When, according to the old myth, Evander led Æneas over the site of future Rome, they saw the cattle grazing in what was to be the Forum, and heard them bellowing among the future dwellings of the rich senators and knights,
——‘passimque armenta videbant
Romanoque Foro et lautis mugire Carinis.’
The change thus pointed out by Virgil was far less than that exemplified by these few relics of a time when possibly no intervening sea separated Britain from the rest of the world.
CHAPTER XXI.
TROGLODYTES OR CAVE-DWELLERS—CANNIBAL CAVES.
Cave Dwellings in the Val d’Ispica—The Sicanians—Cannibal Caves in South Africa—The Rock City of the Themud—Legendary Tale of its Destruction.
Caves were probably the earliest habitations of primitive man, the first rude shelter for which he had to do battle with the hyena or the bear. As we have seen in the preceding chapter, some of the oldest relics of his prehistoric existence have been discovered in caves; and at a far later period, when he had already made some progress in the arts, we find many races still adhering to the subterranean dwellings of their forefathers. Such a state of things may possibly be indicated in the mythical stories of the Greek and Trojan heroes, who, near the base of Mount Etna, are said to have found caverns tenanted by the troglodytic tribe of the Cyclops.
In another part of Sicily the old cave-dwellings of the Val d’Ispica deservedly attract the antiquarian’s attention. The vale is a narrow gorge, situated between Modica and Spaccafurno; and throughout its whole length of about eight Italian miles, the rock-walls on both sides are pierced with innumerable grottoes, which at first sight might be taken for the productions of nature, but on a closer inspection evidently show that they are the work of man, and have been originally excavated to serve as dwellings. The luxuriant vegetation of the Val forms a pleasing contrast with the naked sterility of the plain in which it is imbedded; a small rivulet flows along the bottom, and irrigates wild fig-trees and stately oleanders; on a higher level grow broad-leaved acanthuses and wild artichokes, while thick festoons of cactus hang down from the top of the rocks and shade the entrance of the grottoes. These are excavated at various heights above the bottom of the vale, and often consist of two or three stories, one above the other. A great part of the rock-wall on the right bank of the brook has fallen in, and exposes to sight the internal arrangement of the dwellings. On the mounds of rubbish the visitor is able to ascend to the entrances of the caves, which originally can have been accessible only by ladders. The chambers are seldom more than twenty feet deep and six feet high and broad. The above-mentioned rock-slip has laid open, among others, a dwelling of three stories, with flights of steps in a good state of preservation, to which, on account of its superior dimensions, the neighbouring peasants have given the name of Castello d’Ispica, and which may have been the abode of a chieftain.
Several mortar-like basins or troughs, hollowed in the rock, evidently served for the pounding of corn, so that the inhabitants, whoever they were, must have known at least some of the arts of civilised life. A few of the rooms or burrows (for their size hardly warrants a better name) are still tenanted by shepherds, whose whole furniture consists of a kettle, a few pots, and some skins to lie upon. Parthey, a learned German traveller,[[33]] who visited many of the caves (the whole number probably exceeding 1,500), nowhere found the least traces of ornament about them; the doors and windows were mere rough holes broken through the rock. Thus there can be no doubt that the fragments of painted vases and sculptured marble that have been found here and there in the caves belong to a much later period, for a people sufficiently advanced in the arts to paint vases and to chisel marble could not possibly have been content with a mole-like existence. If we seek to ascertain the probable age of this cavern city, all circumstances combine to throw back its origin to a very ancient date. The total want of artistic decoration at once forbids us to assign these extensive but rude excavations to one of the Greek tribes which successively founded colonies in the island after expelling the aborigines from their ancestral seats. In the Roman, the Saracenic, or some later period a band of fugitives might indeed have found a temporary retreat in this remote vale, but could hardly have remained concealed long enough to execute a work which evidently required long years of undisturbed toil. Thus it has been conjectured that these caves were the dwellings of the ancient Sicanians, a people who became known to history only when about to disappear for ever from the stage of the world, having left no memorial of their existence save perhaps these rude vestiges of an infant state of society.
We may justly presume that the aborigines of Malta, the Balearic Islands, and Sardinia were likewise troglodytes when the first foreign colonists landed on the shores of these islands. And such, after the lapse of more than thirty centuries, are the Sarde shepherds of the present day, who frequently have no better dwellings than the caves of the rocks.