168 History of Nature. [BooK III. 



Island. The River NymphaBUS, Clostra Romana, Circeii 1 , 

 in Times past an Island, environed with a mighty Sea (if we 

 believe Homer\ but now with a Plain. A Wonder it is what 

 we are able to deliver concerning this thing, to the know- 

 ledge of Men. Theophrastus, who of Foreigners was the first 

 that wrote any Thing diligently concerning the Romans (for 

 Theopompus, before whom no Man made any mention, said 

 only, That the City was taken by the Gauls : and Clitarchus 

 next after him, spake of nothing but an Embassage sent 

 to Alexander} ; this Theophraslus^ with more certainty than 

 bare hearsay, hath set down the Measure of the Island 

 Circeii to be eighty Stadia ; in that Book which he wrote to 

 IVicodorus, the chief Magistrate of the Athenians, who lived 

 in the 460th year after the Foundation of our City. What- 

 ever Land, therefore, above ten Miles' compass, lieth near 

 about it, hath been annexed to the Island. A year after 

 that another wonderful Thing fell out in It<sly : for not far 

 from Circeii there is a Pond called Pomptina, which Mu- 

 tianusy a Man who had been thrice Consul, reporteth to have 

 been a Place wherein stood twenty-three Cities. Then there 

 is the River Ufens, upon which is the Town Terracina, 

 called in the Volscian tongue Anxur, and where was the City 

 Aioycle, destroyed by Serpents. After it is the Place of a 



1 Cerceia was a town of the Volsci, on whose ruins is now built the 

 little village Santa Felicita. Homer (" Odyssey," K. 194) represents it 

 as the abode of Circe, and says it was an island 



" An isle encircled with the boundless flood." 



But the country all around is now one vast plain, and constitutes the well- 

 known Pontine Marshes, which being raised but little above the level of 

 the sea, may not improbably have been once covered by its waves. " If 

 the traveller can spare a day," says Eustace in his " Classical Tour," " he 

 may hire a boat, and sail along the coast to the promontory of Circe, 

 which forms so conspicuous a figure in his prospect, and appears from 

 Terracina, as Homer and Virgil poetically describe it, a real island. As 

 he ranges over its lofty cliffs, he will recollect the splendid fictions of the 

 one and the harmonious lines of the other. He may traverse the un- 

 frequented groves ; but instead of the palace of Circe he will discover the 

 lonely village of Santa Felicita, a few solitary towers hanging over the 

 sea, and perhaps some faint traces of the ancient Cerceia, covered with 

 bushes and overgrown with shrubs." Wern. Club. 



