DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.847#0432
CASTEL D'ASSO. 403
pass a summer's day; also, at certain times of the year,
for students from all that part of Italy, to admire, to
romp, to dream, or to think in, as might be. When
I asked him if Cardinal Orioli was not the first
person who had brought them into notice, he said,
No—that the first persons were two canons of Viter-
bo, the one now dead, and the other a man of
ninety, who examined and wrote a description of
them many years ago, and in consequence of whose
publications Orioli had come to see them. He told
me their names, but I only recollect Padre Semina-
rio, of the Minerva. We could extract no informa-
tion as to what these tombs formerly contained, nor
when the last of them was rifled, but they were pro-
bably plundered ages since, for they were marked
objects to a set of idle soldiers, and the opening of
one would immediately lead to the ravaging of them
all.
I feel half ashamed to confess, that we left Viter-
bo, where there is a learned and distinguished body
of antiquarians, chiefly ecclesiastics, without seeing
the museum. Objects of the greatest beauty are
found in sepulchres all round Viterbo, and from a
tomb at Bomarso, very near the town, came the
largest panathenaic vase, and the finest tazza in our
possession. Micali mentions two cucumelle, that
is, tombs in the Lydian fashion, which were opened
in 1831, at Baccano, between Viterbo and Monte
Fiascone, and these conical sepulchres are not unfre-
quent all round this neighbourhood, as might be
expected throughout the state of Tarquinia. He
pass a summer's day; also, at certain times of the year,
for students from all that part of Italy, to admire, to
romp, to dream, or to think in, as might be. When
I asked him if Cardinal Orioli was not the first
person who had brought them into notice, he said,
No—that the first persons were two canons of Viter-
bo, the one now dead, and the other a man of
ninety, who examined and wrote a description of
them many years ago, and in consequence of whose
publications Orioli had come to see them. He told
me their names, but I only recollect Padre Semina-
rio, of the Minerva. We could extract no informa-
tion as to what these tombs formerly contained, nor
when the last of them was rifled, but they were pro-
bably plundered ages since, for they were marked
objects to a set of idle soldiers, and the opening of
one would immediately lead to the ravaging of them
all.
I feel half ashamed to confess, that we left Viter-
bo, where there is a learned and distinguished body
of antiquarians, chiefly ecclesiastics, without seeing
the museum. Objects of the greatest beauty are
found in sepulchres all round Viterbo, and from a
tomb at Bomarso, very near the town, came the
largest panathenaic vase, and the finest tazza in our
possession. Micali mentions two cucumelle, that
is, tombs in the Lydian fashion, which were opened
in 1831, at Baccano, between Viterbo and Monte
Fiascone, and these conical sepulchres are not unfre-
quent all round this neighbourhood, as might be
expected throughout the state of Tarquinia. He