Under various names, too, they augment the number of the divinities,[2925] and give birth to cities; Puteoli,[2926] for example, in Campania, Statyellæ[2927] in Liguria, and Sextiæ[2928] in the province of Gallia Narbonensis. But nowhere do they abound in greater number, or offer a greater variety of medicinal properties than in the Gulf of Baiæ;[2929] some being impregnated with sulphur, some with alum, some with salt, some with nitre,[2930] and some with bitumen, while others are of a mixed quality, partly acid and partly salt. In other cases, again, it is by their vapours that waters are so beneficial to man, being so intensely hot as to heat our baths even, and to make cold water boil in our sitting-baths; such, for instance, as the springs at Baiæ, now known as “Posidian,” after the name of a freedman[2931] of the Emperor Claudius; waters which are so hot as to cook articles of food even. There are others, too,—those, for example, formerly the property of Licinius Crassus—which send forth their vapours in the sea[2932] even, thus providing resources for the health of man in the very midst of the waves!
CHAP. 3.—REMEDIES DERIVED FROM WATER.
According to their respective kinds, these waters are beneficial for diseases of the sinews, feet, or hips, for sprains or for fractures; they act, also, as purgatives upon the bowels, heal wounds,[2933] and are singularly useful for affections of the head and ears: indeed, the waters of Cicero are good for the eyes.[2934] The country-seat where these last are found is worthy of some further mention: travelling from Lake Avernus towards Puteoli, it is to be seen on the sea-shore, renowned for its fine portico and its grove. Cicero gave it the name of Academia,[2935] after the place so called at Athens: it was here that he composed those treatises[2936] of his that were called after it; it was here, too, that he raised those monuments[2937] to himself; as though, indeed, he had not already done so throughout the length and breadth of the known world.
Shortly after the death of Cicero, and when it had come into the possession of Antistius Vetus,[2938] certain hot springs burst forth at the very portals[2939] of this house, which were found to be remarkably beneficial for diseases of the eyes, and have been celebrated in verse by Laurea Tullius,[2940] one of the freedmen of Cicero; a fact which proves to demonstration that his servants even had received inspiration from that majestic and all-powerful genius of his. I will give the lines, as they deserve to be read, not there only, but everywhere:
Great prince of Roman eloquence, thy grove,
Where erst thou bad’st it rise, is verdant now:
Thy villa, from fair Academia[2941] nam’d,
From Vetus now its finish’d graces takes.
Here, too, fair streams burst forth, unknown before,