112 Physical Notices of the Bay of Naples. 



got no farther in his history than the expedition of Hercules, 

 in aid of Theseus before the foundation of this city. It will be 

 sufficient simply to mention the conjecture of Mr Hayter (we 

 presume the gentleman who since superintended the unrolling 

 of the papyri) the ingenuity of which scarcely makes up for 

 its improbability, that Herculaneum is derived from two orien- 

 tal words, Her and Koli, signifying " burning mountain." 

 Be this as it may, Herculaneum seems to have been peopled 

 by a Greek colony, but not to have risen to eminence till later 

 times, since Polybius, 150 years B. C. when mentioning Capua 

 and Nola, does not allude to it. It afterwards became, how- 

 ever, distinguished for its splendour and refinement, and " if 

 we are to judge from its remains,"" says Ferrari, " we must be- 

 lieve that it had been the most remarkable city in Campania 

 after Capua and Neapolis." It certainly was much admired by 

 the Romans from its situation and climate, and we have rea- 

 son to believe that it contained many of their most favourite 

 villas. Yet it must be admitted that it is rarely and cursor- 

 ily mentioned by authors who were contemporary with its days 

 of magnificence, and that its name would hardly now have 

 reached the attention of the learned, but for the remarkable 

 catastrophe of which it was the subject and the scene. 



Antiquaries, previous to the eighteenth century, were not 

 agreed as to the site of the ancient Herculaneum. Cluve- 

 rius, in his " Italia Antiqaa^ inferred from the Monumen- 

 tal Itineraries already cited, that the number xi. there 

 given as the distance between Naples and Herculaneum was 

 a mistake for vi. ; since he remarks that the total distance from 

 Naples to Pompeii was xx. by that reasoning, whereas the dis- 

 tance to the river Sarno, which was known to have passed 

 Pompeii, was found to be only xvi., whence he fixed Hercu- 

 laneum close to Torre del Greco, seated on a small promon- 

 tory at six miles from Naples, which, on its discovery, proved 

 to be very correctly the spot. The harbour of Hercula- 

 neum (for it was a sea-port,) existed on both sides of the pro- 

 montory, and on both a stream appears to have flowed into 

 the sea, as we learn from Sisenna, an old writer, quoted by 

 Nonius Marcellus, and who flourished in the first cent. B. C. 

 The country in the vicinity was then probably much flatter, 



