its name from its almost level surface; for the highest point is said to
be only eighty feet above the sea. Considering its apparent
insignificance, it figures more than could be expected in history. The
ill-fated son of Marcus Agrippa was banished here by Augustus, at the
instigation of Livia, and after a time was more effectually put out of the
way, in order to secure the succession of her son Tiberius. We read also
that it was afterwards the property of Marcus Piso, who used it as a
preserve for peacocks, which were here as wild as pheasants with us. Some
remnants of Roman baths still keep up the memory of its former masters.
Long afterwards it became a bone of contention between Pisa and Genoa, and
the latter State, on permitting the former to resume possession of these
islands of the Tuscan Archipelago, stipulated that Pianosa should be left
forever uncultivated and deserted. To secure the execution of this
engagement the Genoese stopped up all the wells with huge blocks of rock.
Capraja, a lovely island to the northwest of Elba, is rather nearer to
Corsica than to Italy. Though less than four miles long, and not half this
breadth, it rivals either in hilliness, for its ridges rise in two places
more than fourteen hundred feet above the sea. Saracen, Genoese, Pisan,
and Corsican have caused it in bygone times to lead a rather troubled
existence, and even so late as 1796 Nelson knocked to pieces the fort
which defended its harbor, and occupied the island.
"The 'stagno,' or lagoon, the sea-marsh of Strabo, is a vast expanse of
stagnant salt water, so shallow that it may be forded in parts, yet never
dried up by the hottest summer; the curse of the country around for the
foul and pestilent vapour and the swarms of mosquitoes and other insects
it generates at that season, yet compensating the inhabitants with an
abundance of fish. The fishery is generally carried on at night, and in
the way often practiced in Italy and Sicily, by harpooning the fish, which
are attracted by a light in the prow of the boat. It is a curious sight on
calm nights to see hundreds of these little skiffs or canoes wandering
about with their lights, and making an ever-moving illumination on the
surface of the lake."[2]
Elba seems to maintain some relation with the mainland by means of the
hilly promontory which supports the houses of Piombino, a small town,
chiefly interesting as being at no great distance from Populonia, an old
Etruscan city of which some considerable ruins still remain. Here, when
the clans gathered to bring back the Tarquins to Rome, stood
"Sea-girt Populonia,
Whose sentinels descry
Sardinia's snowy mountain tops
Fringing the southern sky."
But long after Lars Porsenna of Clusium had retreated baffled from the
broken bridge Populonia continued to be a place of some importance, for it
has a castle erected in the Middle Ages. But now it is only a poor
village; it retains, however, fragments of building recalling its Roman
masters, and its walls of polygonal masonry carry us back to the era of
the Etruscans.
It must not be forgotten that almost the whole of the coast line described
in this chapter, from the river Magra to Civita Vecchia, belonged to that
mysterious and, not so long since, almost unknown people, the Etruscans.
Indeed, at one time their sway extended for a considerable distance north
and south of these limits. Even now there is much dispute as to their
origin, but they were a powerful and civilized race before Rome was so
much as founded. They strove with it for supremacy in Italy, and were not
finally subdued by that nation until the third century before our era.
"Etruria was of old densely populated, not only in those parts which are
still inhabited, but also, as is proved by remains of cities and
cemeteries, in tracts now desolated by malaria and relapsed into the
desert; and what is now the fen or the jungle, the haunt of the wild boar,
the buffalo, the fox, and the noxious reptile, where man often dreads to
stay his steps, and hurries away from a plague-stricken land, of old
yielded rich harvests of corn, wine and oil, and contained numerous
cities mighty and opulent, into whose laps commerce poured the treasures
of the East and the more precious produce of Hellenic genius. Most of
these ancient sites are now without a habitant, furrowed yearly by the
plough, or forsaken as unprofitable wilderness; and such as are still
occupied are, with few exceptions, mere phantoms of their pristine
greatness, mere villages in the place of populous cities. On every hand
are traces of bygone civilization, inferior in quality, no doubt, to that
which at present exists but much wider in extent and exerting far greater
influence on the neighboring nations and on the destinies of the
world."[3]
South of this headland the Maremma proper begins. Follonica, the only
place for some distance which can be called a town, is blackened with
smoke to an extent unusual in Italy, for here much of the iron ore from
Elba is smelted. But the views in the neighborhood, notwithstanding the
flatness of the marshy or scrub-covered plain, are not without a charm.
The inland hills are often attractive; to the north lie the headland of
Piombino and sea-girt Elba, to the south the promontory of Castiglione,
which ends in a lower line of bluff capped by a tower, and the irregular
little island of Formica. At Castiglione della Pescaia is a little harbor,
once fortified, which exports wool and charcoal, the products of the
neighboring hills. The promontory of Castiglione must once have been an
island, for it is parted from the inland range by the level plain of the
Maremma. Presently Grosseto, the picturesque capital of the Maremma,
appears, perched on steeply rising ground above the enclosing plain, its
sky-line relieved by a couple of low towers and a dome; it has been
protected with defenses, which date probably from late in the seventeenth
century. Then, after the Omborne has been crossed, one of the rivers,
which issue from the Apennines, the promontory of Talamone comes down to
the sea, protecting the village of the same name. It is a picturesque
little place, overlooked by an old castle, and the anchorage is sheltered
by the island of S. Giglio, quiet enough now, but the guide-book tells us
that here, two hundred and twenty-five years before the Christian era, the
Roman troops disembarked and scattered an invading Gaulish army. But to
the south lies another promontory on a larger scale than Tlamone; this is
the Monte Argentario, the steep slopes of which are a mass of forests. The
views on this part of the coast are exceptionally attractive. Indeed, it
would be difficult to find anything more striking than the situation of
Orbitello. The town lies at the foot of the mountain, for Argentario,
since it rises full two thousand feet above the sea, and is bold in
outline, deserves the name. It is almost separated from the mainland by a
great salt-water lagoon, which is bounded on each side by two low and
narrow strips of land. The best view is from the south, where we look
across a curve of the sea to the town and to Monte Argentario with its
double summit, which, as the border of the lagoon is so low, seems to be
completely insulated.
Orbitello is clearly proved to have been an Etruscan town; perhaps,
according to Mr. Dennis, founded by the Pelasgi, "for the foundations of
the sea-wall which surrounds it on three sides are of vast polygonal
blocks, just such as are seen in many ancient sites of central Italy
(Norba, Segni, Palæstrina, to wit), and such as compose the walls of the
neighboring Cosa." Tombs of Etruscan construction have also been found in
the immediate neighborhood of the city, on the isthmus of sand which
connects it with the mainland. Others also have been found within the
circuit of the walls. The tombs have been unusually productive; in part,
no doubt, because they appear to have escaped earlier plunderers. Vases,
numerous articles in bronze, and gold ornaments of great beauty have been
found. Of the town itself, which from the distance has a very picturesque
aspect, Mr. Dennis says: "It is a place of some size, having nearly six
thousand inhabitants, and among Maremma towns is second only to Grosseto.
It is a proof how much population tends to salubrity in the Maremma that
Orbitello, though in the midst of a stagnant lagoon ten square miles in
extent, is comparatively healthy, and has more than doubled its population
in thirty years, while Telamona and other small places along the coast are
almost deserted in summer, and the few people that remain become bloated
like wine-skins or yellow as lizards." But the inland district is full of
ruins and remnants of towns which in many cases were strongholds long
before Romulus traced out the lines of the walls of Rome with his plough,
if indeed that ever happened. Ansedonia, the ancient Cosa, is a very few
miles away, Rusellæ, Saturnia, Sovana at a considerably greater distance;
farther to the south rises another of these forest-clad ridges which,
whether insulated by sea or by fen, are so characteristic of this portion
of the Italian coast. Here the old walls of Corno, another Etruscan town,
may be seen to rise above the olive-trees and the holm-oaks.
Beyond this the lowland becomes more undulating, and the foreground
scenery a little less monotonous. Corneto now appears, crowning a gently
shelving plateau at the end of a spur from the inland hills, which is
guarded at last by a line of cliffs. Enclosed by a ring of old walls, like
Cortona, it "lifts to heaven a diadem of towers." In site and in aspect it
is a typical example of one of the old cities of Etruria. Three hundred
feet and more above the plain which parts it from the sea, with the
gleaming water full in view on one side and the forest-clad ranges on the
other, the outlook is a charming one, and the attractions within its walls
are by no means slight. There are several old churches, and numerous
Etruscan and Roman antiquities are preserved in the municipal museum. The
town itself, however, is not of Etruscan origin, its foundation dates only
from the Middle Ages; but on an opposite and yet more insulated hill the
ruins of Tarquinii, one of the great cities of the Etrurian League, can
still be traced; hardly less important than Veii, one of the most active
cities in the endeavor to restore the dynasty of the Tarquins, it
continued to flourish after it had submitted to Rome, but it declined in
the dark days which followed the fall of the Empire, and never held up its
head after it had been sacked by the Saracens, till at last it was
deserted for Corneto, and met the usual fate of becoming a quarry for the
new town. Only the remnants of buildings and of its defenses are now
visible; but the great necropolis which lies to the southeast of the
Corneto, and on the same spur with it, has yielded numerous antiquities. A
romantic tale of its discovery, so late as 1823, is related in the
guide-books. A native of Corneto in digging accidentally broke into a
tomb. Through the hole he beheld the figure of a warrior extended at
length, accoutred in full armour. For a few minutes he gazed astonished,
then the form of the dead man vanished almost like a ghost, for it
crumbled into dust under the influence of the fresh air. Numerous
subterranean chambers have since been opened; the contents, vases,
bronzes, gems and ornaments, have been removed to museums or scattered
among the cabinets of collectors, but the mural paintings still remain.
They are the works of various periods from the sixth to the second or
third century before the Christian era, and are indicative of the
influence exercised by Greek art on the earlier inhabitants of Italy.
As the headland, crowned by the walls of Corneto, recedes into the
distance a little river is crossed, which, unimportant as it seems, has a
place in ecclesiastical legend, for we are informed that at the Torre
Bertaldo, near its mouth, an angel dispelled St. Augustine's doubts on the
subject of the Trinity. Then the road approaches the largest port on the
coast since Leghorn was left. Civita Vecchia, as the name implies, is an
old town, which, after the decline of Ostia, served for centuries as the
port of Rome. It was founded by Trajan, and sometimes bore his name in
olden time, but there is little or nothing within the walls to indicate so
great an antiquity. It was harried, like so many other places near the
coast, by the Saracens, and for some years was entirely deserted, but
about the middle of the ninth century the inhabitants returned to it, and
the town, which then acquired its present name, by degrees grew into
importance as the temporal power of the Papacy increased. If there is
little to induce the traveller to halt, there is not much more to tempt
the artist. Civita Vecchia occupies a very low and faintly defined
headland. Its houses are whitish in color, square in outline, and rather
flat-topped. There are no conspicuous towers or domes. It was once
enclosed by fortifications, built at various dates about the seventeenth
century. These, however, have been removed on the land side, but still
remain fairly perfect in the neighborhood of the harbor, the entrance to
which is protected by a small island, from which rises a low massive tower
and a high circular pharos. There is neither animation nor commerce left
in the place; what little there was disappeared when the railway was
opened. It is living up to its name, and its old age cannot be called
vigorous.
South of Civita Vecchia the coast region, though often monotonous enough,
becomes for a time slightly more diversified. There is still some marshy
ground, still some level plain, but the low and gently rolling hills which
border the main mass of the Apennines extend at times down to the sea, and
even diversify its coast-line, broken by a low headland. This now and
again, as at Santa Marinella, is crowned by an old castle. All around much
evergreen scrub is seen, here growing in tufts among tracts of coarse
herbage, there expanding into actual thickets of considerable extent, and
the views sometimes become more varied, and even pretty. Santa Severa, a
large castle built of grey stone, with its keep-like group of higher
towers on its low crag overlooking the sea, reminds us of some old
fortress on the Fifeshire coast. Near this headland, so antiquarians say,
was Pyrgos, once the port of the Etruscan town of Cære, which lies away
among the hills at a distance of some half-dozen miles. Here and there
also a lonely old tower may be noticed along this part of the coast. These
recall to mind in their situation, though they are more picturesque in
their aspect, the Martello Towers on the southern coast of England. Like
them, they are a memorial of troublous times, when the invader was
dreaded. They were erected to protect the Tuscan coast from the descents
of the Moors, who for centuries were the dread of the Mediterranean.
Again and again these corsairs swooped down; now a small flotilla would
attack some weakly defended town; now a single ship would land its
boatload of pirates on some unguarded beach to plunder a neighboring
village or a few scattered farms, and would retreat from the raid with a
little spoil and a small band of captives, doomed to slavery, leaving
behind smoking ruins and bleeding corpses. It is strange to think how long
it was before perfect immunity was secured from these curses of the
Mediterranean. England, whatever her enemies may say, has done a few good
deeds in her time, and one of the best was when her fleet, under the
command of Admiral Pellew, shattered the forts of Algiers and burnt every
vessel of the pirate fleet.
The scenery for a time continues to improve. The oak woods become higher,
the inland hills are more varied in outline and are forest-clad. Here
peeps out a crag, there a village or a castle. At Palo a large,
unattractive villa and a picturesque old castle overlook a fine line of
sea-beach, where the less wealthy classes in Rome come down for a breath
of fresh air in the hot days of summer. It also marks the site of Alsium,
where, in Roman times, one or two personages of note, of whom Pompey was
the most important, had country residences. For a time there is no more
level plain; the land everywhere shelves gently to the sea, covered with
wood or with coarse herbage. But before long there is another change, and
the great plain of the Tiber opens out before our eyes, extending on one
hand to the not distant sea, on the other to the hills of Rome. It is
flat, dreary, and unattractive, at any rate in the winter season, as is
the valley of the Nen below Peterborough, or of the Witham beyond the
Lincolnshire wolds. It is cut up by dykes, which are bordered by low
banks. Here and there herds of mouse-colored oxen with long horns are
feeding, and hay-ricks, round with low conical tops, are features more
conspicuous than cottages. The Tiber winds on its serpentine course
through this fenland plain, a muddy stream, which it was complimentary for
the Romans to designate _flavus_, unless that word meant a color anything
but attractive. One low tower in the distance marks the site of Porto,
another that of Ostia and near the latter a long grove of pines is a
welcome variation to the monotony of the landscape.
These two towns have had their day of greatness. The former, as its name
implies, was once the port of Rome, and in the early days of Christianity
was a place of note. It was founded by Trajan, in the neighborhood of a
harbor constructed by Claudius; for this, like that of Ostia, which it was
designed to replace, was already becoming choked up. But though emperors
may propose, a river disposes, especially when its mud is in question. The
port of Trajan has long since met with the same fate; it is now only a
shallow basin two miles from the sea. Of late years considerable
excavations have been made at Porto on the estate of Prince Tortonia, to
whom the whole site belongs. The port constructed by Trajan was hexagonal
in form; it was surrounded by warehouses and communicated with the sea by
a canal. Between it and the outer or Claudian port a palace was built for
the emperor, and the remains of the wall erected by Constantine to protect
the harbor on the side of the land can still be seen. The only mediæval
antiquities which Porto contains are the old castle, which serves as the
episcopal palace, and the flower of the church of Santa Rufina, which is
at least as old as the tenth century.
Ostia, which is a place of much greater antiquity than Porto, is not so
deserted, though its star declined as that of the other rose. Founded, as
some say, by Ancus Martius, it was the port of Rome until the first
century of the present era. Then the silting up of its communication with
the sea caused the transference of the commerce to Porto, but "the fame of
the temple of Castor and Pollux, the numerous villas of the Roman
patricians abundantly scattered along the coast, and the crowds of people
who frequented its shores for the benefit of sea bathing, sustained the
prosperity of the city for some time after the destruction of its harbor."
But at last it went down hill, and then invaders came. Once it had
contained eighty thousand inhabitants; in the days of the Medici it was a
poor village, and the people eked out their miserable existences by making
lime of the marbles of the ruined temples! So here the vandalism of
peasants, even more than of patricians, has swept away many a choice relic
of classic days. Villas and temples alike have been destroyed; the sea is
now at a distance; Ostia is but a small village, "one of the most
picturesque though melancholy sites near Rome," but during the greater
part of the present century careful excavations have been made, many
valuable art treasures have been unearthed, and a considerable portion of
the ancient city has been laid bare. Shops and dwellings, temples and
baths, the theater and the forum, with many a remnant of the ancient town,
can now be examined, and numerous antiquities of smaller size are
preserved in the museum at the old castle. This, with its strong bastions,
its lofty circular tower and huge machicolations, is a very striking
object as it rises above the plain "massive and gray against the
sky-line." It has been drawn by artists not a few, from Raffaelle, who saw
it when it had not very long been completed, down to the present time.
X
VENICE
Its early days--The Grand Canal and its palaces--Piazza of St. Mark--A
Venetian funeral--The long line of islands--Venetian glass--Torcello,
the ancient Altinum--Its two unique churches.
So long as Venice is unvisited a new sensation is among the possibilities
of life. There is no town like it in Europe. Amsterdam has its canals, but
Venice is all canals; Genoa has its palaces, but in Venice they are more
numerous and more beautiful. Its situation is unique, on a group of
islands in the calm lagoon. But the Venice of to-day is not the Venice of
thirty years ago. Even then a little of the old romance had gone, for a
long railway viaduct had linked it to the mainland. In earlier days it
could be reached only by a boat, for a couple of miles of salt water lay
between the city and the marshy border of the Paduan delta. Now Venice is
still more changed, and for the worse. The people seem more
poverty-stricken and pauperized. Its buildings generally, especially the
ordinary houses, look more dingy and dilapidated. The paint seems more
chipped, the plaster more peeled, the brickwork more rotten; everything
seems to tell of decadence, commercial and moral, rather than of
regeneration. In the case of the more important structures, indeed, the
effects of time have often been more than repaired. Here a restoration,
not seldom needless and ill-judged, has marred some venerable relic of
olden days with crude patches of color, due to modern reproductions of the
ancient and original work: the building has suffered, as it must be
admitted not a few of our own most precious heirlooms have suffered, from
the results of zeal untempered by discretion, and the destroyer has worked
his will under the guise of the restorer.
The mosquito flourishes still in Venice as it did of yore. It would be too
much to expect that the winged representative of the genus should thrive
less in Italian freedom than under Austrian bondage, but something might
have been done to extirpate the two-legged species. He is present in force
in most towns south of the Alps, but he is nowhere so abundant or so
exasperating as in Venice. If there is one place in one town in Europe
where the visitor might fairly desire to possess his soul in peace and to
gaze in thoughtful wonder, it is in the great piazza, in front of the
façade, strange and beautiful as a dream, of the duomo of St. Mark. Halt
there and try to feast on its marvels, to worship in silence and in peace.
Vain illusion. There is no crowd of hurrying vehicles or throng of
hurrying men to interfere of necessity with your visions (there are often
more pigeons than people in the piazza), but up crawls a beggar, in
garments vermin-haunted, whining for "charity"; down swoop would-be
guides, volunteering useless suggestions in broken and barely intelligible
English; from this side and from that throng vendors of rubbish,
shell-ornaments, lace, paltry trinkets, and long ribands of photographic
"souvenirs," appalling in their ugliness. He who can stand five minutes
before San Marco and retain a catholic love of mankind must indeed be
blessed with a temper of much more than average amiability.