“Fons etiam rivo dare nomen idoneus, ut nec
Frigidior Thracam, nec purior ambiat Hebrus.”
Aquilius.—The river was the Digentia, the cold Digentia.
“Me quoties reficit gelidus Digentia rivus.”
It may be here a river, but not certainly. Do you suppose he went down in sight of the whole neighbourhood to bathe in the little river? for little river it is, and cold enough, too; for I have bathed in it, and can testify of its coldness. Would you take him, 1 say, down from his house to the river itself, when he had it conveyed to his own home by a rivus, or channel, and by a fons such as has been described, from which, without doubt, he was supplied with water enough for his hot and his cold baths? The gelidus Digentia rivus, I well know, and, as I said, bathed in it. A countryman seeing me, cried out, “Fa morir!” The Italians now (at least inland) never bathe; they have a perfect hydrophobia. Few even wash themselves. I asked a boy, whom we took about with us to carry our sketching materials, when he had last washed his face. He confessed he had never washed it, and that nobody did.
Curate.—We know Horace delighted in Tibur,—his “Tibur argeo, positum colono.” In the passage criticised in the Pentameron, I shall always see Tivoli, with its wood, its rocks, and cascatelle. He had the scene before him when he wrote,—
“ego laudo ruris amæni
Rivos; et museo circumlita saxa, nemusque.”
Tibur still; its rocks, woods, and rivus again; and perhaps the “nemus” was “Tiburni lucus.”
Aquilius.—Perhaps a line in this epistle from the lover of country to the lover of town, may throw some light on “obliquo” and “trepidare,” if indeed he has the scene in his eye.
“Purior in vicis aqua tendit rumpere plumbum,
Quam que per pronum trepidat cum murmure rivum.”
Great indeed is the difference, whether the water passes through a leaden pipe, or by the rivers, a mere direction by a channel open to the sky, and whose bed is the rock.