The walls of Anagni are wonderful only as the great works of Rome are wonderful. They are built by men to whom it was more natural to put together rectangular stones with some kind of regularity than it was to pile together huge polygons anyhow. They were built by men who thoroughly understood the principle of the arch, and knew how to use it with all boldness. They remain, in various degrees of preservation, round the greater part of the circuit of the town. In some parts they are broken down altogether; in some they are supplanted, in others merely patched, by walls of later date; in short, they have gone through all the casualties which a wall is likely to go through in the course of two millenniums or so; but the wall of modern Anagni, as a whole, is still the old wall of Anagnia. The construction differs a good deal in different parts as to the size of the stones and as to their nature, and as to the degree of rudeness or finish in the work. In some parts the wall stands single; in others it is strengthened by further defences, buttresses rather than towers—defences, by-the-way, which must be carefully distinguished from the additions of later times. But one general character reigns throughout. The stones, greater and smaller, smoother and rougher, are always rectangular, and always laid with some measure of regularity. In some cases ranges of larger and smaller stones alternate; in one part of the wall stones of two natures and colours almost alternate. The chief material is a light-coloured stone exactly like the puff-stone of Gloucestershire, the material of Berkeley Castle and of not a few other buildings in that neighbourhood. This is eked out here and there by the dark volcanic peperino, which, towards the south-eastern part of the wall, is used much more freely. The general effect, wherever the wall is at all perfect, is stately and striking in the extreme, both in form and colour.

Now was it only a dream when we tracked out these walls, and took a certain pleasure in speaking of them as Hernican walls? We come back to our library; we take down the Dictionary of Geography; we turn to the article "Anagnia," and we find that by far the best contributor to the series, Mr. E. H. Bunbury, has another tale to tell. Our feelings are damped when he says, "The only remains extant there are of Roman date and of little interest." As to the "little interest," we venture to have our own opinion in any case; we should hold that so great an extent of ancient wall still bounding an inhabited town was an object of high interest, even if it could be shown to belong to the latest days which could come under the definition of "Roman date." But what is Roman date? Mr. Bunbury sends us to the correspondence of the Emperor Marcus with Cornelius Fronto. We hope he does not ask us to believe that the walls are later than the days of the philosophic Emperor. For, if he will allow them to be as old as that, we can call the Emperor himself to witness that they must be a good deal older. For Marcus himself read an inscription over one of the gates, "Flamen sume samentum." He did not know what "samentum" meant, and we cannot find the word in our Latin dictionary. But a native explained to him its meaning in the Hernican language; it meant the skin of the victim which the flamen put on his head when he entered the town. We do not want to be unreasonable in our dates, if only we can let in our Hernicans at some corner. When we looked at the walls, we saw at once that they had no fellowship with the primæval works at Cori and at Segni; they did seem to us to have fellowship with the works of the Tarquins at Rome. We shall be quite happy if Mr. Bunbury will allow us to put the walls as early as the year B.C. 307. The next year Anagnia sank from a Hernican city, a free ally of Rome, into a town whose people were burthened with Roman citizenship without the Roman franchise. If we may carry back walls over whose gates Hernican inscriptions could be read between four and five hundred years later, to a date as nearly as that, we shall have done all that we could wish. They will be walls of the days of Hernican independence, walls on which Hannibal and Pyrrhos have looked.

One thing is plain, that the builders of the walls of Anagnia, like the builders of the cloaca at Rome, but most unlike the elder builders of Cora and Signia, knew as well as any men how to turn arches. On the highest point of the town, by the modern gate which looks out towards Ferentino, within the circuit of the ancient arx, we may still see, blocked, partly hidden by the modern gate, disguised by the arrangements of the mediæval castle, the double gate of the ancient wall. It is perfectly plain, but with arches thoroughly well turned, with a double range of voussoirs. A smaller arch of the same workmanship beside them looks almost as if it had been blocked from the beginning. The arx itself, it should be remembered, had its separate wall within that of the city, a noble fragment of which, of exactly the same character as the town wall, is still to be seen in a narrow street a little lower down.

When we actually reach Anagni, there can be no doubt that the character in which it chiefly strikes us is that of the city of the Hernican walls, if Hernican walls we may call them. But historically Anagni is so far more famous as the city of mediæval Popes that it is fitting that it should have something to show in that character also. The town is rich in mediæval fragments. The main street, in its winding courses, displays long ranges of blocked arcades, round and pointed, which, when open, must have given it, narrow and often dim as it is, no small measure of stateliness. Not a few buildings stand out with arches of vast height and boldness, suggesting, as it is fit that one papal city should suggest to another, the mighty works of Rome's absent Bishops at Avignon. Not remarkable for height, but most remarkable for their span, are the exceedingly bold arches which support the communal palace, once, it is said, the dwelling of the Popes, a building which, on its northern side, shows a range of windows which savour of France or England rather than of Italy. The houses with their staircases often present highly picturesque shapes, which in one house in the main street, where the outside staircase is sheltered by two arches resting on a graceful column, grow into a form of genuine beauty. And an elegant form of double window, two round arches divided by a slender shaft, is characteristic of the architecture of Anagni. It is needless to add that at Anagni, as everywhere else in Italy, most of these relics of the skill of former times have been mercilessly disfigured and mutilated.

In the ecclesiastical line the other churches supply a few good fragments of the same character as those in the domestic building; but the cathedral church within the arx is the only one which has the least claim to be looked on as a striking whole. It stands boldly on the edge of the hill with its east end—that is, what would be east according to northern rules, for it is in truth nearly west—rising up nobly with its three apses in good Romanesque style, while a stately bell-tower of the more massive sort, though sadly marred on two sides, stands near the east end which should be west. The crypt is in a somewhat ruder form of the same style. The whole outside of the church is worth study; the inside is of an early and massive type of the Italian Gothic, always, unless in the case of some unusual merit, less satisfactory than Italian Romanesque. The sacristy contains the vestments of Innocent III. and Boniface VIII., and a good many other curious objects. The church is just now suffering restoration; let us hope that nothing very dreadful will happen to it. There, at least, seems no disposition to pull down the apse, after the pattern of the church which Popes and Emperors alike have decreed to be the mother-church of Rome and of the world.

II. Ferentino.

Italy contains two places bearing the name of Ferentinum or Ferentino, as England contains two places—perhaps more—bearing the several names of Leeds, Stafford, Birmingham, Hereford, Cambridge, Washington, Rochester, and others more obvious. And as the Northumbrian Rochester is also very conveniently written Rutchester, so the Etruscan Ferentinum is also conveniently written Ferentia. On an iter ad Brundisium we cannot possibly have anything to do with Etruscan Ferentia; our business lies with that Ferentinum which, according to the Itineraries, was to be found on the Via Latina between Anagnia and Frusino, and which is to be found there still. But if the name of the southern Ferentinum is more certain than that of its fellow, its ancient nationality is less certain. Its historical position is Hernican; it lies between Hernican Anagnia and Hernican Frusino; yet it is also spoken of as Volscian, as it may well have become in the endless warfare of those ever-shifting nations. Yet it is in other company that we should be best pleased to find it. Our earliest remembrance of the name places "Ferentinum of the rock" among the Thirty Cities, and gives it no mean place among them. We go to the spot with the lines ringing in our ears which place its warriors under the rule of proud Tarquin himself, on the spot where—

Yet, even without book, we may have been a little surprised both to find a Thirty-city so far in the heart of the Volscian and Hernican hills, and to find its warriors marshalled along with such distant comrades as Tibur and Pedum and "Gabii of the pool." And, when we come back to our books, a horrible thought presses itself upon us more and more, a thought that Ferentinum may have no right to any place in that list at all. The name seems to be Lord Macaulay's guess—among a hundred other guesses—at the manifestly corrupt name which comes next before Gabii in Dionysios' list of the Latin cities. Some read as near to our mark as Fortinei; so we may hope for the best; but remembering where Ferentinum stands, very far from Gabii, we confess that our hopes are small.

In obedience to the Itinerary, it is from Anagni that we make our way to Ferentino. And as we go from Anagni to Ferentino, we better take in the special position of Anagni on the top of its isolated hill. Till we have gone some little distance, we are hardly conscious that Anagni is there at all; gradually the bell-tower rises into view, and the rest of the city follows. A few miles only lead us from the hill of Anagni to the hill of Ferentino. At the first glance it may be that the spot which we have reached does not specially strike as "Ferentinum of the rock." It does not seem to stand on such steep cliffs as many other hill-fortresses, Norba pre-eminently among them. But, when we begin to follow the line of the walls, we find out that, whether Lord Macaulay is right or wrong in speaking of Ferentinum at all, he has at least chosen his epithet wisely. Ferentinum is Ferentinum of the rock. Large parts of the wall stand directly on vast masses of rock, and sometimes rock and wall almost lose themselves in one another. And the walls of Ferentino certainly yield in interest to none of our series. They are still standing through the greater part of their ancient circuit, and for the most part they are of two manifest dates, differing in material and construction. There is an original lower part of the wall, built of huge blocks of lias which we may describe as rude, but less rude than the rudest work at Cori. The height to which this earliest construction of all reaches differs in different parts, but it has in most parts been patched and raised, not only by later repairs of all manner of dates, but long before then by a construction of very respectable antiquity, which would seem venerable if it were not for the elder and more massive stones beneath it. The later work has a general likeness to the walls of Anagnia both in construction and material, and it is distinguished from the more primitive work by the same mark. The pilers of the elder stones had no notion of the arch; the builders of the later wall were perfectly familiar with it. The only complete opening of the earlier work is a small postern with merely inclined sides; but in one of the ancient gates, not far from the modern gate by which the visitor is most likely to enter, stones of the earlier date support an arch of the second date. This ancient entrance is, as usual, warily placed; the giants, or whoever they were, from the days of Tiryns onwards, knew perfectly well how to take a military advantage of any enemy who might attack their strongholds. Another gate, now known as Porta Maggiore, is a much more elaborate work, with its inner and outer arch still remaining. Here the gate is placed with great skill, advanced in front at a point where the wall turns at an angle. The wall may be followed, and followed to great advantage, through the more part of its circuit. One hardly knows whether to count it gain or loss that the path becomes most difficult just at the point where, through large later repairs, the wall becomes least interesting. When we have to scramble—all at least save Alpine climbers—with constant thoughts for the safety of our legs and feet, we are less able to take in the differences in the various forms of construction, or to consider the dates to which we may be inclined to refer each. In the more instructive parts of the walls of Ferentino no such necessity is laid upon us; they may be studied with perfect ease, and the outlook from the various points of their circuit may be enjoyed at the same time. And at one point, not far from the Porta Maggiore, it will be well to go down the hill a little way to study the long inscription cut in the rock in honour of a local worthy and magistrate, Aulus Quinctilius by name, who seems to have played much the same part at Ferentinum in pagan days which Sir William Harpur played ages later at Bedford. He founded everything that, according to the notions of his day, could be founded. Among other things he ordained that thirty bushels of nuts should be yearly given to be scrambled for by the boys of Ferentinum, without distinction of bond or free. Now is the will of this pious founder carried out? Are there any Italian Charity Commissioners to look into these matters, and to see that the boys get their nuts? Or, if the scrambling for nuts be deemed a nuisance—yet many well-remembered scraps of Latin plead on its behalf—will they devise a scheme for the better employment of the funds? Or has the benefaction of the benevolent Quinctilius, like some benefactions nearer home, been lost altogether? Two or three years ago the Times was filled with letters complaining how a charitable foundation in Somerset had vanished altogether, and how the founder's monument, once standing in the church, had been buried under a neighbouring barn. In one point at least the benevolent Aulus of Ferentinum has been more lucky. When Ferentinum had quatuorviri, they did not bury people in their temples, still less did they set up monuments in their temples to people who were not buried in them. So the monument which commemorates the bounty of Aulus Quinctilius stands in the open air clear enough to be seen, well fenced in withal, which the visitor may perhaps regret, as a little time may be wasted in searching for the key. But do his benefactions go on? We will not hint at their having been alienated by Goths or Vandals, by East-Roman exarchs or Lombard princes. Can we trust the really dangerous characters in these parts of the world, Popes, Popes' nephews, Roman princes, and Roman cardinals, who pull down buildings and steal their columns to make their own palaces and villas? Perhaps some of them may have swallowed up the funds which should go in nuts to the boys of Ferentinum.

We have been writing as we dreamed on the spot. As at Anagni, we wish—we must confess the weakness—to see independent Hernicans wherever we can. It gives us therefore a little shock when we come back and turn to our books, and find the walls of Hernican Ferentinum spoken of, without any special emotion, as "Roman." We look up again in a moment, and ask, What is Roman? At Ferentinum the word certainly means something quite different from what it commonly means in Britain and Northern Gaul. There we are happy if we light on anything earlier than the third century A.D. Here no one asks us to accept any date later than Sulla; some will allow us to go as far back as the middle of the second century B.C. We are allowed to think that the walls of Ferentinum were in being when old Carthage and old Corinth were still standing. But we have not yet got to our great piece of evidence. Ferentino contains inscriptions much older and more important—though about the comparative importance some might raise a doubt—than Aulus Quinctilius and his nuts. But we must get to them by the proper road; we must get into what once was the arx, what is now the ecclesiastical quarter. Now, at places like Ferentino, ecclesiastical and domestic buildings seem like something kindly thrown into the bargain. We go to look at walls, not at churches or houses; so we get something more than we asked for when we find that Ferentino contains many houses which are worth at least a glance, and several churches which are worth much more than a glance. Indeed at Ferentino the study of walls and that of churches cannot be kept asunder. That some of the great stones have been taken to build the small and now disused church of Saint Lawrence is a slight matter. The most striking feature of Ferentino in any distant view consists of the mass of buildings which is formed by piling the cathedral church, the bell-tower, and the Bishop's palace, on the walls of the arx, as a mighty sub-structure. The walls of the arx show the same two dates as the walls of the tower. In one part we have only the vast rude stones of the first period; at another part they support the upper range of the second. The first no one will refuse to our Hernicans, to Hernicans older than Spurius Cassius; but how about the second, the "Roman" date? This is claimed in several inscriptions as the work of the censors Aulus Hirtius and Marcus Lollius—censors, that is, not of Rome but of Ferentinum. The inscription may be seen in the first volume of the great Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, p. 238, and its closer likeness is given at fol. lxvii., lxviii. of the Priscae Latinitatis Monumenta Epigraphica. Now Aulus Hirtius and Marcus Lollius are names of a frightfully modern sound, suggesting well-known persons of the days of Divus Julius and Divus Augustus. But no one asks us to think of them here, though we may likely enough have got hold of the Hernican forefathers of those better-known Romans. They had no such need to change their names and the alphabet in which they are written, as when the son of the Etruscan Avle Felimne became the Roman Publius Volumnius. Now our Hirtius and Lollius claim to have built what they built from the foundation; but they must at the outside only mean that they built the later work on the top of the primæval wall. And to a zealous eye even the work of Hirtius and Lollius has an archaic look about it. There are no columns against the wall, as in the Tabularium of Catulus at Rome; the work is finished with a row of triglyphs, not unlike those on the tomb of "Cornelius Lucius Scipio Gnaivod patre prognatus." But we need not go back quite so far as his day. The further back we can go the better, but any time before Sulla will do. The history of Ferentinum allows us to carry our Hernicans of Ferentinum, like our Etruscans of Perusia, down to the Social War. Ferentinum, it must be remembered, was one of those Hernican towns which were true to Rome when Anagnia fought against her. What follows is most instructive. The men of Ferentinum, steady allies of Rome, refused the proffered reward of Roman citizenship, and chose rather to remain a distinct, even if a dependent, community. That is to say, the old Hernican city went on, as long doubtless as to the days of the Social War, a self-ordering commonwealth, with its own laws and magistrates—Aulus Hirtius and Marcus Lollius among them—subject only to the demands of military service which were needed in the wars of Rome, and sometimes perhaps to the unlawful excesses of powerful Romans.

This last fact comes out in a strange story told by Aulus Gellius (x. 3). It is an extract from a speech of Gaius Gracchus, setting forth the wrongs of the Italian allies. The wife of a Roman prætor suddenly wished the public baths of Ferentinum to be cleared and made ready for herself. The thing was not done so fast as the great lady wished; so her husband bade the two quæstors of the town to be seized; one was scourged, the other threw himself over the wall. This tale, told in the words of Gracchus, proves a good deal as to the arbitrary way in which Roman magistrates are not ashamed to deal with the dependent cities even of Italy, whatever might be their formal relation to Rome.

It is of less importance that Gellius casually speaks of the town as a municipium, while Livy also casually implies its possession of the Latin franchise. Such obiter dicta do not go for very much. Scholars sometimes get astray in these times from forgetting that, not only casual sayings, but even formal documents, may sometimes err. Thus not long ago we saw a solemn paper in which a public officer, bound to accuracy, a clerk of the peace, had to describe several towns in the West of England. We here read of "the county of the city of Bristol," the "borough of Gloucester," the "borough of Bath," and the "borough of Taunton." An inquirer some ages hence might be misled into forgetting that Bath is a "city" and Gloucester even a "county of a city." May we not sometimes get wrong about municipia and Latin colonies from the same kind of cause? Ferentinum was not, in the strict sense, a municipium, but an allied Hernican commonwealth. In the like sort, we once saw an official document from a high sheriff calling on the electors of a county to elect, not a "knight of the shire," as they had done for six hundred years, but a hitherto unheard-of being called a "member of Parliament." Is it not possible then that Livy, and even Cicero, may sometimes use a wrong phrase in talking of tribes, curiae, and centuries, in ages long before their own day?

The walls then, though called "Roman" in a vague sense—that is, it would seem, simply not primæval, like those of Cori and Segni—are doubtless Hernican in the sense of being built while Ferentinum was still a separate Hernican community. The walls that we see are most likely the walls over which the unlucky quæstor threw himself. The walls of the arx, where we read the legend of Hirtius and Lollius, connect the Hernican town with later times. Just at the point where the inscription is they are carried up to form the Bishop's palace, and from the middle of one side rises the bell-tower of the cathedral—a very good example of the usual Romanesque type of such buildings. The church of Ferentino is small and unpretending, and a good deal damaged within, but it still keeps its main features, not only its bell-tower, but its west front, its apses, its ranges of windows. A little restoration, in the true sense of the word, would soon make it into as good a specimen of its own class as could be needed. But, unless we altogether misunderstood the words of one of its own clergy, antiquity and simplicity are not esteemed at Ferentino. The little minster is convicted of the crime of being old, a charge which, except by comparison with the walls beneath it, cannot be denied. Only, if the church be an offender on this score, how fearful must be the crime of the walls? Unless we misunderstood in the most amazing way what we heard with our own ears, the church of Ferentino, convicted of the crime of old age, is sentenced to destruction. A new church is actually begun; when it is finished the old one is to go. Happily the new one as yet stands still for want of funds; let us hope that funds may refuse to drop in till a wiser Bishop and Chapter shall rule at Ferentino.

The church at Ferentino is dedicated to Saint Ambrose, who may be seen there in the worldly garb of the unbaptized prefect, before the infant voice greeted him as Bishop of Milan. And in the inner buildings of the arx—buildings most worthy of a visit on their own account—strange tales lurk of the sufferings of the saint, which seem to find no place either in history or in received legend. Among other things he was thrown into a boiling caldron. Down below is another church Santa Maria Maggiore, some centuries younger than the cathedral, and a very pretty example of its style; which, as far as we know, no one designs to destroy. Singularly graceful, but singularly un-Italian, it strikes by the power of contrast, as it rises above the walls, or as we go up to it from the gate which shares its surname. A few other ecclesiastical and domestic scraps may also be picked up in the city of the rock. The primitive remains are the great object in all these places; but it is always a gain when the walls shelter something which has an interest of another kind. The walls of the stout-hearted people who chose rather to be citizens of Ferentinum than citizens of Rome lose nothing by having been turned to an unlooked-for use as the holy places of their successors, perhaps descendants, of another age and another creed.

III. Alatri.

The tale of those Hernican cities, fenced in with primæval walls, among which we have been lately sojourning, is worthily brought to an end at Alatri. Among its immediate Hernican fellows that town must certainly claim the highest place; it might on some grounds claim the highest place, even if we throw in Old-Latin and Volscian rivals. Yet it is the one which has the least history. There is very little to say about it, except that Alatrium, like Ferentinum, was faithful to Rome, but preferred to keep its separate Hernican being rather than accept the proffered reward of Roman citizenship. It therefore doubtless remained a distinct commonwealth down to the Social War. And here at least there can be no question about dates. Alatri is not especially rich in mediæval antiquities; it has still less claim to be called rich in Roman antiquities. Nor does it supply us with the work of more or less Romanized Hernicans, like the censors of Ferentinum. At Alatri nearly everything that we care about is strictly primæval. We cannot reasonably doubt that both the circuits of wall at which we now look were there in the days of Spurius Cassius, and were by no means new then.

Alatri seems to have been somewhat of an out-of-the-way place in all ages. Not lying on any of the great roads of Italy, it has no place in the Itineraries, and now it lies much further than Anagni or Ferentino—nay, even than Cori and Norba, from common tracks of going and from the common haunts of men. Yet it cannot be looked on as seriously inaccessible; it may at least be reached without calling in the help of asses and mules. The party whose track we are now following—a party, be it noticed, numbering two ladies among them—reached Alatri in a carriage from Frosinone, having slept there after seeing Ferentino. The old Hernican town of Frusino had scant justice done to it by our wayfarers; as no man or book had pointed it out as a seat of primitive walls, it was treated merely as a resting-place between the wonders of Ferentino and the wonders of Alatri. Frosinone was slept in, but was not examined; yet a glance from its railway station, the point which connects Alatri with the modern world, shows that it at least possesses a by no means contemptible bell-tower. From Frosinone then our travellers made their way to Alatri, and, as Alatri gradually rose before them, they were for a while puzzled, perhaps for a while even disappointed, with what they saw. But it was not for lack of a striking object to crown the Alatrian hill-top. Of all the walls of our series, the inner range of the walls of Alatri, the walls which fence in the arx, are the most prominent in a distant view. Even the circuit of empty Norba, beyond our immediate range, hardly outdoes these defences of a still inhabited town. At Alatri indeed the primæval walls are so prominent that in the distant view no one would suspect them of being primæval walls at all. They are still so nearly perfect that they can and do discharge what may be looked on as a survival of their original function. They still fence in the innermost and loftiest quarter of the town, where, as in so many other cases, the ancient citadel has become the episcopal precinct. But at Alatri the episcopal precinct puts on a distinct and central character which is rarely found in Italian cities. The arx is not in a corner, but in the middle; the lower town, fenced in by the wall of its own outer circuit, lies around it on every side. The arx forms an open, lofty, and airy platform, looking forth from every point of the compass on the mountains which keep watch around—on the little towns, Veroli among them, perched here and there on their heights—on the houses and churches of Alatri, covering the slope of the hill which the arx crowns. It is seldom that we find in an Italian town a church or any other building standing in this way free on a commanding site, not hemmed in on any side by parasitical buildings. These hill-towns are perhaps better off in this respect than most others; at Anagni, at Ferentino, the cathedral churches stand grandly on their heights, comparatively free from all buildings except their own proper companions. But there is not the wide, open space around them which surrounds the church of Alatri. One cannot help wishing that some more worthy building, either the primæval temple itself or some more fitting successor, occupied so noble a site, a site in truth which needs—let us say either the Parthenôn of Athens or the Parthenôn of Lincoln to do it justice. But the only thing that can be said for the cathedral church of Alatri is that the lower part of its wall is part of the cella of the primæval temple. Here we have something even more than can be seen at Segni. We know not what may have been added in the way of a pillared front; but it is plain that, as far as the main walls are concerned, the building which was transformed into a Christian church was actually the house of pagan worship itself. And it was a house going back, not to dated Emperors or consuls, but to the unrecorded age which reared these cities great and fenced up to heaven. There is the terrace, there is the wall of the cella, wrought of the same wonderful masonry as the walls of the surrounding arx, as the walls of the yet again surrounding city. It is strange indeed to see the ordinary rites of Christian worship, the ordinary accompaniments of a Christian church, dwelling, as at Rome and Syracuse, within the temples of a creed, fallen indeed but perfectly familiar. But here we see them within walls reared in honour of we know not what—gods of unchronicled days, gods alongside of whom Jupiter of the Capitol may have seemed as strange and foreign as Mithras and Serapis now seem alongside of Jupiter of the Capitol.

Where the præhistoric temple has thus become the cathedral church, it is not out of keeping that the wall of the præhistoric arx should become the wall of the cathedral close. This is the wall which we see from afar, a wall which seems so straight and regular, so clearly furnished with a modern finish at top, that it is not till we can distinguish the mighty blocks of which it is formed that it has the air of a wall even of Roman, even of mediæval, antiquity. Shall we say it? As we looked up at no very amazing distance, the wall of the arx of Alatri had a good deal of the air of the wall of a modern prison. We could not yet see the construction, and the outline seemed more regular and rectangular than it proves to be. Nowhere do we better see than at Alatri the nature of these primitive walls. They are seldom walls in the same sense as the later walls of Rome or of other places, walls built on the ground and standing up clear on both sides. Their business commonly is, as is perhaps more clear at Alatri than anywhere else, to strengthen by masonry the scarped side of a hill. Hence they have little or no height within, and the gateways are necessarily reached from within by a steep descent. The open space at Alatri allows this arrangement to be studied with unusual ease. The wall is eminently a wall against a hill, and its arrangements are made with no small art. The weak corner has its double defence; the way up from the town at this point is carefully sheltered. And what stones they are with which the hill of Alatri is strengthened; above all, what stones they are which are piled together to form its main gateway. Nowhere indeed in the walls of Alatri, whether of temple, arx, or city, do we find anything quite so rude as the rudest part of the wall of Cori. All the stones, of whatever shape—and they are of many shapes—have clearly been cut; they are all laid according to some kind of system, though the system according to which they are laid is not the same in every part of the wall. In some parts they seem almost to take the shape of constructive arches, at least of attempts at arches, such as may be seen in gateways and roofs at Segni and elsewhere. The true arch, it is hardly needful to say, is nowhere found in the original work; nor do we find even any of the attempts at the arch in that position where we should have most naturally looked for them, in the gateways. The great gateway of the arx at Alatri is indeed a wonderful work. Its builders either knew the arch and despised it, or else the thought of the arch had not come into their heads. It is as pure an example of the lintel-construction as any gateway at Athens or Mykênê. We suppose that the lintel-stone of the great treasury is yet vaster than the huge lintel-stone at Alatri; but the Anakim of Alatri were at least rivals whom those of Mykênê could not have despised. But, except in vastness of construction, we must not compare the gateway at Alatri, perfectly plain, a mere piling, though a very skilful piling, of huge blocks with the really artistic work of the Mykênaian treasuries. It goes rather with the lion-gate; only there are no lions. The builders of Alatri could carve, as is shown over one of the smaller gateways of the arx. But they chose to carve quite other subjects than lions. On the great gate however they carved nothing; that is left in the stern majesty of the vast blocks which form it. And here we may distinguish between the cut blocks of the gateway itself and the far ruder blocks just within it, which merely formed part of the foundation, and which, when the steep path went down to the gate, would not have stood above ground. Even the builders of primæval walls clearly drew a line between what was meant to meet the public eye and what was not.

But we must remember that the walls of which we have been speaking, the walls which first catch the eye, are not the whole of the walls of Alatri. They fence in only its inner and higher circuit. Their effect in the distant view is so imposing that the visitor will most likely be tempted to go to them first, instead of doing things in a more regular order by first tracking out the walls of the town itself. But these last, except that they do not supply anything like the primæval gate, are just as well worthy of study as the walls of the arx itself. They remain perfectly round the greater part of the circuit of the city, and they are of the same general construction as the walls of the arx. At some points a singular contrast is made by mediæval additions to the defences; good thirteenth century work, with the characteristic windows of the time, stands out as projections from the primæval wall. And, as in some of the other places, we have something thrown in in the way of what the walls contain, besides the attractions of the walls themselves. From the arx of Alatri we look down on several bell-towers and rose-windows, and one church at least, that of Santa Maria Maggiore, though hardly equal to its namesake at Ferentino, is quite worthy of examination. But, next to its walls, the strong point of Alatri lies in its domestic buildings. Very seldom, in Italy or out of it, do we see graceful windows, chiefly couplets with a divided shaft, more thickly gathered together, than in its crooked and narrow streets. Alatri, in short, is, to the antiquarian eye, satisfactory in every point save one. There should have been some decent building, pagan or Christian, crowning the noble site of its arx, the noblest in our whole range.

With Alatri we end one main stage of our iter, that of the hill-cities. We shall henceforth pass by places which lie more in the world, some of them in the thick of modern communication. But if we had turned back at Alatri, we should have done a good stroke of work. A journey to the walls of the Hernicans is in every way pleasant and profitable. And in truth, even if we throw in the Old-Latins and the Volscians, it is not a journey of hardships. The little inns are very humble, very simple, but they may be fed in and slept in without anything very frightful to endure. It may perhaps be well to mention that the Locanda d'Italia, at Anagni, recommended in various guide-books, has ceased to exist for some years. Still a day and a night at Anagni are no hardship, and a guide may be found, shirtless and letterless, who knows what is really worth going to much better than many in England who boast at once more clothes and more learning. Indeed, the men of the walls seem altogether a kindly and well-disposed race. Some say that is because they are said to be reclaimed brigands, perhaps on the principle that a reformed rake used to be said to make the best husband. There are indeed more beggars among them than need be; but on this head a wise rule was laid down by a young Volscian, or he might be a Hernican—we cannot always be exact among these obsolete nationalities—"Give to the halt and the blind; but not to anybody else."

IV. From Alatri to Capua.

We have done for a while with the hill-cities, though it would not be hard to find several other spots of the same kind, rivalling in historical interest, and, by all accounts, rivalling also as to existing remains, any of those which we have gone through. But the special necessities of an iter ad Brundisium carry us to quite other parts of the Italian peninsula, to parts where the sources of interest are fully equal to those of Etruscan or Latin cities, but where they are wholly different in kind. We leave the hills, or touch only their lowest slopes. For a while the mountains still soar above us, while our work is in the plains. Presently we lose the mountains even as distant companions; but before long we have the blue waves of Hadria as their substitute. At last we reach our goal; we go for a season even beyond it. And when we have gone as far as the devices of modern science can carry us, when we have reached the very end of the general railway system of Central Europe, our landscape again takes in both the sea and the mountains. But the eye now ranges beyond the bounds of Italy, beyond the bounds of Western Europe. We see across the narrowed waters to the heights of another peninsula. Without seeking for more than a chance likeness between the names—a name that ranges from the Euxine to the Hudson—without seeking in any sort to identify the Ἀλβανοί of Dionysios and the Ἀλβανοί of imperial Anna, it is still with a curious feeling of coincidence that the eyes which not many days before were looking up to the mount of Alba, now look across the sea to the wilder mountains of Albania.

Some of those who now looked across had already learned something of those heights from earlier and nearer experiences. Still it is a new feeling to look out on them from Italian ground, above all to look out on them from the spot where the Turk made his entrance into the western world, and where the signs of his short presence have stamped themselves deep on local memory. Standing at Otranto, looking on the Albanian heights, the foremost thought is how near Otranto came to being to the West of Europe all that the Thracian Kallipolis was to the East. But we are as yet far from Otranto, far from the heel of the boot, far even from any point of the Hadriatic coast. We are still on the western side of the great backbone of Italy; we have still to catch glimpses of the Tyrrhenian waters, to look, as at distant objects, on the bold outline of Ischia and on Vesuvius crowned with his pillar of cloud. But this time we do not obey the seemingly inflexible law which decrees that he who goes to Rome and does not turn back from Rome must go and see Naples, whether he dies after the sight or not. This time we have no call either to Naples itself or to the far more attractive range of objects of which Naples is the centre. Our errand is to pass from the primæval cities of the Latin and the Volscian to the cities of south-eastern Italy. Their chief present attraction lies in the series of churches raised in the days of the Norman and Angevin kings; but their memories carry us back through a long series of stirring ages, not indeed to the hoary antiquity of Cori and Alatri, but to the days when Southern Italy, the earliest Italy, was counted for a part of Hellas. It is not for nothing that we look out from thence on those eastern lands which then perhaps were the less Hellenic of the two.

Greek influence indeed begins—some say that it historically began—on the western, not the eastern, shore of Italy, in lands which, in the present journey, we leave to the west of us and see only in glimpses. We hurry on, passing by much that we might well stop and study, from Frosinone to Caserta. And we are luxurious enough to rejoice at finding ourselves there. We have proved that a few days and nights may be passed among Volscians and Hernicans without damage or even serious discomfort; but we trust that it is not an avowal to be ashamed of that it is a pleasing exchange to find ourselves in thoroughly civilized quarters in the plains of Campania. We have found our Capua; not, however, at Capua itself, but under the shadow of the royal palace a few miles off. But we desert Capua only because Capuan comforts—we will not talk of luxuries—have fled from Capua and have found their new home at Caserta. Those who have tried a night at Capua itself, Santa Maria di vetere Capua, not the newer Capua on the site of Casilinum, report that, if Hannibal's army could be quartered there again, they would certainly not be corrupted by anything excessive in the way of creature comforts. Anagni and Frosinone are said to be far in advance of the city which long was to Rome what Paris long was to London. The excuse doubtless would be that Capua is Capua no longer. The name of Capua, and with it the stirring history of early mediæval Capua, has wandered from the true Capua to Casilinum. It is not at the town now called Capua, but at the village—it is hardly more—of Santa Maria, that we must look for what is left of Etruscan Vulturnum, of Samnite, Campanian, and Roman Capua, the special city of pleasure, the city where, before all others, pleasure was sought for in scenes of blood.

On our present course we have no special call to either Capua, old or new. We have in times past seen both the amphitheatre of the elder Capua and the cathedral portico of the newer. But, when Caserta has been chosen as a convenient halting-place, it would be a shame for the historic traveller to pass by two such famous spots without a glance at either, while in their neighbourhood lies a third object, of no small value in its own line, which will have the further charm of novelty. It is well, while still fresh from the Flavian amphitheatre at Rome, to look again on the amphitheatre of Capua—Capua, the mistress of Rome in the sports of slaughter. There is a certain special lore of amphitheatres, the mastery of which does not fall to the lot of all, even of those who look on the monuments either of Rome or Capua with a general historical eye. But it is easy to see that in the Capuan amphitheatre the underground arrangements can be studied as they hardly can be studied anywhere else. The walls, the seats, are far less perfect than at Rome; much more then are they less perfect than at Verona. But the substructure seems wholly untouched. In the Roman Coliseum the underground work is only partially brought to light, while of what has been brought to light it is not always clear how much is the work of the Flavian Emperors, and how much of the mediæval barons who turned the amphitheatre into a fortress. Here, better than at Rome, we may study what really happened when the lions came up from underground to be slaughtered by the imperial hands of Commodus. If any question is raised as to the date of the building, one who is not a special Capuan topographer may be satisfied with the fact, that the inscription of Hadrian claims for that prince only a renovation and enrichment of the building with columns and statues. This seems to imply that the shell is older; it may be far older. In idea at least, the amphitheatre of Capua is far older than that of Rome. It illustrates a strange but well-known law of human nature, that the taste for luxury and the taste for blood should find a common home.

Besides the modernized basilica, besides the tombs of various sizes and designs which line the road—one of which is indeed singularly like a model of an amphitheatre—the true Capua has little to show besides the amphitheatre itself. It is strange to see so great a city, one which for some ages must have been far greater, far more splendid than Rome, so utterly gone—or rather to see the little that is left of it translated to another site. But great as Capua undoubtedly was, we begin to doubt its extreme antiquity. Capua, once Etruscan Vulturnum, remained Etruscan Vulturnum till the fourth century of Rome. It was the last remnant of the great Etruscan dominion in that region of Italy. As such, it represents a state of things far older than Rome. But the city itself may well be of later date than Rome. At all events, we may be sure that it is of far later date than Cori and Alatri. The city by the Vulturnus, down in the plain, taking its name from its guardian river, marks an advance not only on the mountain strongholds of Segni and Norba, but on Veii, on Rome itself. It must be far older than Florence; but it is the fellow of Florence; it marks an equal forsaking of the oldest type of a city. It is hard to see where the arx of Capua could have stood, if we are to understand by an arx something set upon a hill. But what a position that of Capua was, according to later ideas, is shown by its revival after the Hannibalian war. The Samnite settlement, parted away from their kinsfolk of the mountains, had become Campanians, and, to seek shelter against their kinsfolk of the mountains, they had been fain in some sort to become Romans.