I. The [Scylacium] or Scolacium of Roman times, the city of Cassiodorus, is not to be looked for at the modern Squillace, but at the place called Roccella in the Italian military map, which Lenormant and Evans know as La Roccelletta del Vescovo di Squillace.

[Enlarge]

This place, which is about ten kilometres north-east of modern Squillace, is on a little hill immediately overhanging the sea, while Squillace is on a spur of the Apennines three or four miles distant from the sea. Mr. Evans' chief reasons for identifying Roccella with Scylacium are (1) its position, 'hanging like a cluster of grapes on hills not so high as to make the ascent of them a weariness, but high enough to command a delightful prospect over land and sea.' This description by Cassiodorus exactly suits Roccella, but does not suit Squillace, which is at the top of a conical hill, and is reached only by a very toilsome ascent. 'With its gradual southern and eastern slope and its freedom from overlooking heights (different in this respect from Squillace),' says Mr. Evans, 'Roccella was emphatically, as Cassiodorus describes it, "a city of the sun."'

(2) Its ruins. While no remains of a pre-mediaeval time have been discovered at Squillace, there is still standing at Roccella the shell of a splendid basilica, of which Mr. Evans has taken some plans and sketches, but which seems to have strangely escaped the notice of most preceding travellers. The total length of this building is 94 paces, the width of the nave 30, the extreme width of the transept 54. It has three fine apses at the eastern end, and is built in the form of a Latin cross. On either side of the nave was an exterior arcade, which apparently consisted originally of eleven window arches, six of them not being for the transmission of light. 'Altogether,' says Mr. Evans, 'this church, even in its dilapidated state, is one of the finest monuments of the kind anywhere existing. We should have to go to Rome, to Ravenna, or to Thessalonica, to find its parallel; but I doubt whether, even at any of those places, there is to be seen a basilica with such fine exterior arcading. It is a great tribute to the strength of the original fabric that so much should have survived the repeated shocks of earthquake that have desolated Calabria, and scarcely left one stone upon another of her ancient cities.'

After a careful examination of the architectural peculiarities of this basilica, Mr. Evans is disposed to fix its erection somewhere about the time of the Emperor Justinian.

In addition to this fine building there are at Roccella the ruins of two smaller late Roman churches, mausolea, and endless foundations of buildings which must have formed very extensive suburbs.

More important than all, the massive walls of a considerable city can still be traced for nearly a mile in two parallel lines, with the transverse wall which unites them. Certainly all these indications seem to point to the existence at this spot of a great provincial city of the Empire, and to make Mr. Evans' conjecture more probable than that of M. Lenormant, who identified the ruins at Roccella with those of Castra Hannibalis, the seaport of Scylacium. It would seem probable, if Mr. Evans' theory be correct, that the city may have been removed to its present site in the early middle ages, in order to guard it against the incursions of the Saracens.

The Vivarian Monastery.

II. As to the situation of the Vivarian Monastery Mr. Evans comes to nearly the same conclusion as M. Lenormant. Both place it on the promontory of Squillace (eastward of Staletti), and, as Mr. Evans observes, 'only such a position can be reconciled, on the one hand, with the presence of an abundant stream and rich Campagna, on the other with the neighbourhood of caves and grottoes on the sea-shore.' But while M. Lenormant places it at a place called Coscia, almost immediately to the north of and under Staletti, Mr. Evans pleads for the site now occupied by the Church of S. Maria del Mare, on the cliff top, very near the sea, and about three kilometres south of Staletti. This church is itself of later date than Cassiodorus, and probably formed part of the work of restoration undertaken by Nicephorus Phocas in the Tenth Century; but there are signs of its having formerly joined on to a monastery, and some of the work about it looks as if materials taken from the Cassiodorian edifice had been used in the work of reconstruction.