No. IV.— Oil the Solfatara of Pozzuoll 127 



active condition of the crater, when it discharged the lava 

 composing Monte Olibano, to which its character of a Solfatara 

 might well be considered " frigidus." Silius Itahcus and 

 some other ancient writers seem to allude in different passages 

 of their works to the phenomena of this spot ; but in all these 

 records, whether poetical or historical, we have no intimation 

 of an actual eruption of the crater, though it is sufficiently 

 evident that such must have taken place. It is such an event, 

 and that only, which breaks the silence of the middle ages re- 

 garding the Solfatara. It is on tradition that an eruption took 

 place in the year 1198, during the reign of Frederic II. em- 

 peror of Germany, though the authority for thisimportant event 

 is very obscure. Indeed writers on the subject seem to have copied 

 one from another without any reflection ; but on investigation 

 I find that the earliest authority given for the fact appears to be 

 Capaccio, quoted in the Terra Tremante of Bonito, and it ap- 

 pears to be overlooked by the Italian historical writers of note, 

 as Muratori, who does not mention it in his Annali d" Italia for 

 that year, and Giannone in his Storia di NapoU ; nor does it ap- 

 pear in the Modern Universal History ; yet though unsupport- 

 ed by very sufficient testimony, it would be extremely bold to 

 deny the occurrence of an event which must have been of the 

 most striking notoriety at the time, and which it is not possible to 

 conceive any old Italian writer to have invented, though we may 

 well imagine how no circumstantial detail should have reached 

 us from that time, when more than usual gloom benighted the 

 literature and the records of Europe, and Italy was subjected 

 to all the miseries of foreign and intestine wars, more calcula- 

 ted to absorb attention even than the ravages of volcanic 

 eruption. 



The fact is also confirmed by natural appearances. It may 

 safely be said that the Solfatara has a more modern appear- 

 ance as a volcanic crater than any of the surrounding hills, 

 Astroni not excepted ; and its actual activity is also far greater, 

 so that no writer has hesitated to consider it the object of the 

 bay most nearly approaching to the condition of Mount Ve- 

 suvius, although Monte Epomeo in Ischia was in a state of ac- 

 tivity in 1302. The uppermost formation, too, which we ob- 

 serve in the crater of the Solfatara, particularly the loose scori- 

 form matter which surmounts the mass of trachyte to the east* 



