From Tibur, still beside the Anio, we drive for about seven miles, until we reach the ancient Varia, now Vico Varo, mentioned by Horace as the small market town to which his five tenant-farmers were wont to repair for agricultural or municipal business. (Ep. I, xiv, 3.) Here, then, we are in the poet's country, and must be guided by the landmarks in his verse. Just beyond Vico Varo the Anio is joined by the Licenza. This is Horace's Digentia, the stream he calls it whose icy waters freshen him, the stream of which Mandela drinks. (Ep. I, xviii, 104-105.) And there, on its opposite bank, is the modern village Bardela, identified with Mandela by a sepulchral inscription recently dug up. We turn northward, following the stream; the road becomes distressingly steep, recalling a line in which the poet speaks of returning homeward "to his mountain stronghold." (Sat. II, vi, 16.) Soon we reach a village, Roccagiovine, whose central square is named Piazza Vacuna. Vacuna was the ancient name for the goddess Victory; and against the wall is fixed an exhumed tablet telling how the Emperor Vespasian here restored an ancient Temple of Victory. One more echo this name wakes in Horatian ears--he dates a letter to his friend Aristius Fuscus as written "behind the crumbling shrine of Vacuna." (Ep. I, x, 49.) Clearly we are near him now; he would not carry his writing tablets far away from his door. Yet another verification we require. He speaks of a spring just beside his home, cool and fine, medicinal to head and stomach. (Ep. I, xvi, 12.) Here it is, hard by, called to-day Fonte d'Oratini, a survival, we should like to believe, of the name Horatius. Somewhere close at hand must have been the villa, on one side or the other of a small hill now called Monte Rotondo. We may take our Horace from our pocket, and feel, as with our Wordsworth at Dove Cottage, with our Scott at Ashestiel, that we are gazing on the hills, the streams, and valleys, which received the primal outpourings of their muse, and are for ever vocal with its memories. [Illustration: THE SITE OF HORACE'S VILLA.]