LATEST ERUPTIONS 341 



conclusion has been claimed to have been found on the 

 ridge of Castel Gandolfo, where numerous burial urns 

 containing cremated human remains have been un- 

 earthed five or six feet below the surface of the ground. 

 Associated with some of these interments were fibulae 

 and objects in amber and bronze, together with speci- 

 mens of Etruscan or Italo-Greek pottery of a beauti- 

 fully Archaic pattern. It has been maintained that 

 the superficial covering of volcanic material (which 

 has even been called 'lava') has been the product of 

 one or more volcanic eruptions, subsequent to the 

 time of the burials, and hence that these eruptions 

 must have taken place not only after the Stone Age, 

 but even so late as after the coming of the Greek 

 colonists. It has even been held that the shepherds 

 of the Alban Hills, driven away from these heights 

 by the violence of the volcanic disturbances, took 

 refuge on the Seven Hills, where they founded the 

 city and empire of Rome. More probably the volcanic 

 detritus which overlies the cinery urns is of much 

 more ancient date, the interments having been made 

 by digging down through it, long after the last 

 eruptions of the volcano had ceased. 



It is not necessary, however, to refuse credence to 

 all the portents recounted by Livy. More than two 

 thousand years ago, when the events cited by him 

 are alleged to have happened, the volcanic forces of 

 the region must have been more potent than they 

 now are, and various manifestations by them may 

 have occurred which we do not expect to see repeated 

 at the present day. Though the subterranean fires 

 have been steadily dwindling, they even yet retain 



