Part 5

The town of Albano itself contains a good many antiquities, the most prominent among which, that which greets the eye on the entrance from Rome, is the huge tower-like pile, so cruelly stripped of its hewn stone, which, truly or falsely, passes for the tomb of Cnæus Pompeius Magnus. More striking on a close examination, though spoiled in its effect by a Papal freak of restoration, is the tomb which hovers between the names of Aruns son of Porsena and the Horatii and Curiatii. Which of the two would Sir George Lewis have looked on as the more impossible? This is the tomb which so singularly forestalled the outline of the Glastonbury kitchen--before its chimneys perished--and thereby of the Museum laboratory at Oxford. A good deal of the wall of the camp, a good deal of an amphitheatre on the hill-side, and several other fragments of the earlier Imperial time, are still to be seen. But after all Albano really exists, not for its own sake, but as a starting-point for the Alban lake and the Alban mount, and hardly less as a starting-point for

... the still glassy lake that sleeps Beneath Aricia's trees.

Aricia has changed its site; the small modern town has flown up to the level of the _arx_, to be approached by Albano by almost the only work on which we do not grudge to see the name of Pius IX. The viaduct of that "Pontifex Optimus Maximus"--his votaries seem never quite to distinguish between him and Jupiter--is really a work worthy of Cæsars or consuls. Below it new Aricia has left the elder city, its fragments of walls and of the Appian Way, to be sought for in the valley below, the crater, so wise men tell us, of an extinct volcano, the biggest surely even in this region where craters meet us at every step. Scraps of primæval wall, hardly to be distinguished from the rocks, prepare us for what we are to see at places further out of the ordinary track; walls of the days of Sulla join on alike to what we have seen at Rome, and to what we are to see at Cori. But, after all, the "still glassy lake" to which the grove of the "rex nemorensis" has given the name of Nemi, is the true glory of Aricia. How well we remember being puzzled years and years ago with the thrilling run of the lines--

Those trees in whose dim shadow The ghastly priest doth reign, The priest who slew the slayer, And shall himself be slain.

In these days the fault would be held to lie with the poet for venturing on an allusion which it might need a little research to take in. In those days we thought in such cases that the fault lay with ourselves; we admired without understanding till we lighted on the explanation which enabled us to understand as well. As such a process is a wholesome one, we will leave the lines without comment; not to speak of books of reference, the story will be found, in a somewhat grotesque form, in Dr. Merivale's chapter on the reign of Caius, better known as Caligula.

The ghastly priest has gone from Nemi; but the lake is there still, and the successors of the trees. Access is courteously granted by the present owner, who, we may believe, has never slain anybody, and who, we hope, may not be slain himself. But though we may admire Nemi from close by, we do not fully understand Nemi and its place among things, till we can look upon it in company with its greater fellow of Alba. That is, we must climb the Alban mount, or a good part of its height. But we go first to the Alban lake itself; and to do so we go along its rim and slide down the side of its crater. There we find the _emissarius_, so deftly cut in the rock, and which has done its work so well for so many ages. Who made it? Camillus, or some one long before Camillus? The men who built the great _cloaca_ of Rome were quite capable of cutting the hole through the rock of Alba, without any message from Delphi or any design against the walls of Veii. Whoever the borer was, he did his work far more thoroughly than Claudius ages afterwards did his for the Fucine lake, which work it has been left for the Torlonia of our own day to finish. But no one, we may suppose, wished at any time to drain the Alban lake, but only to keep it in order. How needful such a work is we do not fully grasp till we can look down from above. Then we take in the strict accuracy of the name _crater_. We see the two lakes, greater and smaller, side by side, like two basins in the strictest sense, in which, at some time which geologists may fix, but which it is enough for history to say that it was long before the oldest primæval wall, the powers of water supplanted those of fire. We take in how the larger lake, with its narrow rim, in some parts of its circuit with its low rim, liable to be swollen, but with no natural outlet for its waters, might easily come to overflow, if artificial means had not been, in some early time, taken to check it.

But when we have wound our way by the rim of the lake, by the house which the so-called Prisoner of the Vatican never chooses to visit, by the rock which still bears his name, when we have crossed the so-called fields of Hannibal--yet another crater, science tells us--when we have climbed by the triumphal way to the height of Monte Cavo, we do indeed understand the geography and history of Rome and Latium better than we did before. The eye may range over the height of Tusculum and over the battle-ground of Regillus as far as the height of Præneste; it may range hither and thither over many points which have their charm both of history and of nature. But there are two sides to which the historical eye will be attracted before all others. Such a gazer will better take in the position of Rome, as he sees it, with its seven hills shrunk out of sight, a point--rather a line--in the Latin plain, with a wall of Etruscan hills beyond it. We see how utterly different was the position of Rome from the position of the elder cities; we see how she lies in the midst, at the very meeting-place of nations; we see how needful for her it was to make the barrier behind her her own; and we understand her wars with Veii better than before. But we look down too on the Latin plain itself: we look down, we believe, on the vanished site of Rome's mother at our feet; we look out on the great flat once fringed with cities, and on the great and wide sea beyond it. Here, standing forth as an advanced post of the land, we see where

... the Witch's Fortress O'erhangs the dark-blue seas.

And beyond Circeii and its island satellites, we look on to the more distant height, in so many ages the boundary height, best known as a height by the name of Anxur, but known as a boundary by the name of Terracina. When we think how early Rome became the mistress, not only of the height on which we stand and of the kindred heights around it, but of that long coast-line and its protecting heights, we feel why Rome, so early in her history, had to enter on a career of wide-spreading policy, which could never have suggested itself to a power seated at Veii or at Præneste. Rome, on her great river, with her haven at its mouth, with her long line of sea-faring subjects or allies, felt from a very early time the friendship or enmity of the great powers of the sea to be an important matter. She had to dread Etruscan pirates and Phœnician traders; the Greek of Cumæ might perhaps do something more against her than merely shelter her tyrants. We may believe or not in the connexion between the Alban lake and the fall of Veii, but, as we look one way from beside the few stones that are left of Jove's loftiest temple, we understand how needful it was that Juno of Veii should move to Rome. We may or we may not have the camping-ground of Hannibal behind us; but as we look out seawards we believe in the first treaty with Carthage; we go on to wonder how things had turned about, when Duilius and Lutatius could break the Carthaginian power by sea, and when Hannibal could make his way into Italy by land.

Cori.

There was some reason in the remark made by Mr. Creighton in the Academy a little time back, that there must be something "irritating to the Italians of the present date in the point of view which is often adopted by English writers towards Italian history." "Their cities," he said, "which are still instinct with political and social life, are regarded as museums of curiosities, which serve to awaken picturesque reminiscences in the mind of the passing tourist." Mr. Creighton was speaking of Genoa, and at Genoa and in cities like Genoa, what he says may be perfectly true. But there are other Italian cities where the political and social life at least hides itself from the passing tourist, and where the curiosity with which he regards the city is as nothing compared with the curiosity with which the inhabitants of the city seem to regard him. The curiosity is not specially irritating; it is perhaps mixed up with a certain open craving after _soldi_ which nothing short of the very highest civilization can get rid of; but it is quite distinct from the endless touting and wearying which the traveller has to undergo in places which are one degree more advanced, or which, to speak more civilly, have fallen less far back. For it is only civil to believe of cities which were once independent commonwealths, members of the League of the Thirty Cities, and, therefore, doubtless instinct with political life, that they were, at least two or three millenniums back, cleaner than they are now, and filled with inhabitants who had something more to do than their successors seem to have. But the interest which the novelty of the stranger awakens in the minds of the present inhabitants--far keener, it would seem, than the interest which the antiquity of the city awakens in his mind--really does him no harm. The modern Latins or Volscians come and look; they wonder; they follow. If the nature of the country requires that the strangers be set on asses and mules, the curiosity, as is only natural, reaches its height. The asses of the Prisci Latini or of their Volscian neighbours are undoubtedly grave and discreet beasts; even the obstinacy of the mule is a virtue when he knows the way so much better than his foreign rider. But there is something grotesque in the way of going; it is not wonderful if the sight gathers together a crowd, if the travellers find themselves the centre, not exactly of triumph, for they are not drawn in a chariot; not exactly of an ovation, for they do not walk on foot; but of a not ill-humoured procession of gazers, it may even be of admirers.

Something of this kind is likely to be the destiny, at some point at least, of those who wish to carry out the full programme of the right wing of the Latin host of Regillus:

Aricia, Cora, Norba, Velitræ, with the might Of Setia and of Tusculum.

Tusculum they will, perhaps, have made the object of a separate pilgrimage; Aricia belongs to the following of Jupiter and the Alban mount; "Setia's purple vineyards" it may be hard to take into the line of march; but, with a slight change of order, "Velitræ, Cora, Norba," with the later Ninfa thrown in as a substitute for neglected Setia, will form an admirable group, a day's journey, which those who have made it will perhaps, at the end of a day or two, feel sorry that they have not cut into two. Velitræ--hardly changed in the modern Velletri--has itself but little to show beyond one of the very noblest bell-towers of the second Italian period, where the pointed arch creeps in, a visitor which in Italy is better away, but which at least keeps out the vagaries of a yet later time. The lie of the town is good; it stands well on its hill, of no great elevation among its brighter neighbours. Besides the bell-tower, it has little to show in the ecclesiastical line, save only the eccentricity of having its cathedral church placed as if we were in Wales instead of in Italy, at the bottom of the city instead of at the top. One or two ancient houses and modern palaces may claim some attention, but Velletri, truly barren in Roman remains, cannot be said to be fruitful in those of mediæval times. The chief value of the town is as a starting-point--we can hardly call it centre--for Cora, Norba, and several other of its ancient fellows. The view from Velletri is beyond words. We look over the fertile plain, dying away to the right into the Pomptine marshes, and fenced in by the mighty limestone bulwark of the Volscian mountains. To the right of all the height of Anxur's temple looms in the distance; Circeii, with its following of islands, rises nearer and more plainly, almost itself like a great island, reminding the visitor from the West of England of Brean Down and the Holms in the Severn Sea. But the mountains draw the eyes towards them by something more than their bright masses, something more than a light and shade upon their sides. Several of their strong points are crowned with castles and whole towns; and one point so crowned stands out as the centre of all. We see one spur of the mountain, far lower than the heights beyond it, crowned by a little city coming some way down its sides, with a tall tower rising well from the midst when the sunlight catches it. There stands one of the chief objects for which Velletri is the starting-point; there we have to look for--

... the gigantic watch-towers, No work of earthly men, Whence Cora's sentinel's o'erlook The never-ending fen.

Watch-towers, perhaps, in the strictest sense, we do not see, and we shall hardly find them when we come nearer; but Cora, _Cori_, still keeps the mightiest of walls, which it was no wonder that men looked on as too mighty to be the work of such mortals--in Homer's phrase--as we now are, and looked on them as reared by no hands weaker than those of the forgers of Jove's own thunderbolts. With Cori we enter on the examination of a long series of towns, whose main feature is their primæval walls, and among these Cori has the merit of showing us the walls that are the most primæval of all. None of its fellows can show such blocks as the mysterious engineers, whose work men love to call Cyclopean, piled together in the lower town of Cori, just outside what is now the gate of Ninfa. Blocks indeed of equal size we may see elsewhere, but surely none of equal rudeness. They are heaped together as they were hewn or torn away from their place in the natural rock; huge limestone blocks of every size and shape, with the spaces between them filled up with similar stones of their own kind. But the whole range of the wall of Cori is not of this primitive sort. The curious in such matters distinguish five epochs: Cyclopean, Latin, Old Roman, Roman of Sulla's day, and--the leap is a great one--mediæval walls of the time of King Ladislaus; we hardly venture to give an Angevin king of the hither Sicily the full Slavonic shape which marks him as sprung from the other side of Hadria. The stones of the first four--we have already spoken of the first of all--are all polygonal, of distinguishing degrees of regularity of work and degrees of size. The rudest wall, as far as we saw, of all is to be found quite at the bottom; the others may be seen side by side in the great walls of the _arx_ which soar high above all, and which shelter the chief ornament of Cori in quite another department.

According to the nearly invariable rule, the _arx_ of Cora contained a temple, and the temple, as so often happens, has been turned into a church. But the change has been less destructive to Cori than in many other places. The house of St. Peter has been built without damaging the portico of the house of Hercules--the old Latin Herculus was hopelessly confused with the Hêraklês of Greek legend--and still keeps the columns of his portico, both on its front and its sides; keeps his entablature, his pediment, the gate-way of his _cella_, the inscription which records the work of the local _duumvirs_, Manlius and Turpilius. But what shall we say to the columns themselves? They profess to be Doric, even to be Greek Doric; but they have bases; they stand as wide apart as Etruscan tradition planted the columns of the Capitoline Jupiter; the shafts themselves, instead of being as massive as Pæstum, are slenderer than Nemea. But sin against rule as it may, the upper temple at Cori is still undoubtedly pretty, to say the least, and it is really all the more interesting because of its sin against rule. Far finer in themselves are the Corinthian columns--such as are left--of the temple of the Greek Twin Brethren lower down the hill; but we can see good Corinthian columns in a great many places; the peculiarities of the Hercules temple are special to Cori. Do they not speak of the Hellenizing mind of the great dictator who made Cora rise again after it had suffered deeply at the hands of his Marian enemies? Stern restorer of what he deemed Rome's ancient ways, but votary and favourite of Hellenic gods, the taste of Sulla might well lead him to some such forms as we see in the object, yet prominent from many points of view, that crowns the height of the citadel of Cora.

But we have not gone through the full tale of the antiquities of this strange little mountain-city. Outside the Ninfa gate, spanning at a vast height the deep gorge which on that side forms the foss of Cori, rises a bridge, of days which we call ancient, but which we are tempted to call modern so near to the Cyclopean wall. Not a few fragments of columns may be marked here and there in the streets. We light too on inscriptions. Besides the _duumvirs_--one might call them the bailiffs--of the Roman Municipium, whose names are carved on the frieze of Hercules, another commemorates two _Praitors_; surely these, with their archaic spelling, are the abiding magistrates of the Latin Commonwealth--as Cicero's Milo was dictator of Lanuvium--dependent on Rome, but not fully incorporated in her substance. Then, besides the chief temple, other Pagan buildings and objects have been turned to Christian uses. In the church where St. Peter has supplanted Hercules, an altar, if altar it be, bearing rams with horns and the Gorgon's head, has been hollowed out to make a baptismal font. The church of St. Oliva bears a dedication dating only from the sixteenth century; but it is a lovely cloister of that better kind of _Renaissance_ which was in truth only a falling back on Romanesque. In the church are memorials of earlier times, classical columns used again, fitted some of them with capitals of the very rudest Romanesque, whose fellows may be found in Worcester and at Hildesheim. Altogether Cori is emphatically a place for a visit. But a word of warning must be given. Cori and Norba cannot be combined so as to see both worthily in a single day. Let the traveller either make two distinct outings from Velletri, or let him take his chance of sleeping at Cori; it may not be a worse chance than sleeping at Frosinone, where sleep may be had. Then let him rise up early in the morning and saddle his ass, or, if able-bodied, let him rather make his way on his own feet along the mountain-path to Norba.

Norba.

We will suppose that, the mutual curiosity of natives and strangers having been fully gratified at Cori, the strangers have set out on their way, on mule-back or otherwise. The mountain-track up and down, skirting the lower heights of the Volscian range, opens noble views of the higher mountains inland, of the wide flat below, and of the sea beyond. But these views are perhaps, on the whole, better enjoyed when the traveller has found a firm foothold within "Norba's ancient wall" than while he has personal experience how

The patient ass, up flinty paths, Plods with his weary load.

Still worse indeed is it when the flinty paths have to be plodded down, and when the weary load needs all his theoretical philosophy to persuade him how thoroughly safe he really is, while the weakness of the flesh surrounds the descent with terrors which he knows to be unreal. At last the ancient wall rises immediately before him; the hill-side, a small height straight above the path, is climbed on his own feet, and he can presently contemplate at his ease both the wall itself and the prospect which it commands. The last part of the ass-track has become so like a lane anywhere else that we are amazed when we reach the other side of the immediate height of Norba, and find how far below lies the plain from which the almost perpendicular cliffs spring to bear up the forsaken city. For at Norba the curiosity will be almost wholly on the side of the stranger; in cannot be returned in kind, as at Cori; a lone shepherd or two may come to look at him; he cannot bring together the least approach to a triumphal procession. For within the wall all is, we cannot say desolate or forsaken, for the crops are there, full and green--"_segetes, ubi Norba fuit_"--but the ancient circuit is at least empty of all dwelling-places of man. We would fain believe that the space has stood as empty as it now does ever since the people of Norba--less wise, as the event showed, than their neighbours of Cora--embraced the cause of Marius with such desperate zeal that they slew themselves and burned their houses rather than let either themselves or their goods fall into the hands of Sulla. This inference might possibly be rash; for the ancient wall fences in at least one ruin which may be later than the days of the fortunate dictator. But it is clear that Norba, if it recovered from this great single blow, gradually dwindled away, to the profit, first of Norma by its side, which still abides, and of Ninfa, at its foot, which has perished only less utterly than Norba itself.