DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.785#0176
74 FIDENjE. [chap. in.
sparkles out from the dense olive-groves.4 There, where
the purple range sinks to the plain, "cool Prseneste" climbs
the steep with her Cyclopean walls.5 Here, as your eye
sweeps over the bare Campagna, it passes the site of many
a city, renowned in the eariyMstory of Italy, but now,
like Fidense and Antemnse, in utter desolation, and lost to
the common eye.6 And there, on the slope of the Alban,
that most elegant of mountains, with its soft flowing outlines
and long graceful swells, still brightened by towns—once
stood Alba, the foster-mother, and rival of Rome; Tus-
culum with its noble villas and its Academy, where the
greatest of Romans lived, wrote, debated, taught, and
where—
" Still the eloquent air breathes, burns, with Cicero;"—
and from its highest peak shone the Temple of Jove, the
common shrine of the Latin cities, a worthy altar to the
King of Heaven. Then, after again sweeping the surface
of the wide Campagna, strewn in this quarter with league-
long lines of ruined aqueducts, with crumbling tombs,
and many a monument of Roman grandeur, your eye
reaches at length the Imperial City herself. She is in
great part concealed by the intervening Pincian, but you
catch sight of her most prominent buildings—the pinnacled
statues of St. John Lateran, the tower and cupolas of Sta.
Maria Maggiore, and the vast dome of St. Peter's; and
you look in imagination on the rest from the brow of
Monte Mario, which rises on the right, crested with dark
cypresses and snow-white villas.
4 Densa Tiburis umbra.— day had utterly perished, without a
Hor. Od. I. 7, 20. trace remaining—mteriere sine vestigiis
5 Hor. Od. III. 4, 22. Juven. Sat. —among them were Antemnse and
III. 190. Fidense. But, as regards the latter,
6 Pliny (III. 9) enumerates fifty-three this is hardly in accordance with the
towns of ancient Latium, which in his facts mentioned in p. 72.
sparkles out from the dense olive-groves.4 There, where
the purple range sinks to the plain, "cool Prseneste" climbs
the steep with her Cyclopean walls.5 Here, as your eye
sweeps over the bare Campagna, it passes the site of many
a city, renowned in the eariyMstory of Italy, but now,
like Fidense and Antemnse, in utter desolation, and lost to
the common eye.6 And there, on the slope of the Alban,
that most elegant of mountains, with its soft flowing outlines
and long graceful swells, still brightened by towns—once
stood Alba, the foster-mother, and rival of Rome; Tus-
culum with its noble villas and its Academy, where the
greatest of Romans lived, wrote, debated, taught, and
where—
" Still the eloquent air breathes, burns, with Cicero;"—
and from its highest peak shone the Temple of Jove, the
common shrine of the Latin cities, a worthy altar to the
King of Heaven. Then, after again sweeping the surface
of the wide Campagna, strewn in this quarter with league-
long lines of ruined aqueducts, with crumbling tombs,
and many a monument of Roman grandeur, your eye
reaches at length the Imperial City herself. She is in
great part concealed by the intervening Pincian, but you
catch sight of her most prominent buildings—the pinnacled
statues of St. John Lateran, the tower and cupolas of Sta.
Maria Maggiore, and the vast dome of St. Peter's; and
you look in imagination on the rest from the brow of
Monte Mario, which rises on the right, crested with dark
cypresses and snow-white villas.
4 Densa Tiburis umbra.— day had utterly perished, without a
Hor. Od. I. 7, 20. trace remaining—mteriere sine vestigiis
5 Hor. Od. III. 4, 22. Juven. Sat. —among them were Antemnse and
III. 190. Fidense. But, as regards the latter,
6 Pliny (III. 9) enumerates fifty-three this is hardly in accordance with the
towns of ancient Latium, which in his facts mentioned in p. 72.