But we must remember that the walls of which we have been speaking, the walls which first catch the eye, are not the whole of the walls of Alatri. They fence in only its inner and higher circuit. Their effect in the distant view is so imposing that the visitor will most likely be tempted to go to them first, instead of doing things in a more regular order by first tracking out the walls of the town itself. But these last, except that they do not supply anything like the primæval gate, are just as well worthy of study as the walls of the arx itself. They remain perfectly round the greater part of the circuit of the city, and they are of the same general construction as the walls of the arx. At some points a singular contrast is made by mediæval additions to the defences; good thirteenth century work, with the characteristic windows of the time, stands out as projections from the primæval wall. And, as in some of the other places, we have something thrown in in the way of what the walls contain, besides the attractions of the walls themselves. From the arx of Alatri we look down on several bell-towers and rose-windows, and one church at least, that of Santa Maria Maggiore, though hardly equal to its namesake at Ferentino, is quite worthy of examination. But, next to its walls, the strong point of Alatri lies in its domestic buildings. Very seldom, in Italy or out of it, do we see graceful windows, chiefly couplets with a divided shaft, more thickly gathered together, than in its crooked and narrow streets. Alatri, in short, is, to the antiquarian eye, satisfactory in every point save one. There should have been some decent building, pagan or Christian, crowning the noble site of its arx, the noblest in our whole range.
With Alatri we end one main stage of our iter, that of the hill-cities. We shall henceforth pass by places which lie more in the world, some of them in the thick of modern communication. But if we had turned back at Alatri, we should have done a good stroke of work. A journey to the walls of the Hernicans is in every way pleasant and profitable. And in truth, even if we throw in the Old-Latins and the Volscians, it is not a journey of hardships. The little inns are very humble, very simple, but they may be fed in and slept in without anything very frightful to endure. It may perhaps be well to mention that the Locanda d'Italia, at Anagni, recommended in various guide-books, has ceased to exist for some years. Still a day and a night at Anagni are no hardship, and a guide may be found, shirtless and letterless, who knows what is really worth going to much better than many in England who boast at once more clothes and more learning. Indeed, the men of the walls seem altogether a kindly and well-disposed race. Some say that is because they are said to be reclaimed brigands, perhaps on the principle that a reformed rake used to be said to make the best husband. There are indeed more beggars among them than need be; but on this head a wise rule was laid down by a young Volscian, or he might be a Hernican—we cannot always be exact among these obsolete nationalities—"Give to the halt and the blind; but not to anybody else."
IV. From Alatri to Capua.
We have done for a while with the hill-cities, though it would not be hard to find several other spots of the same kind, rivalling in historical interest, and, by all accounts, rivalling also as to existing remains, any of those which we have gone through. But the special necessities of an iter ad Brundisium carry us to quite other parts of the Italian peninsula, to parts where the sources of interest are fully equal to those of Etruscan or Latin cities, but where they are wholly different in kind. We leave the hills, or touch only their lowest slopes. For a while the mountains still soar above us, while our work is in the plains. Presently we lose the mountains even as distant companions; but before long we have the blue waves of Hadria as their substitute. At last we reach our goal; we go for a season even beyond it. And when we have gone as far as the devices of modern science can carry us, when we have reached the very end of the general railway system of Central Europe, our landscape again takes in both the sea and the mountains. But the eye now ranges beyond the bounds of Italy, beyond the bounds of Western Europe. We see across the narrowed waters to the heights of another peninsula. Without seeking for more than a chance likeness between the names—a name that ranges from the Euxine to the Hudson—without seeking in any sort to identify the Ἀλβανοί of Dionysios and the Ἀλβανοί of imperial Anna, it is still with a curious feeling of coincidence that the eyes which not many days before were looking up to the mount of Alba, now look across the sea to the wilder mountains of Albania.
Some of those who now looked across had already learned something of those heights from earlier and nearer experiences. Still it is a new feeling to look out on them from Italian ground, above all to look out on them from the spot where the Turk made his entrance into the western world, and where the signs of his short presence have stamped themselves deep on local memory. Standing at Otranto, looking on the Albanian heights, the foremost thought is how near Otranto came to being to the West of Europe all that the Thracian Kallipolis was to the East. But we are as yet far from Otranto, far from the heel of the boot, far even from any point of the Hadriatic coast. We are still on the western side of the great backbone of Italy; we have still to catch glimpses of the Tyrrhenian waters, to look, as at distant objects, on the bold outline of Ischia and on Vesuvius crowned with his pillar of cloud. But this time we do not obey the seemingly inflexible law which decrees that he who goes to Rome and does not turn back from Rome must go and see Naples, whether he dies after the sight or not. This time we have no call either to Naples itself or to the far more attractive range of objects of which Naples is the centre. Our errand is to pass from the primæval cities of the Latin and the Volscian to the cities of south-eastern Italy. Their chief present attraction lies in the series of churches raised in the days of the Norman and Angevin kings; but their memories carry us back through a long series of stirring ages, not indeed to the hoary antiquity of Cori and Alatri, but to the days when Southern Italy, the earliest Italy, was counted for a part of Hellas. It is not for nothing that we look out from thence on those eastern lands which then perhaps were the less Hellenic of the two.
Greek influence indeed begins—some say that it historically began—on the western, not the eastern, shore of Italy, in lands which, in the present journey, we leave to the west of us and see only in glimpses. We hurry on, passing by much that we might well stop and study, from Frosinone to Caserta. And we are luxurious enough to rejoice at finding ourselves there. We have proved that a few days and nights may be passed among Volscians and Hernicans without damage or even serious discomfort; but we trust that it is not an avowal to be ashamed of that it is a pleasing exchange to find ourselves in thoroughly civilized quarters in the plains of Campania. We have found our Capua; not, however, at Capua itself, but under the shadow of the royal palace a few miles off. But we desert Capua only because Capuan comforts—we will not talk of luxuries—have fled from Capua and have found their new home at Caserta. Those who have tried a night at Capua itself, Santa Maria di vetere Capua, not the newer Capua on the site of Casilinum, report that, if Hannibal's army could be quartered there again, they would certainly not be corrupted by anything excessive in the way of creature comforts. Anagni and Frosinone are said to be far in advance of the city which long was to Rome what Paris long was to London. The excuse doubtless would be that Capua is Capua no longer. The name of Capua, and with it the stirring history of early mediæval Capua, has wandered from the true Capua to Casilinum. It is not at the town now called Capua, but at the village—it is hardly more—of Santa Maria, that we must look for what is left of Etruscan Vulturnum, of Samnite, Campanian, and Roman Capua, the special city of pleasure, the city where, before all others, pleasure was sought for in scenes of blood.
On our present course we have no special call to either Capua, old or new. We have in times past seen both the amphitheatre of the elder Capua and the cathedral portico of the newer. But, when Caserta has been chosen as a convenient halting-place, it would be a shame for the historic traveller to pass by two such famous spots without a glance at either, while in their neighbourhood lies a third object, of no small value in its own line, which will have the further charm of novelty. It is well, while still fresh from the Flavian amphitheatre at Rome, to look again on the amphitheatre of Capua—Capua, the mistress of Rome in the sports of slaughter. There is a certain special lore of amphitheatres, the mastery of which does not fall to the lot of all, even of those who look on the monuments either of Rome or Capua with a general historical eye. But it is easy to see that in the Capuan amphitheatre the underground arrangements can be studied as they hardly can be studied anywhere else. The walls, the seats, are far less perfect than at Rome; much more then are they less perfect than at Verona. But the substructure seems wholly untouched. In the Roman Coliseum the underground work is only partially brought to light, while of what has been brought to light it is not always clear how much is the work of the Flavian Emperors, and how much of the mediæval barons who turned the amphitheatre into a fortress. Here, better than at Rome, we may study what really happened when the lions came up from underground to be slaughtered by the imperial hands of Commodus. If any question is raised as to the date of the building, one who is not a special Capuan topographer may be satisfied with the fact, that the inscription of Hadrian claims for that prince only a renovation and enrichment of the building with columns and statues. This seems to imply that the shell is older; it may be far older. In idea at least, the amphitheatre of Capua is far older than that of Rome. It illustrates a strange but well-known law of human nature, that the taste for luxury and the taste for blood should find a common home.
Besides the modernized basilica, besides the tombs of various sizes and designs which line the road—one of which is indeed singularly like a model of an amphitheatre—the true Capua has little to show besides the amphitheatre itself. It is strange to see so great a city, one which for some ages must have been far greater, far more splendid than Rome, so utterly gone—or rather to see the little that is left of it translated to another site. But great as Capua undoubtedly was, we begin to doubt its extreme antiquity. Capua, once Etruscan Vulturnum, remained Etruscan Vulturnum till the fourth century of Rome. It was the last remnant of the great Etruscan dominion in that region of Italy. As such, it represents a state of things far older than Rome. But the city itself may well be of later date than Rome. At all events, we may be sure that it is of far later date than Cori and Alatri. The city by the Vulturnus, down in the plain, taking its name from its guardian river, marks an advance not only on the mountain strongholds of Segni and Norba, but on Veii, on Rome itself. It must be far older than Florence; but it is the fellow of Florence; it marks an equal forsaking of the oldest type of a city. It is hard to see where the arx of Capua could have stood, if we are to understand by an arx something set upon a hill. But what a position that of Capua was, according to later ideas, is shown by its revival after the Hannibalian war. The Samnite settlement, parted away from their kinsfolk of the mountains, had become Campanians, and, to seek shelter against their kinsfolk of the mountains, they had been fain in some sort to become Romans.
"Cives Romani tunc facti sunt Campani,"