it was who would have summoned an army from all Christendom, which he would have led in person to the conquest of Byzantium, that the Greek and Latin Churches might have been united under one head ; and this having been achieved, all Christendom under his leadership would have turned upon the Saracen and restored the Empire of Augustus and of Hadrian and of Constantine. In that dream lay all the future of which even now, now least of all, should we despair. The Pope forewent his dream. Instead, seeing the corruption of the world he began the reformation of the West. And first he made an army that nothing has ever been able to break, for he made it in a white fire and of steel. He established the celibacy of the clergy, created the priest- hood of Europe, and forbade alike the investiture of a married clergyman or any layman to any spiritual ofiice. Then he claimed for the Church an absolute independence from the temporal power of Caesar ; more, he declared and maintained the supremacy of the Church over the State, and all this he made good ; and over all shone the throne of Peter like the sun over the world. For he claimed and maintained and established the infallibility of the Pope ; he asserted and erected the name of Pope as incomparable with any other ; the Pope alone could make and depose an Emperor ; all Princes must kiss his feet ; he could release from their allegiance the subjects of those whom he had excommunicated, and his legates took precedence over all Bishops and all ambassadors. The first to face him and say him nay was the Emperor ; at Canossa he was broken and humbled in the snow. SALERNO 127 It was Hildebrand alone who flung his Europe upon the Holy Sepulchre. But when he died in Salerno, having given a general absolution to mankind, but excepting from this act of mercy Henry, so-called the King, and the usurp- ing pontiff Gilbert and their abettors, his last words were : " I have loved justice and hated iniquity ; therefore I die in exile." He had not lived in vain, since there was one to answer : "In exile thou canst not die ! Vicar of Christ and His Apostles thou hast received the nations for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." This man, who more than any other before or since has expressed and summed up the soul of the Church and of Europe, was the son of a poor carpenter ; but his name is like a light in heaven ; when it was extinguished, the kings crept out into their twilight. Here in Salerno let us salute him. VIII EBOLI AND P^STUM THE great spectacle which La Cava or Salerno usually affords the traveller, which for the most part is the reason for a visit to them, is the Greek Temples of Psestum, twenty-four miles to the south of Salerno in the malarious marsh by the low seashore that stretches from Monte Giove on the north to Agropoli on the south. The traveller usually leaves La Cava or Salerno in the morning, spends the best part of the day at Psestum, and returns in time for dinner ; and this procedure, unsatisfactory as it is, for it not only forces one to see those marvellous sanctuaries in the com- pany of a crowd of tourists and in the ugliest hours of the day, but entails a journey of not much less than two hours each way, is generally considered necessary, on account of the unhealthy and malarious situation of Paestum itself, which for this reason is without an inn, or indeed any decent habitation. Psestum, however, is worth any sort of trouble to see quietly, apart from the crowd, and best of all in the early morning, and therefore I determined not to follow the usual plan, but to go to Eboli overnight, and to drive thence at dawn some fifteen miles across the oak forest of Persano down the valley of the Sele to Psestum shining in the rising sun.^ Nor was I disappointed. Eboli 1 The traveller who wishes to see the Temples alone need not go to the expense of this long drive. He can easily go into Battipaglia from Eboli, some four miles, in time to catch the early morning train for Paestum, which leaves Battipaglia at 6.17 a.m., arriving at Paestum before 7 o'clock, (28 EBOLI AND P^STUM 129 itself, the ancient Eburum, on the hills to the north-east of the great Pianura di Pesto, I found to be full of interest. This almost unvisited little town boasts a quite possible hostelry in the Albergo Pastore, and from the grand old Castello offers the traveller glorious views of the great mountains and over the forest and the plain to the far-away temples and the sea. Nor is it itself without treasures. In the church of S. Francesco, in the sacristy, there is to be seen a large picture of the Madonna and Child, an altar- piece by Andrea da Salerno, to say nothing of a Cruci- fixion by Roberto Oderisi, the fourteenth-century pupil it might seem of Simone Napoletano. The road from Eboli to Passtum, very early in the morning, is full of delight. The forest of Persano was of old of much greater extent and beauty than it is to-day ; but in 1746 all the Bosco Grande was destroyed by fire : what remains is a vast ruin of the great forest of the Silarus of which Virgil speaks : — Est lucos Silari circa ilicibusque virentem Plurimiis Alburnum volitans cui nunen asilo Romanum est, oestrum Graii vertere vocantes Asper, acerba sonans quo tota exterrita silvis Diffugiunt armenta . . ." ^ I don't know of any more graphic description of the mosquito, which of course still abounds in all this country : in Virgil's lines one can almost hear the small sharp drone of the dangerous little beast. Coming out of the forest, the road from Eboli joins the high road southward from Battipaglia across the half- drained marsh where of old great herds of buffalo used to ^ " About the groves of Silarus and Albumus, where holm-oaks flourish, an insect flies often : we Romans call it asilus, the Greeks gave it another name, oestros ; a stinging fly buzzing with sharp sound, thereat terrified all the herds scatter in flight through the woods ..." Strabo also speaks of the unheg^lthiness qi the plain of Paestum. 130 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY wander, a few of which still remain. These beasts are not native to Italy, or indeed to Europe. They were brought by the Saracens into Sicily, and thence into the peninsula by the Normans. In the year 1300 Filippo di Taranto gave all the marsh on the right bank of the Silarus, or Sele as it is now caUed, to the people of Eboli as pasturage for their buffalo, and the marsh to the east of the river to the people of Capaccio for the same purpose. The marsh-land suited the brutes very well, and one may measure the success of the drainage of the plain by the extent to which the oxen have replaced the wilder and inferior beast. The country here is still brutalized by the marsh, almost unpopulated, and extraordinarily melancholy. It is with relief that soon after crossing the Sele one sees still far off the ruins of Paestum, and with delight one presently passes a lonely farm at the gates of the forgotten city, where as by a miracle roses are blooming, the twice blossoming roses perhaps of which Virgil sings, or were they the eglantine ? — . . . biferi rosaria Psesti. But not the wild desolation of the plain, nor its silence, nor its shadowy light, prepare one in any way at all for that vision of splendour and sadness which it still guards so well. One enters the gate of the desolate city, and there within the low overgrown far-stretched walls of the place, in the immense silence of early morning, in the clear and tender light beside the sea, three temples stand that in their mysterious isolation and tragic beauty are like something wholly divine, at one with the sky and the earth and the sea, from which indeed they come, out of which they were hewn, and in honour of which they still stand, abandoned by man, after centuries of silence, in so great majesty. Within a great walled pentagon, near three miles in circumference, they are alone with the sun, the wind, and the sea. What can the city have been like which boasted such sanctuaries as these ? It cannot have been less, P.ESTUM 131 one might think, than the capital of Magna Graecia, beside which Cuma was a provincial town and Neapolis a village. Indeed, Poseidonia was but a colony, the colony of Sybaris. Its foundation dates from about 650 B.C. The Dorians of Troezen, who had been associated with the Achaeans in the foundation of Sybaris upon the shores of the Ionian Sea, in what we now call the Gulf of Taranto, were it seems so numerous that in course of time their descendants formed ^o great a party within the city as to threaten its character, therefore the Sybarites turned them out while they could, and established them in a new colony here at the mouth of the Silarus, upon the Tyrrhene Sea. Thus Sybaris early established her power upon the two coasts, and since the God of the Dorians of Troezen was above all Poseidon, they named the new city after him, placing it under his protection, and called it Poseidonia ; and until the ruin of Sybaris at the hands of Cotrone, in 510 B.C., Poseidonia looked to her as a daughter to a mother, as a provincial city to the metropolis, paying an annual tribute and contributing soldiers for her armies in case of need, as did indeed twenty-five other free cities. Thus Sybaris estabhshed her power upon the Tyrrhene Sea, and to such purpose that when the Phocaeans came to build the city of Velia, the only city save Cuma, the oldest of all, founded upon this coast not as a colony but as a new settlement, she with Poseidonia looked upon it as a usurpation of her territory, and instantly made war, which Poseidonia con- tinued even after the ruin of Sybaris, though without the old success. Indeed, under the hegemony of Sybaris, Poseidonia flourished exceedingly : she firmly established herself as the great city of the Gulf we call of Salerno, but which in the sixth century B.C. took its name from her, and which even the Romans continued to call Pcestanus Sinus. Sybaris ceased to exist, however, in 510 B.C., and it has been suggested that the bulk of its population migrated to Poseidonia. History, such history as we have, however, 132 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY by no means endorses such a theory. Indeed, we know so little of Poseidonia at any time, and especially after the destruction of Sybaris, that but for her marvellous ruins and the large number of her coins that have been found, we should scarcely be sure of her continued existence. It seems certain, however, that she was one of the first cities to suffer from the advance of the Lucanians, and she probably fell altogether into the hands of these barbarians before 390 B.C. At this time the Greeks do not seem to have been expelled, but they were compelled to receive a barbarian colony within the city and to submit to its authority. For ages, it is said, the Greeks of Poseidonia would assemble every year upon a certain festival, and bewaihng their captivity remember the great days of their fathers. But there seems little doubt that some two generations after the fall of the city it was retaken from the barbarians by Alexander, King of Epirus, in 330 B.C., and it is probable that it was he who built the walls we still see. They would appear to have availed the city very little, and when Alexander was gone Poseidonia again fell into the hands of the barbarians, and with the rest of Lucania came at last into the power of Rome. It would appear to have been at this time that the great city changed her name and became Paistum. This name, we may think, was not the oldest of all, for the (Enotrians before the Greeks came to the land had here perhaps a village, perhaps a town, which they called Viistos or Fiistos, and this became for the Lucanians Paistum, and for the Romans Paestum. The Romans estabHshed a colony in the city in 273 B.C., immediately after the departure of P3n:rhus from Italy ; but we hear as little of Roman Paestum as we do of Greek Poseidonia. All we know for certain is that it distinguished itself above every other Greek city by its fidelity to Rome during the Second Punic War, and this probably because it was no longer Greek. In the first years of the Empire certainly it was already unhealthy by reason of the silting PiESTUM 133 up of the mouth of the small river upon which it stood ; it presently boasted a bishop, and certainly continued to exist down to the ninth century, when the site seems to have been abandoned, the inhabitants moving to Capaccio, a few miles inland upon the hills, on account of the raids of the Saracens, who had established them- selves at AgropoH. It is probable that the See was re- moved to Capaccio at the same time, but the bishop continued to bear the title of PcBstano until the end of the eleventh century, although Paestum had long before then become a desert. It would certainly seem that that emigration was really a flight, for the Paestani abandoned even their most precious possession, the body of S. Matthew in their cathedral church. In the year 954 the people of Salerno found it and stole it away, but they lost it. When by a miracle it was recovered, Robert Guiscard, as I have said, caused to be built as its shrine and in its honour the noble church in Salerno whose spoiled beauty we see to this day. In that work he employed the loot of the forgotten city, but whether from ignorance or super- stition, certainly by good fortune, he carried away the marble and the stones of a mere Roman building, leaving the Greek temples almost intact in an inviolable silence that endured for more than six hundred years. Indeed, it is surely one of the most extraordinary facts in the history of archaeology that these enormous and majestic ruins, though less than twenty- five miles from Salerno and less than four from Capaccio, an episcopal city, remained entirely unknown to the Middle Age and the Renaissance, nay, until the middle of the eighteenth century, when about 1740 they were discovered by a certain Conte Gazola, to be first accurately described by Swinburne in 1779, and first mapped by Wilkins in 1807 ; and yet the largest temple of the three is the best preserved Doric building in existence, and in its beauty and majesty rivals the Parthenon itself. 134 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY The three temples stand within the ruined walls in a rough and stony place strewn with the debris of other buildings, and overgrown with brambles and wild flowers, and among them perhaps the twice-blossoming roses for which the place was famous. The two principal temples stand close together to the south, their fagades facing the agora, or market-place, the consecrated open space which in coast towns usually lay on the sea side of the city. The greater of the two temples, the Temple of Poseidon, is also the most ancient. Before it stands a platform in the midst of which we still see the foundations of the altar of sacrifice, for such bloody rites were not performed within the sanctuary but in the open air. The great building stands 58 metres long by 26 broad. The fagades east and west consist of six mighty columns which uphold the architrave, and there are twelve upon each of the sides north and south, in all thirty-six columns, 5 metres 90 high and 2 metres 27 in diameter. The cella, or sanctuary, within is open to the sky, and consists of sixteen columns about 2 metres in diameter, surmounted by a second order of smaller columns, which bore the roof of the aisles. All these columns are intact save upon one side, where the smaller columns of the upper story have disappeared ; but the walls of the cella have been demolished. Although this mighty work, so nearly perfect, impresses one at once by its noble size and the beauty of its proportions, it seems less splendid than it is, because it is not built of marble but of stone. Of old, indeed, these enormous fluted columns of the Doric order, the shafts without a base resting immediately upon the stylobate, and diminish- ing in diameter from about one- quarter of their height to the top, were covered with a fine stucco which gave them the appearance of the finest marble, but this has nearly everjrwhere perished, and with it the beautiful polychrome ornamentation with which it was once enriched. But the absence of such ornamentation only enhances the impression of weight and power which P4 G < w Q P.ESTUM 135 everyone receives from these indestructible sanctuaries. No wonder Roger of Normandy used the Roman buildings here for his quarries ; before these enormous and heroic stones he was helpless, he could neither move them nor use them in the buildings he was busy upon, which they would have dwarfed and made ridiculous. In their beauty and their strength they remain forever as though the sea and the earth had raised them in their own honour, as though indeed they were the work of nature rather than of man. And it is in truth in honour of the sea, of Poseidon, God of the Sea, that this the greatest of the three temples still stands there upon that lonely and desolate coast. In the name of that God to whom the city was dedicated, the men of Poseidonia raised it to Poseidon in the first half of the sixth century before Christ. It is therefore not only perhaps the most beautiful, but certainly one of the most ancient Doric buildings left to us in the world. The second temple, which stands beside it to the south, is a later work. Not only are its dimensions somewhat smaller, it measures 54 metres 33 in length and 24 metres 50 in breadth, but its columns are both smaller and more numerous, and its form is altogether different. Upon either side north and south it numbers sixteen columns, and upon each of its fagades east and west there are nine columns, an uneven number, so that a column stands right in the midst of the entry. The whole temple would seem to have been built really as an experiment which was never repeated. Its peculiar form gives us its secret. It has been called a Basilica, but its double form of two parallel naves divided by the uneven number of the columns of its two fa9ades suggests at once that it was dedicated to a dual divinity, and we know of only one such in all the mythology of the Greeks, the mother and daughter Demeter and Persephone. This both the discoveries of statuettes in terra-cotta made in 1820 beside this temple and the coins of Poseidonia confirm, while we know that the Dorians of Troezen 136 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY associated the two Goddesses of the Earth with the God of the Sea, and held them in scarcely less honour. The third temple, which stands at a considerable dis- tance to the north of its fellows, is much the smallest of the three, and would seem to offer an insoluble problem to the archaeologist who would discover in whose honour it was built. It can only be called the small temple. It measures 32 metres 25 in length by 14 metres 25 in width. It consists of thirty-two columns, of which six appear in each of its fa9ades east and west, and while its beauty is very great it is of a less primitive kind than that of the two greater works. They date respectively from the early sixth and early fifth centuries B.C. ; this last temple cannot be much earlier than the end of the latter century, or perhaps the beginning of the fourth century, when Poseidonia had become Paistum and was, under the Lucanians, already a city half barbarian, where neverthe- less, as this temple shows, Greek manners and Greek art still prevailed and were able to find noble expression. Between this last temple and the Temple of Poseidon are the ruins of other buildings which would seem to date only from Roman times, and to be the stones of a theatre, of an amphitheatre, and of the platform of a very small temple. These were the buildings looted by Roger of Sicily for his Cathedral of S. Matthew at Salerno. But these may well be disregarded, and such tirne as can be spared from the temples themselves spent in an examination of the walls, huge masses of travertine in places over 12 feet high, dating from the time of Alexander of Epirus, and especially upon the eastern gate, the only one of the four which remains almost perfect and nearly 50 feet high. When all is said, however, the delight of Paestum lies in its appeal to the eye, in the sheer beauty of those golden buildings shining there in the dawn between the great moun- tains and the sea in the midst of the wide plain, deserted and silent, where only the sun and the wind are at home. IX INTO CALABRIA FEW travellers, I suppose, get farther south than Paestum upon this coast. It is a pity. The lonely majesty of those indestructible ruins should encourage one to penetrate farther, but the desolate aspect of the country, as seen from Paestum, the silence or vagueness of the guide-books about it, the absence of good modem inns, above all, perhaps, the fear of malaria, prevent the traveller in any impulse he may have to journey into the South, and so he turns back from Psestum towards Naples without adventuring into what, when aU is said, is by no means the least interesting, and certainly not the least beautiful, part of a country which from top to toe is all compact with delight. It was my good fortune to explore the South with two companions whom I had lured upon this adventure ; to journey, sometimes on foot, sometimes by public auto- mobile, sometimes by train, for the distances were too great and time too precious to allow of our going all the way by road, through the provinces of Calabria and Apulia. The country had, we knew, many extraordinary attractions, the chief of which was, of course, that here the Greeks established their great cities, which all together were known as Magna Graecia, of which Paestum formed a part ; but there were Roman and mediaeval memories too, and the natural beauty of the Basilicata and Calabria, of their broken and steep sea-coasts, of the great mountains of the Sila and the Aspromonte, together with their almost com- 137 138 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY plete isolation from the modern world, seemed to offer us much for the small hardships and difficulties of the way. Curiously enough, it was only of these hardships and difficulties that we heard before setting out. Kindly and well-meaning people in Naples who had heard by chance of our intention, Italians every one, would have saved us from they knew not what. Not one of them had ever been into the South — they assured us of that ; it was unsafe, uncivilized, a country of brigands, hopelessly lost to the modem world, reeking with malaria, and altogether as unattractive in every way as any place could well be. "What are you going for?" they constantly demanded. " There is nothing to see, nothing to eat, no inns, no beds, no roads even, and of course no railways ; moreover, you wiU certainly be robbed and very likely murdered. . . ." Let me hasten to say that what we found was something very different from this. To begin with, the roads every- where in the South are good, the trains as a rule punctual if slow, the inns in the larger places fairly clean and com- fortable, the food a little rough and monotonous but plentiful. Indeed, there is nothing at all to hinder any- one in travelling through the South, or from seeing all that is to be seen with a fair amount of comfort and continual delight in the monuments and the natural beauty of a country for the most part delicious. Indeed, if ordinary English travellers who are fond of getting off the more beaten track but knew of half the beauty and pleasure to be found in Calabria, in the forests of the Sila and upon the Aspromonte, they would be found there in increasing numbers every year. Calabria is a paradise that has not yet been opened to the tourist, and in consequence it is quite unspoilt. As for the two things we were chiefly warned against, robbery and fever, we had not to complain of the one or the other. The people of the South are as full of humanity as are other Italians. Every day you live you will be robbed in Naples and that with your eyes open, for you are helpless and they unashamed ; but in the INTO CALABRIA 139 South it is not so. On the contrary, people are there rough-mannered but good-hearted, and a? honesty goes in Italy, very honest. You will be fleeced in Milan but not in Cosenza, you will receive bad money in Naples but not in Catanzaro, and considering the poverty there is an extraordinary absence of begging. Not that I object to begging ; God knows if a poor man may not demand an alms of his fellows, it is a hard and certainly not a Christian law which forbids him. Nevertheless, though the South is still poor and still Christian, the beggars are but few ; they demand courteously in the name of the Madonna, without the threats of the Neapolitans, and are content with little. As for the fever, there is no fear of it at all between November and June ; at any rate, we saw nothing of it in March, April and May, and except perhaps here and there, as in the valley where Sybaris stood, Sybaris which was the mother of Psestum, the people seemed to be healthy enough and the children rosy and happy, if poor and ragged and barefoot. Indeed,the only thing the traveller need fear in the South is distance : the distances between the greater places, and it is only in the greater places that one can live with comfort, are enormous ; and this fact alone makes walking for the most part impossible. Nowhere else except in Spain is distance, I think, so overwhelmingly impressed upon the traveller. It is the shadow behind all his pleasure, and no day is quite free from its influence. It was already midday when we turned away from the ruins of Psestum and set out upon the first stage of our journey, leaving the city by the Porta Justitia,and presently crossing the Solofrone to follow the high road over the desolate plain towards the mysterious Southern hills, the hills in territorio Cilenti. These twisted and tortured mountains, a mass of volcanic craters cut by one great winding valley narrow and deep, the valley of the Alento, 140 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY have from time immemorial been a district apart. Coming down steeply westward into the sea, these heights upon which towers the noble cone of Monte Stella form the southern promontory of the great Bay of Salerno or Poseidonia, and like the headland of Sorrento, above which Monte S. Angelo hovers, which forms the northern promon- tory of the vast gulf, they are ever5rwhere covered with woods, with vineyards and olive gardens, with figs and almonds. But unlike the northern promontory, this broken country of the Cilento is not a country of towns — there is not a true town in the whole district — but of villages often close together and always upon the hill-tops, for the silting up of the mouths of the various streams has made the valleys unhealthy and malarious. It is a beautiful and a fruitful district, once within the territory of the Phocsean city of Velia, which stood upon its southern extremity, where the Alento finds the sea. While Velia flourished doubtless it was rich, as it certainly continued to be throughout Imperial times ; but it suffered terribly from the Saracens in the ninth century and all through the wars of the Greeks and Lombards of Benevento and Salerno, but was repopulated and built up afresh by the Cluniac monks of La Cava in the eleventh century, who with the assistance of the Benedictines of Monte Cassino planted here some eighteen monasteries which quite redeemed the country. The abominable administration of the Spaniards in the fifteenth century, however, when the Barbary corsairs began to descend upon this coast, de- populated it anew, and it is only in our time, and especially since the evisceration of Algiers, that it is beginning to revive. It was into this living and pleasant land we came out of the desolate plain in which Psestum lies a broken sanctuary. For in some two miles or so the road climbing out of the marsh began to rise precipitously, and presently we stood a thousand feet and more over the sea above the village of Ogliastro, and all before us lay the great bay INTO CALABRIA 141 in its beauty and splendour, guarded on the north by the steep and broken coast beyond Salerno where Vietri stood and Amalfi, Praiano and Positano, how many days' journey behind us, out of the sea. That great coast, stretched out along the promontory of Sorrento till it came to an end in the Punta Campanella, where, a little way off, Capri stood on guard like a sentinel, seemed to be lined with the houses of a single town so thick the villages shone upon it under the great mountains beneath which ran the road we had traversed so many days before. Our eyes lingered upon it, till suddenly like a shadow beyond Capri one of us spied the crater of Epomeo upon Ischia, sixty miles away as the crow flies. Close at hand as it seemed, but not less than twenty-five miles away, in the depth of the bay, lay the city of Salerno over the Psestan marsh, and behind, the hills, and over them the mountains, and again beyond them and above them the central range of the Apennines. Nearer still, over the valley of the Sele, Eboli stood up against the rude hills of Terminio ; while to the east, behind us, lay all this tumble of mountain called the Cilento, and farther again mountains, and beyond the darkness of the Apennines. And all before us lay the perfect arc of the vast bay, and at our feet this great headland answering that of Sorrento, crowned by Monte Stella as that by Monte S. Angelo, beaked by the Punta Licosa as that by the Punta Campanella. But such a catalogue of names can give but a small idea of the glorious sweep of sea and air and mountain and plain which these hills give to him who climbs them. Neither from the heights of Vietri nor from Ravello is the prospect comparable with that which these hills command. To come so far as Psestum and to go home without a sight of this glory is to miss a good half of the pleasure Psestum can bestow. But no guide-book speaks of it, and therefore the tourist moons for hours about the temples, waiting for the train, unsuspecting that so great a spectacle is within reach and to be had almost for the trouble of asking. 142 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY From this great view-point, of which we could not have enough, we presently descended to Agropoli. This little village stands upon a great rock rising out of the sea just where the hills first reach it beyond the Paestan plain. It is but a small place, but it is worth seeing on account of its situation, its towered walls and old castle dating from the Aragon times of the fifteenth century. The name is Greek, but Agropoli owes nothing to Magna Graecia, being indeed most probably a foundation of the Byzantines, perhaps of Narses, who after finaUy breaking the Goths at Angri founded many such strongholds. By the end of the sixth century it was like most of such Byzantine foundations, in possession of a bishop. It seems to have flourished until, in 882, it was seized by the Saracens, who made it their chief stronghold hereabouts, and issuing thence ruined Psestum and all this coast. It was the last of their strongholds to be surrendered after their defeat on the banks of the Garigliano, and by 1070 certainly Agropoli was held by Roger of Sicily. The place seems to have flourished exceedingly under the Normans, the Angevins, and the Aragon kings, until in the middle of the sixteenth century the corsairs, and chief among them Barbarossa, descended upon this coast and seized many places, but chiefly Agropoli and Policastro, the latter being utterly destroyed, and the former so ruined that it was never able to recover itself. Beyond Agropoli the coast thrusts out westward into the double headland which closes the Gulf of Salerno upon the south. The larger and more southern point is the famous Punta Licosa, off which rises a little island where according to Strabo and Pliny was the tomb of the Siren Leucosia, which names both island and promontory. Others, with more reason I think, call this headland Posi- donium Promontorium, the promontory of Poseidon. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, however, calls the island Leucasia, and asserts that it was named so after a cousin of iEneas, whom the hero buried here, as he did his pilot INTO CALABRIA 143 Palinurus farther down the coast. The headland was well known in Imperial times, when both it and the island were covered with luxurious villas. It is a delicious spot, as beautiful as any of those more famous places on the Gulf of Naples which were so popular among the wealthy Romans in the first centuries of our era. We slept at Agropoli, at the Alb ergo del Sud by the sea, and early next morning went on by train, coming down the deep and tremendous valley of the Alento on the southern side of the promontory through a lovely country to Ascea, where we left the railway to return a little way by road towards the mouth of the Alento, the ancient Hales, where are the ruins of Velia. These ruins are set on a low ridge of hill about a mile and a half south of the river mouth, and half a mile from the sea-coast, over a spacious bay between the great promontory of the Cilento on the north, the rocky Punta di Ascea on the south. Immediately over the sea, the top of the hill upon which VeHa stood is now occupied by the mediaeval village of Castellammare della Bruca, doubtless the old acropolis, for the walls of the ancient city may still be traced all about ; but other ruins of the Greek time are wanting, what we see, the debris of aqueducts and build- ings, being of Roman date. The city of Velia was the only Phocaean colony in aU Magna Grsecia, and it came to be founded in this fashion. In the year 544 B.C., when Harpagus conquered Ionia, the inhabitants of Phocaea rather than come under the Persian yoke voluntarily expatriated themselves and went in a body to their new colony of Alalia, in Corsica. There, however, they suffered so much at the hands of the Carthaginians that after a final naval defeat they were compelled to abandon their city, and while a part of them went to Massiha (Marseilles) the rest went south to Rhegium (Reggio) ; but their welcome being anything but cordial they soon set out northward again, and presently founded a new colony at the mouth of the Hales, upon the coast of 144 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY Lucania. This happened about 540 B.C. We know practi- cally nothing of the history of Velia except that from the moment of its foundation it was bitterly attacked by the people of Poseidonia and their mother city of Sybaris, and thus the place would have but little interest for us but for two facts, namely, the fame of the school of philo- sophy that arose there, and the extraordinary beauty of its coinage. That it flourished for all the people of Posei- donia could do, that it was wealthy and a famous place, seems as certain as that it never rose to the great position of such places as Sybaris, Crotona, and Tarentum ; but its celebrated school of philosophy has given it the same immortality which the temples of Psestum have conferred upon Poseidonia or the luxury of the Sybarites has given to Sybaris. Pythagoras, who gave philosophy its name and passed so much of his life in Magna Graecia, regarded the universe as a perfect harmony dependent on number : the Eleatic doctrine of unity might seem to have been the exact opposite of this. The school was founded by Xenophanes of Colophon, who was bom about 570. He was the father of Pantheism, who declared God to be the eternal unity permeating the universe and governing it by his will. The greater disciple of Xenophanes was Parmenides, bom here in Velia in 511, who declared God to be unchanging, " the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," as we might say, and thus to be alone capable of being at all — multitude and change, which never are but always to be, having merely appearance without reality. The glorious doctrine of the school was very ably maintained dialectically by Zeno against the vulgar, who see and realize only this multitude, this change, this becoming in things, in life, in the universe. It was, however, Leucippos of Velia, a disciple of Zeno, who should interest us most perhaps, for he was the father of the atomic philosophy which boasted such famous exponents as Democritus and Epicurus. Zeno, we know obscurely, lost his life in maintaining the VELIA 145 liberty of his native city against a tyrant. His example as well as his thought would seem to have been cherished by his countrymen, who not only maintained themselves against the Poseidonians but, if Strabo is to be believed, against the Lucanians also. If this were so, Velia was one of the very few Greek cities which preserved a real national existence in the face of these barbarians. At any rate, Velia was early admitted to the alliance of Rome, and under Roman government became almost as famous a health resort as Baiae. And it continued to flourish until, like Paestum, it was destroyed by the Saracens encamped at Agropoli in the ninth century. Sitting there to-day in that lonely place among the stones one tries to recall the thoughts and words of that great spirit which first in Europe conceived the idea of the Absolute, the One ; and attempted to demonstrate that Thought and Being are identical — t6 yap avrb voelv ia-rCv T€ Kttt €tvat. " Come ! listen and take home, says he, what I shall tell you : What are in truth the two paths of search after right understanding. The one that what is, is ; and that what is not, is not. This is the path of per- suasion, for truth goes along with it. The other is that what is, is not, and by consequence that what is not is — I tell you that is the way which goes counter to persuasion. That which is not never would you know ; there is no way of getting at that ; nor could you explain it to another ; for Thought and Being are identical." It was perhaps while gazing across this very sea from these hills which were his home that Parmenides uttered those famous words that were after all of so dubious omen — that one day would start Don Quixote on his travels. From the ruins of Velia before midday we went on by train through all the beauty that is Pisciotta within the exquisite curving headland of Palinuro to Policastro. The beautiful lonely horn of Palinurus thrusts itself loftily into the sea between Velia and the old Greek city of Buxentum. Of old, the promontory had a port to 10 146 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY which it gave its name, and which is still called Porto di Palinuro. Both headland and port, indeed, received their name from Palinurus, the pilot of ^Eneas, who was here, according to Virgil and many other Latin writers, cast ashore and buried. Princeps ante omnes densum Palinurus agebat agmen ; In the sixth ^Eneid, Palinurus himself tells the story of his death. " Lo, the pilot Palinurus came along, who late on the voyage from Libya, while he watched the stars had fallen from the stern of the ship, and been tumbled into the midst of the waves. MnesiS, when he had hardly recognized him, full of sorrow in the thick darkness [within the gate of Hades], first addressed him thus : ' Which of the gods was it who snatched you from us, Palinurus, and sunk you in the deep ? Tell me, I pray. For Apollo, though I never before found him a deceiver, deluded my soul by this one oracle in that he foretold that you would be unharmed by sea, and reach the Ausonian shores. Is this indeed his faithful promise ? ' The other an- swered : * Neither did the tripod of Phoebus deceive you, Prince, Anchises' son, nor did a god plunge me in the waves. For in headlong fall I dragged down with me the rudder, wrenched away by mishap with rude violence ; the rudder which I its appointed guardian was holding steadfastly, and guiding the ship's course. By the wild seas I swear that I conceived no such great fear for myself as for your ship, lest stripped of its helm, and violently bereft of its master, it might not live while such a sea was running. Three winter nights the south wind wildly bore me on the water across the boundless main ; scarcely in the forth dawn as I raised myself upward I caught sight of Italy from the surface of the sea. By slow degrees I swam towards land ; soon I should have gained safe ground, had not the ruthless race, while I was weighed down in my drenched garments, and striving to grasp CAPO PALINURO 147 with crooked hands the rough points of a crag, attacked me with the sword, and in their ignorance thought me a prize. Now I He at the mercy of the waves, and the winds ofttimes cast me on the shore. Wherefore by the pleasant Hght of heaven, by your fathers, I beseech you and the promise of your rising lulus, rescue me from these woes, unconquered Prince; either cast earth upon me yourself (for you have the power) and again repair to the port of Velia \ or now if there be any means . . . lend your hand to your hapless pilot, and carry me with you across the flood [the Styx], that in death I may repose. . . .' So had he spoken when the priestess thus begins — " 'Whence comes it, Palinurus, that you feel a longing so unlawful ? Will you unburied view the waters of the Styx ? . . . Cease to hope that divine destiny can yield to your prayer. But receive into your memory my words the consolation of your hard fortune. For your bones the neighbouring tribes far and wide through their cities, compelled by signs from Heaven, shall propitiate, and they shall set up a mound, and to the mound shall bring due offerings, and the place shall keep for ever the name of Palinurus.' " Servius indeed tells us that the Lucanians, probably the citizens of Velia, paid heroic honours to Palinurus, and that he had a cenotaph and sacred grove not far from the city. Some ruins of ancient buildings are indeed to this day to be seen upon the summit of the headland, and these are said by the people hereabouts to be the tomb of the great pilot. To the south of Capo Palinuro opens the vast bay of Policastro, closed on the south again, eighty miles away as the crow flies, by the Capo Vaticano, the bluff within which the ancient Laus, the city which named the whole bay, lay. Immediately to the south of the great headland of which the Capo Palinuro is the horn, and which is crowned by Monte Bulgheria, in the deepest part of the bay, lies Policastro, a place of considerable antiquity and import- 148 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY ance, which Robert Guiscard destroyed in 1055, as did the Corsairs in 1542, so that it is now but a village. It was founded, it is said, in the fifth century B.C. by the Greeks of Rhegium, but its coins lead us to accept an earlier founda- tion, and that from Siris, whose colony it apparently was. Its name was Pyxus. We know absolutely nothing of it, however, until after the conquest of Lucania by the Romans, who in 186 B.C. established there a colony, and named the place Buxentum. No ruins at aU of the Greek city are to be seen, and but little of the Roman town even of imperial times. Policastro, indeed, is not worth a visit. Far better is it to go on directly to Sapri, where there is a fair inn, the Albergo Garibaldi, and where con- siderable remains of the old Greek town of Scidrus may still be seen. The only ancient authority who speaks of Scidrus at all is Herodotus, who, however, does not define its situation. He tells us that it was like the greater city of Laus to the south, which named the whole Gulf a colony of Sybaris, and that to both these cities the Sybarites fled away when their own city was destroyed by Cotrona. There can, I think, be no doubt that the Sybarite colony of Scidrus was established here where we now find the town of Sapri, and that it was of ancient foundation and not a place established by fugitives after the destruction of Sybaris. The enormous wealth of Sybaris was due to commerce, and this was secured and maintained by communications and alliances which kept open the various routes over the sea or the mountains which had their terminus on the agora of the great Achaean city. A people such as we know the Sybarites to have been would be sure to establish them- selves firmly upon the Tyrrhene Sea, and this we know they were able to do at Poseidonia. But that city, whose mighty ruins still fill us with wonder, was too far north and too difficult of access from Sybaris to fulfil the whole purpose of its founders. They needed a port easily accessible from the mother city upon this coast, and this was most easily SAPRI 149 found at Laus, as a glance at the map will assure us. Sybaris lay in the delta formed by various valleys at that point where the Gulf of Taranto is deepest, and where in consequence the peninsula of Calabria is narrowest between the Ionian and Tyrrhene Seas. To follow one of these valleys, the Valle del Salice, as we call it, to its head, to cross the Campo Tenese, the watershed, and to descend the valley of the Lao to Laus upon the Tyrrhene Sea was the shortest and easiest road from one sea to the other. Thus was Laus founded. It might seem that on the same principle Scidrus should have been a colony of Siris instead of Sybaris, for it was most easily approached from that city, from the Ionian Sea up the valley of the Sinni, and it may be that in spite of Herodotus this was the case, and that Sybaris only came, as it were, into possession of Scidrus, or rather that Scidrus only came to depend upon Sybaris after that city had destroyed Siris. However that may be, it is obvious that the reason for the foundation of these cities upon the Tyrrhene Sea was that they could be approached overland from the Ionian Sea, and that thus the western coast was accessible without a journey round the great gulfs of the south and through the dangerous straits of Messina. A mere glance at Sapri shows us at once how valuable a natural harbour and port it must have offered to the small ships of those far-off times. Sheltered on the north by the great bluff on which Monte Bulgheria broods, and by other lesser and nearer heights, it is held on the south by Monte Cerasco, within whose shadow the bay is spread out a glorious land-locked pool of safe water, about which the most considerable of the remains of the ancient Greek city lie in an almost undecipherable confusion. If little remains of Scidrus, nothing at all is to be found of Laus, in the plain by the river, though in the charming little town of Scalea, where there is a good harbour and where, in consequence, some have thought the ancient city must have stood, a few vestiges of antiquity have been disinterred. They are scarcely worth stopping to see. 150 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY Far better is it for the leisurely traveller in Calabria indeed to go on to Belvedere, where he may understand the ancient economic and political geography of these cities of Magna Graecia better than anywhere else upon this coast, and that by climbing the hills behind the town whence he will see both seas, the Ionian and the Tyrrhene, the Gulf of Taranto, and the Gulf of Pohcastro, and realize how narrow is the peninsula between them. The beauty of the place, too, cannot but enchant him, and no pleasanter way of spending a long afternoon is to be had in all this country. At night he wiU go on to Paola to sleep. X FROM PAOLA TO COSENZA PAOLA is to-day, I suppose, one of the most important places upon this beautiful but neglected coast, for it is not only served by the railway, but also two or three times a week by a small steamer from Naples. It is, too, the port of Cosenza upon the Tyrrhene Sea, and as such offers by far the best means of approaching that city, the capital of Calabria citeriore, from the north and west. The little town stands some hundred metres above the sea on the hillside, more than a chilometro from the station upon the shore. It is a charming place, alike on account of its situation and its buildings, its churches, especially that of the Annunziata, and its old convents, in one of which, that of S. Francesco da Paola, lived the famous fifteenth- century saint of that name. The place is, however, without history, and though less primitive than many of the village-towns upon this coast, so unused to the sight of strangers that the whole population turns out to welcome you and escort you to your quarters. As to these you have a choice between the Albergo Regina d' Italia, not far from the station, and the Albergo Leone, in the upper town, and it would be difficult to say which is the least comfortable. Perhaps our experience has been unfortunate. The first time we came to Paola, we arrived from Belvedere about ten o*clock at night. We were the only people alighting there from the train, and save for an oil lamp the station was in complete darkness. We were vaguely directed along a dark and open road and left to ourselves, and indeed, if presently we had not encountered an extraordinarily 152 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY violent tramp, upon whom we loaded our baggage, with directions to lead the way to the inn, I often wonder whether we should ever have found it. As it was, he brought us at last through an almost deserted street to the door, where he demanded payment and off he went. It was a long time before the noise we made attracted any sort of attention, and when at last the door was opened our request for beds was met with derision. After mutual reproaches, however, we were shown a single room, in which after much per- suasion the host consented to erect three beds. This settled, our host became all smiles. We demanded food, and late as it was we ate there and then the best meal we had all the time we were in Calabria. It was nothing to boast of neither ! but even a month or two in this beautiful but untravelled country makes the traveller think with pleasure of the food to be had at Paola. The long persuasion that had been necessary to obtain us beds, the preparation of the meal, had given the people at least of the lower town of Paola time to get up and dress in a negligent sort of way — for the whole place was asleep when we arrived — and to come to the inn to see the strangers. A great company presently filled the dining- room, and overflowed into the street. Most of this com- pany remained till we had finished, and then followed us up to our room, which, since there was no way of locking the door, all night and next morning, was, at least for the occasion, part of the street. We were, it seemed, as enter- taining as a puppet show, and it was only by remembering that we were just that, not human at all really in the clear and curious eyes of these amazingly interested people, that we were able to sleep, to get up, wash, and dress ; as it was, I know we abbreviated the washing. One must be a true-born puppet to stand and take a bath in a tin pot within a circle of children, backed by an exclamatory and admiring crowd of men and women, to whom such a thing is as strange a spectacle as the fire- eating of the clowns at the village fair used to be to U3» PAOLA 153 We were up betimes in the morning, and had plenty of time to see Paola and the convent of S. Francesco da Paola before setting out for Cosenza. S. Francesco da Paola is interesting as the founder of a new Order. S. Francis of Assisi had called his f rati Minors or Lesser Friars, for he wished them to be humble and poor, but S. Francis da Paola was not content with this ; he called his frati Minimites, the least of all in the kingdom of God. The Saint was born here in Paola in 1416, the longed- for son of very poor parents. Having no issue, they be- sought S. Francis of Assisi to aid them by his prayers, and thus when their son was born he was named Francis after the poverello of Assisi. From the first they seem to have dedicated him to God. When he was twelve years old they sent him to the Franciscans of S. Marco Argentano, the nearest episcopal town ; there he learned to read and write, and laid the foundation of his ascetic life. After a year there, as a lad of thirteen he went with his parents on pilgrimage to Assisi and Rome, and on his return to Paola with their permission he retired to a lonely place half a mile from the town, and shortly after to a still more lonely spot, where to-day stands his convent. Here he was presently joined by two companions, and the neigh- bours built them cells and a chapel, which in 1454 were replaced by the large church and monastery we see. Here the new Order was established by S. Francis da Paola, under a Rule based upon the Franciscan, indeed an ex- aggeration of it, both Order and Rule being approved by the Archbishop of Cosenza in 1471, and confirmed in 1474 by Sixtus iv, who established Francis Superior- General. In 1476 the Saint began to found other convents, the first of which was at Paterno on the Ionian Sea. That Francis was of very considerable fame and authority in his day is established, if only by the fact that when Louis xi first fell into his despair it was Francis of Paola he desired to see, and when no other means would bring him to Plessis les Tours he besought the Pope to send him. This wa§ 154 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY done. S. Francis made the tremendous journey, going by sea from Ostia, and was met with a purse of ten thousand crowns, borne by the Dauphin at Amboise. He arrived at Plessis in April 1482, the King going out to meet him, falling on his knees and conjuring him to obtain of God a prolongation of his life. S. Francis refused to make such a prayer, but nevertheless the King lodged him in his own palace, and daily conversed with him, and died in his arms upon August 30, 1483. King Charles viii honoured Francis even more than his father had done, built him a fine con- vent in the Park at Plessis, and another at Amboise, where he had first met him, and when he went to Rome to be saluted Emperor of Constantinople by Pope Alexander vi he built the Saint a noble monastery upon the Pincian Hill, in which none but Frenchmen were to be admitted, and which we still call S. Trinita, though it is now in the hands of another congregation. S. Francis remained in France till his death, in 1508, at the age of ninety-one, and his body remained uncorrupt in the church of Plessis till the year 1562, when the Huguenots broke open the tomb and dragged the body through the streets and burned it "on a fire which they had made with the wood of a great Crucifix." The Order wear a dark tunic and cord, and the word Charitas appears upon it, and this is the badge of the Order. The Saint is generally represented as an old man with two companions, or in allusion to his famous miracle when he crossed on his mantle from Reggio to Messina, as spreading his cloak upon the sea. His convent in Paola is picturesquely situated at the end of a long Via Crucis, reached from the upper town, but it has nothing beside its beauty to recommend it, neither works of art nor even a major relic of the Saint who founded it. The road for Cosenza ^ climbs up out of Paola very steeply for many miles in a marvellous series of curves ^ A public automobile leaves Paola for Cosenza at 9 o'clock every day. Places should be booked overnight. The distance is 36 ghil., covered in 3| hours, SAN FILI FROM PAOLA TO COSENZA 155 till it crosses the bare ridge of the watershed of the Calabrian Apennines, and descends by the scarcely less steep eastern escarpment to the large village of S. Fill above the wide valley of the Crati. The way up from Paola to the summit is exceedingly noble and fine, offering a wonderful view of the wide and shallow Gulf of Laus or, as we say, of Poli- castro, a view a little featureless after all, though with far- away glimpses of noble headlands, but not to be compared in any way with the view of the Gulf of Poseidonia from the hills above Agropoli to the south of Psestum. Neverthe- less, the way is beautiful up through the steep forest, but the true splendour of it is only to be had when suddenly and unexpectedly from the summit one looks down from the woods upon that immense and noble valley of the Crati, at the mouth of which eastward once stood the city of Sybaris, the greatest of Magna Grsecia, and at the head of which westwards stands the famous city of Cosenza, where Alaric died and was buried. All that valley from your first sight of it seems only full of that accursed Gothic army laden with the spoil of the Eternal City. Here the barbarian passed, as he thought, to the loot of Sicily, but, as God willed, to his atrocious grave. Beyond rise the beautiful heights of the Sila, dark with woods. We could have looked down upon that valley from that height, 3000 feet and more in the air, for hours, recalling that catastrophic march, but that the lingering sun warned us of the hour, and the milestones spoke of Cosenza as still at a great distance. So we went down through the chestnut forests to S. Fill, still some 1500 feet up, and on, still downward, into the valley, where we came into the great Roman road southward, and along it in its straight monotony deep in the dust we trudged in the wake of the Goths into Cosenza. It was still dayhght when we climbed out of the wide, profound valley into that noble city, which for how many centuries has kept the secret of the barbaric grave of Alaric, High up it stands all about a great headland of 156 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY hills, and in this it is like Segovia, though without the splendour of the Spanish city, thrust out between the valleys of the Crati and the Busento. There is in all Calabria no nobler place than this. The inn we chose, the Albergo Vetere, and there are several, we chose as much because from its window we could look across the Crati Valley to the great woods high on the Sila, as because we thought it the best in the town. It is in its Calabrian way a very comfortable house, with a good and plentiful table and clean beds. There we lived gaily, and thence we issued out to see the remarkable city where Alaric died. It is true that we could think of little else in Cosenza but the tremendous Goth, who first with barbarian arms smote upon the gates of the Capital of the Empire, de- manding what he should for ever have been denied ; but Cosenza is older far than Alaric. Consentia, as the Romans called the place, was the capital city of the Bruttii, the greatest town of that barbarous people, and the centre of their movements against the cities of Magna Grascia. We first hear of it in history, however, in the expedition of Alexander of Epirus, and Livy asserts that it was taken by that hero, but it would seem that when he was assassinated at Pan- dosia, " a little above Consentia,'' a city the site of which is unknown, Consentia was still in the hands of the bar- barians, and Alexander's mutilated body was brought there for burial. During the Second Punic War, Consentia, though reluctantly, followed the rest of the cities of the Bruttii, was occupied by the Carthaginian General Himilco, followed the cause of Hannibal, and was only reduced by the Romans in 204 B.C. It was then, accord- ing to Appian, a very large place, and continued to be the chief city in this part of Italy all through the great time of Rome, which would seem never to have wholly subdued the tribes of the Sila hereabout. Then in the year a.d. 410, at the end of August, Alaric, having sacked COSENZA 157 the Eternal City, appeared upon the Appian Way at the head of his army, laden with noble prisoners and the spoil of Rome, intent upon the loot of the South and of Sicily, and in his train as a captive went along with him Galla Placidia, the sister of the Emperor, the daughter of the great Theodosius. The Goth marched southward spoiling the mighty cities, Capua the capital of Campania, Nola, too, which was devastated ; one after another the great towns -of the South were ruined and spoiled, till at last he came to Consentia. Already it seems the first division of the Gothic army had embarked for Sicily, when in the midst of a tempest which sunk and scattered their trans- ports news came of the death of Alaric. Then, in the immortal words of Gibbon, " the ferocious character of the barbarians was displayed in the funeral of a hero, whose valour and fortune they celebrated with mournful applause. By the labour of a captive multitude they forcibly diverted the course of the Busentinus (Buxentius), a small river that washes the walls of Consentia. The royal sepulchre, adorned with the splendid spoils and trophies of Rome, was constructed in the vacant bed ; the waters were then restored to their natural channel, and the secret spot where the remains of Alaric had been deposited was for ever concealed by the inhuman massacre of the prisoners, who had been employed to execute the work." After that appalling spectacle, Consentia is wrapt in darkness for more than five hundred years. In 988, however, we hear of it as taken and destroyed by the Saracens, and then in 992 as rebuilt by the Greeks, only to be burnt in the beginning of the eleventh century again by the Saracens. When in 1050 Pope Nicholas 11 gave Calabria to Robert Guiscard, Cosenza came into his possession without a struggle, but later it rebelled, and it was then the great Castello was built to dominate it on the hill-top. It is from this Castello that one gets the finest impression 158 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY of the situation of the city, and of the beauty and splendour of the country round about. It is a tremendous place, a vast keep looking over the valleys to the Apennines upon the west, the Sila on the east, down the great valley of the Crati between them on the north and southward to the tumble of mountains that divides Calabria Citeriore from Calabria Ulteriore, the toe of Italy and the Aspro- monte. Beneath the Castello the girls sing in the vine- yards, children laugh at their play under the olives, and all the beauty of Calabria, one of the loveliest provinces of Italy, is spread out before you ; but none of these will keep your mind from Alaric. Down the wide and noble valley from the north rode the barbarian king at the head of his thousands and his thousands, train upon train of captives bearing the spoil and the loot of Rome. Hither he came in the midst of his great success, the first bar- barian who had successfully broken into the Empire, intent upon the destruction of Sicily, the spoliation of Africa. Here he died. Somewhere down there where from the great height you may see the Buxentius meet the Crathis they buried him, turning the river aside to make his sepulchre, and setting about it the gold and silver of Rome. There in that unknown place he lies, till God shall raise him up and judge him. Little to compare with that great view from the Castello remains to be seen in Cosenza. The city has suffered, especially in the last two centuries, from earthquakes which have even damaged the Castle, whose walls are nine feet thick, so that little else that is old has escaped damage or destruction. Among that little, however, is happily the Cathedral, a Gothic building, in so far as it remains ancient, of the thirteenth century, consecrated in 1222 in the presence of the Emperor Frederick 11. There lie King Henry of Germany, the eldest son of Frederick ii, Isabella, the Queen of Philip iii of France (1270), and Louis III of Anjou (1435). The other churches are scarcely worth a visit, but the town itself is picturesque, especially COSEXZA, FROM THE CASTELLO COSENZA 159 in its higher parts under the Castello, where the steep, narrow ways are very well worth the fatigue of the climb. If for a time we forgot Alaric in Cosenza it was to the Sila we turned. Those great mountains, dark with forests rising to the east over the valley, impress you with their dark beauty all day long. Somewhere there you remind yourself the Neaithos rises of which Theocritus sings. It is this stream with all its riches of green herbage and trees that you come upon if you adventure into these great hills and come over the watershed, as in summer-time you may do, by public automobile, to S. Giovanni in Fiore, some 3000 feet above the sea, in the very heart of the Sila. This village began to rise in the sixteenth century about an ancient monastery, one of the most famous in Italy in the twelfth century. There Joachim da Fiore ^ founded his new Order, the Ordone di Flora, and wrote those amazing works, the most celebrated of which was, or perhaps only was to have been, The Eternal Gospel, which seems to have had so great an influence upon the Franciscans, and indeed upon religious thought generally in Italy in the thirteenth century. It is a long way to S. Giovanni, some seventy chilometri from Cosenza, but the beauty of the road and the interest of the place are certainly worth any trouble and fatigue they may cost. ^ For an account of Joachim, see my Cities of Umbria (5th ed., Methuen, 1913), pp. 261-277. XI TO CATANZARO AND REGGIO FROM Cosenza you may go very easily down the great valley of the Crati by train to Sybaris upon the Ionian Sea, and thus come immediately into the heart of Magna Grsecia, but the wiser traveller will not hesitate, I think, to take advantage of the new service by automobile, which will take him right across central Calabria and over a great shoulder of the Sila to Catanzaro, a hundred chilometri southward, the capital of Calabria Ulteriore. That long journey, occupying at least seven hours, is very well worth making, for it takes you through some of the most beautiful parts of this extraordinarily beautiful country, crosses a great mountain range, and though it offers you nothing so dramatic as the sudden view of the great valley of the Crathis which the road from Paola to Cosenza affords, at Tiriolo, near the end of your journey, you may look upon both seas, the Ionian and the Tyrrhene, the Gulf of Squillace on the east and the Gulf of S. Euf emia on the west. The road first proceeds up the valley of the Crati to the source of that famous river ; then passing under the village of Donnici it descends into the valley of the Arbicello, crosses the torrent, and climbs up to the Piano del Lago, some fourteen chilometri from Cosenza and 2000 feet and more over the sea. Here it crosses a part of the Sila, passing through the little mountain town of Rogliano above the Savuto, the ancient Sabatus where of old there was a Roman station. Rogliano was the Rulianum of antiquity, 160 TO CATANZARO i6i but little or nothing remains there that is very old, for the place has suffered much from earthquakes, and was almost destroyed in 1638. The road climbs up to Rogliano through delicious forest, and beyond the village descends through a beautiful country to the Savuto, which it crosses to climb up by many winding ways to Carpanzano, whence it is possible to see the Tyrrhene Sea. At Carpanzano the road turns eastward, climbing all the way till it reaches a height of well over 3000 feet, and a little beyond the village of Corace crosses the southern hill-tops of the Sila Piccola and descends into Soveria Mannelli. In this rather desolate village you leave the automobile that has brought you from Cosenza, and after a wait of an hour and a half, in which it is well to get some luncheon at the local ristorante, a by no means bad little place, another automobile arrives to take you on to Catanzaro. There can be no doubt that these automobile services which are now everywhere in Italy are doing very splendid work in opening up the less accessible parts of the peninsula, such as the mountain districts of Calabria and the Marches.^ In a country such as this, where the distances are enormous and the whole country so far away from any great centre, one cannot praise the enterprise of modern Italy enough in establishing this admirable means of getting about. Here are two sub-units of a great province, Calabria Citeriore and Calabria Ulteriore, each with its capital, Cosenza and Catanzaro, to reach either from other before the coming of the automobile meant a journey of two days, almost impossible in winter and always full of a sort of misery. To-day you may leave Cosenza at half -past seven in the morning and be in Catanzaro by half -past two, or you may leave Catanzaro at half -past eight in the morning and be in Cosenza b}^ half -past three. And besides the two capitals, how many hamlets and villages the automobile serves. It is enough to notice the difficulty of obtaining ^ Cf, my Cities of Romagna and iMM^arqlies (Methuen, 1913),, p., l8,8. II i62 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY seats to see at once how welcome it is to the people. It is cheaper, and certainly as expeditious as most of the railways here in the South, and quite as comfortable. Moreover, it can go where the railway cannot penetrate ; it passes not under but over the hills. In all things it is to be praised ; and its effect upon the isolated com- munities of this glorious but neglected and despised Calabria cannot but be good, for little by little people will come into the South from Central Italy, and Calabria will be discovered. When that happens a new playground will be opened for us all, and such a one as we have never dreamed of. For there can indeed be few provinces of Europe lovelier or nobler than this, with its great mountain ranges covered with primeval forest, miles of glorious woodland, and an air so soft and yet so exhilarating that no other hills in Europe can boast the like. Alike in spring, summer, and autumn these mountains are a paradise ; they should gather wealth for Italy from the rest of Europe, and that should be employed in draining the v/ide valleys of the sea- coast, which of old supported a great population, but which are to-day utterly lonely on account of the malaria which ever3rwhere holds them in its grip all the summer and autumn through. But even after two thousand years let no one any longer despair of the South. With the new communications it will be rediscovered, and again it will lift up its head. Here rather than on the sands of Lybia lies the field for Italy's new energy ; here, in this virgin and fruitful soil, which has been resting for two thousand years and awaits every day with more impatience the labour of the delivering peasant, the gold of the capitalist, the love and enthusiasm of Italia La Nuova. The automobile is indeed to be praised, for it has made such a belated resurrection possible and even certain ; but in its minor results it is still disquieting to the populace. By reason of the great hills that stand everywhere in ranges throughout Calabria, of which the Sila and the Aspromonte are but th§ greatest, the roads continually and without (l *^ ^ .--_ ^.,?:.^ 1 i K 1 ' TO CATANZARO 163 ceasing wind up and down in so astonishing and so many series of curves and hairpin corners that the countrymen and burgesses who travel in the new pubHc conveyances which hurry along at a really frightening speed are all sick by reason of them. Indeed, upon the run from Cosenza to Catanzaro my companion and I were the only travellers in the packed machine who were not continually leaning out of the window. Soveria Mannelli is about half-way between Cosenza and Catanzaro. There the road forks, the western branch proceeding over the Monti di Nicastro to Nicastro, the eastern road passing along a high ridge some 3000 feet high, over Serrastrella, past S. Pietro Apostolo, to the town of Tiriolo, whence one may look upon both seas, the Ionian to the east, the Tyrrhene to the west, while to the south rises the long peaked ridge of the Aspromonte. Tiriolo is indeed one of the loftiest towns of Calabria, standing over 2000 feet above the sea. The place is the Ad Turres of the Antonine Itinerary, and many antiquities have been found there, more especially a table of bronze, now preserved in the Imperial Museum at Vienna, upon which is incised the text of a decree of the Senate of 186 B.C. which forbade the celebration of the Bacchanalia. This discovery was made in 1640. But in our own day a large number of terra-cottas of the last Greek period have been unearthed here, and are now preserved in the Museum of Catanzaro. For the traveller the dehght of Tiriolo is the costumes of the women, which are most beautiful and picturesque. With the coming of the automobile it is to be feared these will disappear, but they have not gone yet. Almost every girl in the place wears the old-fashioned dress of the commune and is, and not only on this account, a delight to the eyes. Tiriolo is divided from Catanzaro by the vast gorge of the Corace, down the western side of which the road winds very steeply and giddily to the river, which it crosses i64 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY and thence climbs up on the other less lofty side to Catan- zaro, about looo feet above the sea. Catanzaro is built upon a lofty and precipitous shoulder of rock between two deep valleys that unite before it, and proceed onward together, ever widening, towards the sea. In the main it consists of one long street, which runs from north to south till it comes to an end above the steep southern escarpment of the great hiU on which the city stands, in the garden where the ruins of a castle built by Robert Guiscard still remain. Upon this side the city slopes a little towards the valley in a few windy alley-ways almost mediaeval in their picturesque dilapida- tion ; but for the most part Catanzaro stands along the hill-top, strikingly new in appearance, a clean, healthy, cool town, where a breeze that easily becomes half a gale of wind always seems to blow, and where everyone seems to be happy, healthy, and hospitable to strangers. There are in this unexpectedly modern town several inns, two of which certainly deserve the name of hotels. That we chose was called the Brezia, and there we found every sort of reasonable comfort and attention ; it might have been in Siena for that. Catanzaro would seem to have been founded like Agro- poli, by the Byzantines, indeed in the time of Nicephorus Phocas, in the tenth century. In 1055, however, it came into the hands of Robert Guiscard, who recognizing its strategic importance as commanding the shortest road of all between the Ionian and the Tyrrhene Sea, there built the strong castle whose ruins we see. Under the Norman, indeed, the town flourished exceedingly, and was divided into four quarters, in which the Latins, the Greeks, the Amalifitani, and the Jews dwxlt apart ; the two latter peoples having established themselves here for the sake of commerce. Catanzaro then boasted twenty-eight churches, a relic doubtless, as Lenormant reminds us, of the Greek rule, that rite not permitting more than one mass to be said in any church daily. Time and earthquake have left but few of these churches, CATAN2AR0 165 and not one that is recognizable as a Byzantine or Norman foundation; indeed, all are dishearteningly modern, and without either beauty or interest. One of them, however, S. Domenico, or La Chiesa del Rosario, contains a fine Venetian picture of the sixteenth century, in which we see S. Domenico receiving the Rosary from the Blessed Virgin and her little Son. A work perhaps by the same master is to be found in the little Museo near the Castle : this is a Lucretia. But the most beautiful thing here is a helmet, a Greek work found at Tiriolo, and a number of terra-cottas, vases, coins, and other curiosities, for the most part from the district. The true delight of Catanzaro is to be found in its extraordinary situation and the amazing views it offers you of the great country in which it lies. To the south, and for the first time, you see before you something of the bitter desolation of the coasts of the Ionian Sea, where long and long ago, in all their beauty, energy, and pride, stood the great cities of Magna Graecia, the memory of which names, even to-day, all this country. To the east from the Giardino Pubbhco you look upon the strange valley of the Crotalus between its sheer and barren cliffs, an extraordinary, bitter, desolate place, on which it might seem the sun never shines. Uphfted above this curious and arid country in which the priapal agave and the cactus form the chief vegetation, hedging in the olives, the vines, and the rare patches of corn, Catanzaro alone seems to laugh, ever in the wind, high above the fever belt and the malaria of the empty vales and littoral. The town is indeed a sort of refuge thrust out from the hills into the midst of this dead country which from Reggio to Taranto is washed by the Ionian Sea. Something of the strategical value of Catanzaro in ancient times as in the Middle Age may be best understood by journeying by the light railway from the uphfted town across the hills from the valley down which the Corace runs into the Ionian Sea to the vaUey of the Lametus i66 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY (Ameto), which empties itself into the Tyrrhene Sea. To the north above the valley and the plains of Maida stands the town of Nicastro, a Byzantine foundation in whose castle Frederick ii confined his rebellious son Henry, who lies buried in the Cathedral of Cosenza. Frederick ii had two sons by his first wife, Henry and Conrad, whom he caused, each one during his lifetime, to be elected King of the Romans. But in 1240 King Henry perceiving, as Villani tells us, " that the Emperor his father was doing all he might against Holy Church, and feeling the same heavy upon his conscience, time and again reproved his father, for that he was doing ill ; whereat the Emperor set himself against him, and neither loving him nor dealing with him as with a son, raised up false accusers, who testified that the said Henry had it in his mind to rebel against him as concerning his Empire, at the request of the Church. On the which plea (were it true or false) he seized his said son King Henry and two sons of his, little lads, and sent them . . . into prison severally ; and there he put him to death by starvation in great torment, and afterwards Manfred put his sons to death. ..." Upon the other side of the Lametus lies the plain of Maida, the field of the only battle ever fought by British troops upon Italian soil. This battle, fought in 1806 against the French army of General Regnier, resulted in a victory for Sir John Stuart. That General was in command of the British forces then in occupation of Sicily when upon July I, 1806, he landed 4800 men in the Gulf of S. Eufemia. The French upon the southern side of the Lametus occupied the wooded hillside of Maida, but they outnumbered the British force and, confident of success, they crossed the river and came on to meet us in the plain. They came, and were met with the bayonet, and the result does not seem to have been in doubt for a moment. They fled, leaving 4000 men upon the field ; the British casualties amounting in all to 327. But before MONTELEONE 167 the end of the year the French were again in possession of Calabria. S. Eufemia, the little town which to-day gives its name to the ancient Sinus Terinaeus, is chiefly famous for the Benedictine monastery founded there by Robert Guiscard, in which he placed the head of the martyr S. Eufemia, which he brought from Constantinople. All, however, was destroyed in the earthquake in 1638. It stood upon the site of the Greek city of Terina, a colony of Crotona, and was regarded as the burial-place of the Siren Ligeia, and consequently would seem to have been older than the Greek settlement, whose date we do not know, nor indeed are we acquainted with its history, though the number, beauty, and variety of its silver coins bear witness to its wealth and importance. From the railway junction of S. Eufemia the railway from Naples proceeds south over the plain, and presently under the hills along the coast to Pizzo, where in the castle Murat was done to death in 1815. His body lies beneath a plain stone in the parish church. The great Roman highway, the Via Popilia, runs through Pizzo, and leaving the coast there proceeds across the hills to the gloriously situated city of Monteleone, 1500 feet above the sea, which still boasts of a ruined castle built by Frederick 11. Monteleone stands upon the site of the Greek city of Hipponium, a colony according to Strabo of Locri upon the Ionian Sea. We know, however, almost nothing of it save that it was taken in 389 B.C. by Dionysius of Syracuse, who destroyed it and carried away its citizens to Sicily. With the assistance of the Carthaginians, however, these exiles returned. Presently the city fell into the hands of the Bruttii, but was taken from them in 294 B.C. by Agathocles, who established a naval station there, and for a time held the place, which upon his departure was seized again by the Bruttii and his garrison put to the sword. These barbarians held it thenceforth until the i68 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY Roman conquest of the peninsula. Under the Romans both city and port flourished exceedingly, it became a very important place, and Appian indeed speaks of it as one of the '' most flourishing cities of Italy." In the civil wars it played a very considerable part, its situation at the point where the Via Popilia first touches the sea no doubt giving it a great strategical and economic im- portance. The ruins of the city would seem to have disappeared if it was situated upon the hill where Mon- teleone stands, but considerable remains may still, in spite of time and earthquake, be seen of the port at a place called Bivona (Hippo nium, Vibonia, Bivona), some three miles from that lofty town, upon the shore, where there remains also a mediaeval Castello. To the south-west of Monteleone the high lands over which that city shines thrust out westward and south from the beautiful southern headland of the Sinus Teri- naeus, the Gulf of Eufemia. Upon this headland stood the old Roman Herculis Portus, on the site of which stands Tropea to-day, most beautifully situated upon a preci- pitous rock thrust out into the sea above a delicious bay, all surrounded by woods and olive gardens and vineyards and villages. Above all the city stands the church, upon its steep and cavernous rock rising sheer out of the sea, within a vast amphitheatre of great hills far in the back- ground. Beyond, southward, the railway runs quite round the great headland by the great Capo Vaticano, which may be reached also by road from Tropea, a walk of about six miles. That walk is worth taking not only on account of the glorious beauty of the coast here, but because from the high land above the Capo Vaticano one may first see snow-crowned Etna and the Sicilian mountains over the incomparable beauty of the sea. Far and far away they lie, like ghosts on the horizon beckoning you on into a world the loveliest we may know. One proceeds by paths and tracks along the headland over the trailway to Nicotera, and thence across the mouths REGGIO 169 of the Mesima and the great plain or marsh of Gioja, upon the farther side of which, just upon the hills, stood the ancient city of Metauria. It is here, amid the horrid desolation of the Plana di Gioja, that one enters upon the country so awfully made desolate by the earthquake of 1908 which destroyed Messina. Signs of this appalling calamity are indeed still very visible even as far north as Pizzo, but it is here at Gioja that one begins to realize what that disaster really was. Indeed, in all the exquisite loveliness of the coast between Gioja and Reggio through the Straits of Messina scarcely a village is left. Of Palmi amid its gardens, its orange groves, and wonderful olive-yards, really only the glorious views of the island are left to us. It is best to leave it, to forget, and to climb thence through the olive gardens, the great hill of Monte Elia upon whose slopes it lies in ruin to gaze upon Etna and Sicily, the Straits down which you may look as into the noblest of bays, the glory of the sea in which like jewels lie the Lipari Isles and smoking Stromboli, and eastward the great mountains, the Aspromonte dark with forests. And if Palmi seems to have been destroyed, what can one say of Scilla, at the mouth of the Straits, of old so famous ; what of Villa S. Giovanni, where the coast so wonderfully turns suddenly southward; of Reggio itself, amid all the loneliness God has here poured out of His heart ? Here are nothing but ruins, about which linger even yet an incredible romance and the rumour of Homeric verse amid the tragic litter of the buildings of the Middle Age, the Renaissance, and the modern world. We enter Magna Grsecia to-day through a ruined gate. XII MAGNA GR^CIA WE speak of Magna Grsecia and think of all those cities founded by the Greeks hundreds of years before the coming of Our Lord, east and west between Taranto and Reggio along the shore of the Ionian Sea ; but in fact Magna Graecia meant more than this, for it included those colonies founded upon the Tyrrhene coast between Poseidonia and Hipponium, though never, as we may think, the oldest settlements of all at Cumse and Neapolis, Nevertheless, we are right after all when in speaking of Magna Graecia we think first of the cities within the Gulfs of Taranto and Squillace along the Ionian Sea, for these were the original settlements from the mother land, the Tyrrhene cities, with the exception of the Phocsean city of Velia, being but their colonies. Magna Graecia indeed was, whether in its larger or narrower sense, this above all, a long string, as it were a rosary, of cities, not a territory ; the name was never used in a territorial sense as including the whole or part of Southern Italy, it was only applied to the Greek cities on the coasts, and corresponds most nearly to Livy's expression, Grcecorum omnis ora^ The Greek inhabitants of these cities were known to the Greeks of the mother lands as 'IraXtwrat ; that is to say, the Greeks in Italy, while the Italians were of course ol "IraXSi. As I have said, the most ancient settlement of the 1 Livy, xxii. 6i. The same historian uses the name Graecia Major, but the commonest title of all was undoubtedly Graecia Magna. The term did not, of course, include the Greek cities in Sicily. 170 MAGNA GR^CIA 171 Greeks in Italy would appear to have been made at Cumae, and this was very ancient indeed, some placing it as early as 1000 B.C. Cumae, however, was so remote, and perhaps for early navigation so difficult of access by reason of the approach through the Straits of Messina and of Capri, that it remained isolated from its later sisters in the South and never made a part of Magna Grsecia. Cumae thus isolated from Magna Graecia was not only the otdest of the Greek settlements in Italy, but it was older than those in Sicily, which are themselves older than any city of Magna Graecia. The settlements upon the southern shore of the mainland followed those upon the island, and for the most part may be said to date from 735 to 685 B.C. ; but we have unfortunately no record of their foundation and history in any way comparable with that preserved by Thucydides concerning the Greek cities of Sicily ; nevertheless, we may state certain facts with some certainty. We know, and this without doubt, that the Achaeans, a people always undistinguished in the history of Greece proper, were the earliest colonists here upon the mainland of Italy and that they founded the two greater cities of Magna Graecia, first Sybaris in the Gulf of Taranto in 720 B.C., and then, ten years later, in 710 B.C., Crotona upon the eastern side of the great headland which divides the Gulf of Taranto from the Gulf of Squillace. About the same time, according to Strabo, the Locrians founded the city of Locri near the modern Gerace, and two years later, as we may believe, in 708 B.C., the Dorians founded Tarentum, and it was to hold them in check that at the prayer of the Sybarites the Achaeans founded about 700 B.C. the city of Metapontum, some twenty-seven miles along the shore to the south-west of Tarentum. Some twenty-five years later, about the year 675, the lonians of Colophon, having been conquered by Gyges, King of Lydia, emigrated westward and founded the city of Siris here upon the Gulf of Taranto between Sybaris 17^2 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY and Metapontum ; while about the same time the Chalcidians founded Rhegium within the Straits of Messina.^ Such were the chief Greek cities upon the Ionian shore of the Italian peninsula ; the Greek cities upon the Tyrrhene Sea were, as I have said, with one exception, VeUa, a Phocaean settlement, all colonies of these cities, and not original settlements from the mother lands. Thus Poseidonia, Laus, and Scidrus, as we have seen, were all colonies of Sybaris ; Terina was a colony of Crotona, as was Hipponium of Locri. As for the minor cities upon the Ionian shore, Scylletum (Squillace) was a dependence of Crotona, and Heraclea a fortress of Tarentum. AU we know of the early history of these settlements and colonies amounts to very little, but it would seem that one and all they flourished and became exceedingly pros- perous, and indeed in size, wealth, and power they far exceeded the cities of Greece proper at this time. The fertility of this district, which they drained and cultivated., the facilities for commerce, were doubtless exploited to the utmost, and Sybaris especially enjoyed a luxury and a power without parallel at that time ; she ruled, it is said, in the days of her greatness, over twenty-five subject cities and extended her suzerainty over four nations of the local barbarians, while her name has become a synonjmi for luxury. This period of prosperity would seem to have lasted for some two hundred years — till about 510 B.C. In that year Sybaris was destroyed by Crotona, and with the fall of the greatest of the cities of Magna Grsecia a decline seems to have set in both in -prosperity and good fortune. The weakness of all city states, and of the Greek especially, was a miserable jealousy that always had something of the vindictive bitterness of a personal enmity. We have seen Sybaris call upon the Achseans to oppose the new Dorian foundation of Tarentum by the foundation of ^ Some consider Rhegium as an earlier foundation even than Sybaris. MAGNA GR^CIA 173 Metapontum. Later we see the three great Achaean cities, Sybaris, Crotona, and Metapontum, utterly destroy the Ionian colony of Siris, and again the two cities of Locri and Rhegium combine to destroy though not altogether successfully, not finally at least, Crotona. In that battle, the battle of the Sagras, it is said that Crotona put 120,000 men into the field. The especial foolishness of these internecine feuds and wars will be obvious when it is remenibered that these Greek cities were but little islands of civilization in a sea of brutish barbarism — a thing in- effectually perceived, too late. Crotona would seem scarcely to have recovered from her defeat, indeed she had long endured a wretched de- pression, when about 530 B.C. the half -mystic and always mysterious philosopher and statesman Pythagoras suddenly appeared from the East within her walls. He was then about fifty years old, having been born upon the island of Samos about 580 B.C. The few facts we know of him, for his life is almost wholly shrouded in the legends which grew up about his amazing personality, lead us to believe that he was a disciple of Pherecydes of Syros, and that he spent a great part of his earlier life in travel in the East, where he studied those civilizations and the religions which had created them, and especially the " wisdom " of the Egyptians. It seems that when, the most learned man of the day, he would have returned to Samos, he found his country still under the yoke of the tyrant Polycrates, and almost by chance, indeed quite romantically, he came to Crotona in Magna Gr^ecia. Here he found the political and social life of the Greeks, and more especially in Crotona itself, half ruined by the bitterness of parties, the hate of one city for another. It was his mission, as we might say, to bring about a revolution in ideas, to reorganize not Crotona alone but all Magna Graecia and to regenerate that precious civilization. To this end he appears to have established a society, perhaps secret, whose members seem to have undergone some sort of 174 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY initiation when they took upon them half-priestly vows of chastity, an enlightened morality and devotion the one to the other. With this weapon he sought to refound as it were a real and perhaps united Magna Grsecia out of the old and decajdng and too various states. In part he succeeded. But his society was too like an aristocracy, a Samurai, to please the populace, which rose against him and his followers in Crotona and slew 300 of them, Pytha- goras himself, it is said, escaping to Metapontum, where he died in 504. That Pythagoras was to fail at least in his larger aim must, it might seem, have been evident to him six years before his death, when the Crotoniats, 100,000 strong, it is said, went out against Sybaris, which put not less than 300,000 men into the field, so we are told, overthrew her on the banks of the Traeis, and razed the city to the ground. From this appalling catastrophe, followed as it was by the expulsion and death of Pythagoras and the massacre of his adherents. Magna Graecia never really recovered. The Sybarites attempted to refound their city without success, they established a new settlement close to the site of Sybaris, and called it Thurii ; this too came to nothing : many of them fled at last for refuge to their own colonies, and especially to Laus and Scidrus. Sybaris was no more, and Magna Graecia for all its splendour was unable or unwilling to send the mother country any assistance to meet the Persian invasion, nor so far as we know, though help was demanded of the Greeks in Sicily, were these cities of Magna Graecia appealed to. The same indifference, a thing even more extra- ordinary, seems to have characterized the cities of Magna Graecia two generations later upon the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, nor did they take any part in the Athenian raid upon Sicily in 415 B.C., though all the Greek cities in the island were involved in the affair. The only cities of Magna Graecia that at any time showed any interest in Sicily or in Greece were Rhegium, which MAGNA GR^CIA 175 under the rule of the despot Anaxilas (496-476 B.C.) became involved in Sicilian affairs by reason of its annexa- tion of Messina on the other side of the Straits, and Thurii, which had been refounded in 443 B.C. by a body of colonists led by Athenians. This city induced Meta- pontum to ally herself with Athens, and with her suppHed a small force to assist the expedition of 415 B.C. The true explanation of this indifference, apart from the general softness induced by wealth, and the bitter jealousy of one city for another, will be found, I think, in the fact that each of the cities of Magna Graecia was, as I have said, but an island of civilization in a sea of barbarism. Already in the earlier part of the fifth century, in 473 B.C., theTarentines, though assisted by three thousand Rhegians, had suffered an appalling defeat at the hands of the bar- barians, the lapygians of the district in which their city stood. Herodotus tells us that this was the greatest slaughter of Greeks within his knowledge. If it was the greatest, it was not the first nor the last, and with the advance of the fourth century B.C. this appalling danger became more and more threatening. Yet even in the face of annihilation the Greeks could not combine : it was only when, about this time, they were threatened by a Greek city, that they made at last a loose League, or confederation. The Greek danger that threatened the cities of Magna Grsecia came from Syracuse, where Dionysius had estab- lished himself as tyrant not only over that city but over the greater part of Sicily. The ambitions of Dionysius were first opposed by the Rhegians, who had already interposed in Sicilian affairs. To oppose Rhegium, Diony- sius allied himself with the Locrians, and his cause thus became so formidable in Magna Graecia that a confedera- tion was formed among the other cities, but without success. Pressed on the north by the barbarians and from the south by Dionysius, the confederate army was utterly defeated by the latter near Caulonia, about half;^ 176 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY way between Locri and Scylletum, in 389 B.C., and in 387 B.C., after a siege of eleven months, Rhegium was sur- rendered. This foohsh civil war by no means discouraged the barbarians who were continually raiding and pressing upon the Greek cities. The first and most formidable pressure came on the north from the Lucanians, who had conquered the (Enotrian tribes of the province to which the victors had given their name. These formidable barbarians had met already with more than one success against the Greeks before they possessed themselves of Poseidonia, the first Greek city actually to come into their hands. Poseidonia was followed about 390 B.C. by Laus, and when the Bruttii, a new enemy, appeared, the position was so serious that the younger Dionysius, who had suc- ceeded his father, was forced to join the Greek confedera- tion against the barbarians whose assistance he had formerly invoked. His efforts, however, do not seem to have added much to the effectiveness of the League, and Terina and Hipponium suffered a similar fate to that of Poseidonia and Laus, while Rhegium and Crotona had already suffered so severely from the elder Dionysius that they were only just able to maintain themselves against the barbaric raids. Every city in Magna Graecia was enfeebled by these catastrophes, and only Taren- tum, far away to the north-east and especially defended by nature, was really able to stand, and perhaps still to increase in wealth and strength. At last even Tar- entum became afraid. She had been the last city of Magna Grsecia to join the confederation, and as one by one her sisters confined themselves to defence, she appealed to her mother city Sparta for assistance. This was given by King Archidamus, but without success, for he was finallj^ defeated near Manduria, twenty-four miles east of Tarentum, in 338 B.C. It was now a hero appeared for a moment, to deliver, if it were possit)Je, civilisation from the cruel hands of these MAGNA GR.ECIA 177 barbaric tribes. The deliverer was Alexander, King of Epirus, who appeared at the head of an army in Magna Graecia in 332 B.C., and not without success. He retook Terina, and even penetrated into the heart of the territory of the Bruttii, but the essential Greek weakness soon manifested itself even in so desperate an hour as this ; the Tarentines quarrelled with him, and when he was murdered in 326 B.C. by a Lucanian exile serving in his army, they rejoiced, though that miserable event put their whole cause once more in peril. The fourth century came to an end in utter anarchy ; more than one figure appears as though to deliver civiliza- tion from the ever - advancing barbarians, only to fall, utterly unworthy of the great cause he had sought to use for his own aggrandisement. Such was Cleonymus, the uncle of the Spartan king who came to deliver Tarentum in 303 B.C., but quitted Magna Graecia at last, " the object of an universal contempt." Such Agathocles, who made himself master of Crotona and played the part of Judas, allying himself with the barbarians to possess himself of Tarentum. He died without achieving his end in 289 B.C. Seven years later the mighty shadow of Rome fell upon all Magna Graecia. It was the Thurians who called in the Romans to their assistance when they were besieged by the Lucanians. That was in 282 B.C. But such a deliverer appeared to Magna Graecia as a whole, and especially to Tarentum, now the most powerful of its cities, worse than the barbarians. They called Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, the successor of Alex- ander to aid them against this last foe, and to the same end made alliance with the barbarians, who knew and feared the Roman yoke. Such was the disastrous policy of all Magna Graecia. Pyrrhus, when he landed, found himself supported by this strange alliance ; but after his early successes he achieved nothing, and when at last after years of fighting he finally departed in 274 B.C., Magna Graecia was ruined and utterly at the mercy of Rome, which already 13 178 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY held Crotona and Locri, while in 272 B.C. Tarentum fell, and Rhegium in the following year. Thus Rome became master by force where she should have been welcomed as an ally. The mistaken policy of Magna Grsecia is obvious in the fate of Heraclea, which having opened its gates obtained an alliance with Rome on very favourable terms, and long continued in a prosperous state. Rhegium, too, seems to have made the best of her bad fortune, but the other cities now enslaved and in poverty nursed their hate against the Roman name. The political aptitude of Magna Grsecia, always small, always incapable of conceiving a large policy, proved now to be non-existent. When Hannibal appeared in Italy, winning victory after victory, only Heraclea and Rhegium refrained from supporting the Carthaginian cause. It was in a very real sense a betrayal of Europe. Led by Tarentum, whose citadel, however, remained throughout the war in the hands of its Roman garrison, Magna Grsecia supported the Orientals, with the result that might have been expected. When the Romans under Fabius at last entered Tarentum in 209 B.C. the city was treated like a prize of war, burnt and plundered, and its inhabitants put to the sword. Six years later, Crotona learned also the price of the Oriental alliance. Hannibal had long made that city his headquarters when he determined to obey the order of recall he had received from Carthage. From Crotona he set out, and when his allies refused to accompany him he had them led down to the sea in companies and butchered by thousands. Baal that day was satiated. The long series of wars in Magna Grsecia, which ended with the victory of Fabius and the departure of Hannibal, had ruined the Greek cities beyond revival. Their popu- lation was decimated, nay more, halved, and with the failure of administration, of public works and agriculture following inevitably upon this, the rivers silted up and flooded, the land went out of cultivation, malaria appeared. MAGNA GR^CIA 179 the cities, with the exception of Rhegium and Tarentum, and in a lesser degree of Crotona, were deserted and became mere rains, and the whole littoral became pestilent, as it largely remains to this day. Magna Graecia, as Cicero tells us, " nunc quidem deleta est." It remains for the most part a beautiful savage country, lonelier and more deserted than any other part of Italy, with here and there a stray ruin, a heap of stones from those far-off days, but for the most part almost without a memory of that great civilization which had ennobled it with cities whose names are household words. XIII REGGIO, GERACE, AND THE GULF OF SQUILLACE REGGIO DI CALABRIA has to-day nothing but the spectacle of her latest misery to offer to the traveller. The most unfortunate of ItaHan cities, she has from her foundation suffered every violation of nature and of man ; fire, sword, and earthquake have from time immemorial continually laid her in ruins. Her foundation, as I have said, she owes to the Chalcidians, who ''in a year of famine " dedicated a tenth part of their people to ApoUo, and these the Oracle at Delphi sent to found a new city upon a site already chosen for them by their Chalcidic brethren of the city of Zancle, which we know as Messina. With the new colonists was united a body of Messenian exiles who had for a time established themselves at Macistus, a town of Triphylia in Elis. These, however, were few in number, and until the end Rhegium was considered as a Chalcidic city, as was Zancle across the Straits. It may be that Rhegium was the most ancient of all the Greek settlements in Italy save Cumse alone, that she was older than Sybaris ; but this is far from certain, the most general opinion being that the city was founded not in the eighth but in the seventh century B.C. In any case, Rhegium soon became very prosperous, her aristocratic government encouraging both her military power and her commerce. We know, however, little of her earlier history, the one certain fact in it being that she sheltered the fugitive Phocseans after their expulsion from Corsica before x8o REGGIO i8i the foundation of Velia. It was, however, in the first years of the fifth century B.C. that Rhegium came to her own. This happened under the beneficent rule of the tyrant Anaxilas, about 494 B.C. He was a Messenian and an aristocrat, a member of the famihes that had ruled Rhegium since its foundation. He made himself lord not only of Rhegium but of Zancle, upon the other side of the Straits in Sicily, which he renamed Messana (Messina). He was thus master of the Straits, and as such in a very strong position with regard to all the cities of Magna Grsecia. It was he too who first fortified the headland of Scylla and established a naval station there, whence his ships issued out against the Tyrrhenian pirates that were so terrible a scourge upon the commerce by which all Magna Graecia lived. He was faced, and perhaps outfaced, by the Locrians and their ally, Hieron of Syracuse. He managed, however, to keep the peace with these powerful enemies during his hfetime, even marrying his daughter to the Syracusan tyrant, expecting his friend- ship. This wise policy was followed after his death in 476 B.C. by the guardian of his two sons, Micythus, who ruled for nine years during their minority. It was this man who very properly supported Tarentum against the barbarians, and though the auxiliary force he sent was massacred with a loss of 3000 men, had his poUcy been consistently followed, and had the Greeks held together, the later history of Magna Grsecia would not have been the unrelieved misfortune it is. With the disappearance of Micythus, however, the dis- asters of Rhegium begin. The two sons of Anaxilas on attaining their majority abused their power, and were soon expelled (461 B.C.). A period of anarchy followed, which seems presently to have involved Rhegium and the Chal- cidic cities of Sicily, whose cause she espoused, in hostilities with Locri and Syracuse, though she took no part at all in the great Athenian expedition of 415 B.C. This, however, did not save h^r from Dionysius of Syracus^j who having i82 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY destroyed the Chalcidic cities upon the Island was opposed by Rhegium, to the disgust of Messana. Thus Rhegium lost the control of the Straits, and was compelled to make peace with Dionysius. He for his part expected her friendship and alliance in the attempt he contemplated against Carthage, but Rhegium refused his request ; whereupon he made a new alliance with the Locrians, and ever after remained the enemy of Rhegium, in 394 B.C. seizing and refortifying Messana after its destruction by the Carthaginians, thus making himself master of the Straits, in 389 B.C., after two and unsuccessful attempts, on the morrow of his victory over the confederation of Magna Grsecia upon the Helorus, he forced her to make a miserable truce, which was soon broken, and two years later, after a siege of eleven months, Rhegium was taken, her citizens sold as slaves, and the city itself utterly destroyed. From this appalling calamity of 387 B.C., the first of a long series, Rhegium never recovered. That she rose again at all was due wholly to the strategic importance of her site, but her history henceforward would appear to be an unrelieved disaster. When Pyrrhus entered Italy, for instance, Rhegium admitted a body of 4000 Roman auxiliaries for her defence, but these barbarians turned upon her citizens and massacred them. The traitorous army remained in possession of the city till the end of the war against Pyrrhus, when Rome dealt with them, reducing Rhegium by force, and putting to death the survivors of the defence by order of the Roman people. Rhegium, such as it was, remained faithful to Rome throughout the Second Punic War, but it played no great part in that heroic affair. It thus won the favour of Rome, but its inhabitants did not become Roman citizens till after the Social War. It was about this time that we first hear of the city suffering from earthquake, which in 191 B.C. partially destroyed it. But it was rebuilt, and under Augustus a^ain increased in wealth and power, and con- REGGIO 183 tinued to exist as a flourishing city until the collapse of the Imperial administration. Its appalling adventures since then have become notorious. It fell to Alaric in 410, who tried and failed to cross the Straits from its port. It was taken in 549 by Totila, in 918 by the Saracens, in 1005 by the Pisans, in 1060 by Robert Guiscard, and was burnt out by Frederick Barbarossa. Rebuilt, it was sacked by the Turks in 1552 and burnt to the ground by them in 1597. Rebuilt again, in 1783 it was totally destroyed by earthquake, as it was again in 1908. It is now a mass of ruins, scattered with mere shelters, but is slowly being rebuilt, certainly to be destroyed again in time to come, since it lies upon the direct line of volcanic disturbance between Etna and Vesuvius. It is with rehef one leaves the ruins of Reggio, more dreadful and more dismal by far than those of Pompeii, for they are our own. Here in 1908 perished 5000 people, and yet as one gazes upon the debris it might seem a wonder that anyone escaped ; in fact, however, not less than 30,000 people got away with their lives out of that appalling calamity. Southward one goes out of the misery of Reggio, through the riches of the valley of S. Agata under S. Leo, round the beautiful Bay of Pellaro, south-east out of the Straits across which Etna towers, to the Capo delF Armi, the ancient Promontory of Leucopetra, that white headland which is the end of the Apennines, the extreme south- west point of Italy towards the Sicilian Sea. This was the last point in Italy which Demosthenes and Eurymedon touched with the Athenian expedition before they crossed to Sicily ; here Cicero turned back to Rome after the death of Caesar. Yet it is not with them one occupies oneself upon these white rocks, but with the glory and the beauty of Etna, which all the way round this coast fills the eyes and the mind with its incomparable majesty. With this wonder ever upon the horizon one passes over the barren rocks and sandhills about Melito, the mo3t i84 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY southern town in Italy, famous for the landing and the surrender of Garibaldi, and proceeding onward crosses the Amendolea, which the ancients called the Hal ex, where stiU the grasshoppers sing and are silent, through desolation and wilderness to Capo Spartivento, the ancient Pro- montorium Herculis, after passing which, as Strabo says, the traveller's course lies suddenly north-east. Capo Spartivento is the south-eastern headland of this vast promontory or peninsula of the Bruttii; passing it one looks eastward towards Greece over the Ionian Sea. At Capo Spartivento, very weary and disheartened because of all the desolation of the coast here at the foot of the Aspromonte, the scarcity of the villages, the barbaric Greek of their few inhabitants, the darkness of the heights, the wilderness that here lines the classic sea, we took train for Gerace, for the road beyond the Marina di Bran- caleone is steep and difficult, leaving the desolate shore for the more desolate hills, while the line clings to the sea, the only friendly thing in all this country. So we went on to Gerace, which we entered just before sunset. The Marina di Gerace, which the railway serves, hes, as its name implies, upon the shore, and there is the inn, wretched enough, yet by no means impossible ; but Gerace proper, the town of that name, lies five miles and more up on the hills, and is to be reached only by a steep and difficult road, that it takes the diligenza nearly three hours to pass. It was, however, our first business to see the ruins and the site of the old Greek city of Locri, and thither we turned back very early on the morrow of our arrival. These ruins lie some two miles to the south-west of Gerace Marina, beside the road from Capo Spartivento between three precipitous hills and the sea. There is not much to be seen : the foundations of a Temple of the Ionic order of the fifth century B.C., a part of the old walls, a smaller Temple, and a shrine, little beside ; but musing there in that wild and desolate place one may recall the glory that is departed. LOCRI 185 From the shore at Locri, looking south-west, one may descry the abrupt headland of Capo Bruzzano far away, the ancient Promontorium Zephyrium. It was there the Locrians founded their first settlement, removing thence presently to this spot and building here a city which they called Locri Epizephyrii, in memory of their first place of abiding. Here under the Zaleucan code, the most ancient written code of laws given to any Greek state, the Hundred Houses ruled the city, for Locri, like Rhegium, was politically an aristocratic oligarchy, only its ruling families derived their nobility from the female side, and, as we might expect, the city was noted for its good government and order, as in the modem world Venice and England have been, and for its aversion from all innovation. We do not know when this city was founded, but it would appear to have been established soon after Crotona, about 700 B.C. The most notable event in its history is the extraordinary victory it won at the battle of the Sagras, when a small force of 10,000 Locrians defeated an army of 130,000 Crotoniats. This would seem to have befallen after the fall of Sybaris before Crotona in 510 B.C., and consequently when the latter city was at the very height of its power. The victory was so wonderful and so decisive that it passed into a proverb. The smallness of the Locrian force certainly confirms what every other fact we know about Locri points to, that it was but a small place, and never rivalled either in wealth or power such cities as Sybaris and Crotona. It seems to have used what power it had with some dexterity, allpng itself with Syracuse to hold Rhegium in check ; and to ensure this in the time of Dionysius the Locrians married Doris, the daughter of one of the Hundred Houses, to that monarch, in return receiving many benefits, among them the territory of Caulonia and that of Hipponium, where they founded a colony, but they lost the place to the Carthaginians in 379 B.C. It was indeed in Locri that the younger Dionysius found i86 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY a refuge when he was expelled from Syracuse in 359 B.C. This proved a horrible misfortune for the Locrians, for he seized and garrisoned their city, debauched their wives and daughters, and turned a place perhaps the most con- servative in Magna Grsecia into a pandemonium. At length, however, they seized the opportunity of his absence to drive out his garrison and to massacre his wife and daughter. There can be little doubt that the smallness of Locri tempted the barbarians of the Bruttii long before they dared to think of Sybaris and Crotona. Perhaps this fact taught the Locrians to rely so much upon Syracuse, at any rate it certainly drove them later to seek the pro- tection of Rome. She sent them a garrison of auxiliaries, but these the Locrians expelled when Pyrrhus appeared, preferring his troops. However, they conducted them- selves so ill that they were expelled. When Pyrrhus heard of it he threatened to sack the city, and did indeed carry off '* the sacred treasure of the Temple of Perse- phone," the most famous sanctuary of that Goddess in Magna Grsecia. He was compelled to restore his loot, nevertheless, being caught in a storm which threatened to engulf him. It is probably part of this Temple of Persephone which is to be seen to-day in the shrine ex- cavated in 1910. The days of misfortune were, however, by no means over when Pyrrhus departed. The Bruttii were always about to overwhelm a place so small and now so feeble, and therefore Rome was again invoked. Had Locri but remained true to her great protector she might, in spite of everything, have endured in prosperity. But with the advance and the victories of Hannibal she threw in her lot with him, and when he was disposed of, Rome returned no longer as a protector, but as a harsh and absolute lord. From that time we know nothing of Locri, which, however, seems to have continued to exist — the excavations prove that a Roman city certainly stood here — till in the sixth GERACE 187 century of our era it was exterminated by the Saracens, and time and disaster have made of it since what we see. We returned along that desolate coast from the ruins of Locri, glad enough to see the modern houses of the Marina di Gerace, and on the morrow climbed up to Gerace itself, high on the hillside, perhaps 1500 feet over the sea. Here in this amazing eyrie we found the refuge of the people of Locri, when their city was overwhelmed by the Saracens in the sixth century. All along the Ionian coast of Italy the Greek cities by the sea were deserted for the hills, for such inaccessible nests as this ; and here you may find the debris of their civilization, all that could be saved of its material beauty and pride. Gerace is wretched enough, God knows, and the earthquake has not spared it, but there remains there the shell of a Romanesque Cathedral of the eleventh century, modernized and spoilt, but still upheld by the ancient columns of Locri, twenty pillars of marble, beautiful and august of verde antico, of giallo antico, of African marble, and six fluted columns of white Greek marble, with their original bases and capitals, exactly similar, it is said, to that of the monu- ment of Lysikrates at Athens. Others, too, remain in the crypt. Nothing else is to be found here that may have come from Locri, but the church of S. Francesco dates from the thirteenth century and is worth a visit, and the old Rocca, now in ruins, affords one, perhaps, the finest view to be had between Capo Spartivento and the Punta di Stilo. Beyond Gerace the railway, always clinging to the shore, runs through a country not less desolate than that it has traversed from Capo Spartivento. Here and there a picturesque town rises out of the brutal country as at Roccella, and all the way the classic names we know from Ovid and from Livy abound. One crosses the Buthrotus (Novito), the Lucanus (Locano), and Roccella itself is but Ovid's Romechium, while a Httle farther the iron road bridges the Sa^as that once flowed with Crotoniat blood. i88 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY Here beside the wide river-bed to the north was set the city of Caulonia, that Achaean city which Dionysius destroyed after the battle of the Helorus and refounded from Locri. The train goes on through a country so silent and dark that it seems inhuman, till it passes the Promontorium Cocinthum, the Punta di Stilo, and turns due north into the vast Gulf of Squillace, closed on the north very far away by the Lacinian Promontory sacred to Hera. It is only along the shore that this country, so strangely silent and deserted there, is brutal and inhuman. Nothing, for instance, in all this peninsula is lovelier than the valley of the Stilo, up which a little railway runs, to Stilo high in the air, built in terrace after terrace, under sheer rocks that rise nearly a thousand feet above her. Here in this wonderfully picturesque place, with its mediaeval, round- towered gate, or rather above it on a vast rock, is a curious Byzantine church, under a central cupola, supported by marble columns, and supported and surrounded by four smaller buildings under cupolas, at the angles. It is Greek work, and helps to prove what one always half suspected, that Magna Grsecia, in some strangely pro- vincial way, became Greek again after the fall of the western Empire — Greek again, but with a difference which may best be expressed, I expect, by using a word more expressive of the truth, Byzantine. Here in this sixth- century building we feel that strange Renaissance to be more real than ever we may do in Ravenna, which for all its mosaics remains Roman, the mighty citadel of the Roman tradition and administration throughout the Dark Ages. It was already sunset when we returned from Stilo to Monasterace on the main line of the railway, and because we had not slept in comfort for three nights we deter- mined to make for Catanzaro, passing Squillace, of whose inns we heard nothing but evil, to return to it on the following day. It was well we did so, at least so we SQUILLACE 189 thought on the next day when we dimbed that almost inaccessible rock five miles from the railway and the sea in the most ramshackle conveyance I have ever used. Squillace really beggars description. It stands on a rock so precipitous that it can only be approached from the west, and though from afar it is picturesque enough, when one has reached it, there is nothing to see — a squahd village under the ruins of an old Norman castle, itself a ruin, windswept and forbidding. Only the view repays you, giving you dark Sila to the north, Aspromonte to the south, and all between them the sea. And this is Cassiodorus, " bunch of grapes," shining in the sun ! As it seems, however, Squillace does not stand upon the site of the ancient Scylaceum. Perhaps for the first time Lenormant was wholly mistaken when he made that assertion. We had all our labour for nothing. The site of Scylaceum, the birthplace of Cassiodorus, to which he returned with such joy at the end of his busy and useful life, is not at Squillace, but at Roccelletta, above the valley of the Corace, close to the Marina di Catanzaro. There its ruins remain. We came to these in the after- noon on our way back to Catanzaro, but found little to see. The whole of this coast is but a graveyard, in which more often than not the tombs have been rifled and the gravestones have fallen away. XIV CROTONA NORTHWARD from the Marina di Catanzaro the rail- way crosses a desolate marsh country, cut and divided by the mouths of many rivers at the foot of the hills, which here stand back from the sea, before it turns inland, some twenty miles from Catanzaro to cross the Lacinian Promontory, upon the northern side of which in the Gulf of Taranto Cotrone lies under its citadel beside the sea. Nothing can be drearier or more sinister than this desolate marshland, which is utterly deserted, save for a few houses about the railway stations, without even a village. The whole littoral is in the grip of the malaria ; the stations themselves are entirely wired in to keep out the poisonous mosquito, and such poor folk as one sees upon the plat- forms, the children especially, look ill and wretched. Surely the proper drainage and tillage of all this country would be a more glorious enterprise for the Italian Government than the watering and reclamation of the desert of Tripoli. Cotrone lies upon a little low promontory within the great northern headland of the Lacinian peninsula, the Promentorium Lacinium proper, famous throughout the Greek world for its Temple of Hera, and now upon that account called Capo delle Colonne. It is a curiously busy but rather wretched place, which, on account of its haven, I suppose, does a thriving trade in oranges, olives, and so forth ; and the inn, the Albergo Concordia, is, except those in the upper town at Catanzaro and at Taranto, horrible though it be, the best upon this coast. Cotrone 190 CROTONA 191 itself, however, the town we see, has no attractions at all for the traveller, but the history of the place is so famous and important that no one who comes this way can afford to pass it by, while the site of the great Temple of Hera upon the headland to the south cannot be left un visited. Croton or Crotona, which we call Cotrone, was, as I have said, one of the greatest and most important cities of Magna Grsecia. Founded in 710 by a colony of Achseans led by a certain Myscellus, a native of Rhypae, in obedience to the Oracle at Delphi, the city owes its name, so of old it was asserted, to that Croton who, living hereabout, received Heracles into his house when he was driving the bulls of Geryon across Italy. It seems that the king of this country, Lacinios, was unfriendly to the demi-god, and refused him shelter. Heracles avenged the insult by killing him, but during the fight Croton, the son-in-law of Lacinios, who had married the king's daughter, Laura, would have aided the hero, but Heracles seeing him approach mistook his intentions and killed him also. Understanding too late of what a crime he had been guilty, the hero raised a mighty tomb over the body of his victim, whom he buried with customary rites, prophesying to the natives, there assembled, that one day over the tomb of Croton a mighty city would rise and bear his name. So far the legend. Philologists, on the other hand, assert that the name Crotona is Pelasgic and the same as Cortona, the great city of this people in Etruria. However that may be, we know that the Crotoniats paid especial honour to Heracles, whom they regarded as their tutelary divinity, and to Croton, who was their national hero. All we know of Crotona before the arrival of Pythagoras in the middle of the sixth century B.C. is that it rapidly rose to great wealth and power, and though it was never so luxurious a city as Sybaris, its rival, its walls were twelve miles round about, and it extended its power as Sybaris did right across the Bruttian peninsula to the Tyrrhene Sea, iga NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY where it founded the colony of Terina, while upon the Ionian coast towards Locri it established as an outpost the city of Caulonia. The Crotoniats, indeed, would appear to have been an energetic, athletic, and in comparison with the Sybarites a stern and even a puritan people. The climate was certainly better here on the headland, then as now, than in the low valley of the Crathis — *' more healthy than Croton " was a proverb in the old Greek world, while the women of the city were the loveliest in all Magna Graecia, and the men the strongest, the best soldiers, and athletes. *' Crotona," says Strabo, " seems to have given herself above all to the production of soldiers and athletes. It happened, for instance, in the same Olympiad, that the seven victors in the Stadium were all Crotoniats, so that it was said and with truth that the last of the Crotoniats was still the first of the Greeks." Crotona, indeed, could boast of more victors in the Olympic Games than any other city of the Greek world. The famous Milo of Crotona was six times victor in wrestling at the Ol3nTipic Games, and as often at the Pythian. He it was who carried a heifer five years old on his shoulders through the Stadium at Olympia, and afterwards ate the whole of it in a single day. He was a follower of Pythagoras, and is said to have commanded the army which broke Sybaris in 510 B.C. His end was curious and terrible. In his old age, passing through a forest one day, he saw the trunk of a tree which had been half split by the woodman. He tried to rend it altogether, but the wood closed up his hands and held him fast till he was devoured by wolves in the night. What the government of Crotona was before the coming of Pythagoras we cannot say for certain, but according to lamblichus it was an oligarchy, power being vested in the hands of a council of 1000 who claimed to be descended from the original inhabitants ; and in this it resembled Sybaris before the rebellion. But the advent of Pytha- goras to Crotona, about 540, led apparently to great changes. The extraordinary and adventurous life of Pythagoras, CALABRESE PEASANT GIRL CROTONA 193 if we may believe anything of his legend, would seem especially to have fitted him for the strange and at last the disastrous part he played in Magna Graecia. He had travelled everywhere in Greece, in the East, in Egypt, had seen the courts and the politics of all civilized com- munities, had penetrated the mysteries of his own people, of the Phoenicians, and especially of the Egyptians ; for at Thebes he is said to have lived twenty-two years in the temple' there, and he had too often been a prisoner not to be a despot. It was indeed as a captive that he left Egypt at last in the train of Cambyses, the general of Darius of Babylon, at forty-four years of age, a slave in the heart of Assyria. There he became the friend of a certain physician of Crotona, for even then Crotona was famous for its physicians as for its athletes. This physician one day cured Darius of a sprain, and as a reward asked that he might return to his native city. This the king granted him, but on the way the ship was driven into Tarentum and all were taken prisoners ; but when the Tarentines found that the physician was of Crotona they let him go. Then he came to Crotona, and found there a certain Tarentine exile who being very rich ransomed the Persian prisoners out of the hands of the Tarentines his countrymen, and sent them back to Darius ; and this he did, begging two favours, namely, that Darius would make the Tarentines receive him again, and that he would set free the famous magician Pythagoras, and to this he was prompted by the physician. And Darius granted him what he asked ; and Pythagoras returned to Samos, but when he found his home still in the hands of a tyrant he turned toward Magna Grsecia and his benefactor, and took ship and came to Crotona, where he founded the amazing brotherhood which passes under his name. Exactly what this society was we do not know. It consisted of 300 members bound by a vow to Pythagoras and to each other, and was at once religious and political. It would appear to have spread through all Magna Graecia 13 194 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY and to have been an attempt to establish some sort of governing sect, a sort of Samurai. The whole movement excited the enmity of the populace and led to a great democratic revolution which changed the government of half the cities of Magna Graecia and led to the expulsion of Pythagoras from Crotona. But this did not happen all at once. It certainly seems to have been during the years of Pythagoras' greatest influence that the appalling war broke out between Crotona and Sybaris, in which the latter city was wholly and finally destroyed. This happened in 510 B.C. The cause of the sudden quarrel between the two most famous and powerful cities of Magna Graecia, hitherto friendly rivals, is for the most part unknown to us. We can but suppose that the moral revolution worked by Pythagoras, a sort of revival of asceticism, and his attempt to form a real confederation of the Greek cities of Magna Graecia was laughed at and refused by the wealthy and luxurious Sybarites, who had by reason of too great prosperity fallen into a strange impiety and scorn of all religion. Perhaps the influence of Pythagoras in Sybaris had already begun to be felt, an influence ascetic and aristocratic in its intentions. At any rate we know that a democratic reaction occurred in Sybaris ; certain Sybarites, presumably followers of Pythagoras, found refuge in Crotona, and upon their expulsion being demanded, and refused, the Crotoniat ambassadors sent to Sybaris were massacred ; whereupon war broke out. Milo the athlete led the Crotoniat army of 100,000 men against the Sybarites, who are said to have put no less than 300,000 into the field. The two armies met upon the banks of the Traeis, when the Sybarites were utterly destroyed and their city razed to the ground. The democratic revolution or reaction which had thus brought Sybaris to nothing soon after appeared in Crotona, and the first event of which we have any evidence after the democratic expulsion of Pythagoras is the amazing CROTONA 195 defeat sustained by the Crotoniats 130,000 strong at the hands of the 10,000 Locrians upon the famous field of the Sagras which dyed that river red with Crotoniat blood. This was but the first of a long series of disasters which at last brought the city, once so famous, to obscurity. It placed itself at the head of the League which opposed Dionysius, which was defeated by that despot upon the river -Helleporus, and not long after Crotona fell into his power. Dionysius held it for twelve years, and when he was gone he left it distracted by parties and in peril from the pressure of the Lucanians and the Bruttians. It suffered still more in the following years from enemies within and without, and when Pyrrhus was gone even the extent of the city was reduced by not less than a half. Indeed, when Hannibal broke into Italy, and, after victory after victory, appeared here in the South, it was altogether at his mercy, even the citadel being obliged to surrender, though it was long defended by a few of the aristocratic party. The roadstead, the only possible port hereabout, was useful to Hannibal, and the citadel of Crotona became in his hands his principal fortress upon this coast, and when at last he determined to return to Carthage it was here he embarked, massacring upon the shore all those his Italian and Greek allies who refused to accompany him. It might seem as though this shore, desolate since then, were still under the shadow of that appalling act. Having burnt his magazines and store - houses and barracks, and slaughtered 4000 horses with all the sumpter beasts of his army, Hannibal began the long embarkment of his troops, the most redoubtable regiments of which since he had lost the Gauls were composed of Campanians, Samnites, Lucanians, and Bruttii. These especially he wished to take with him that he might face Scipio upon the Carthaginian soil and not without success. He offered them, therefore, increase of pay, and did all he could to persuade them to follow him to Carthage. They refused. 196 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY He therefore assembled them and caused them to lay down their arms, and this done he surrounded them with his African troops. Then he gave the order, and before his eyes these savages shot down the Italian mercenaries with flight after flight of arrows until all were dead, for they could neither fly nor resist. And this he did lest they should be enrolled by the Romans because he was a Carthaginian. Well said Cato : " Delenda est Carthago." No one certainly coming to Crotona to-day would guess her ancient dignity and long, long history. Not a stone remains of the ancient city, and the place to-day is alto- gether wretched save for the delight of the orange gardens in which it is embowered, and the noble sea over which the old citadel looks out ever towards the mother land eastward. It would be useless to visit so miserable a town, devoid alike of beauty and antiquity, but for the fact that it is only from Crotona one may reach the Lacinian pro- montory, where there still stands in majestic loneliness and silence a single column over the sea of that great Temple of Hera which was so famous through the Greek world. The low headland upon which this column stands lies some seven or eight miles from Crotona to the south, and can be reached either by sea in a fishing-boat or by the road, or rather track, along the low cliffs. This road passes first the cemetery, a walled Campo Santo full of flowers, and presently reaches the little haven or roadstead of Porto Berlinghiere. Thence it climbs along the steep escarpment of the hills over the sea, and soon becomes just a perilous track over a precipice guarded upon the landward side by a sheer wall of tufa. This dangerous passage safely passed, one comes out upon the downs of the headland itself, sweet with thyme and all sorts of wild flowers. Before one lies a valley which divides the cape into two parts and is called " La Fossa del Lupo," or as we might say ''Wolfs Hole" ; it is full of trees and CROTONA 197 undergrowth, and has served in times gone by as a nest and hiding-place for pirates. A few villas are scattered about, summer houses of the well-to-do Crotoniati, and upon the very end or head of the low promontory rises the beautiful solitary column, all that now remains of the great Temple of Hera. It is perhaps impossible to convey to the reader the impression of noble and tragic beauty which this lonely column, standing upon that far headland in the midst of that classic sea, makes upon the traveller. Beyond any- thing else in Magna Graecia it recalls that fair and ancient world which is so irrevocably lost ; and if only for this reason it is better worth the trouble and fatigue of a visit than any other fragment left to us upon all this coast. Here the Greeks worshipped and the maidens laid their offerings ; here Pythagoras lingered in contemplation, gazing over the sea : for, as one may still understand, the place itself was sacred, if only because of its beauty : the temple in its glory and perfection only expressed what after all was inherent here in earth and sky and sea. Indeed, that place was sacred from the beginning : long before the Achaeans landed upon this shore men prayed here to the genius of the place, and, sacrificing victims, propitiated the gods, those divinities still implicit in the beauty of such places as this. Legend ascribes the founda- tion of the temple to Hercules or Lacinius, or asserts that Thetis gave it to Hera, and that therefore in her honour the women of Crotona mourned there every year the death of her son Achilles ; while Virgil speaks of it as already in existence at the time of the voyage of iEneas. Every- thing indeed that we hear of it impresses us with its im- mense antiquity, while that solitary column of the Doric order that alone remains upon a vast and perhaps in part a Roman foundation is undoubtedly the oldest thing left to us in Magna Graecia, far older than anything we have at Poseidonia or Metapontum. 198 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY It would seem that until the beginning of the sixteenth century this mighty Temple of Hera remained almost intact, its forty- eight columns still erect upholding the pediments and the roofs. But in the first years of that century the well-named Antonio Lucifero, Bishop of Cotrone, puUed it down to build with the broken materials his episcopal palace in the city. Even until the middle of the eighteenth century two columns remained and considerable parts of the pavement and the wall which formed the peribolos of the temple, but these were then carried off to mend or build the mole of the haven of Cotrone. To-day there is left to us only that solitary and mighty column looking over the sea. This great Doric column is 26J feet high,^ and has sixteen grooves ; it is thus somewhat smaller than the columns of the Temple of Neptune at Paestum, but is older than they, having been set up here at the end of the seventh century B.C. It is itself all that remains to us of the temple it supported : the masses of ruins some hundred yards away have nothing to do with it, though they may represent its dependences. The whole headland, of course, was a sanctuary dedicated to Hera, whose sacred flocks wandered and grazed in the valley which we call the Fossa del Lupo. The fa9ade of the temple faced towards the sea, eastward that is, looking to Greece. Within, at the end of the fifth century B.C., it was decorated at the expense of the Crotoniats by Zeuxis. " Crotona," says Cicero, " at that time when she was so famous and so rich that she was regarded as the happiest city in Italy, wished to decorate with paintings the Temple of Juno, which she especially held in veneration. Therefore she persuaded Zeuxis of Heracleia to come to Croton. And when he had painted several pictures, of which some remain to this day, the painter resolved to create an image of Helen, the model of perfect beauty. This greatly flattered the Crotoniats, who knew how excellent a painter ^ 8 m, 29 high ; 5 m. 60 in its lower circumference, i m. 75 in its lower diameter. CROTONA 199 of women was Zeuxis, so that they helped him in every way, thinking to enrich their temple with a masterpiece. Nor were they deceived. First Zeuxis demanded of them if they had any maidens remarkable for beauty. Thereupon they led him to the gymnasium, where he saw a crowd of youths of most noble and perfect beauty, for the Crotoniats were famous for strength and beauty of form and for their victories in the combats of the gymnasium. And when Zeuxis greatly admired these youths, the Crotoniats said, * We have their sisters, the maidens : these youths will give you some idea of their beauty.' ' Give me,' said Zeuxis, ' the most beautiful for my models.' . . . Then by a decree of the people of Crotona all the maidens were assembled and Zeuxis was bidden to choose. He chose five, whose names the poets have preserved for us. . . ." In such wise did the Crotoniats build and adorn the Temple of Hera which was so famous through the Greek world. There it stood for hundreds of years, the most venerable and the holiest place in all Magna Graecia, and perhaps the most beautiful. It was filled with a vast treasure. This it was which at last tempted Hannibal. At the end of the Second Punic War he had made Crotona his chief stronghold, and greatly in need of money to pay his mercenaries, at his wits' end to find it, he determined to loot the Temple of Hera Lacinia. In the midst of the sanctuary, before the statue of the Goddess, there stood a great votive column of solid gold. Its worth was reckoned in thousands of talents, and it represented the price of the wool of the sacred flocks during many centuries. This he determined to steal. But like a true Semite, before committing this appalUng sacrilege he wished to find out whether it was indeed worth the risk of steaHng. There- fore he had it bored to see if it was of solid gold. And when he found that it was so, he gave orders to have it carried away. But in the night as he slept Hera appeared to him and forbade the sacrilege, threatening him with blindness. Frightened by this dream, the Carthaginian 200 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY revoked his orders, and with the gold produced by the boring he caused to be made a golden calf which he placed upon the column of gold, in honour of that goddess w^orshipped by the Carthaginians whom the Romans called Juno Coelestis, and there too he placed a great table of bronze upon which in Greek and in Phoenician he caused to be inscribed the account of his wars against the Romans that it might remain for ever : and this table Polybius saw and used in his History. It was not the barbarian Hannibal who began the de- struction of this marvellous sanctuary, but a Roman magistrate, one Q. Flavins Flaccus, who in 173 B.C., having founded in Rome the Temple of Fortuna Equestris, bore away the marble tiles of the unique roof of the Temple of Hera to adorn his own sanctuary in the Eternal City. This outrage was indeed condemned by the Senate, which caused the slabs to be carried back to this headland, but there was found no one able to replace them. Lenormant tells us that in the middle of the nineteenth century this great pile of tiles which the Romans could not replace upon the roof of the temple was discovered intact and ranged in order upon the ground close to the temple. Flavins Flaccus did not stand alone. In 36 B.C. Sextus Pompeius having been conquered by Agrippa and forced to abandon Sicily, hoped to continue the war in the East by piracy. Before setting out finally for Mitylene,- he descended upon Crotona and looted the temple, so that Strabo writing a generation later tells us that the temple had lost its wealth though it still itself remained, as indeed it would seem to have continued to do till the sixteenth century. Lenormant indeed asserts that it was with the advance of Christianity transformed into a church and dedicated in honour of the Madonna. There still indeed remains in the Cathedral of Croton a chapel in honour of La Madonna del Capo delle Colonne, while upon the headland itself there is a shrine of Our Lady to which it is said the maidens of Cotrone, le verginelle, go yearly in CROTONA 201 procession with bare feet carrying flowers and singing as of old. I would that I might have seen them as they came by that steep way over the sea in the early sunlight, as they were the maidens of Crotona going in springtime to the Temple of Hera Lacinia. XV THE GULF OF TARANTO WE left Cotrone after all with a sort of reluctance to follow the coast by rail to Taranto,and first we passed along a low shore across which, amid a profusion of flowers, the iEsarus finds the sea, and then we crossed the Neaethus, the Neto of the Sila and of Theocritus, concerning which that poet sings in the rather dull Fourth Idyll where the shepherds Cory don and Battos speak of their pastures. Just across the wide bed of this stream, the greatest that descends from Sila into the Ionian Sea, is the station of Strongoli, the city lying some miles away on the hiUs inland toward the west. Strongoli is a wretched place enough, set on a bold height more than iioo feet high and some six miles from the shore. It stands right above the ancient city of Petelia, founded according to the Greek traditions by Philoctetes after the Trojan War. It would seem to have been always rather a fortress than a city, a small place really of the barbarians, who probably became almost completely Hellenized by the Crotoniats. Later it feU into the hands of the Lucanians and became the chiefest of their strongholds, so that Strabo calls it their metropolis. In the Second Punic War it played a considerable part, remaining entirely faithful to Rome amid the general disaffection ; but Rome was compelled to abandon it, and after a most heroic resistance the city fell into the hands of the Bruttian allies of Hannibal. Most of the inhabitants appear to have been massacred, but some THE GULF OF TARANTO 203 few escaped, and these Rome restored and treated with such favour that PeteUa was soon a flourishing town, indeed in the first years of the Empire one of the most flourishing towns in this part of Italy. With the fall of the Empire in the West, Peteha apparently came to ruin, until Justinian restored it and built the fortress of Strongylos, as the Byzantines called it. The place like all the Byzantine foundations became an episcopal city, which however it no longer remains. But upon its old Cathedral certain inscriptions from Petelia are to be found, the only ruins left to us of the ancient city. From the station of Strongoli by the shore the railway follows the coast, crossing the Crimisso upon the low and open shore, and rounding the Punta delF Alice under Giro. This headland is the ancient promontory of Crimissa upon which, according to Greek tradition, Philoc- tetes founded a small city known by that name, no ruins of which are left to us, but the retreat from which is represented by the town of Giro. Like Petelia, Grimissa was probably an (Enotrian city, a barbarous town that was in the great years of Magna Grgecia completely Hellenized. Giro, which does not occupy the site of the ancient city, is not worth a visit except it be for the beauty of the Galabrian mountains and sea to be had thence. These mountains are the joy of Galabria to-day ; amid many disappointments they never disappoint us, for their beauty alone remains unchanged from the days of Pythagoras to our own. From th« Punta dell' Alice the railway passes through a country of considerable charm all along the shore, past Crucoli and its castle, exquisitely situated over the sea, across the river Fiumenica to Gariati, a place as miserable as Grucoli is delightful, and close to the shore. The line continues to follow the coast through a hill country full of beauty if rather sombre, until, crossing the Trionto, the ancient Traentus, it enters the vast and noble Gulf of 204 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY Taranto along the low and ever widening shore across which the famous Crathis reaches the sea upon which stood of old the great and illustrious city of Sybaris and the later foundation of Thurii. Before coming to these famous but now empty and desolate places, however, the railway passes under the beautiful town of Rossano, which is not only worth some trouble to see, but which boasts the best inn, poor though it be, in this part of the country, the only possible resting-place from which to visit the site of Sybaris. Rossano is a considerable town, so wonderfully situated upon a height surrounded by great precipices that coming to it one wonders how men ever chose so inaccessible a spot. It takes more than an hour to climb up to it from its borgo by the station where I suppose the ancient town of Roscianum to have stood, and every yard of the way is full of wonder. It can indeed only have been in the misery of the Lower Empire, when the whole of these coasts were open to the raids of the Saracens, that Rossano retreated to the marvellous eyrie upon which it lies, living by its quarries of marble and alabaster. In that time of confusion the first necessity of any strong place was natural strength and difficulty of access. This virtue certainly Rossano possessed, and thus it appears as one of the principal fortresses of the Byzantines in Southern Italy, itself impregnable and commanding the coast and the valley of the Crathis, the easiest route from the Ionian to the Tyrrhene Sea. The first we hear of it is that it fell to Totila in 548, but thereafter it appears as the southern key of all this country, a role it continued to play until late in the Middle Age. To this early import- ance the fact that it was and is the see of an archbishop bears witness, as does the strange career of its saint, the Byzantine S. Nilus, who was born in Rossano in 910, and of whom the town boasts to this day. Before the Byzantine Madonna which remains in the Cathedral he took his vows under the Basilian Rule, and he became SYBARIS 205 abbot of S. Maria close by. His life was a long flight before the Saracen, The Byzantine Cathedral of S. Pietro, under its five domes, however, possesses a treasure even more precious than S. Nilus' Byzantine Madonna. This is a sixth-century manuscript of the Gospels of S. Matthew and S. Mark, written in silver upon purple leaves of vellum, with twelve full-page miniatures in gold and colours, a marvellous antiquity. Even this wonder is as nothing to the beauty of the world that lies before one from the terraces of Rossano, where mountains and sea and great headland, all the vast bay of Taranto and the peninsula of Otranto are spread out in the glory of the morning and evening light, never to be forgotten. From Rossano it is a fine morning's walk to Corigliano northward by a footpath over the hills which leaves the steep road to the sea about half-way down. Rising out of the olives stands a great castle, and beneath it the little town, almost as beautiful though less picturesque than its neighbour. Thence it is easy to descend to the railway and from the desolate station of Sybaris to visit the forgotten site of that great city. Nothing but the melancholy satisfaction of standing by the river beneath which lie the ruins of Sybaris is to be gained by a visit to this utterly desolate place, where not only Sybaris but Thurii once stood. There is nothing to see, not a stone remains of either Greek city, though at Thurii a few Roman ruins are still visible. Yet Sybaris was incomparably the greatest republic in Magna Grsecia, Poseidonia was but her colony. The power and splendour of Sybaris were so great that the name of her citizens has become a synonym for luxury, and in the height of her career in the sixth century B.C. she was easily the greatest and wealthiest city of the Greek world ; she ruled over twenty-five subject cities and could put an army of 300,000 men into the field. Her own walls were not less than 50 stadia in circumference, and her knights, those wealthy 2o6 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY patricians who rode in her ceremonial processions, were not less than 5000. When one of her citizens sought to marry the daughter of Cleisthenes of Sicyon he carried with him in his train not less than 1000 slaves. Their luxury indeed was such that all dressed in silk, and such was their magnificence that Alcimenes of Sybaris offered to the Lacinian Hera a figured robe of purple which Dionysius of Syracuse stole and sold for 120 talents, ;f24,ooo of our money. But in spite of their wealth, their power, their luxury and exquisite civilization, the Sybarites were destroyed, and this not by the barbarians but by their brothers of Crotona. Both were Achaean cities, but after years of friendship they quarrelled when Pythagoras began his mysterious revolu- tion. It seems that like Crotona, Sybaris had been governed till then by an aristocratic oligarchy, but this had been dispersed by a demagogue called Telys who made himself despot. The aristocrats took refuge in Crotona, and when Telys demanded them and was refused, he declared war upon Crotona, and, murdering her am- bassadors, marched against that city with an army of 300,000 men. With 15,000 men under the command of Milo, Crotona met him upon the Traeis, and having annihi- lated his immense army, proceeded to destroy the city, turning the course of the Crathis so that it flowed over the ruins and for ever forbade any resurrection. This happened in 510 B.C. All attempts to rebuild the city were frustrated by the Crotoniats ; the Sybarites were forced to take refuge in Laus and Scidrus, colonies of theirs upon the Tyrrhene Sea. Half a century later a fresh attempt was made to re-establish Sybaris, but Croton would not permit it, and all that she would ever consent to was the foundation of Thurii by the Sybarites and certain Athenian colonists sent by Pericles. This was done about seventy years after the fall of Sybaris. The site of the new city was chosen upon rising ground to the south of the mouth of the Crathis ; but for some reason Thurii did not flourish : THE GULF OF TARANTO 207 constant disputes arose between the Sybarites and the Athenians, until the former were expelled, their ultimate fate being unknown to us. Having got rid of the Sybarites, the Thurians made friends with the Crotoniats, and the new city rapidly increased in wealth and prosperity under a democratic government which seems to have welcomed every sort of immigrant. The wars of Dionysius and Pyrrhus left it greatly weakened, but it was the Second Punic War that destroyed it, for Hannibal gave it to be plundered by his troops. Later Rome sent it a colony, but it never rose again to its old prosperity, and with the fall of the Empire disappears altogether, even its site being to-day doubtful, and its name as utterly lost as that of Sybaris was till with the advent of the rail- way the new station in this desolate place was called Sibari. Leaving that melancholy station, the railway crosses the marshes of Sybaris, and proceeds through a delicious hill country between the mountains and the sea, crossing many a river, under Trebisaccie, Amendolara, Roseto, Rocca Imperiale, to the marshes of the Sinni, the ancient Syris, where the station of Nova Siri, a mere handful of houses, gives us access to the site of the ancient Greek cities of Siris and Heracleia. There is nothing more picturesque upon all this coast than Trebisaccie, Amendolara upon its isolated rock, and Roseto in its ravine, or Rocca Imperiale ; but their obvious wonder and delight does not occupy the mind as does the legendary beauty of Siris in the words of Athenaeus : '* There is no spot on earth so sweet, so lovely, so to be desired as the banks of that stream upon which Siris stands." The place is a marsh : nothing at all remains of that Ionian city founded perhaps in 700 B.C. ; not a stone is left of it, and scarcely a word in history — only that loving tribute of Athenaeus. The place early came to nothing ; it was destroyed before Sybaris fell, and thereafter would seem to have served Heracleia as a port. 2o8 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY Heracleia was founded by the Tarentines as an outpost against the Thurians and the Crotoniats in 432 B.C. After years of war the Tarentines were victorious, and they estabHshed this outpost of Heracleia, transferring there what was left of the population of Siris upon the headland that comes down from the mountains towards the sea between the rivers Acisis (Agis) and Siris (Sinni) . The two cities of Siris and Heracleia were indeed so bound together in their history that Pliny confounds them and Livy considers them as one. The history of Heracleia follows that of Tarentum, for it was her daughter till the Second Punic War, when upon the offer of extraordinary terms it deserted the cause of Hannibal for that of Rome, and throughout the time of the Republic continued to enjoy a very favourable position, so that it hesitated to accept the rights of Roman citizenship in 89 B.C. Later it seems to have sunk into decadence, and with the fall of the Empire it disappears, and its site appears to have become desolate. All along this coast, with three exceptions, Reggio, Cotrone, and Taranto, the cities upon the sea were deserted because they could not be defended against the malaria and the raids of the Saracens. It was doubtless the same causes which made Heracleia a desert. The wretched village of Policoro would seem to-day to occupy the site of this outpost of Tarentum. Between Sybaris and Tarentum there is only a sort of desolation. The coast here is a low swamp, and the only place of any importance is the railway junction, little more than a station, of Metaponto, rather nearer Heracleia than Tarentum, in the deepest part of the gulf. Alighting there to-day and crossing the neglected fields in search of the ruins of the great and famous city which once stood here by the sea, none would guess that this place was once so fertile, and especially in corn, that the Metapontines sent to the temple at Delphi an offering of a '* golden sheaf," O€po