having the width half of the length, according to Etruscan style. It was partly surrounded with small shrines and adorned with statues of great men. Instead of sacrificing bulls, as was done by a Triumphator, upon the Capitol, on the summit of the Alban Mount, it was usual for him to sacrifice a sheep-ovis-hence 'ovatio.' The consular processions on these occasions started from Ariccia. On the Alban Mount, Juno, in the Aeneid, stood to contemplate the majestic country : 'At Juno, e summo, qui nunc Albanus habetur, Tum neque nomen erat, nec honos, aut gloria monti, -Aen. xii. 134. And truly the view is worthy the eyes of a Goddess, although the heights of Monte Pila close it out toward the dreamy south. 'From the summit of the Alban Mount, by the light of the setting sun, the eye can reach Corsica and Sardinia; and the hill which still bears the name of Circe looks like an island beneath the first rays of her heavenly sire. The line of the long street of Alba, stretching between the mountain and the lake, may still be made out distinctly. Monte Cavo was the Capitoline hill of Alba; its summits required to be fortified, to secure the town from above.'— Niebuhr, 'History of Rome,' i. 199. Hence, by the green lanes of the Macchia della Fajola, once notorious for brigands, and by winding pathlets through woods, and narrow ways between green meadows, passing a farm of the Corsini, we descend upon the second lake of our pilgrimage. 'Lo, Nemi! navelled in the woody hills So far, that the uprooting wind which tears Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares The oval mirror of thy glassy lake; And, calm as cherish'd hate, its surface wears A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake, The village of Nemi (more worth visiting than Genzano) is beautifully situated on the edge of a steep gray cliff overlooking the lake, and is crowned by an old castle which, after passing through the hands of the Colonna, Borgia, Piccolomini, Cenci, Frangipani, and Braschi, is now the property of a Ruspoli. "The water is surrounded in parts by rocks of the hardest basaltic lava, in others by conglomerated cinders and scoriæ, and in some places by banks of tufa. Its circumference is about five miles, and the level of the water higher than that of the Alban lake. The story of the ship discovered at the bottom of this lake, and said by some authors to have belonged to the time of Tiberius, by others to that of Trajan, is well known. Biondi, Leon Battista Alberti, and particularly Francesco Marchi, a celebrated architect and military engineer of the sixteenth century, who went down into the lake himself, have spoken of it. Fresh investigations have been carried on of late (1828), at which I was present, and I assert that the pretended ship was nothing more than the wooden piles and timbers used in the foundations of a building. The beams were of fir and larch, and were joined by metal nails of various sizes. The pavement, or at least the lowest stratum of the remains, was formed of large tiles placed upon a kind of grating of iron, on which the name Caisar' in ancient letters was marked. 6 The name Caisar' seems to explain the history of the building. For Suetonius, in his 'Life of Julius Caesar,' as an illustration of the Dictator's extravagance, asserts, that after having built a villa on the lake of Nemi at an enormous expense, he had the whole destroyed because it did not quite suit his taste. It is my belief that the pretended ship was nothing else than the piles and wooden framework upon which this villa was supported, and that after the upper part was destroyed the foundation under the water still remained, partly covered by fragments of the demolished building above.'~ Nibby. In October 1895 divers were again employed to discover the submerged objects, and although the depth at which they were found to be lying was 118 feet below the surface of the lake, it was possible to recognise that two great house-boats are lying there at right angles to one another, and also something resembling a long pier, which has been adorned with mosaic pavement, fountains, &c. They attached a number of strings with corks to these so as to render their locality and design apparent on the surface above. They also contrived to bring up seventeen very beautiful bronze ornaments, including heads of lions and wolves, having rings in their mouths and portions of lead conduit - pipes bearing the epigraph of Caius Caligula, who is known to have built two similar galleys with ten banks of oars, in which he enjoyed the Campanian coast. A number of the timbers of these floating villas until quite recently lay out along the shore near Casa del Pescatore. Nothing in the entire environs of Rome can surpass the effect of the first glimpse afforded from above, of the lake of Nemi, between dark ilex and cypress boughs; with lofty Monte Cavo looking down upon it, and splendid shadows of clouds gliding up the purple woodland flanks; and then the lake itself. It takes its name from Nemus, the sacred grove. 'Albanus lacus, et socia Nemorensis ab unda.' 'Nemus -Stat. 'Silv.' iv. 4. Tauric Diana had her grove, temple, and porticus here, the remains of which, explored in 1885 by the late Lord Savile, lie not far from the northern shore of the lake, facing it from a spacious platform, at a spot called Giardino del Lago. This terrace measures 30 ft. in height and 721 ft. in length, and is held up by triangular buttresses. The temple was probably prostyle-Hexastyle, was entered from the S. side, and measured 80 ft. (length) by 50 ft. (width). The spring, now called 'Tempesta,' into which she is supposed to have changed the nymph Egeria after the death of Numa, gushes out of the cliffs below Nemi. 'Non tamen Egeriae luctus aliena levare Damna valent; montisque jacens radicibus imis -Ovid, 'Metam.' xv. 547. Genzano, which forms so conspicuous a feature in the view from Nemi, is reached by a circuitous walk along the paths near the water until the Casa del Pescatore is reached, when the ascent begins and passes on direct, encountering here and there the ancient pavement of its original. The slopes beneath the town are occupied by the lovely gardens of Duke Sforza-Cesarini (which a silver key will usually open to visitors). The scenery of this beautiful hill-side is photographed in the description of H. Christian Andersen. "The lake of Nemi slept calmly in the great round crater, from which at one time fire spouted up to heaven. We went down the amphitheatre-like rocky slope, through the great beech wood and the thick groves of plane trees, where the vines wreathed themselves amongst the tree-branches. On the opposite steep lay the village of Nemi, which mirrored itself in the blue lake. As we went along we bound garlands, entwining the dark green olive and fresh vine-leaves with the wild golden cistus. Now the deep-lying blue lake and the bright heavens above us were hidden by the thick branches and the vine-leaves, now they gleamed forth again as if they were only one united infinite blue. Everything was new and glorious to me; my soul trembled for its great joy. There are even still moments in which the remembrance of these feelings comes forth again like the beautiful mosaic fragments of a buried city. "The sun burned hotly, and it was not until we were by the water-side, where the plane trees raise aloft their ancient trunks from the lake, and bend down their branches, heavy with enwreathing vines, to the watery mirror, that we found it cool enough to continue our work. Beautiful water-plants nodded here as if they dreamed under the cool shadow. And they too made part of our garlands. Presently, however, the sunbeams no longer reached the lake, but only played upon the roofs of Nemi and Genzano; and the gloom descended upon where we sate. I went a little distance from the others, yet only a few paces, for my mother was afraid that I should fall into the lake where it was deep and the banks were steep. Not far from the small stone ruins of an old temple of Diana there lay a huge fig-tree which the ivy had already begun to bind fast to the earth; I climbed upon this, and wove a garland whilst I sang from a canzonet, The Palazzo Cesarini contains little of especial interest, but it is associated with one of those dramas of real life which are seldom found out of Italy. A Duchess Cesarini dreamt before her confinement that she should give birth to twins, one of whom would endanger the happiness of the other. Determined to obviate this misfortune, she bribed the midwife to convey one of the children away as soon as it was born, and bring it up as a peasant. This was done, and the young Cesarini served as a shepherd, supposing himself to be a shepherd's son, till after he came of age. Then his adopted shepherd-mother happened to hear that the young Duke Cesarini and his father and mother were dead and that there was no heir to the fortunes and title; and, going to the palace with the midwife, she was able to produce indisputable proofs to the astonished heirs at-law which established the claims of the shepherd-boy, who was sent to Paris to be educated and became the late Duke Cesarini. Genzano is now chiefly celebrated for its excellent white wine |