[20] The marshes of Minturnae lay between the city and the mouth of the Liris. (Cluverius, Ital. Antiq., lib. 3, cap. 10, sec. 9.) The Spanish army encamped, says Guicciardini, "in a place called by Livy, from its vicinity to Sessa, aquae Sinuessanae, being perhaps the marshes in which Marius hid himself." (Istoria, lib. 6.) The historian makes two blunders in a breath. 1st. Aquae Sinuessanae, was a name derived not from Sessa, the ancient Suessa Aurunca, but from the adjacent Sinuessa, a town about ten miles southeast of Minturnae. (Comp. Livy, lib. 22, cap. 14, and Strabo, lib. 5, p. 233.) 2d. The name did not indicate marshes, but natural hot springs, particularly noted for their salubrity. "Salubritate harum aquarum," says Tacitus in allusion to them (Annales, lib. 12); and Pliny notices their medicinal properties more explicitly. Hist. Naturalis, lib. 31, cap. 2.
[20] This does not accord with Horace's character of the Garigliano, the ancient Liris, as the "taciturnus amnis," (Carm., lib. i. 30,) and still less with that of Silius Italicus,
"Liris … qui fonte quieto
Dissimulat cursum, et nullo mutabilis imbre
Perstringit tacitas gemmanti gurgite ripas."
Puncia, lib. 4.
Indeed, the stream exhibits at the present day the same soft and tranquil aspect celebrated by the Roman poets. Its natural character, however, was entirely changed at the period before us, in consequence of the unexampled heaviness and duration of the autumnal rains.
[21] Bernaldez, Reyes Católicos, MS., cap. 188.—Abarca, Reyes de Aragon, tom. ii. rey 30, cap. 14.—Garibay, Compendio, tom. ii. lib. 19, cap. 16. —Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 269.—Giovio, Vitae Illust. Virorum, fol. 262-264.—Ulloa, Vita di Carlo V., fol. 22.—Machiavelli, Legazione Prima a Roma, let. 11, Nov. 10.—let. 16, Nov. 13.—let. 17.—Chrónica del Gran Capitan, lib. 2, cap. 106.—Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. pp. 440, 441.
[22] Giovio, Vitae Illust. Virorum, fol. 264.
[23] Guicciardini, Istoria, lib. 6, pp. 327, 328.—Giovio, Vitae Illust. Virorum, fol. 262.—Machiavelli, Legazione Prima a Roma, let. 29.— Garnier, Hist. de France, tom. v. pp. 443-445.
[24] Legazione Prima a Roma, let. 9, 10, 18.
The French showed the same confidence from the beginning of hostilities. One of that nation having told Suarez, the Castilian minister at Venice, that the marshal de la Trémouille said, "He would give 20,000 ducats, if he could meet Gonsalvo de Cordova in the plains of Viterbo;" the Spaniard smartly replied, "Nemours would have given twice as much not to have met him at Cerignola." Zurita, Anales, tom. v. lib. 5, cap. 36.
[25] This barren tract of uninhabited country must have been of very limited extent; for it lay in the Campania Felix, in the neighborhood of the cultivated plains of Sessa, the Massicau mountain, and Falernian fields,—names, which call up associations, that must live while good poetry and good wine shall be held in honor.