354 
LOWERING OF LAKE FUCINUS OR CELANO. 
distance of six thousand feet, or nearly a mile and one seventh, 
is still in so good condition as to serve its original purpose. 
The fact that this work was contemporaneous with the siege 
of Yeii, has given to ancient annalists occasion to connect the 
two events, but modern critics are inclined to reject Livy’s 
account of the matter, as one of the many improbable fables 
which disfigure the pages of that historian. It is, however, 
repeated by Cicero and by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and it 
is by no means impossible that, in an age when priests and 
soothsayers monopolized both the arts of natural magic and the 
little which yet existed of physical science, the Government of 
Home, by their aid, availed itself at once of the superstition 
and of the military ardor of its citizens to obtain their sanction 
to an enterprise which sounder arguments might not have 
induced them to approve. 
Still more remarkable is the tunnel cut by the Emperor 
Claudius to drain the Lake Fucinus, now Lago di Celano, in 
the Neapolitan territory, about fifty miles eastward of Home. 
This lake, as far as its history is known, has varied very con¬ 
siderably in its dimensions at different periods, according to 
the character of the seasons. It has no visible outlet, but was 
originally either drained by natural subterranean conduits, or 
kept within certain extreme limits by evaporation. In years 
of uncommon moisture, it spread over the adjacent soil and 
destroyed the crops; in dry seasons, it retreated, and produced 
epidemic disease by poisonous exhalations from the decay of 
vegetable and animal matter upon its exposed bed. Julius 
Caesar had proposed the construction of a tunnel to drain the 
lake, but the enterprise was not actually undertaken until the 
reign of Claudius, when—after a temporary failure, from 
errors in levelling by the engineers, as was pretended at the 
time, or, as now appears certain, in consequence of frauds by 
the contractors in the execution of the work—it was at least 
partially completed. From this imperfect construction, it 
soon got out of repair, but was restored by Hadrian, and seems 
to have answered its design for some centuries. In the bar¬ 
barism which followed the downfall of the empire, it again fell 
