INEXHAUSTIBLE ITALY 



28' 



garlanded with the "twice-blooming roses 

 of Paestum." 



But brooding silence has fallen over 

 these magnificent Doric remains and their 

 flattened city. We may study undisturbed 

 the subtle refinements the architects 

 adopted to give grace and elegance to 

 structures of so heavy a type : the swell 

 and slant of the massive fluted columns, 

 the curving line of foundation and entab- 

 lature, the perfect coherence and sim- 

 plicity that has made the Greek form the 

 only one perfect in appearance without 

 regard to size. 



Even the hardy Roman who met and 

 imbibed the softer culture of the polished 

 Greek in southern Italy here went to 

 pieces mentally and gave history only 

 Lucullian feasts and sybaritic indulgence 

 of every sort. The most lavish and pro- 

 fligate of all the watering places of im- 

 perial days grew up at Baise, named for 

 Ulysses' helmsman, to the west of Naples, 

 along the Gulf of Pozzuoli. No beauty, 

 convenience, or luxury the Roman world 

 could produce to give the region added 

 charm was lacking. The foundations of 

 many of the magnificent villas and baths 

 were thrown far out into the warm, in- 

 viting bay. 



THE CRUMBED GLORIES OE BAI.E 



But with the decline of Rome, Baia3 

 and its district crumbled ; and all we have 

 today as means for the interpretation of 

 that gay and splendid era are shattered 

 remains of masonry, colonnades, passage- 

 ways, mosaic pavements, and statuary 

 dotting the hillsides ; and in the water 

 huge blocks of concrete vaguely tracing 

 the lines of those baths where the gilded 

 youth and corrupt old age of Rome idled 

 away the sunny hours and occupied their 

 minds with the devising of new sorts of 

 indulgence. 



One of the ancient Roman towns near 

 by is still very much alive- — Pozzuoli. 

 Founded by the Greeks, it was captured 

 by the Romans, and at one time was the 

 most important commercial city in the 

 Empire. Its harbor was a focus of traffic 

 with Egypt and the East. Spices and 

 perfumes from the Nile, copper and gold 

 from Tarshish (Spain), slaves and weap- 

 ons and other commodities in popular 



demand landed here. And St. Paul, in 

 those comfortable, letter-like chapters of 

 the Acts, that describe his adventures on 

 the way up to Rome and martvrdom, 

 says : "And we came the next day to 

 Puteoli, where we found brethren and 

 were desired to tarry with them seven 

 days." The modern town is an attractive 

 manufacturing community, much of its 

 prosperity based on the cement made of 

 the puzzolana, or volcanic earth, named 

 after it. 



"napoei EA belea!" 



Naples, aside from its amazing local 

 beauty, is a dirty south Italian seaport, 

 full of fleas and beggars, noisy as pande- 

 monium day and night, without a really 

 distinguished edifice, and peopled by a 

 conglomerate mass as strikingly beautiful 

 physically as they are notoriously untrust- 

 worthy. From the storied heights that 

 sweep in a magnificent amphitheater 

 around the brilliant bay the old city strag- 

 gles downward in a picturesque huddle of 

 densely packed houses and other build- 

 ings, tortuous streets full of color and 

 bubbling with the nervous activity of the 

 south, black canyons of stone stairs, slip- 

 pery with damp and dirt, across which 

 the teeming houses gossip and quarrel in 

 neighborly wise. 



Nowhere are fisherfolk more pictur- 

 esque in habit and costume ; nowhere is 

 there so salty a dialect, spiced with such 

 myriad quaint and startling phrases and 

 exclamations. Bare and brown of leg, 

 dressed in ragged, parti-colored motley, a 

 stout canvas band about each sinewy body 

 for hauling in the net without cutting the 

 hands to pieces, they bring ashore their 

 shimmering silver quarry right along the 

 widest, finest promenade in the city — the 

 handsome Via Caracciolo. Across that 

 broad street the charming Villa Nazion- 

 ale, not a house, but a public park, wholly 

 conventional in design, contains an aqua- 

 rium which may fairly be considered the 

 most remarkable in the world for both the 

 variety and interest of its finny and mon- 

 strous exhibits and the thoroughness of 

 its scientific work. To it many of the 

 great universities of the world contribute 

 annually for the privilege of sending spe- 

 cial investigators in zoology. 



