350 THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA 



ages, advantage has been taken of such defensible sites. 

 They were selected as positions for the cities of Latium 

 and Etruria, art often aiding to scarp their sides into 

 steeper and more continuous crags than Nature had 

 provided. They supplied convenient sites for the 

 abundant suburbana or country villas and manors of 

 ancient Rome, and they were used over again in 

 the stormy Middle Ages for the erection of fortified 

 farms and refuge towers. 



A discussion of the history of the Campagna would 

 probably be regarded as culpably incomplete without 

 at least a reference to the causes that have led to the 

 solitude and desolation of the region. There can be 

 little doubt that in the days of the Empire the plain 

 was thickly peopled and well cultivated. It could 

 not have been the fever-stricken place which it has 

 since become. The wealthy Romans were delighted 

 to escape from the tumult of town to their quiet and 

 healthy retreats in the country where, amid the plea- 

 sures and occupations of their farms, they could spend 

 the hottest, and what is now the most insalubrious, 

 season of the year. Yet there would seem to have 

 been even then malarious tracts in the Campagna. 

 Cicero boasts of the healthiness of Rome, compared 

 with the pestilential character of the surrounding dis- 

 trict. The porousness of the tuff all over the country, 

 as I have above remarked, allows a large proportion 

 of the rain to sink at once under ground, instead of 

 flowing off into runnels and brooks. The water finds 

 its way again to the surface at lower levels, either in 

 the form of springs or oozing from the soil. In the 

 hollows where the drainage accumulates, stagnant pools 



