Italy, the Magic Land Part 11

c.u.mae was the most ancient Greek colony of Italy on the coast, and the last survivors of the Tarquinii died here. This is the most cla.s.sic of all these legendary coast towns near Naples, as it was here that the c.u.maean Sibyl dwelt with the mysterious sibylline leaves,--the books that were carried to Rome. A colossal Acropolis was once here, fragments of whose walls are now standing; and the rocky foundation is honeycombed with secret pa.s.sages and openings. It is here that Virgil's "Grotto of the Sibyl" is supposed to have stood,--the grotto "whence resound as many voices, the oracles of the prophetess."

The journey from Naples to Herculaneum is easily made by electric train cars within an hour, and while there is not much to see it is still an excursion well worth making. Dr. de Petra, of the chair of Archaeology in the University of Naples, and formerly the Director of the National Museum, is warmly in favor of the proposed excavation of this buried city, as is Professor Spinazzola of the San Martino museum, who believes that Italy may well become one vast museum of antiquities. "As the theatre of Herculaneum is actually at present a subterranean excavation," he observed, "why not excavate in a similar way the entire city underneath modern Resina? In this way a perfectly unique underground museum would be formed, which would have the merit of leaving magnificent Roman art treasures exactly in their proper places in the villas. Such a work ought to be perfectly practicable, with the resources of modern engineering, and would certainly be unique in the world.

"There would be no need to build a special museum for the objects discovered. Not only would this money be saved, but I feel convinced that so many visitors would be attracted as to more than pay for the maintenance. A subterraneous Herculaneum--surely a perfectly unique place of pilgrimage, just as it was nearly two thousand years ago--might be lighted by electric arc lights. I feel certain it would attract sight-seers from the ends of the world. At the same time work might go on in the open parts of the city.

"Pompeii was more of an industrial town, while Herculaneum was a favorite resort of the Roman patricians, who did not bring their treasures with them from their northern homes, but had them executed by Greek artists in the south."

Under the mighty floods of _lava d'acqua_ that buried Herculaneum doubtless lie temples, a splendid forum, magnificent villas, and most valuable art and literary treasures. In the eighteenth century excavations brought to light rare bronzes, mosaics, and papyri. The famous equestrian statue of Balbo, in the Naples Museum, was excavated from Herculaneum. Professor Lanciani and Commendatore Boni of Rome--the latter the present director of the Forum, succeeding Lanciani--believe that some of the richest art of ancient times may be found in Herculaneum; as does Professor Dall'Osso, inspector of excavations at Pompeii.

Herculaneum is held to have been founded by Hercules when he landed at Campania, returning from Iberia, some three hundred years B.C., and it was in 63 A.D. that it was destroyed. Of this cataclysm Pliny, the Younger, wrote:--

"The sea seemed to roll back on itself by the convulsions of the earth. On the other side hung a black and dreadful cloud, bursting with fiery and serpentine vapors. Naught was heard in the darkness but the shrieks of women, the screams of children, and the frenzied cries of men calling for children, for wives, for parents,--all lifting hands to the G.o.ds, praying and wis.h.i.+ng for death."

Dr. Charles Waldstein of Cambridge University, the eminent archaeologist, whose efforts toward initiating the excavation of Herculaneum were a notable event of 1906, thus writes of this buried city:--

"It is important to bear in mind that naturally all the best works in the Museum of Naples, especially the bronzes, came from Herculaneum and not from Pompeii.

"What is most striking is the marvellous preservation of these works. This fact of itself ought to counteract the strange but widespread misapprehension that, while Pompeii was covered with cinders and ashes, Herculaneum was covered with lava, and that the hardness of that material made excavation difficult, if not impossible. All geologists and archaeologists are agreed that no lava issued from the eruption of 79 A.D. Herculaneum was covered by a torrent of mud consisting of ashes and cinders mixed with water.

The ma.s.s which covers it, so far from being less favorable to the preservation of objects, is much more favorable than that which covers Pompeii. Pompeii was partially covered with hot ashes and pumice stones, which burnt or damaged the works of art. As it was not wholly covered, moreover, the inhabitants returned and dug up some of their greatest treasures. Herculaneum, on the other hand, had its actual life, arrested at the highest point, securely preserved from depredation, to a depth of eighty feet, by a material which preserved intact the most delicate specimens which have come down to us in a state so perfect as to be really remarkable.

"The most important of these delicate objects are ma.n.u.scripts, of which that one villa produced 1750. The state of preservation is ill.u.s.trated by one specimen, giving two pages from the works of the philosopher Philademus. Unfortunately, the possessor of the villa was a specialist, a student of Epicurean philosophy. While his taste in art was fortunately so catholic, his taste in literature was narrowed down by his special bent. Piso was the friend and protector of the philosopher Philo. Already sixty-five copies of that author's works have been found among the papyri.

"Yet the city of Herculaneum contained many such villas, and herein it differed from Pompeii. Pompeii was a commonplace provincial town devoted exclusively to commerce; it was not the resort of wealthy and cultured Romans. It was essentially illiterate. No ma.n.u.script can be proved to have been found there. It is true a wax tablet with writing has been found; yet this contains--receipts of auctions. Herculaneum, on the other hand, was the favorite resort of wealthy Romans, who built beautiful villas there as in our times people from modern Rome settle for the summer at Sorrento and Castellammare."

The present descent into the theatre of Herculaneum is made by a flight of more than a hundred steps, slippery and cold, in total darkness save for the candle that is carried by the guide, and the visitor sees only the stone seats of the amphitheatre and the stage with the two vacant niches, the statues that filled each being now placed in the Museum in Naples.

The journey of thirteen miles from Naples to Pompeii is through a succession of densely populated villages that seem to be an integral part of Naples itself, for there is no line of demarcation. Portici, Torre del Greco, Torre dell'Annunziata, and others all blend with each other and with Naples. However familiar one has become with the literature of Pompeii, with both archaeological descriptions and imaginative interpretations in romance, and however familiar with its aspects he may have become from replicas in art museums, and from pictures, one can yet hardly approach this silent, phantom city without being thrilled by its deep significance. At a distance of a few miles over the gently undulating plain rises Vesuvius; one gazes on the paths where the rivers of molten fire must have rolled down. George S.

Hillard, visiting Pompeii in 1853, thus described a house which the visitors of to-day study and admire:--

"The finest house we saw within the walls is one which had been discovered and laid bare about four months previous to the date of our visit, called the house of the Suonatrice, from a painting of a female playing on a pipe, at the entrance. This house was deemed of such peculiar interest that it was under the charge of a special custode, and was only to be seen on payment of an extra fee. It was not of large size, but had evidently been occupied by a person of ample fortune and exquisite taste. The paintings on the walls were numerous, and in the most perfect preservation. In the rear was a minute garden not more than twenty or thirty feet square, with a fairy fountain in the centre; around which were several small statues of children and animals, of white marble, wrought with considerable skill. The whole thing had a very curious effect, like the tasteful baby-house of a grown-up child. Everything in this house was in the most wonderful preservation. The metal pipes which distributed the water, and the c.o.c.ks by which it was let off, looked perfectly suited for use. Nothing at Pompeii seemed so real as this house, and nowhere else were the embellishments so numerous and so costly.

"Pompeii, though a Roman city in its political relations, was everywhere strongly marked with the impress of the Greek mind. It stood on the northern edge of that part of Italy which, from the number of Grecian colonies it contained, was called Magna Graecia,--a region of enchanting beauty, in which the genius of Greece attained its most luxurious development. It has been conjectured that Pompeii had an unusually large proportion of men of property, who had been drawn there by the charms of its situation and climate, and that it thus extended a liberal patronage to Greek architects, painters, and sculptors. At any rate, the spirit of Greece still lives and breathes in its ashes.

Its temples, as restored by modern architects, are Greek. Its works in marble and bronze claim a place in that cyclus of art of which the metopes of the Parthenon are the highest point of excellence.

The pictures that embellish the walls, the unzoned nymphs, the bounding Bacchantes, the grotesque Fauns, the playful arabesques, all are informed with the airy and creative spirit of Greek art.

"The ruins of Pompeii are not merely an open-air museum of curiosities, but they have great value in the ill.u.s.tration they offer to Roman history and Roman literature. The antiquarian of our times studies the great realm of the past with incomparable advantage, by the help of the torch here lighted."

From Pompeii to Castellammare, the beautiful seaside summer resort of the Neapolitans, "a lover of nature could hardly find a spot of more varied attractions. Before him spreads the unrivalled bay,--dotted with sails and unfolding a broad canvas, on which the most glowing colors and the most vivid lights are dashed,--a mirror in which the crimson and gold of morning, the blue of noon, and the orange and yellow-green of sunset behold a livelier image of themselves,--a gentle and tideless sea, whose waves break upon the sh.o.r.e like caresses, and never like angry blows. Should he ever become weary of waves and languish for woods, he has only to turn his back upon the sea and climb the hills for an hour or two, and he will find himself in the depth of sylvan and mountain solitudes,--in a region of vines, running streams, deep-shadowed valleys, and broad-armed oaks,--where he will hear the ringdove coo, and see the sensitive hare dart across the forest aisles.

A great city is within an hour's reach; and the shadow of Vesuvius hangs over the landscape, keeping the imagination awake by touches of mystery and terror."

The road to Sorrento, on a cliff a hundred feet or more above the sea, with mountains on the other side, towering up hundreds of feet high; a road cut in many places out of the solid rock, supported by galleries and viaducts from below,--a road that crosses deep gorges and chasms, always with the iridescent colors of the sea below,--and from Sorrento to Amalfi again, only, if possible, even more wonderful,--is there in the world any drive that can rival this picturesque and sublime route?

Of it George Eliot wrote:--

"It is an unspeakably grand drive round the mighty rocks with the sea below; and Amalfi itself surpa.s.ses all imagination of a romantic site for a city that once made itself famous in the world."

Sorrento, with its memories and a.s.sociations of Ta.s.so, seems a place in which one cares only to sit on the balcony of the hotel overhanging the sea and watch the magic spectacle of a panorama unrivalled in all the beauty of the world. Flowers grow in riotous profusion; the fairy sail of a flitting boat is caught in the deepening dusk; the dark outline of Vesuvius is seen against the horizon; and orange orchards gleam against gray walls. Here Ta.s.so was born, in 1544, fit haunt for a poet, with tangles of gay blossoms and the aerial line of mountain peaks. A low parapet borders the precipice, and over it one leans in the air heavy with perfume of locust blossoms. Has the lovely town anything beside sunsets and stars and poets' dreams? Who could ask for more?

To La Cava,--to Amalfi,--still all a dream world!

"O summer day, beside the joyous sea!

O summer day so wonderful and white, So full of gladness and so full of pain!"

How Amalfi sets itself to song and music! Who can enter it without hearing in the air Longfellow's beautiful lines?--

"Sweet the memory is to me Of a land beyond the sea, Where the waves and mountains meet, Where, amid her mulberry-trees, Sits Amalfi in the heat, Bathing ever her white feet In the tideless summer seas.

'Tis a stairway, not a street, That ascends the deep ravine, Where the torrent leaps between Rocky walls that almost meet.

This is an enchanted land!

Round the headlands, far away, Sweeps the blue Salernian bay With its sickle of white sand; Further still and furthermost On the dim discovered coast, Paestum with its ruins lies, And its roses all in bloom."

If ever a region was dropped out of paradise designed, solely, for a poet's day-dreams, it is Amalfi, and the even more beautiful Ravello just above. One fancies that it must have been in the mystic loveliness of this eyrie that the poet lost himself in a day-dream while Jupiter was dividing all the goods of the world. When he reproached the G.o.d for not saving a portion for him, Jupiter replied that all the goods were gone, it was true, but that his heaven was always open to the poet.

The ancient Amalfi, the city of activities and merchandise, is gone.

"Where are now the freighted barks From the marts of east and west?

Where the knights in iron sarks Journeying to the Holy Land, Glove of steel upon the hand, Cross of crimson on the breast?

Where the pomp of camp and court?

Where the pilgrims with their prayers?

Where the merchants with their wares?

Vanished like a fleet of cloud, Like a pa.s.sing trumpet-blast, Are those splendors of the past, And the commerce and the crowd!

Fathoms deep beneath the seas Lie the ancient warves and quays, Swallowed by the engulfing waves."

It is impossible to realize that Amalfi was once a flouris.h.i.+ng city of Oriental trade. One looks in vain for any trace of ruin or shrine that still suggests the ancient splendors of activity. The strata of the past, so visible in other mediaeval cities, are not apparent here. The great cathedral is a most interesting study in the art of architecture,--its exquisite arcades, its delicate, lofty campanile glittering in the sun. The green-roofed cupola is a distinctive feature, and up the many flights of stairs the old Capuccini convent lies,--the unique, romantic hotel where the cells of the monks are now the rooms of the perpetual procession of guests. Does the wraith of Cardinal Capuano, who founded this convent, still wander in midnight hours through the dim cloisters? Does he still keep watch by the body of St.

Andrew, the apostle, which he is said to have found and brought to the cathedral where the saint lies, as a saint should lie, gloriously entombed. St. Andrew was the patron saint of Amalfi, but at his death his body was carried from Patras to the Bosphorus, where it was placed in a church in Constantinople. The legend runs that Cardinal Capuano, being in Constantinople, entered the Church of the Holy Apostles to pray, and knowing that the body of the saint was in that city, he besought the heavenly powers to guide him to it. Rising from his devotions he was approached by an aged priest, who announced to the Cardinal that the object of his search was in that very church in which he was praying for guidance; and, aided by unseen powers, he was able to recover it and convey it to Amalfi. All Italian towns that respect themselves offer the allurement of an entombed saint and if, occasionally, the same identical saint does duty for more than one city, who is to decide the local genuineness of the claim? Nothing in all Italy is so curious as is this town of staircases instead of streets; of houses perched on the angles of impossible eyries suggesting that, as the Venetians go about in gondolas, so the Amalfians must have airs.h.i.+ps, or the wings of Icarus, with which to circle in air from their dwellings to the beach.

The precipitous gorges and dark ravines have on their crests low parapets of stone walls over which the visitor lingers and leans watching the bluest of seas lying fair under the bluest of skies. The main road,--there is only one,--descending from the hill to the water's edge, makes its progress through a tunnel.

The old Amalfi, with its palaces, its arches and colonnades, lies under the sea. Just as the Pensione Caterina with its rose walks and terraces slipped into the sea in December of 1899, when two guests and several fishermen lost their lives, so the ancient Amalfi fell, its cliffs swallowed up in the waters below.

"Hidden from all mortal eyes, Deep the sunken city lies; Silent streets and vacant halls, Ruined roofs and towers and walls; Even cities have their graves!"

When, on a May evening, the white moonlight falls in cascades of silver sheen over terraces and sea, with Amalfi all alabaster and pearl like a dream city in the ethereal air; when the stars hang low in the skies and the fairy lights of the fishermen's boats twinkle far out at sea; when the summer silence is suddenly thrilled by the melody of Neapolitan songs on the air, as if it were a veritable _chant d'amour_ of sirens,--then does one believe in the buried city. These rich baritone voices are surely those of some singers of the buried ages. They are floating across the centuries since Amalfi had its pride and place among the great centres of activity. Atrani, Amalfi's twin city, lies in the adjoining defile of the mountains which arch above them. The strange old houses are all dazzlingly white, transfigured under the moon to an unearthly loveliness.

The tragedy of the ruin of Amalfi is related by Petrarca, who was then living in Naples. It was in 1343 that a terrible cataclysm--an earthquake accompanied by a tempest--caused the destruction and the submergence of the city in the sea.

The believers in astrology will find their faith re-enforced by the fact that a bishop, who was also an astrologist, had read in the stars that in December of 1343 a terrible disaster would occur on the Naples coast.

It arrived on schedule time. Petrarca, writing of it to Giovanni Colonna, states that in consequence of the prediction of the bishop, the people were in a condition of wild terror, endeavoring to repent of their sins and aspiring to a purer moral life. In this tide of religious emotion, ordinary occupations were neglected. On the very day of the calamity people were crowding the churches and kneeling in prayer. At night, after the people were in bed, the shock came. The sunset had been fair, the evening quiet, and the people were rea.s.sured. But they were awakened from sleep by the violence of falling walls and the terror of the tempest. Petrarcha was lodging in a convent, and he heard the monks calling to one another as they rushed from cell to cell. They hastily gathered crosses and sacred relics in their hands, and, preceded by the prior, sought the chapel, where they pa.s.sed the night in prayer while the tempest raged outside. The sea broke against the rocks with a fury that seemed to tear the very foundations of the earth. The thunder pealed, and mingled with it were the shrieks of the frightened populace. The rain fell in torrents, deluging the city as if the sea itself were pouring on it. When the morning came the darkness still continued. In the harbor broken s.h.i.+ps crashed helplessly together. The sands were strewn with mutilated dead bodies. Between Capri and the sh.o.r.e the sea ran mountains high. Amalfi was completely destroyed, and has never regained her prestige.

The cathedral at Ravello has traces of the rich art it once enshrined, and the rose gardens of the Palazzo Rufolo might enchant Hafiz himself.

The terrace on the very crest of the mountain commands one of the wonderful views of the world. The cloistered colonnades of this old Saracenic palace reveal views even to the plains of Paestum. There are rare mosaics and fragments of bronzes and marbles yet remaining.