DOI chapter:
Chap. III: Excursion to Beneventum - Furcæ Caudinæ - Mount Taburnus - Beneventum, its Triumphal Arch - Excursion - Nuceria - Cava - Salernum - Mount Alburnus - Pæstum, its History and Temples
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62268#0114
104
CLASSICAL TOUR
Ch. III.
We returned by the same road, and regretted
as we passed over the plain, that we had not
sent a boat before us to take us back along· the
coast, and thus afford us an opportunity of exa-
mining- the shore, and exploring- the site of the
temple of Juno Argiva, that stood at the mouth
covered in many places with woods and thickets, they are
become the resort of banditti and outlaw's. One of these
miscreants was presented to us by the clergyman who had
been commissioned by the bishop to receive us, and wras
recommended as an object of charity. Upon inquiring into
his case, we discovered that he had shot his wife, because
she had shewn a partiality for the strangers (the French)
and had threatened him, as he said, with poison. To avoid
the pursuit of justice, he had run away from his home, and
become a wanderer in the forests, and amid the ruins of the
plain of P rest am. Our refusal was accompanied with an
observation, that he was an object of justice, not of charity.
He stalked away in sullen disappointment. His figure was
that of an assassin; tall, bony, and lank, with black hair
and thick eyebrows, a dark complexion, and glaring eyes.
He was armed with a gun and pistols; and was on the
whole an object very unwelcome to the eye in such a
solitude.
It may not perhaps be useless to observe, that there are
four mineral springs near Piestum, said to be of consider-
able efficacy in different complaints: from these springs
flow as many little streamlets, which form the fiume salso,
which falls into the Solofone close to the wails of the city.
CLASSICAL TOUR
Ch. III.
We returned by the same road, and regretted
as we passed over the plain, that we had not
sent a boat before us to take us back along· the
coast, and thus afford us an opportunity of exa-
mining- the shore, and exploring- the site of the
temple of Juno Argiva, that stood at the mouth
covered in many places with woods and thickets, they are
become the resort of banditti and outlaw's. One of these
miscreants was presented to us by the clergyman who had
been commissioned by the bishop to receive us, and wras
recommended as an object of charity. Upon inquiring into
his case, we discovered that he had shot his wife, because
she had shewn a partiality for the strangers (the French)
and had threatened him, as he said, with poison. To avoid
the pursuit of justice, he had run away from his home, and
become a wanderer in the forests, and amid the ruins of the
plain of P rest am. Our refusal was accompanied with an
observation, that he was an object of justice, not of charity.
He stalked away in sullen disappointment. His figure was
that of an assassin; tall, bony, and lank, with black hair
and thick eyebrows, a dark complexion, and glaring eyes.
He was armed with a gun and pistols; and was on the
whole an object very unwelcome to the eye in such a
solitude.
It may not perhaps be useless to observe, that there are
four mineral springs near Piestum, said to be of consider-
able efficacy in different complaints: from these springs
flow as many little streamlets, which form the fiume salso,
which falls into the Solofone close to the wails of the city.