So much for Peutinger's Tables.
Beloch makes a further confusion in regard to the local topography. He
says that the "three-peaked rock" which Eratosthenes describes as
separating the gulfs of Cumae and Paestum (that is, of Naples and
Salerno) is Mount San Costanzo. I do not understand Beloch falling into
this error, for the old geographer uses the term skopelos, which is
never applied to a mountain of this size, but to cliffs projecting upon
the sea. Moreover, the landmark is there to this day. I have not the
slightest doubt that Eratosthenes meant the pinnacle of Ierate, which is
three-peaked in a remarkably, and even absurdly, conspicuous manner,
both when viewed from the sea and from the land (from the chapel of S.
M. della Neve, for instance).
Now this projecting cliff of three peaks - they are called, respectively,
Montalto, Ierate, and Mortella; Ierate for short - is not the actual
boundary between the two gulfs; not by a mile or more. No; but from
certain points it might well be mistaken for it. The ancients had no
charts like ours, and the world in consequence presented itself
differently to their senses; even Strabo, says Bunbury, "was so ignorant
of the general form and configuration of the North African coast as to
have no clear conception of the great projection formed by the
Carthaginian territory and the deep bay to the east of it"; and,
coasting along the shore line, this triple-headed skopelos, behind which
lies the inlet of Ierate, might possibly be mistaken for the
turning-point into the gulf of Naples. So it looks when viewed from the
S.E. of Capri; so also from the Siren islets - a veritable headland.
So much for Beloch and Eratosthenes.
To sum up: Strabo is wrong in saying that the temple of Athene stood on
the summit of Mount San Costanzo; I was wrong in thinking that this
temple lay at Ierate; Peutinger's Chart is wrong in figuring the
structure on the south side of the Sorrentine peninsula; Beloch is wrong
in identifying the skopelos trikoruphos of Eratosthenes with Mount San
Costanzo; Eratosthenes is wrong in locating his rock at the boundary
between the two gulfs.
The shrine of Athene lay doubtless at Campanella, whose crag is of
sufficient altitude to justify Roman poets like Statius in their
descriptions of its lofty site. So great a number of old writers concur
in this opinion - Donnorso, Persico, Giannettasio, Mazzella, Anastasio,
Capaccio - that their testimony would alone be overwhelming, had these
men been a little more careful as to what they called a "temple."
Capasso, the acutest modern scholar of these regions, places it "in the
neighbourhood of the Punta Campanella." Professor Pais, in 1900, wrote a
paper on this "Atene Siciliana" which I have not seen. The whole
question is discussed in Filangieri's recent history of Massa
(1908-1910). It also occurs to me that Strabo's term akron may mean an
extremity or point projecting into the sea (a sense in which Homer used
it), and be applicable, therefore, to the Punta Campanella.
Rome
Here we are.
That mysterious nocturnal incident peculiar to Rome has already
occurred - sure sign that the nights are growing sultry. It happens about
six times in the course of every year, during the hot season. You may
read about it in the next morning's paper which records how some young
man, often of good family and apparently in good health, was seen
behaving in the most inexplicable fashion at the hour of about 2 a.m.;
jumping, that is, in a state of Adamitic nudity, into some public
fountain. It goes on to say that the culprit was pursued by the police,
run to earth, and carried to such-and-such a hospital, where his state
of mind is to be investigated. Will our rising generation, it gravely
adds, never learn the most elementary rules of decency?
If I have not had the curiosity to inquire at one of these
establishments what has been the result of the medical examination, it
is because I will wager my last shirt that the invalid's health leaves
nothing to be desired. The genesis of the affair, I take it, is this. He
is in bed, suffering from the heat. Sleep refuses to come. He has
already passed half the night in agony, tossing on his couch during
those leaden hours when not a breath of air is astir. In any other town
he would submit to the torture, knowing it to be irremediable. But Rome
is the city of fountains. It is they who are responsible for this sad
lapse. Their sound is clear by day; after midnight, when the traffic has
died down, it waxes thunderous. He hears it through the window - hears it
perforce, since the streets are ringing with that music, and you cannot
close your ears. He listens, growing hotter and more restless every
moment. He thinks.... That splash of waters! Those frigid wavelets and
cascades! How delicious to bathe his limbs, if only for a moment, in
their bubbling wetness; he is parched with heat, and at this hour of the
night, he reflects, there will not be a soul abroad in the square. So he
hearkens to the seductive melody, conjuring up the picture of that
familiar fountain; he remembers its moistened rim and basin all alive
with jolly turmoil; he sees the miniature cataracts tumbling down in
streaks of glad confusion, till the longing grows too strong to be
controlled.
The thing must be done.
Next day he finds a handful of old donkeys solemnly inquiring into his
state of mind....
I can sympathise with that state of mind, having often undergone the
same purgatory. My room at present happens to be fairly cool; it looks
north, and the fountain down below, audible at this moment, has not yet
tempted me to any breach of decorum.
