QUE
STAELA VI
A
DEGLIA SINI
While some declared that “que” was an enclitic conjunction, and that therefore the inscription must be incomplete, others asserted that the word was an abbreviation of “queo,” and that the inscription might be read: “I am able to gaze upon the star without pain.”
While the dispute was on, a peasant of the Campagna passed by. He approached and asked the reason of the crowd. He was told, and gazing at the inscription for several minutes he read slowly:
“Questa e la via degli asini” (“This is the way of asses.”).
And the Latinists, the archæologists, and the other savants crept quietly away, while the Commendatore in good, modern Tuscan made some remarks unprintable and untranslatable.
CHAPTER X
THE CAMPAGNA AND BEYOND
THE environs of Rome—those parts not given over to fox-hunting and horse-racing, importations which have been absorbed by the latter day Roman from the forestieri—still retain most of their characteristics of historic times. The Campagna is still the Campagna; the Alban Hills are still classic ground, and Tivoli and Frascati—in spite of the modernisms which have, here and there, crept in—are still the romantic Tivoli and Frascati of the ages long gone by.
The surrounding hills of Rome are, really, what give it its charm. The city is strong in contrast from every aspect, modernity nudging and crowding antiquity. Rome itself is not lovely, only superbly and majestically overpowering in its complexity.
The Rome of romantic times went as far afield as Otricoli, Ostia, Tivoli and Albano, and, on the east, these outposts were further encircled by a girdle of villas, gardens and vineyards too numerous to plot on any map that was ever made.