contrast in Elysian {291} Fields, and this name has actually been
bestowed upon a portion of the peninsula of Baiæ, which formed the
chief attraction of the voluptuous Romans, and where Marius, Pompey,
Cæsar, Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Agrippina, Nero, and others
had their palaces. Many a fearful tragedy has been enacted in these
sumptuous buildings. But hardly a trace of them exists now; nature has
resumed possession of the country, and the hills of tufa and volcanoes
are the only curiosities of the peninsula. Cape Miseno is one of these
old volcanoes, and from its summit may be enjoyed one of the most
delightful prospects in the world. The whole of the Bay of Naples—“a
bit of heaven fallen upon our earth”—lies spread out beneath us, and
Ischia the joyous, formidable Capri, the promontory of Sorrento, Mount
Vesuvius, and the houses and villas of Naples fill up the space bounded
by the sea and the distant Apennines.
The island of Procida joins the Phlegræan Fields to the chain of island
volcanoes lying off the Bay of Gaeta. Ischia is the most important of
these, and its volcano, the Epomeo (2,520 feet), almost rivals Mount
Vesuvius in height. One of its most formidable eruptions occurred in
1302, at a time when Mount Vesuvius was quiescent, but after the latter
resumed its activity Ischia remained in repose. Similarly, when the
Monte Nuovo was ejected from the earth, the huge volcano went to sleep
for no less a period than one hundred and thirty years. Ischia has
known no eruption for five centuries and a half, and the gases escaping
from its thirty or forty hot springs are now the only signs of volcanic
activity.
Ischia has certainly been upheaved during a comparatively recent epoch,
for its trachytic lavas rest in many places upon clays and marls
containing marine shells of living Mediterranean species. Some of these
have been found at a height of nearly 2,000 feet. At the present time
the tufa rocks of Ischia, and of the other volcanic islands to the
west of it, are being washed away by the sea. Ventotene, the ancient
Pandataria, to which the Roman princesses were exiled, is hardly more
now than a heap of scoriæ. Ponza, likewise a place of exile of the
Romans, has been separated by the erosive action of the sea into a
number of smaller islands. Its lavas overlie Jurassic rocks, similar in
all respects to those of Monte Circello on the coast nearest to it.
Mount Vesuvius (4,100 feet), the pride and dread of the Neapolitans,
was likewise an island during prehistoric times. The marine shells
found in the tufa of Monte Somma prove this, and on the east the
volcano is still surrounded by plains but little elevated above the
sea. Formerly the mountain was covered with verdure to its very summit,
but the explosion of A.D. 79 shattered its cone, and the ashes thrown
up into the air shrouded the whole of the country in darkness. Even at
Rome the sun was hidden, and an age of darkness was believed to have
set in. When at length the light reappeared, the face of the country
was found to have undergone a marvellous change. The mountain had lost
its shape, the fertile fields were hidden by masses of débris, and
entire towns had been buried beneath ashes.
Since that terrible event Mount Vesuvius has vomited lavas and ashes on
many occasions. No periodicity has been traced in these outbursts, and
the intervals {292} of repose were generally of sufficient duration to
enable vegetation to resume its sway. But these eruptions have become
more frequent since the seventeenth century, and hardly a decade passes
by without one or more of them. Each of them modifies the contours of
the mountain, whose great central vent has undergone many changes. The
crescent-shaped mass of débris which surrounds the old crater, known
as the Atrio del Cavallo, was undoubtedly of loftier height previously
to the great outburst of 79 than it is now. The vicinity of Naples has
facilitated a study of the phenomena attending volcanic eruptions, and
an observatory, permanently occupied, has been built close to the cone
of eruption.
[Illustration: Fig. 107.—ERUPTION OF MOUNT VESUVIUS, APRIL 26TH, 1872.]
The neighbourhood of Mount Vesuvius, like that of all other volcanoes,
abounds in hot and gas springs, but there are no subsidiary craters.
The nearest volcano is Monte Vultur (4,356 feet), a regular cone on the
eastern slope of the peninsula. Its dimensions are larger than those
of Vesuvius, but no eruptions are on record, though a slight escape of
carbonic acid is still going on from the two lakes which occupy the
bottom of its vast crater. On a line connecting Ischia, Vesuvius, and
Monte Vultur, and about half-way between the two latter, we meet with
the most abundant carbonic acid spring of Italy. The gas escapes with
a hissing noise from the pond of Ansanto, and the ground around the
spring is covered with the remains of insects, killed in myriads on
coming within the influence of the poisonous air. Near it the Romans
erected a temple in honour of Juno the Mephitic.
The disasters resulting from volcanic eruptions are great, no doubt,
but they {293} are exceeded by those caused by earthquakes. Some of
these are unquestionably caused by a subterranean displacement of lava,
and thus, when Vesuvius begins to stir, Torre del Greco and other
towns at its foot incur the risk of being buried beneath ashes or
destroyed by earthquakes. But the Basilicata and Calabria—that is to
say, the two provinces lying between the volcanic foci of Vesuvius and
Etna—have many times been shaken by earthquakes whose origin cannot be
traced to volcanic agencies. Out of a thousand earthquakes recorded in
Southern Italy during the last three centuries, nearly all occurred in
the provinces named, and they were occasionally attended by the most
disastrous results. The earthquake of 1857 cost the lives of 10,000
persons at Potenza and its vicinity, but the most disastrous of these
events happened in 1785 in Southern Calabria. The first shock, which
proceeded from a focus beneath the town of Oppido, in the Aspromonte
Mountains, only lasted a hundred seconds, but within that short space
of time 109 towns and villages were overthrown, and 32,000 of their
inhabitants buried beneath their ruins. Crevasses opened in the ground;
rivers were swallowed up, to reappear again lower down as lakes;
liquid clay flowed down the hill-slopes like lava, converting fertile
fields into unproductive wastes. The commotion of the sea added to
these horrors. Many of the inhabitants of Scilla, afraid to remain on
the quaking land, fled to their boats, when an enormous mass of rock
detached itself from a neighbouring mountain, and, tumbling into the
sea, produced a wave which upset the boats and cast their fragments
upon the shore. Want of food brought on famine, and typhus, as usual,
came in its train.
We are not yet able to predict earthquakes, and can only provide
against them by a suitable construction of our dwellings. There exists,
however, another cause of misery and depopulation which the Neapolitans
might successfully combat, as was done by their ancestors. In the time
of the Greeks the swamps along the coast were certainly less extensive
than they are now. War, and a return towards barbarism, have caused the
rivers to be neglected, and to produce a deterioration in the climate.
Baia, a place once famous on account of its healthiness, has become the
home of malaria. Sybaris, the town of luxury and pleasure, has been
supplanted by a fever-plain “which eats more men than it is able to
nourish.” These paludial miasmata, poverty, and ignorance decimate the
population of La Puglia, Basilicata, and Calabria. Even certain Asiatic
diseases, such as elephantiasis and leprosy, ravage the country, which,
from its rare fertility and fine climate, ought to be in the enjoyment
of the greatest prosperity.
Continental Sicily is indeed a favoured region, and its eastern slopes
more especially might be converted into one huge garden, for the
rainfall there is abundant. Naples enjoys a semi-tropical climate, and
its winter temperature is hardly inferior to the annual mean of London.
Snow very rarely falls, and only remains on the tops of the hills
for a few weeks.[101] The vegetation along the coast is of tropical
luxuriance. Oranges and lemons bear excellent fruit; date-palms uplift
their fan-shaped leaves, and sometimes bear fruit; the American agave
{294} stretches forth its candelabra-like branches; sugar-cane,
cotton, and other industrial plants, which elsewhere in Europe are
scarcely ever met with outside hothouses, grow in the fields. In the
forests of Calabria the olive-tree affords as much shade as does the
beech with us. Even the bare rocks on the coast yield excellent grapes
and garden fruits. Naples, Sicily, Andalusia, and certain districts of
Greece and Asia Minor realise our beau idéal of the sub-tropical zone,
and only the heaths on the Adriatic slope and the upper valleys of the
Apennines remind us that we are still in Central Europe.
This delightful country is inhabited by a people having the most
diverse origin. It is now 2,300 years since the Samnites occupied the
whole of it from sea to sea. They were more numerous than the Romans,
and might have conquered the whole of Italy had there been more
cohesion amongst them, and some of that talent for organization which
constituted the strength of their adversaries. But they were split into
five tribes, each speaking a different dialect; and whilst the Samnites
of the hills quarrelled with their kinsmen in the plains, the latter
were at enmity with the Hellenized Samnites who lived near the Greek
towns on the coast.
The whole of the coast of Southern Italy, from Cumæ—founded more than
a thousand years before our era—to Sipuntum, of which some ruins
remain near the modern Manfredonia, was dotted with Greek colonies.
In these districts of Southern Italy the bulk of the population is
of very different origin from that of other parts of the peninsula.
To the north of Monte Gargano, Celtic, Etruscan, and Latin elements
preponderate, whilst Hellenes, Pelasgians, and kindred races dominate
in the south. Not only did civilised Greeks found their colonies there,
but the aboriginal population, the Iapygians, spoke a dialect akin to
the Hellenic, and Mommsen may be right when he conjectures that these
Iapygians were of the same origin as the modern Albanians.
At a subsequent date these southern Italians had to bow down before
the Romans, who founded military colonies amongst them, but never
succeeded in completely Latinising them. When the Roman Empire fell to
pieces the Cæsars of Byzantium still maintained themselves for a long
time in Southern Italy, and the Greek language again preponderated,
but gradually Romance dialects gained the upper hand. The inhabitants
returned to a state of barbarism, but they retained to a great extent
their language and customs, and even now there are districts in the
south which are Italian in appearance rather than in reality, and in
eight villages of the Terra d’Otranto the Hellenic dialect of the
Peloponnesus is still spoken. Towns like Naples, Nicastro, Taranto,
Gallipoli, Monopoli, and others, whilst preserving their sonorous Greek
names, have also retained many features which recall the times of Magna
Græcia.
Reggio—that is, the “city of the strait”—appears to have retained the
use of Greek much longer than any other town, and its patricians,
who boasted of being pure Ionians, still spoke the language of their
ancestors towards the close of the thirteenth century. In several
remote towns of the interior Greek was formerly in common use. The old
popular songs of Bova, a small town near the southern {295} extremity
of Italy, are in an Ionian dialect more like the language of Xenophon
than is modern Greek. Down to a very recent date the peasants near
Roccaforte del Greco, Condofuri, and Cardeto spoke Greek, and when
they appeared before a magistrate they required an interpreter. At the
present day all young people speak Italian; the old language has been
forgotten, but the Greek type remains. The men and women of Cardeto
are famous for their beauty, more especially the latter. “They are
Minervas,” we are told by a local historian. Their principal livelihood
consists in acting as wet nurses to the children of the citizens of
Reggio. The women of Bagnara, between Scilla and Palmi, are likewise of
wondrous beauty, but their features are stern, betraying Arab blood,
and they are destitute of the noble placidity of the Greek.
It is said that the women of the Hellenic villages of Calabria are
still in the habit of executing a sacred dance, which lasts for hours,
and resembles the representations we meet with on ancient vases,
only they dance before the church instead of the temple, and their
ceremonies are blessed by Christian priests. Funerals are accompanied
by weeping women, who collect their tears in lachrymatories. Elsewhere,
as in the environs of Tarento, the children consecrate the hair of
their head to the manes of their ancestors. Old morals, no less than
old customs, have been preserved. Woman is still looked upon as an
inferior being, and even at Reggio the wives of citizens or noblemen
who respect ancient tradition confine themselves to the gynæceum. They
do not visit the theatre, go out but rarely, and when they walk abroad
are attended by barefooted servants, and not by their husbands.
In addition to Samnites, Iapygians, and Greeks, who form the bulk
of the population of Southern Italy, we meet with Etruscans in the
Campania; Saracens in the peninsula of Gargano, in the Campania,
the marina of Reggio, Bagnara, and other coast towns; Lombards in
Benevento, who retained their language down to the eleventh century;
Normans, from whom the shepherds on the hills are supposed to be
descended; and Spaniards in several coast towns, especially at
Barletta, in Apulia. The Albanians have probably furnished the largest
contingent of all the strangers now domiciled in Southern Italy. They
are numerous on the whole of the eastern slope of the peninsula, from
the promontory of Gargano to the southernmost point of Calabria.
One of their clans came to Italy in 1440, but the bulk of them only
arrived during the second half of the fifteenth century, after the
heroic resistance made by Scanderbeg had been overcome by the Turks.
The conquered Skipetars were then compelled to expatriate themselves
in order to escape the yoke of the Turks, and they were received with
open arms by the Kings of Naples, who granted them several deserted
villages, which are now amongst the most flourishing of Southern Italy.
The descendants of these Skipetars, who are principally domiciled in
the Basilicata and Calabria, rank among the most useful citizens of
the country. They take the lead in the intellectual regeneration of
the old kingdom of Naples, and were the first to join the liberating
army of Garibaldi. Many have become Italianised, but there are still
over 80,000 who have neither forgotten their origin nor their language.
{296}
The Neapolitans are undoubtedly one of the finest races of Europe.
The Calabrians, the mountaineers of Molise, and the peasants of the
Basilicata are so well proportioned, erect, supple of limb, and agile,
that their low stature, as compared with the races of the North, can
hardly be a subject of reproach; and the nobility and expression of
the faces of Neapolitan women fully compensate for the irregularity we
frequently meet with. The faces of the children, with their large black
eyes and well-formed lips, beam with intelligence, but the wretched
existence to which too many of them are condemned soon degrades their
physiognomy. Supremely ignorant, the Neapolitan is, nevertheless,
most admirably gifted by nature. The country which has produced so
many great men since the days of Pythagoras is in nowise inferior to
any other; its philosophers, historians, and lawyers have exercised a
powerful influence upon the march of human thought; and the number of
great musicians which it has produced is proportionately large.
Still, in many respects, the inhabitants of Southern Italy hold the
lowest rank amongst the nations of Europe. Ever since the annihilation
of the Greek republican cities the country has been subjected to
foreign masters, who have either devastated it or systematically
oppressed its inhabitants. With the exception of Amalfi, no other town
was granted the privilege of governing itself for any length of time.
The very position of the country exposed it to dangers. Placed in the
centre of the Mediterranean, it was on the high-road of every pirate
or invader, whether Saracen or Norman, Spaniard or Frenchman, and the
absence of any natural cohesion between its various districts prevented
its population from organizing a united resistance against the attacks
of foreign invaders. Southern Italy has not the river basins of
Lombardy, Tuscany, Umbria, or Rome; there exists no centre of gravity,
so to say, and the country is split up into separate sections having
nothing in common.
The government under which the Neapolitans lived until quite recently
was most humiliating. “I do not require my people to think,” said King
Ferdinand II. of Naples. Ideas which did not commend themselves to
the authorities were punished as crimes, and only mendicity and moral
depravity were allowed to flourish. Science was compelled to live in
retirement; history to seek a refuge in the catacombs of archæology;
and literature was corrupt or frivolous. Of the Neapolitans who did
not expatriate themselves only a very small number became eminent.
Schools were hardly known outside the large towns, and where they
did exist they were placed under the supervision of the police. Men
able to read and write were looked at askance, and, to escape being
accused of belonging to some secret society, they were compelled to
turn hypocrites. Old superstitions exist in full force, and the heathen
hallucinations of Greeks and Iapygians still survive. The idolatrous
Neapolitan casts himself down before the statue of St. Januarius, but
heaps imprecations upon the head of his saint if his miraculous blood
does not quickly liquefy. Similar superstitions exist in nearly every
town of Naples. Every one of them has its patron saint or deity, who,
if he should fail to protect his people, is treated as a common enemy.
As recently as 1858 the villagers of Calabria, irritated by a drought,
put their venerated saints into prison; and Barletta, {297} about the
same period, had the melancholy honour of being the last town in Europe
in which Protestants were burned alive. Such is the fanaticism still
met with in the second half of the nineteenth century ! [102]
[Illustration: Fig. 108.—EDUCATIONAL MAP OF ITALY.]
{298}
One of the great superstitions of the Neapolitans refers to the
“evil eye.” The unfortunate being who happens to have a nose like a
battle-axe and large round eyes is looked upon as _jettatore_, and is
avoided as a fatal being. If by any evil chance his glance happens
to fall upon any unfortunate person, it is considered necessary to
counteract it by the influence of an amulet resembling the _fascinum_
of the ancients, or by some other means no less potent. Coral amulets
are looked upon as most efficient, and many who pretend not to believe
in their virtues are the first to make use of them. The peasants of
Calabria wear an image of their patron saint upon the chest, and shield
their cattle and houses by means of the images of saints or household
gods. At Reggio a cactus may be seen near the door or on the balcony of
every house, which has been placed there to keep off evil influences,
and is universally known as _l’albero del mal’ occhio_ (the tree of the
evil eye).
Next to superstition, the great scourge of Southern Italy is
brigandage. The very name of Calabria conjures up in our imagination
picturesque brigands armed with carbines. Unfortunately this Calabrian
brigand is no myth, invented to serve the purposes of the stage. He
really exists, and neither the severity of the laws put in motion
against him nor political changes have brought about his extermination.
On many occasions, after a successful hunt for brigands had been
carried on, the authorities felicitated themselves upon having rid the
country of this scourge, but it regularly revived.
In Sardinia and Corsica the peasant takes up arms from a desire for
vengeance, but in Calabria from poverty. Feudalism, though abolished in
name, still flourishes in that country. Nearly the whole of the soil
belongs to a few great landowners, and the peasant, or _cafore_, is
condemned to a life of ill-remunerated toil. In years of plenty, when
the rye, chestnuts, and wine suffice for the wants of his family, he
works without grumbling, but in years of dearth brigandage flourishes.
The brigand, or _gualano_, looks upon the feudal lord as the common
enemy, steals his cattle, sets fire to his house, and even takes him
prisoner, releasing him only on payment of a heavy ransom. Some of
these bandits become veritable wild beasts, thirsting after blood;
but, as long as they confine themselves to avenging wrongs, they
may count upon the complicity of all other peasants. The herdsmen
of the mountains supply them with milk and food, furnish them with
information, and mislead the carabiniers sent in pursuit of them.
All the poor are leagued in their favour, and refuse to bear witness
against them. Moreover, most of these Neapolitan bandits, conscientious
in their own way, are extremely pious. They swear by the Virgin or
some patron saint, to whom they promise a portion of their booty, and
religiously place the share promised upon the altar. Not content with
wearing amulets all over the body to turn aside bullets, they are
said sometimes to place a consecrated wafer in an incision they make
in their hand, in the belief that this will render deadly their own
bullets.
The fearful poverty of the South Italian peasantry has led to another
practice, even worse than brigandage. Foreign speculators, Christians
as well as Jews, travel the country, and particularly the Basilicata,
in order to purchase children, whom {299} their poverty-stricken
parents are ready to part with for a trifle. The more intelligent and
prettier the child, the greater the likelihood of its passing into the
hands of these dealers in human flesh. The latter are threatened with
the penalties of the law, but custom and ignoble accomplices enable
them to evade them, and to carry their living merchandise to France,
England, Germany, and even America, where the children are converted
into acrobats, street musicians, or simple mendicants. The chances of
this shameful commerce have been carefully calculated, and the losses
arising from deaths and the cost of travelling are more than covered by
the earnings of the children. Viggiano, a small town of the Basilicata,
is more especially haunted by these traffickers, for its inhabitants
possess a natural gift for music.
Voluntary emigration is on the increase, and if it were not for the
obstructions placed in the way of young men liable to the conscription,
certain districts would become rapidly depopulated in favour of South
America. Only the poorest peasants remain behind. This emigration
influences in a large measure the customs of the country, and,
conjointly with railways and factories, will no doubt bring about
an assimilation of Southern Italy to the rest of the peninsula.
Brigandage and the traffic in children will doubtless disappear, but
the proletarianism of manufacturing towns is likely to be substituted
for them.