DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.847#0313
CHAPTER VI.
TUSCANIA.
We had scarcely returned from the plain of Vulci,
where the existence of a rich and prosperous city
has been in these latter times detected by its broken
potsherds, before we prepared to set out to explore
another seat of old Etruscan greatness, Tuscania,
or as it is now called Toscanella. We are, if
possible, still more ignorant of the existence and
fortunes of the ancient inhabitants of this city than
of those of Vulci, though their abode has never
been actually blotted out of the map of Italy as
that of the neighbouring Vulci has been; for
while the stalactite grotto is now all that adorns the
banks of the Fiora, and the ruined Cucumella stands
solitary on the plain, the well-girt, turretted, and
highly picturesque town of Toscanella towers over
the distant landscape, and proclaims that whatever
may have been the greatness of ancient Tuscania,
TUSCANIA.
We had scarcely returned from the plain of Vulci,
where the existence of a rich and prosperous city
has been in these latter times detected by its broken
potsherds, before we prepared to set out to explore
another seat of old Etruscan greatness, Tuscania,
or as it is now called Toscanella. We are, if
possible, still more ignorant of the existence and
fortunes of the ancient inhabitants of this city than
of those of Vulci, though their abode has never
been actually blotted out of the map of Italy as
that of the neighbouring Vulci has been; for
while the stalactite grotto is now all that adorns the
banks of the Fiora, and the ruined Cucumella stands
solitary on the plain, the well-girt, turretted, and
highly picturesque town of Toscanella towers over
the distant landscape, and proclaims that whatever
may have been the greatness of ancient Tuscania,