Rome.
We delayed visiting Tivoli, Frescati, and Albano, till our return from
Naples.
The Campagna is an uninhabited plain, surrounding the city of Rome,
bounded on one side by the sea, and on the other by an amphitheatre of
hills, crowned with towns, villages, and villas, which form the finest
landscapes that can be imagined. The ancient Romans were wont to seek
shelter from the scorching heats of summer, among the woods and lakes of
those hills; and the Cardinals and Roman Princes, at the same season,
retire to their villas; while many of the wealthier sort of citizens take
lodgings in the villages, during the season of gathering the vines.
On the road from Rome to Tivoli, about three miles from the latter,
strangers are desired to visit a kind of lake called Solfatara formerly
Lakus Albulus, and there shown certain substances, to which they give
the name of Floating Islands. They are nothing else than bunches of
bullrushes, springing from a thin soil, formed by dust and sand blown
from the adjacent ground, and glued together by the bitumen which swims
on the surface of this lake, and the sulphur with which its waters are
impregnated. Some of these islands are twelve or fifteen yards in length;
the soil is sufficiently strong to bear five or six people, who, by the
means of a pole, may move to different parts of the lake, as if they
were in a boat. This lake empties itself, by a whitish, muddy stream,
into the Teverone, the ancient Anio; a vapour, of a sulphureous smell,
arising from it as it flows. The ground near this rivulet, as also around
the borders of the lake, resounds, as if it were hollow, when a horse
gallops over it. The water of this lake has the singular quality of
covering every substance which it touches with a hard, white, stoney
matter. On throwing a bundle of small sticks or shrubs into it, they
will, in a few days, be covered with a white crust; but, what seems still
more extraordinary, this encrustating quality is not so strong in the
lake itself, as in the canal, or little rivulet that runs from it; and
the farther the water has flowed from the lake, till it is quite lost in
the Anio, the stronger this quality is. Those small, round encrustations,
which cover the sand and pebbles, resembling sugar-plums, are called
Confetti di Tivoli. Fishes are found in the Anio, both above and below
Tivoli, till it receives the Albula; after which, during the rest of its
course to the Tiber, there are none. The waters of this lake had a high
medical reputation anciently, but they are in no esteem at present.
Near the bottom of the eminence on which Tivoli stands, are the ruins
of the vast and magnificent villa built by the emperor Adrian. In
this were comprehended an amphitheatre, several temples, a library, a
circus, a naumachia. The emperor also gave to the buildings and gardens
of this famous villa the names of the most celebrated places; as the
Academia, the Lycæum, the Prytaneum of Athens, the Tempe of Thessaly,
and the Elysian fields and infernal regions of the poets. There were
also commodious apartments for a vast number of guests, all admirably
distributed with baths, and every conveniency. Every quarter of the world
contributed to ornament this famous villa, whose spoils have since formed
the principal ornaments of the Campidoglio, the Vatican, and the palaces
of the Roman Princes. It is said to have been three miles in length, and
above a mile in breadth. Some antiquarians make it much larger; but the
ruins, now remaining, do not mark a surface of a quarter of that extent.
At no great distance, they shew the place to which the Eastern Queen
Zenobia was confined, after she was brought in triumph to Rome by the
emperor Aurelian.
The town of Tivoli is now wretchedly poor; it boasts however greater
antiquity than Rome itself, being the ancient Tibur, which, Horace
informs us, was founded by a Grecian colony.
Tibur Argæo positum colono
Sit meæ sedes utinam senectæ.
Ovid gives it the same origin, in the fourth book of the Fasti.
——Jam mœnia Tiburis udi
Stabant; Argolicæ quod posuere manus.
This was a populous and flourishing town in remoter antiquity; but it
appears to have been thinly inhabited in the reign of Augustus. Horace,
in an Epistle to Mæcenas, says,
Parvum parva decent. Mihi jam non Regia Roma,
Sed _vacuum Tibur_ placet——
Though the town itself was not populous, the beauty of the situation, and
wholesomeness of the air, prompted great numbers of illustrious Romans,
both before the final destruction of the Republic, and afterwards in
Augustus’s time, to build country-houses in the neighbourhood. Julius
Cæsar had a villa here, which he was under the necessity of selling
to defray the expence of the public shews and games he exhibited to
the people during his Ædileship. Plutarch says, that his liberality
and magnificence, on this occasion, obscured the glory of all who had
preceded him in the office, and gained the hearts of the people to such
a degree, that they were ready to invent new offices and new honours for
him. He then laid the foundation of that power and popularity, which
enabled him, in the end, to overturn the constitution of his country.
Caius Cassius had also a country house here; where Marcus Brutus and
he are said to have had frequent meetings, and to have formed the plan
which terminated the ambition of Cæsar, and again offered to Rome that
freedom which she had not the virtue to accept. Here, also, was the
villa of Augustus, whose success in life arose at the field of Philippi
from which he fled, was confirmed by the death of the most virtuous
citizens of Rome, and who, without the talents, reaped the fruits of
the labours and vast projects of Julius. Lepidus the Triumvir, Cæcilius
Metellus, Quintilius Varus, the poets Catullus and Propertius, and other
distinguished Romans, had villas in this town or its environs; and you
are shewn the spots on which they stood; but nothing renders Tibur so
interesting, as the frequent mention which Horace makes of it in his
writings. His great patron and friend Mæcenas had a villa here, the
ruins of which are to be seen on the south bank of the Anio; and it was
pretty generally supposed, that the poet’s own house and farm were very
near it, and immediately without the walls of Tibur; but it has been of
late asserted, with great probability, that Horace’s farm was situated
nine miles above that of Mæcenas’s, at the side of a stream called
Licenza, formerly Digentia, near the hill Lucretilis, in the country of
the ancient Sabines. Those who hold this opinion say, that when Horace
talks of Tibur, he alludes to the villa of Mæcenas; but when he mentions
Digentia, or Lucretilis, his own house and farm are to be understood; as
in the eighteenth Epistle of the first book,
Me quoties resicit gelidus Digentia rivus,
Quem Mandela bibit, rugosus frigore pagus;
Quid sentire putas, quid credis, amice, precari?
the seventeenth Ode of the first book,
Velox amænum sæpe Lucretilem
Mutat Lycæo Faunus;——
and in other passages. But whether the poet’s house and farm were near
the town of Tibur, or at a distance from it, his writings sufficiently
show that he spent much of his time there; and it is probable that he
composed great part of his works in that favourite retreat. This he
himself in some measure declares, in that fine Ode addressed to Julius
Antonius, son of Mark Antony, by Fulvia; the same whom Augustus first
pardoned, and afterwards put privately to death, on account of an
intrigue into which Antonius was seduced by the abandoned Julia, daughter
of Augustus.
——Ego, apis Matinæ
More modoque,
Grata carpentis thyma per laborem
Plurimum, circa nemus uvidique
Tiburis ripas, operosa parvus
Carmina fingo.
If you ever come to Tivoli, let it not be with a numerous party; come
alone, or with a single friend, and be sure to put your Horace in your
pocket. You will read him here with more enthusiasm than elsewhere; you
will imagine you see the philosophic poet wandering among the groves,
sometimes calmly meditating his moral precepts, and sometimes _his eye
in a fine frenzy_ rolling with all the fire of poetic enthusiasm. If
Tivoli had nothing else to recommend it but its being so often sung by
the most elegant of the poets, and its having been the residence of so
many illustrious men, these circumstances alone would render it worthy
the attention of travellers; but it will also be interesting to many on
account of its cascade, the Sibyl’s Temple, and the Villa Estense.
The river Anio, deriving its source from a part of the Apennines, fifty
miles above Tivoli, glides through a plain till it comes near that
town, when it is confined for a short space between two hills, covered
with groves. These were supposed to have been the residence of the
Sibyl Albunea, to whom the temple was dedicated. The river, moving with
augmented rapidity as its channel is confined, at length rushes headlong
over a lofty precipice; the noise of its fall resounds through the hills
and groves of Tivoli; a liquid cloud arises from the foaming water,
which afterwards divides into numberless small cascades, waters several
orchards, and, having gained the plain, flows quietly for the rest of its
course, till it loses itself in the Tiber. It is not surprising that the
following lines have been so often quoted by those who visit the Sibyl’s
Temple, because they delineate, in the most expressive manner, some of
the principal features of the country around it,
Me nec tam patiens Lacedæmon,
Nec tam Larissæ percussit campus opimæ,
Quam domus Albuneæ resonantis,
Et præceps Anio, et Tiburni lucus, et uda
Mobilibus pomaria rivis.
The elegant and graceful form of the beautiful little temple I have so
often mentioned, indicates its having been built when the arts were in
the highest state of perfection at Rome. Its proportions are not more
happy than its situation, on a point of the mountain fronting the great
cascade.
Before they take their leave of Tivoli, strangers usually visit the Villa
Estense, belonging to the Duke of Modena. It was built by Hippolitus
of Este, Cardinal of Ferrara, and brother to the duke of that name; but
more distinguished by being the person to whom Ariosto addressed his
Poem of Orlando Furioso. The house itself is not in the finest style
of architecture. There are many whimsical waterworks in the gardens.
Those who do not approve of the taste of their construction, still owe
them some degree of respect, on account of their being the first grand
waterworks in Europe; much more ancient than those of Versailles. The
situation is noble, the terraces lofty, the trees large and venerable;
and though the ground is not laid out to the greatest advantage, yet the
whole has a striking air of magnificence and grandeur.