Naples.
Terracina, formerly called Anxur, was the capital of the warlike
Volsci[5]. The principal church was originally a temple of Jupiter, who
was supposed to have a partiality for this town, and the country around
it. Virgil calls him Jupiter Anxurus. Enumerating the troops who came to
support the cause of Turnus, he mentions those who plough the Rutulian
hills:
Circeumque jugum; queis Jupiter Anxurus arvis
Præsidet, et viridi gaudens Feronia luco:
Qua saturæ jacet atra palus, &c.
Near this place we fell in again with the Appian Way, and beheld, with
astonishment, the depth of rock that has here been cut, to render it
more convenient for passengers. This famous road is a paved causeway,
begun in the year of Rome 441, by Appius Claudius Cæcus the Censor, and
carried all the way from Rome to Capua. It would be superfluous to insist
on the substantial manner in which it has been originally made, since
it still remains in many places. Though travellers are now obliged to
make a circuit by Casa Nuova and Piperno, the Via Appia was originally
made in a straight line through the Palude Pontine, or Palus Pomptina,
as that vast marsh was anciently called: it is the Ater Palus above
mentioned, in the lines quoted from Virgil. That part of the Appian road
is now quite impassable, from the augmentation of this noxious marsh,
whose exhalations are disagreeable to passengers, and near which it is
dangerous to sleep a single night.
Keysler and some others say, that Appius made this road at his own
expence. I do not know on what authority they make this assertion; but,
whatever their authority may be, the thing is incredible. Could a Roman
citizen, at a period when the inhabitants of Rome were not rich, bear an
expence which we are surprised that even the State itself could support?
Though this famous road has received its name from Appius, I can hardly
imagine it was completed by him. The distance from Rome to Capua is above
one hundred and thirty miles; a prodigious length for such a road as this
to have been made, during the short course of one Censorship; for a man
could be Censor only once in his life. This was an office of very great
dignity; no person could enjoy it till he had previously been Consul. It
was originally held for five years; but, a hundred years before the time
of Appius, the term was abridged to eighteen months. He, however, who,
as Livy tells us, possessed all the pride and obstinacy of his family,
refused to quit the Censorship at the end of that period; and, in spite
of all the efforts of the Tribunes, continued three years and a half
beyond the term to which the office had been restricted by the Æmilian
Law. But even five years is a very short time for so great a work; yet
this was not the only work he carried on during his Censorship. “Viam
munivit,” says the Historian, “et aquam in urbem duxit.” The Appian road
was carried on, afterwards, from Capua to Brundusium, and was probably
completed so far, in the time of Horace; as appears by this verse, in one
of his Epistles addressed to Lollius:
Brundusium Numici melius via ducat, an Appi.
Terracina is the last town of the Ecclesiastical, and Fundi the first of
the Neapolitan, dominions. This last town stands on a plain, sheltered by
hills, which is seldom the case with Italian towns: it probably derives
its name from its situation. There is nothing very attractive in this
place, now, more than in Horace’s time; so we left it as willingly as he
did:
Fundos Aufidio Lusco Prætore _libenter_ Linquimus.
Continuing our route, partly on the Appian way, we came to Mola di Gaeta,
a town built on the ruins of the ancient Formiæ. Horace compliments Ælius
Lamia, on his being descended from the first founder of this city:
Auctore ab illo ducis originem,
Qui Formiarum mœnia dicitur,
Princeps.
The same Poet puts the wine, made from the grapes of the Formian hills,
on a footing with the Falernian:
——mea nec Falernæ
Temperant vites, neque Formiani
Pocula colles.
Cicero had a villa near this place; and it was on this coast where that
great orator was murdered in his litter, as he was endeavouring to make
his escape to Greece. The fortress of Gaeta is built on a promontory,
about three miles from Mola; but travellers, who have the curiosity
to go to the former, generally cross the gulph between the two; and
immediately, as the most remarkable thing in the place, they are shewn
a great cleft in a rock, and informed that it was miraculously split in
this manner at the death of our Saviour. To put this beyond doubt, they
shew, at the same time, something like the impression of a man’s hand
on the rock, of which the following account is given.—A certain person
having been told on what occasion the rent took place, struck the palm of
his hand on the marble, declaring he could no more believe their story,
than that his hand would leave its stamp on the rock; on which, to the
terror and confusion of this infidel, the stone yielded like wax, and the
impression remains till this day.
Nothing is so injurious to the cause of truth, as attempts to support it
by fiction. Many evidences of the justness of this observation occur in
the course of a tour through Italy. That mountains were rent at the death
of our Saviour, we know from the New Testament; but, as none of them are
there particularized, it is presumptuous in others to imagine they can
point out what the Evangelists have thought proper to conceal.
This rock, however, is much resorted to by pilgrims; and the Tartanes,
and other vessels, often touch there, that the seamen may be provided
with little pieces of marble, which they earnestly request may be taken
as near the fissure as possible. These they wear constantly in their
pockets, in case of shipwreck, from a persuasion, that they are a more
certain preservative from drowning, than a cork jacket. Some of these
poor people have the misfortune to be drowned, notwithstanding; but
the sacred marble loses none of its reputation on that account. Such
accidents are always imputed to the weight of the unfortunate person’s
sins, which have sunk him to the bottom, in spite of all the efforts of
the marble to keep him above water; and it is allowed on all hands, that
a man so oppressed with iniquity, as to be drowned with a piece of this
marble in his pocket, would have sunk much sooner, if, instead of that,
he had had nothing to keep him up but a cork jacket.
Strangers are next led to the Castle, and are shewn, with some other
curiosities, the skeleton of the famous Bourbon, Constable of France, who
was killed in the service of the emperor Charles the Fifth, as he scaled
the walls of Rome.
It is remarkable that France, a nation which values itself so much on an
affectionate attachment to its princes, and places loyalty at the head
of the virtues, should have produced, in the course of the two last
centuries, so many illustrious rebels: Bourbon, Coligni, Guise, Turenne,
and the Condés; all of them were, at some period of their lives, in arms
against their sovereign.
That it is the duty of subjects to preserve their allegiance, however
unjustly and tyrannically their prince may conduct himself, is one of
the most debasing and absurd doctrines that ever was obtruded on the
understanding of mankind. When Francis forgot the services which the
gallant Bourbon had rendered him at Mirignan; when, by repeated acts
of oppression, he forgot the duty of a king; Bourbon spurned at his
allegiance, as a subject. The Spanish nobleman, who declared that he
would pull down his house, if Bourbon should be allowed to lodge in it,
either never had heard of the injurious treatment which that gallant
soldier had received, or he betrayed the sentiments of a slave, and
meant to insinuate his own implicit loyalty to the Emperor. Mankind in
general have a partiality for princes. The senses are imposed on by the
splendour which surrounds them; and the respect due to the office of a
king, is naturally converted into an affection for his person: there must
therefore be something highly unpopular in the character of the monarch,
and highly oppressive in the measures of government, before people can be
excited to rebellion. Subjects seldom rise through a desire of attacking,
but rather from an impatience of suffering. Where men are under the
yoke of feudal lords, who can force them to fight in any cause, it may
be otherwise; but when general discontent pervades a free people, and
when, in consequence of this, they take arms against their prince, they
must have justice on their side. The highest compliment which subjects
can pay, and the best service they can render, to a good prince, is, to
behave in such a manner, as to convince him that they would rebel against
a bad one.
From Mola we were conducted by the Appian way, over the fertile fields
washed by the silent Liris:
——Rura quæ Liris quieta
Mordet aqua, taciturnus amnis.
This river bounded Latium. On its banks are still seen some ruins of
the ancient Minturnæ. After Manlius Torquatus, in what some will call
a phrenzy of virtue, had offered up his son as a sacrifice to military
discipline; and his colleague Decius, immediately after, devoted himself
in a battle against the Latins; the broken army of that people assembled
at Minturnæ, and were a second time defeated by Manlius, and their lands
divided by the senate among the citizens of Rome. The first battle
was fought near Mount Vesuvius, and the second between Sinuessa and
Minturnæ. In the morasses of Minturnæ, Caius Marius, in the seventieth
year of his age, was taken, and brought a prisoner to that city, whose
magistrates ordered an assassin to put him to death, whom the fierce
veteran disarmed with a look. What mortal, says Juvenal, would have been
thought more fortunate than Marius, had he breathed out his aspiring
soul, surrounded by the captives he had made, his victorious troops, and
all the pomp of war, as he descended from his Teutonic chariot, after his
triumph over the Cimbri.
——Quid ilio cive tulisset
Natura in terris, quid Roma beatius unquam?
Si circumducto captivorum agmine, et omni
Bellorum pompâ, animam exhalâsset opimam,
Cum de Teutonico vellet descendere curru.
Several writers, in their remarks on Italy, observe, that it was on the
banks of the Liris that Pyrrhus gained his dear-bought victory over the
Romans. They have fallen into this mistake, by confounding the Liris with
the Siris, a river in Magna Græcia, near Heraclea; in the neighbourhood
of which Pyrrhus defeated the Romans by the means of his elephants.
Leaving Garilagno, which is the modern name of the Liris, we pass the
rising ground where the ancient Sinuessa was situated; the city where
Horace met his friends Plotius, Varius, and Virgil. The friendly glow
with which this admirable painter has adorned their characters, conveys
an amiable idea of his own.
——Animæ, quales neque candidiores
Terra tulit; neque queis me sit devinctior alter.
O, qui complexus et gaudia quanta fuerunt!
Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico.
Do you not share in the happiness of such a company? And are you not
rejoiced that they happened to meet near the Ager Falernus, where they
could have the best Massic and Falernian wines?
New Capua, through which the road from Rome to Naples lies, is a small
town of no importance. The ancient city of that name was situated two
miles distant from the new. The ruins of the amphitheatre, which are
still to be seen, give some idea of the ancient grandeur of that city.
Before the amphitheatre of Vespasian was built, there was none in Rome of
equal size with this. Old Capua is said, at one period, to have vied in
magnificence with Rome and Carthage:
Altera dicta olim Carthago, atque altera Roma,
Nunc prostrata jacet, proprioque sepulta sepulchro.
The army of Hannibal is said to have been conquered by the luxuries of
this place; but the judicious Montesquieu observes, that the Carthaginian
army, enriched by so many victories, would have found a Capua wherever
they had gone. Whether Capua brought on the ruin of Hannibal or not,
there can be no doubt that Hannibal occasioned the ruin of Capua.
Having broken their connection with Rome, and formed an alliance with
her enemy, the Capuans were, in the course of the war, besieged by the
Consuls Fulvius and Appius. Hannibal exerted all his vast abilities
for the relief of his new friends; but was not able to bring the Roman
army to a battle, or to raise the siege. When every other expedient
had failed, he marched directly to Rome, in the hopes of drawing the
Roman army after him to defend the capital. A number of alarming events
conspired, at this time, to depress the spirit of the Roman Senate. The
Proconsul Sempronius Gracchus, who commanded an army in Lucania, had
fallen into an ambuscade, and was massacred. The two gallant brothers,
the Scipios, who were their generals in Spain, had been defeated and
killed; and Hannibal was at their gates. How did the Senate behave at
this crisis? Did they spend their time in idle harangues and mutual
accusations? Did they throw out reflections against those senators who
were against entering into a treaty with the Carthaginians till their
army should be withdrawn from Italy? Did they recall their army from
Capua? Did they shew any mark of despondence? In this slate of affairs,
the Roman Senate sent orders to Appius to continue the siege of Capua;
they ordered a reinforcement to their army in Spain; the troops for that
service marching out at one gate of Rome, while Hannibal threatened to
enter by storm at another. How could such a people fail to become the
masters of the world!
The country between Capua and Naples displays a varied scene of lavish
fertility, and with great propriety might be named Campania Felix, if
the richest and most generous soil, with the mildest and most agreeable
climate, were sufficient to render the inhabitants of a country happy.
[5] Anxur fuit quæ nunc Terracinæ sunt; urbs prona in paludes.
TIT. LIV. lib. iv.