Eustace, John Cretwode: A classical tour through Italy An. MDCCCII (Vol. 3): 3. ed., rev. and enl (London: J. Mawman, 1815)

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CLASSICAL TOUR

Ch. VI.

favored regions, and now and then fix on others
apparently more distant from their sphere of
action; and in short, that they are not very re-
gular and systematical in their progress ·, as
otherwise they must have reached the mountains
of Albano, Tibur, and Sabina, extended over
Umbria, and spreading from the Tuscan to the
Adriatic Sea, from Bologna to Terracina, they
must have long since turned one of the most
fertile countries in the world into a dreary desert.
But as these causes, so active in the Campagna,
are perfectly inefficient in every other part of the
Roman territory, and particularly at Loretto,
Ancona, Cano, and in all the delicious environs
of Bologna, though as much under their deadly
influence as Rome and its immediate neighbor-
hood, the reader may be disposed to seek for
some more satisfactory solution of the difficulty.
To obtain it we must go back to antiquity.
Strabo observes, that the coasts of Latium
were in some places unhealthy, and ascribes that
quality to the marshes that border them*. It

* Lib. v.—Columella indeed seems to consider the vi-
cinity of the sea as generally insalubrious. “ Praestat,”
says he, “ a mari longo potius interval!© quam brevi re-
fugisse, quia media sunt spatia gravioris halitus.”