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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Capri is an esthetic wonder of the 

 world. Its area is but six square miles ; 

 but surely nowhere else in the world are 

 so much loveliness and so many interest- 

 ing things packed in so little space. 

 Artists have always flocked to Capri, 

 each year bringing a fresh brood, con- 

 fident in its ability to paint the unpaint- 

 able cliffs and sea. Some of these lin- 

 gered on, some to marry the handsome 

 Capri girls; and Howell's Englishman 

 who came to the island for three months 

 and stayed for thirty years is not a 

 unique case in this respect. 



Capri has the odd reputation of mak- 

 ing its foreign residents eccentric, and 

 there are many strange tales told on 

 the island of their peculiar behavior. It 

 has always been rather noted for its 

 queer characters and human flotsam and 

 jetsam. 



THE EURE OF THE GROTTO 



The fame of the Blue Grotto has made 

 Capri a show-place, and for upward of 

 a hundred years, day after day, the tide 

 of seasick tourists has flowed and ebbed. 

 In spite of these daily caravans, how- 

 ever — in spite of the Anacapri Road, 

 the Funicular Road, the Strada Krupp, 

 much tasteless villa-building, and the vast 

 hordes of Germans — Capri is still essen- 

 tially unspoiled. 



It is true that the Capri women gave 

 up wearing their costume thirty years 

 ago ; that the old Greek forms have 

 dropped out of the island speech ; that 

 the old days have gone forever ; but, de- 

 spite this, there has been a gain in con- 

 venience and comfort of living for both 

 Capresi and Forestieri, even at a loss of 

 picturesqueness ; and the comforting fact 

 remains that Capri's beauty is rugged 

 and perennial, not to be destroyed by 

 man. 



After the murder of Julius Caesar, in 

 B. C. 44, there was confusion, civil war, 

 until the battle of Actium produced a 

 lasting peace and seated Augustus firmly 

 on the throne. When Actium was won 

 the future Emperor retired to the Island 

 of Samps, and as a matter of pleasant 

 association must have enjoyed island life 

 ever after. In B. C. 29 he left Asia and 

 returned to Italy, and before his three 

 days' triumph at Rome visited Naples 



and near there heard Virgil read his 

 Georgics. He also came to Capri and 

 acquired it for a royal residence. 



The statement in Suetonius that some 

 withered oak branches came to life when 

 Augustus landed, and that this so pleased 

 him that he obtained the island, must be 

 taken with the modern skeptic grain of 

 salt. "The usual compliment to great- 

 ness," Mabie calls it. 



Augustus, though doubtless as super- 

 stitious as any Roman, bought Capri be- 

 cause that was the object of his visit. 

 These miraculous incidents have a way 

 of happening all over Italy in all days 

 and generations. 



THE EMPEROR MAKES A DEAE IN ISLANDS 



It is not known whether Augustus had 

 visited the island before. The Roman 

 historians merely say that he received 

 Capri from Naples, in whose possession 

 it had been for hundreds of years, and in 

 return gave the larger and more fruitful 

 island of Ischia. 



Islands were in style at this time. But 

 Ischia, perhaps, was discarded because 

 of its reputation for eruptions of the vol- 

 cano of Monte Epomeo, one of which oc- 

 curred in B. C. 92 ; and there were prob- 

 ably earthquakes, too. Besides, Capri 

 was more intimate and exclusive and 

 more easily transformed into an imperial 

 domain than the much larger and more 

 thickly populated Ischia. 



In the opinion of the writer, who spent 

 the greater part of one spring browsing 

 about the Roman ruins on Capri, the 

 property was acquired as much for state 

 reasons as for private ones. In the first 

 place, it was an outlying island which 

 probably needed protection — a strategic 

 point, logically destined to become crown 

 property. Undefended and neglected, it 

 could be easily captured ; but a small gar- 

 rison could hold it against any attack. 

 The island at that time was twenty feet 

 higher out of the water and even more 

 inaccessible than now. 



PIRATES A PEST IN POMPEy's DAY 



Capri was the first point in Campania 

 where the Greeks obtained a foothold, 

 and Augustus possibly did a far-sighted 

 tiling by securing it for the Empire, thus 

 preventing its seizure by enemies or by 



