The country there is indescribably beautiful and charming, and besides Baiae, the lake AVERNUS, surrounded by very ancient forests, is likewise a spot of great interest. Near it, a road has been cut through the rock leading to Cumae. Such roads were often constructed for the purpose of shortening the distance and avoiding the heights, for the Romans generally endeavoured by every means to shorten the roads. A similar road leads from Naples to Puzzuoli, likewise made to avoid a hill, which it would be very difficult to cross: hence the _crypta Pausilippana_, _Puteolana_, _Neapolitana_.[43] The Avernus was, no doubt, originally called ἄορνος, and with the digamma ἄϝορνος. This etymology has been rejected, because it implied the statement that birds could not fly over the lake, which, it is said, is an absurdity. But no bird settles there without dying in consequence, on account of the quantity of carbonic acid which is exhaled by the earth and the lake; dogs, too, are not safe there, but men may pass without any danger. NAPLES[44] was originally called PARTHENOPE, and was, no doubt, situated on mount Posilipo, towards Nisita, where the crypta turns towards the cape. Afterwards, NEAPOLIS was built a few miles from it on the other side of the cape; and it is a mistake to believe that the two places were nearer each other. Parthenope was a colony of the Eretrians of Ischia, while Neapolis was a Cumaean settlement with an admixture of Athenians; and after the establishment of the latter place, Parthenope was called PALAEPOLIS. In the second Samnite war, Palaepolis was taken by the Romans, and must have been destroyed, for it entirely disappears; Neapolis, on the other hand, became a federate town of Rome, and was treated with kindness. Strabo, however, relates, that the town was so much distracted by internal disturbances, as to be obliged to concede the franchise even to the Campanians, its natural enemies. But notwithstanding all this, it remained a perfectly Greek city until the imperial times; this is evident in the reign of Augustus, evident from a letter of the emperor M. Aurelius to Fronto, and evident, also, from Petronius; there exists, moreover, a great number of Greek inscriptions of the third century. Afterwards, we lose our thread. But the chapel of the ancient church of S. Rosa at Naples contains Greek inscriptions of the period when Naples was a free city, under the protectorate of Byzantium, that is, of the seventh or eighth century.[45] Traces of Greek words still exist in the Neapolitan dialect. The Italian word _golf_ is evidently formed from κόλπος; the gulf of Naples is specially called _the_ gulf; but the ancients also called it κρατήρ.