Est locus Italia medio, sub montibus altis, In midst of Italy, well known to fame, Which, falling from on high, with bellowing sound To this infernal gate the fury flies, Æn. 7. Here hides her hated head, and frees the lab'ring skies. DRYDEN. It was indeed the most proper place in the world for a fury to make her exit, after she had filled a nation with distractions and alarms; and I believe every reader's imagination is pleased, when he sees the angry goddess thus sinking, as it were, in a tempest, and plunging herself into hell, amidst such a scene of horror and confusion. The river Velino, after having found its way out from among the rocks where it falls, runs into the Nera. The channel of this last river is white with rocks, and the surface of it, for a long space, covered with froth and bubbles; for it runs all along upon the fret, and is still breaking against the stones that oppose its passage: so that for these reasons, as well as for the mixture of sulphur in its waters, it is very well described by Virgil, in that verse which mentions these two rivers in their old Roman names. Tartaream intendit vocem, quâ protinus omne Æn. 7. The sacred lake of Trivia from afar, The Veline fountains, and sulphureous Nar, Shake at the baleful blast, the signal of the war. DRYDEN. He makes the sound of the Fury's trumpet run up the Nera to the very sources of Velino, which agrees extremely well with the situation of these rivers. When Virgil has marked any particular quality in a river, the other poets seldom fail of copying after him. CLAUD. de Pros. et Olyb. Cons. -The hoary Nar, Corrupted with the stench of sulphur, flows, And into Tiber's streams th' infected current throws. From this river our next town on the road receives the name of Narni. I saw hereabouts nothing remarkable except Augustus's bridge, that stands half a mile from the town, and is one of the stateliest ruins in Italy. It has no cement, and looks as firm as one entire stone. There is an arch of it unbroken, the broadest that I have ever seen, though, by reason of its great height, it does not appear so. The middle one was still much broader. They join together two mountains, and belonged, without doubt, to the bridge that Martial mentions, though Mr. Ray takes them to be the remains of an aqueduct. Sed jam parce mihi, nec abutere Narnia quinto, Preserve my better part, and spare my friend; Lib. 7. From Narni I went to Otricoli, a very mean, little village, that stands where the castle of Оcriculum did formerly. I turned about half a mile out of the road to see the ruins of the old Ocriculum, that lie near the banks of the Tiber. There are still scattered pillars and pedestals, huge pieces of marble half buried in the earth, fragments of towers, subterraneous vaults, bathing places, and the like marks of its ancient magnificence. In my way to Rome, seeing a high hill standing by itself in the Campania, I did not question but it had a classic name, and, upon enquiry, found it to be Mount Soracte. The Italians at present call it, because its name begins with an S, St. Oreste. The fatigue of our crossing the Apennines, and of our whole journey from Loretto to Rome, was very agreeably relieved by the variety of scenes we passed through; for, not to mention the rude prospect of rocks rising one above another, of the gutters deep worn in the sides of them by torrents of rain and snowwater, or the long channels of sand winding about their bottoms, that are sometimes filled with so many rivers we saw, in six days' travelling, the several seasons of the year in their beauty and perfection. We were sometimes shivering on the top of a bleak mountain, and a little while after basking in a warm valley, covered with violets and almond-trees in blossom, the bees already swarming over them, though but in the month of February. Sometimes our road led us through groves of olives, or by gardens of oranges, or into several hollow apartments among the rocks and mountains, that look like so many natural greenhouses; as being always shaded with a great variety of trees and shrubs that never lose their verdure. I shall say nothing to the Via Flaminia, which has been spoken of by most of the voyage-writers that have passed it, but shall set down Claudian's account of the journey that Honorius made from Ravenna to Rome, which lies most of it in the same road that I have been describing. -Antiquæ muros egressa Ravenna Signa movet, jamque ora Padi portusque relinquit Estuat, et pronas puppes nunc amne secundo Non procul amnis adest, urbi qui nominis auctor Inter utrumque jugum tortis anfractibus albet. Inde salutato libatis Tibride nymphis, Excipiunt arcus, operosaque semita, vastis Molibus, et quicquid tantæ præmittitur urbi. De 6 Cons. Hon, They leave Ravenna, and the mouths of Po, A highway made by Vespasian, like the Grotto Obscuro, near Naples. + This fountain not known. Through rocks and woods impetuously he glides, Silius Italicus, who has taken more pains on the geography of Italy than any other of the Latin poets, has given a catalogue of most of the rivers that I saw in Umbria, or in the borders of it. He has avoided a fault (if it be really such) which Macrobius has objected to Virgil, of passing from one place to another, without regarding their regular and natural situation, in which Homer's catalogues are observed to be much more methodical and exact than Virgil's. -Cavis venientes montibus Umbri, Hos Esis Sapisque lavant, rapidasque sonanti SIL. IT. lib. 8. Since I am got among the poets, I shall end this chapter with two or three passages out of them, that I have omitted inserting in their proper places. Sit cisterna mihi quam vinea malo Ravenna, Callidus imposuit nuper mihi caupo Ravennæ; Cum peterem mixtum, vendidit ille merum. By a Ravenna vintner once betray'd, MAR, lib. 5. But when I thought the purchas'd liquor mine, Idem. |