Borghese, misled by a false report of ancient walls. In the afternoon I
visited an ancient fragment in the town, said to be the monument of
Lucullus; and they pretend that an inscription was found there to that
effect, but where that inscription now is, nobody could tell me. My last
object was a large circular monument, the sepulchre of Lucius Valerius
Corvinus, below the town, and nearly at the foot of the hill. It seems
to have been in the style of the Plautian monument, or of the Cecilia
Metella.
Next morning I set out, after an early breakfast, intending to reach the
summit of Monte Albano, or of Monte Cavo, which is its common name. The
road at first passes among cultivated enclosures, which change as it
approaches Rocca del Papa, into delightful groves of chesnut. Rocca del
Papa is a village situated on a lofty pinnacle, composed of a heap of
cinders, forming part of the edge of an ancient volcano. In a hot
climate we feel the advantage a town enjoys in occupying these points of
land; the only wonder is, that the necessity of cultivating the valleys,
has not induced people to choose such as were rather less elevated; for
the peasantry seem to live very much in the towns, and not each on the
land he cultivates, as in England. It has been supposed that the
unhealthiness of the Campagna arose from the hot days and cold nights
there experienced; but the inhabitants of these places, labouring all
day in the close valleys, and returning at night to their airy
dwellings, must experience much greater difference; and yet all these
places are reckoned perfectly healthy. From Rocca del Papa, a narrow
ridge extends to the summit of the hill, and the path lies along this
ridge; it is covered with wood, but nevertheless we see below us at
intervals the Campi di Annibale, on the one side, forming the bottom of
the ancient crater, and on the other, on a much lower level, the
extended Campagna, and the city of Rome; the most conspicuous object of
which is the church of St. John Lateran. The latter part of the way is
along the ancient Via Triumphalis, much of the pavement of which
remains. A convent has taken the place of the ancient temple of Jupiter
Latialis, and a few fragments of wall, and numbers of the squared stones
employed in the building attest the existence of the former edifice.
There is a garden attached to the convent, occupying precisely the
summit of the hill, the soil under which is said to be full of
fragments. I should suppose Monte Cavo to be about as much elevated
above Rome, as Ingleborough is above the little town at its base, _i.
e._ about 2,000 or 2,200 feet, yet here is a productive garden, with
fruit-trees and a fine meadow. We cease to associate the idea of
mountains, with that of barrenness, which are so strongly connected in
our cold and wet climate.
In descending, I followed the ancient _Via Triumphalis_, as far as it
was traceable; but missing my way, returned almost to Rocca del Papa. I
could hardly regret the error, as the walk from thence towards Albano is
exceedingly beautiful, overlooking the lake and the Campagna, but in the
latter part of the way, the woods become thicker, and exclude all view.
Discontented with the confinement, I scrambled to the edge of the crater
which contains the lake of Albano, and found a charming path among the
woods on its slope, by which I continued to the ridge of the hill just
above Albano, popping the pods of the bladder senna, by way of
amusement, as I went along. I found an excellent inn at Albano, and
after getting some dinner, returned to enjoy the view from the line of
hills which surrounds this beautiful lake; the fine circular sheet of
water is expanded below us; over the edge of the surrounding hills we
see the Campagna, but greatly foreshortened, and Rome in the distance;
on the other side is the convent of Palazzuolo, crowning its steepest
and highest bank, and above that Monte Albano, covered with wood. In the
way I examined the ruins of the amphitheatre, but very little remains.
While looking at it I was joined by rather a shabbily dressed young man,
about, I suppose, eighteen years old, who talked to me on various
subjects, repeated verses of Horace and Virgil, in a manner which
shewed, not only that he understood them, but was capable of entering
into their beauties, and gave me afterwards some Latin verses of his
own. He conducted me by a short road, as he said, to some of the ruins
of the villa of Domitian, now occupied by the house and gardens of the
Villa Barberini. It has been immense; but at present we find nothing
remaining but great vaults and substructions; a most beautiful sunset,
which I enjoyed from its terraces to the greatest advantage, made ample
amends for the deficiency of the antiquities. Next morning I went to the
villa of Pompey, the present Villa Doria; you know the Italians when
they speak of the villa, do not mean the house, which is _palazzo_,
_palazzino_, or _casino_, but the whole enclosure, containing, besides
the small place appropriated merely to pleasure and show, a large garden
cultivated for profit, and frequently vineyards, olive-grounds, and
corn-fields. It was disputed at a Roman academy what constituted the
difference between a _villa_ and a _vigna_, and it was decided that they
are the same thing. The ornamental part usually consists of a few
terrace-walks, with clipt edges of bay, or sometimes shaded with ilex;
and it is only a few of the principal, immediately about Rome, which
considerably differ from this description. Such a villa is that of Doria
at Albano, but it includes also a most delightful little bit of wood,
which entirely covers the ancient ruins. The white houses of Albano,
seen among the dark foliage of the venerable ilices, had the prettiest
effect imaginable. Hence I walked to Castel Gandolfo, and down to the
shores of the lake, which must be near 300 feet below the palace of the
popes. Some fishermen were drawing their nets, but all they had caught
consisted of two or three moderate sized tench, and a quantity of small
fry. My principal object here was of course to see the celebrated
_Emissario_, which as you know is an artificial subterraneous channel,
of considerable length, made by the Romans to discharge the waters of
the lake, and it is still the only passage they have; but the story of
its formation is a very strange one. During the siege of Veii, the
waters of the lake rose in dry weather to a very extraordinary
elevation, so that the Romans were afraid it would overflow; terrified
by the prodigy, they sent ambassadors to Delphi to learn what was to be
done, and the answer enjoined them to let out the waters, but to take
care that they did not flow into the sea. Now the lake is a complete
crater, without any continued valley by which it could ever have found a
natural outlet, and to have overflowed the edges of the basin would have
required an elevation, above the present level, of I suppose 150
feet.[10] A few trifling springs on the banks, and probably some
underwater, form its permanent supplies, and the country which drains
into it, is of such small extent, that I do not believe six inches of
rain would raise it thirty feet from its present level, and not a fourth
part of that, if the water stood nearly up to the top of its banks.
Perhaps this wonderful rise proceeded from some volcanic discharge; yet
the danger does not seem to have been very pressing, since the Romans
had time to send to Greece for instructions. The direction of the
existing channel is nearly in a line towards the shore, but the natural
direction of the hollows which receive it, conduct it towards the Tiber,
into which it at present flows, yet it may have been dispersed, and
perhaps in summer lost before it arrived there. The whole looks very
much like a scheme to procure an irrigation for some lands whose dry
soil produced but little. If the lake was to be lowered 150 feet, the
tapping it would be both difficult and dangerous; but if it was only
necessary to lower it 15 or 20, the execution would not require any
great degree of contrivance; and the soil, which is a soft rock,
yielding probably in its hardest parts to the pick-axe, and yet
everywhere firm enough to maintain itself, facilitated the enterprize.
It is however a wonderful work; above a mile and a half in length, and
250 feet from the surface. The front of it was faced with stones,
leaving a rectangular opening, covered with a large square block of
peperino, which is the material of the rest of the work, and this stone
being found near Albano, is likely to have been more exclusively in use
here than at Rome. This is probably the original work, but in front,
there is now a vault of no great extent, of the same material, but not
bonded with the other, and this may perhaps have been an addition or
restoration of the emperor Claudius. The water re-appears from under an
arch of rubble-work, which I do not take to be very ancient, and after
washing all the dirty linen of Albano, runs off, as I have said, towards
the Tiber.
I have conducted you away from the lake, without mentioning to you a
ruin which is here called the baths of Diana. It is composed of several
parts, but the principal is a large vault, formed in an excavation in
the slope of the hills. It is a delightful retreat on a hot day, and
commands a beautiful view over the lake, though the richness of the
vegetation immediately surrounding, hides the water too much. There are
some remains, supposed to be of Thermæ, at Albano, which in certain
points of view form a fine mass, but I did not see anything
characteristic of their destination. Just out of the town, on the road
to Naples, is a monument, which has been called the tomb of the
Curiatii, but it now seems rather the fashion to consider it a monument
erected to Pompey. Nibby thinks it the sepulchre of Aruns, the son of
Porsenna, who lost his life in an unsuccessful attack on Aricia; and
attributes another tomb to Pompey, at the opposite end of Albano, which
appears to have been a tower of three stories in height, cased with
marble. His chief argument for each is, that he has found no testimony
to the contrary among the ancient writers. Amongst other proofs that the
edifice in question is the tomb of Aruns, he quotes Varro’s description
of the tomb of Porsenna, as given by Pliny. This appears to have had
some resemblance to the present monument, and gives a colour to suppose
it an Etruscan edifice, but does not at all connect it with Aruns. It
consists of a square basement, supporting five cones, one at each angle,
and a larger one in the middle. The masonry is of rubble, formed of
fragments of peperino bedded in mortar, and the outside has been covered
with large square blocks of peperino. If it be really Etruscan, it would
serve to shew that the Romans derived their usual mode of building, _i.
e._ a rubble mass cased with squared stones or bricks, from that people.
Farther on, we find the old Appian way, now no longer used, supported to
a considerable height, on a wall built of peperino; and in its
neighbourhood, some vestiges of the ancient Aricia; the modern town is
placed above it.
On the 11th I walked along a very pleasant, and in general a shaded
road, through Aricia, or La Riccia, to Genzano. La Riccia is a very
picturesque town on the top of a rock, overlooking a little hollow of
its own, which probably was once the crater of a volcano, afterwards a
lake, and is now a fertile and cultivated valley. Genzano is on one of
the points above the Lake of Nemi. The edge of these craters, as you may
easily suppose, becomes in time broken down in various places, leaving
some parts higher than the rest; and one of these remaining elevated
portions of the circuit, gives a situation to Genzano. Here I left the
high road to Naples, and kept the road to Nemi, on the north side of the
lake, pursuing, for part of my route, an ancient Roman way. The lake is
very beautiful, with woody banks mixed with cultivation, and a little
valley, prolonged from its upper side, is richly cultivated; but though
these volcanic lakes have their charms, they are generally inferior to
the more varied forms of those which do not owe their origin to such a
source. It is true that the steep bank which surrounds them is not
everywhere of the same height, and is occasionally broken by an
advancing mass of firmer rock; yet its continuity is sufficiently
perfect to produce a degree of monotony; and whichever way you view it,
it is still the same round basin, and cannot present those beautiful
reaches which so much enhance the charm of some of our own lakes; nor
can we expect the receding lines of mountains which indicate the
continuation of the valley. But the still expanse of water reflecting
the dark blue sky, the rich vegetation, the dark woods which cover the
slopes, the magnificent trees which hang over the water, and the rugged
points which start here and there from the edge of the crater, form a
landscape in which you feel it impossible to be tired of wandering. Nemi
itself stands on the highest and boldest of these rocky points, yet the
soil looks more like a heap of cinders than a mass of solid stone.
Between Nemi and Velletri, I lost my way in the woods which here
overspread the country, but I reached the latter city in good time, and
took up my quarters at an inn, which was once the palace of the
Lancelotti family, and at the back of which is a noble open gallery,
about 120 feet long, commanding a most magnificent view over a broad
valley, of the nature of the Campagna, but not so wide, and with more
cultivation and more wood; and of the Volscian mountains. More to the
right are the Pontine marshes, (and these are not in general naked) the
long slip of woody country which divides the Campagna and the marshes
from the shore, Monte Circello, and the sea. As a considerable portion
of the day still remained, I procured a horse to carry me to Cora; it
had only one stirrup, which was very short, and very small; and to guide
it, something more like a halter than a bridle, was fastened to the head
of the animal; the saddle was high and peaked. Thus equipped, I set
forth on my expedition on a paved road among vineyards. After some time
the pavement ceased, and I passed among pastures, and corn-fields,
slightly, or not at all enclosed, but where cultivation seemed to be
rather extending itself, and by a little lake, and afterwards along a
shady lane, deep in mud, though for some time we have had no rain. On
reaching the foot of the mountains, and coasting them by a gradual
ascent towards Cora, I found the road frequently to consist of a
broken-up pavement; the worst of all possible tracks, but very frequent
in the cross roads of Italy. The pavement is made and left; in rainy
weather a little current is formed on one side or the other, or
sometimes on both; and this undermines the external stones, which soon
become loose, and are displaced; and by such a process, sometimes half,
sometimes the whole pavement, is worn away; a few isolated fragments
still are seen, the rest is an uncertain covering of large stones. A
steep descent precedes the entrance into Cora, although the town
occupies a high hill. I found the streets so steep and slippery, that I
was glad to get off and lead my horse. When I had reached the inn, and
put my horse in the stable, I desired the landlord to give him something
to eat. He called out for some hay, and down came two trusses out of the
two pair of stairs window. I walked up to the room from whence this
supply came, and was surprised to find that it wanted some steps of the
height of a court on the side of the house, and which afforded another
entrance. This may give you some idea of the inequality of the ground.
Just below the town is a deep ravine, or rather a cleft in the limestone
rock, and the town itself is seated on a rocky hill, of a conical form,
which rises immediately from the edge of this chasm. It is almost
detached from the chain of Volscian mountains, though placed in a recess
amongst them. “_Cora è due paesi_,” said a boy to me, holding up his
thumb and forefinger. The Italians never mention a number under ten,
without holding up their fingers, the thumb always occupying the first
place; “_uno di sotto e uno di sopra_.” My inn was in the lower part of
the lower town, although I had found the ascent to it so troublesome.
The Temple of Hercules is in a convent at the top of the upper. The
portico, which has four columns in front, and two in each flank, remains
tolerably perfect, and though rather too small, and rather too slender
in its proportions for the exalted situation it occupies, produces a
very pleasing effect. The elevation of the columns in proportion to
their diameter, is not at all displeasing when we are near the edifice;
and if they were stuccoed, as was probably the case, the apparent
diameter would have been somewhat larger. The smallness of the
architrave is much more objectionable, and the abacus also is too small.
The style, as well as the proportions, is between the Greek and Roman
Doric, but the columns have bases, which are hardly to be found in any
other example, either Greek or Roman. These bases are so much decayed,
that one cannot venture to decide on the form of the mouldings, but I
think there was no fillet. The pilaster capital differs from that of the
column. In the lower town there are some remains of a temple of Castor
and Pollux. It is of the Corinthian order, and the foliage is in the
Greek style, and in, and about it are many portions of Cyclopean walls.
A Roman bridge still exists over the deep and narrow chasm I have before
mentioned, and in the chasm is a mill (not ancient), where corn is
ground for the inhabitants of Cora, after heavy rains; but it is only in
such circumstances that there is any water in the hollow. There are some
cloisters of the middle ages in the church of Santa Olivia, which
deserve to be looked at. They are in two stories, with twice as many
arches in the upper as the lower, all resting upon columns; there is a
good space between the stories, but it wants a little more ornament. In
one church, the font is an ancient altar, with rams’ heads at the
corners.
After looking over these antiquities on the evening of my arrival, and
the following morning, I returned to Velletri. I had been able to get
coffee for my breakfast at Cora, but no milk, which in a mountainous
country rather surprised me; but for luncheon I obtained some _ricotta_,
which is goat’s milk curd, boiled I believe, and pressed into little
baskets. On the 13th I left the high road, and crossed the fields by a
shorter path to Genzano. The scenery is delightful, but the heat was
oppressive, for there was no wind, and the path is very much exposed to
the sun. From Genzano, I descended to the lake of Nemi to look at the
Emissario, which I had missed before, and which was hardly worth
visiting, but some fine plane trees growing by the side of the water,
and shading it by their spreading branches, very much embellished the
scene.
The inn where I had before resided at Albano was full, but I found the
other, which is the posthouse, equally good. A little while ago, some
vases were said to be found under a bed of lava near Marino, but
afterwards the story was so far changed, that instead of lava, the
superincumbent bed was peperino. This peperino is certainly a volcanic
production, and as there is no tradition among the nations of Italy
connected with the Romans, that Monte Albano was an active volcano, an
uncertain, but tremendous antiquity was assigned to these vases. On the
other hand, although peperino be composed of volcanic substances, and
sometimes, as on the borders of the lake of Albano, is certainly in the
situation where it was left by the action of the fire, yet it is
probable that in some cases the materials may have been acted upon by
water, and consolidated in a new spot: even on this supposition we must
consider them as the vestiges of a town prior to Alba Longa, which was
itself destroyed by Tullus Hostilius in the first century of Rome. Bits
of iron, resembling nails of different sizes, are said to have been
found in the body of peperino, but there are many details of the
circumstances of place, and condition, which have not been observed, and
which cannot now be ascertained, the excavations in which the vases were
found having been filled up; and this hasty destruction of evidence has
thrown a suspicion on the story, for it may well be supposed that the
urns were placed in some old hollow, or quarry, in this peperino. The
number is considerable; they appear to be all sepulchral, and one great
vase has contained several smaller ones. The largest of these included
vases has the form of a hut, closed by a door which fastens by a little
rod of brass, and they usually contain fragments of burnt bones, various
ornaments, little models of shields, spears, &c., and one of a wheel;
things apparently indicating the occupations of the deceased. They are
all of rude workmanship; not all equally so, but we may doubt if the
potter’s wheel was employed in the formation of any of them. Signor
Visconti has published an account of them which has no merit, except
towards the owner, a Signor Giuseppe Carnovale, who wants to sell the
vases, and for whom this little work may serve as a puff. It is said
that similar things have been found in Germany, and that these are
therefore probably the productions of the middle ages. I left Albano on
the 15th, at four o’clock in the morning, and arrived at Rome about half
past seven. Nothing can be more delightful than the early hours of an
Italian summer’s day, clear, bright, and fresh, without any oppressive
sensation of heat.
Before I close this letter I must give you an account of another
excursion, or rather of two excursions, each of a single day, down to
Ostia. I do not undertake in these expeditions to describe everything
that I see. Many of the objects are so similar that they would appear
the same in description, though we always find difference enough to
interest us in the reality. I might indeed have said something about the
reservoir of Marius at Albano, and about the prætorian camp, attributed
to Domitian, in the same neighbourhood, one of the stones of which is
fifteen feet and a half long, and where Nibby is sure that there were
four towers, for he saw traces of one of them; but I shall leave these,
and a hundred other things which would scarcely interest you.