DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.786#0046
30 CERVETRI. [chap, xxxiii.
If he be an artist, or lover of the picturesque, taking no
interest in the antiquities of the place, he will still find
abundance of matter to delight his eye or employ his
pencil; either on the site of the city itself, with its wide-
sweeping prospect of plain and sea on the one hand, and
of the dark many-peaked hills on the other, or in the
ravines around, where he will meet with combinations of
rock and wood, such as for form and colour are rarely sur-
passed. The cliffs of the city, here rising boldly at one
spring from the slope, there broken away into many angular
forms, with huge masses of rock scattered at their feet, are
naturally of the liveliest red that tufo can assume, yet are
brightened still further by encrusting lichens into the
warmest orange or amber, or are gilt with the most bril-
liant yellow—thrown out more prominently by an occa-
sional sombring of grey—while the dark ilex, or oak,
feathers afed crests the whole,
" And overhead the wandering ivy and vine
This way and that, in many a wild festoon,
Run riot, garlanding the gnarled boughs
With bunch and berry and flower."
The chief interest of Csere, however, lies in its tombs.
has a rectangular cleavage, the Pelasgic composed of enormous masses. Though
founders of the city could not avoid I acknowledge the influence of the local
using it except by fetching limestone, at a materials on the style of masonry, I
great expense of labour, from the moun- do not think it amounts to a constructive
tains inland ; and, using the tufo, they necessity; and though I believe the
would naturally hew it into forms most Pelasgi may have employed one style of
easily worked and arranged, as they did masonry at Cosa, another at Cortona,
in the Regulini-Galassi tomb, and other and a third at Agylla, I cannot admit
early sepulchres of Csere, whose contents that they exercised no preference, or
authorise us to regard them as Pelasgic. that any other people with the same
The objection to assign such an origin to materials would have arrived at the very
the remains of the city walls, lies not in peculiar style which they seem always to
the rectangularity of the blocks, but in have followed, where practicable, and
their small size; seeing that all the which is generally called after their
ancient fortifications we are best war- name. For further remarks on this sub-
ranted in ascribing to the Pelasgi, are ject, see chap. XLVII.
If he be an artist, or lover of the picturesque, taking no
interest in the antiquities of the place, he will still find
abundance of matter to delight his eye or employ his
pencil; either on the site of the city itself, with its wide-
sweeping prospect of plain and sea on the one hand, and
of the dark many-peaked hills on the other, or in the
ravines around, where he will meet with combinations of
rock and wood, such as for form and colour are rarely sur-
passed. The cliffs of the city, here rising boldly at one
spring from the slope, there broken away into many angular
forms, with huge masses of rock scattered at their feet, are
naturally of the liveliest red that tufo can assume, yet are
brightened still further by encrusting lichens into the
warmest orange or amber, or are gilt with the most bril-
liant yellow—thrown out more prominently by an occa-
sional sombring of grey—while the dark ilex, or oak,
feathers afed crests the whole,
" And overhead the wandering ivy and vine
This way and that, in many a wild festoon,
Run riot, garlanding the gnarled boughs
With bunch and berry and flower."
The chief interest of Csere, however, lies in its tombs.
has a rectangular cleavage, the Pelasgic composed of enormous masses. Though
founders of the city could not avoid I acknowledge the influence of the local
using it except by fetching limestone, at a materials on the style of masonry, I
great expense of labour, from the moun- do not think it amounts to a constructive
tains inland ; and, using the tufo, they necessity; and though I believe the
would naturally hew it into forms most Pelasgi may have employed one style of
easily worked and arranged, as they did masonry at Cosa, another at Cortona,
in the Regulini-Galassi tomb, and other and a third at Agylla, I cannot admit
early sepulchres of Csere, whose contents that they exercised no preference, or
authorise us to regard them as Pelasgic. that any other people with the same
The objection to assign such an origin to materials would have arrived at the very
the remains of the city walls, lies not in peculiar style which they seem always to
the rectangularity of the blocks, but in have followed, where practicable, and
their small size; seeing that all the which is generally called after their
ancient fortifications we are best war- name. For further remarks on this sub-
ranted in ascribing to the Pelasgi, are ject, see chap. XLVII.