Dennis, George: The cities and cemeteries of Etruria: in two volumes (Band 1) (London, 1848)

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MONTE FIASCONE—FANUM VOLTUMNM1?

Temple and tower went down, nor left a site.—Byron.

Quale per incertam lunam, sub luce maligna,
Est iter in silvis, ubi coelum condidit umbra
Jupiter, et rebus nox abstulit atra eolorem.—Virgil.

It is a distance of nine miles from Bolsena to Monte
Fiascone, and the road on the long ascent commands
superb views of the lake and its richly-wooded shores.
That the lake, notwithstanding its vast size, was once the
crater of a volcano, seems proved by the character of its
encircling hills ; and in one spot, about a mile from
Bolsena, there is strong evidence in a cliff of basaltic
columns, of irregular pentagons, hexagons, and heptagons,
piled up horizontally. The quarries, for which these
shores were anciently renowned, have not yet been recog-
nised.1

Though the lake anciently took its name from Yolsinii,
the principal city on its shores, yet, as the ager Tarquini-
ensis stretched up to its waters on the west, it was
sometimes called the Tarquinian Lake.2 In all ages
something of the marvellous seems to have attached to it.
The blood-flowing wafer, and the foot-prints of the virgin-
martyr, have already been mentioned. Its islands are
described as floating groves, blown by the wind, now
into triangular, now into circular forms, but never into
squares.3 Shall we not rather refer this unsteady, changeful

1 See Chapter XIII. p. 208 ; and s Plin. II. 96.

Chapter XXIV. p. 467. 3 Plin. loc. cit.