University of Virginia Library

67. LETTER LXVII.

We made the excursion to Baiœ on one of those
premature days of March common to Italy. A south
wind and a warm sun gave it the feeling of June. The
heat was even oppressive as we drove through the city,
and the long echoing grotto of Pausilyppo, always dim
and cool, was peculiarly refreshing. Near the entrance
to this curious passage under the mountain,
we stopped to visit the tomb of Virgil. A ragged boy
took us up a steep path to the gate of a vineyard, and
winding in among the just budding vines, we came to
a small ravine, in the mouth of which, right over the
deep cut of the grotto, stands the half-ruined mausoleum
which held the bones of the poet. An Englishman
stood leaning against the entrance, reading
from a pocket copy of the æneid. He seemed
ashamed to be caught with his classic, and put the
book in his pocket as I came suddenly upon him, and
walked off to the other side whistling an air from the
Pirata, which is playing just now at San Carlo. We
went in, counted the niches for the urns, stood a few
minutes to indulge in what recollections we could
summon, and then mounted to the top to hunt for the
“myrtle.” Even its root was cut an inch or two below
the ground. We found violets however, and they
answered as well. The pleasure of visiting such places,
I think, is not found on the spot. The fatigue of
the walk, the noise of a party, the difference between
reality and imagination, and worse than all, the caprice
of mood — one or the other of these things disturbs and
defeats for me the dearest promises of anticipation.
It is the recollection that repays us. The picture recurs
to the fancy till it becomes familiar; and as the
disagreeable circumstances of the visit fade from the
memory, the imagination warms it into a poetic feeling,
and we dwell upon it with the delight we looked for
in vain when present. A few steps up the ravine, almost
buried in luxuriant grass, stands a small marble
tomb, covering the remains of an English girl. She
died at Naples. It is as lovely a place to lie in as the
world could show. Forward a little toward the edge
of the hill some person of taste has constructed a little
arbor, laced over with vines, whence the city and
bay of Naples is seen to the finest advantage. Paradise
that it is!

It is odd to leave a city by a road piercing the base
of a broad mountain, in at one side and out at the
other, after a subterranean drive of near a mile! The
grotto of Pausilyppo has been one of the wonders of
the world these two thousand years, and it exceeds all
expectation as a curiosity. Its length is stated at two
thousand three hundred and sixteen feet, its breadth
twenty-two, and its height eighty-nine. It is thronged
with carts and beasts of burden of all descriptions, and
the echoing cries of these noisy Italian drivers are almost
deafening. Lamps, struggling with the distant
daylight as you near the end, just make darkness visible,
and standing in the centre and looking either way,
the far distant arch of daylight glows like a fire through
the cloud of dust. What with the impressiveness of
the place, and the danger of driving in the dark amid
so many obstructions, it is rather a stirring half-hour
that is spent in its gloom! One emerges into the
fresh open air and the bright light of day with a feeling
of relief.

The drive hence to Pozzuoli, four or five miles, was
extremely beautiful. The fields were covered with
the new tender grain, and by the short passage through
the grotto we had changed a busy and crowded city for
scenes of as quiet rural loveliness as ever charmed the
eye. We soon reached the lip of the bay, and then
the road turned away to the right, along the beach,
passing the small island of Nisida (where Brutus had
a villa, and which is now a prison for the carbonari).

Pozzuoli soon appeared, and mounting a hill we descended
into its busy square, and were instantly beset
by near a hundred guides, boatmen, and beggars, all
preferring their claims and services at the tops of their
voices. I fixed my eye on the most intelligent face
among them, a curly-headed fellow in a red lazzaroni
cap, and succeeded, with some loss of temper, in getting
him aside from the crowd and bargaining for our boats.

While the boatmen were forming themselves into a
circle to cast lots for the bargain, we walked up to the
famous ruins of the temple of Jupiter Serapis. This
was one of the largest and richest of the temples of antiquity.
It was a quadrangular building, near the edge
of the sea, lined with marble, and sustained by columns
of solid cipollino, three of which are still standing.
It was buried by an earthquake and forgotten
for a century or two, till in 1750 it was discovered by
a peasant, who struck the top of one of the columns
in digging. We stepped around over the prostrate
fragments, building it up once more in fancy, and
peopling the aisles with priests and worshippers. In
the centre of the temple was the place of sacrifice,
raised by flights of steps, and at the foot still remain
two rings of Corinthian brass, to which the victims
were fastened, and near them the receptacles for their
blood and ashes. The whole scene has a stamp of
grandeur. We obeyed the call of our red-bonnet
guide, whose boat waited for us at the temple stairs,
very unwillingly.

As we pushed off from the shore, we deviated a moment
from our course to look at the ruins of the ancient
mole. Here probably St. Paul set his foot, landing
to pursue his way to Rome. The great apostle
spent seven days at this place, which was then called
Puteoli — a fact that attaches to it a deeper interest
than it draws from all the antiquities of which it is the
centre.

We kept on our way along the beautiful bend of the
shore of Baiæ, and passing on the right a small mountain
formed in thirty-six hours by a volcanic explosion,
some three hundred years ago, we came to the Lucrine
Lake, so famous in the classics for its oysters.
The same explosion that made the Monte Nuovo, and
sunk the little village of Tripergole, destroyed the
oyster-beds of the poets.

A ten minutes' walk brought us to the shores of
Lake Avernus — the “Tartarus” of Virgil. This was
classic ground indeed, and we hoped to have found a
thumbed copy of the æneid in the pocket of the
cicerone. He had not even heard of the poet. A
ruin on the opposite shore, reflected in the still dark
water, is supposed to have been a temple dedicated to
Proserpine. If she was allowed to be present at her
own worship, she might have been consoled for her abduction.
A spot of more secluded loveliness could
scarce be found. The lake lay like a sheet of silver
at the foot of the ruined temple, the water looking unfathomly
deep through the clear reflection, and the
fringes of low shrubbery leaning down on every side,
were doubled in the bright mirror, the likeness even
fairer than the reality.

Our unsentimental guide hurried us away as we
were seating ourselves upon the banks, and we struck
into a narrow footpath of wild shrubbery which circled
the lake, and in a few minutes stood before the door
of a grotto sunk in the side of the hill. Here dwelt
the Camæan sybil, and by this dark passage, the souls

of the ancients passed from Tartarus to Elysium. The
guide struck a light and kindled two large torches, and
we followed him into the narrow cavern, walking downward
at a rapid pace for ten or fifteen minutes. With
a turn to the right, we stood before a low archway
which the guide entered, up to his knees in water at
the first step. It looked like the mouth of an abyss,
and the ladies refused to go on. Six or seven stout
fellows had followed us in, and the guide assured us
we should be safe on their backs. I mounted first
myself to carry the torch, and holding my head very
low, we went plunging on, turning to the right and left
through a crooked passage, dark as Erebus, till I was
set down on a raised ledge called the sybil's bed. The
lady behind me, I soon discovered by her screams had
not made so prosperous a voyage. She had insisted
on being taken up something in the side-saddle fashion;
and the man, not accustomed to hold so heavy a burden
on his hip with one arm, had stumbled and let her
slip up to her knees in water. He took her up immediately,
in his own homely but safer fashion, and
she was soon set beside me on the sybil's stony couch,
dripping with water, and quite out of temper with antiquities.

The rest of the party followed, and the guide lifted
the torches to the dripping roof of the cavern, and
showed us the remains of beautiful mosaic with which
the place was once evidently encrusted. Whatever
truth there may be in the existence of the sybil, these
had been, doubtlessly, luxurious baths, and probably
devoted by the Roman emperors to secret licentiousness.
The guide pointed out to us a small perforation
in the rear of the sybil's bed, whence, he said (by what
authority I know not), Caligula used to watch the
lavations of the nymph. It communicates with an
outer chamber.

We reappeared, our nostrils edged with black from
the smoke of the torches, and the ladies' dresses in a
melancholy plight, between smoke and water. It
would be a witch of a sybil that would tempt us to repeat
our visit.

We retraced our steps, and embarked for Nero's
villa. It was perhaps a half mile further down the
bay. The only remains of it were some vapor baths,
built over a boiling spring which extended under the
sea. One of our boatmen waded first a few feet into
the surf, and plunging under the cold sea-water, brought
up a handful of warm gravel — the evidence of a submarine
outlet from the springs beyond. We then
mounted a high and ruined flight of steps, and entered
a series of chambers dug out of the rock, where an old
man was stripping off his shirt, to go through the usual
process of taking eggs down to boil in the fountain.
He took his bucket, drew a long breath of fresh air,
and rushed away by a dark passage, whence he reappeared
in three or four minutes, the eggs boiled,
and the perspiration streaming from his body like rain.
He set the bucket down, and rushed to the door, gasping
as if from suffocation. The eggs were boiled hard,
but the distress of the old man, and the danger of such
sudden changes of atmosphere to his health, quite
destroyed our pleasure at the phenomenon.

Hence to the cape of Misenum, the curve of the bay
presents one continuation of Roman villas. And certainly
there was not probably in the world, a place
more adapted to the luxury of which it was the scene.
These natural baths, the many mineral waters, the
balmy climate, the fertile soil, the lovely scenery, the
matchless curve of the shore from Pozzuoli to the
cape, and the vicinity, by that wonderful subterranean
passage, to a populous capital on the other side of a
range of mountains, rendered Baiæ a natural paradise
to the emperors. It was improved as we see. Temples
to Venus, Diana, and Mercury, the villas of Marius,
of Hortensius, of Cæsar, of Lucullus, and others whose
masters are disputed, follow each other in rival beauty
of situation. The ruins are not much now, except
the temple of Venus, which is one of the most picturesque
fragments of antiquity I have ever seen. The
long vines hang through the rent in its circular roof,
and the bright flowers cling to the crevices in its still
half-splendid walls with the very poetry of decay. Our
guide here proposed a lunch. We sat down on the
immense stone which has fallen from the ceiling, and
in a few minutes the rough table was spread with a
hundred open oysters from Fusaro (near Lake Avernus),
bottles at will of lagrima christi from Vesuvius, boiled
crabs from the shore beneath the temple of Mercury,
fish from the Lucrine lake, and bread from Pozzuoli.
The meal was not less classic than refreshing. We
drank to the goddess (the only one in mythology, by
the way, whose worship has not fallen into contempt),
and leaving twenty ragged descendants of ancient Baiæ
to feast on the remains, mounted our donkeys and
started over land for “Elysium.”

We passed the villa of Hortensius, to which Nero
invited his mother, with the design of murdering her,
visited the immense subterranean chambers in which
water was kept for the Roman fleet, the horrid prisons
called the Cento Camerelle of the emperors, and then
rising the hill at the extremity of the cape, the Stygian
lake lay off on the right, a broad and gloomy pool, and
around its banks spread the Elysian fields, the very
home and centre of classic fable. An overflowed
march, and an adjacent cornfield will give you a perfect
idea of it. The sun was setting while we swallowed
our disappointment, and we turned our donkeys'
heads toward Naples.

We left the city again this morning by the grotto of
Pausilyppo, to visit the celebrated “Grotto del Cane.”
It is about three miles off, on the borders of a pretty
lake, once the crater of a volcano. On the way there
arose a violent debate in the party on the propriety of
subjecting the poor dogs to the distress of the common
experiment. We had not yet decided the point when
we stopped before the door of the keeper's house.
Two miserable-looking terriers had set up a howl, accompanied
with a ferocious and half-complaining bark
from our first appearance around the turn of the road,
and the appeal was effectual. We dismounted and
walking toward the grotto, determined to refuse to see
the phenomenon. Our scruples were unnecessary.
The door was surrounded with another party less
merciful, and as we approached, two dogs were dragged
out by the heels, and thrown lifeless on the grass. We
gathered round them, and while the old woman coolly
locked the door of the grotto, the poor animals began
to kick, and after a few convulsions, struggled to their
feet and crept feebly away. Fresh dogs were offered
to our party, but we contented ourselves with the more
innocent experiments. The mephitic air of this cave
rises to a foot above the surface of the ground, and a
torch put into it, was immediately extinguished. It has
been described too often, however, to need a repetition.
We took a long stroll around the lake, which was
covered with wild-fowl, visited the remains of a villa
of Lucullus on the opposite shore, and returned to
Naples to dinner.