The Story of Rome from the Earliest Times to the End of the RepublicGilman, Arthur
History
The Story of Rome from the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic
Gilman, Arthur
Rome -- History -- Republic, 510-30 B.C.
Next they rested, or rather tried to rest, at Appii Forum, a place
stuffed with sailors, and then took a boat on the canal for Tarracina.
He gives a vivid picture of the confusion of such a place, where the
watermen and the slaves of the travellers were mutually liberal in
their abuse of each other, and the gnats and frogs drove off sleep.
Drunken passengers, also, added to the din by the songs that their
potations incited them to. At Feronia the passengers left the boat,
washed their faces and hands, and crawled onward three miles up to the
heights of Anxur, where Mæcenas and others joined the party. Slowly
they made their way past Fundi, and Formiæ, where they seem to have
been well entertained. The next day they were rejoiced by the addition
of the poet Virgil and several more friends to the party, and
pleasantly they jogged onwards until their mules deposited their pack-
saddles at Capua, where Mæcenas was soon engaged in a game of tennis,
while Horace and Virgil sought repose. The next stop was not far from
the celebrated Caudine Forks, at a friend's villa, where they were very
hospitably entertained, and supplied with a bountiful supper, at which
buffoons performed some droll raillery. Thence they went directly to
Beneventum, where the bustling landlord almost burned himself and those
he entertained in cooking their dainty dinner, the kitchen fire falling
through the floor and spreading the flames towards the highest part of
the roof. It was a ludicrous moment, for the hungry guests and
frightened slaves hardly knew whether to snatch their supper from the
flames or to try to extinguish the fire.
From Beneventum the travellers rode on in sight of the Apuleian
mountains to the village of Trivicum, where the poet gives us a glimpse
of the customs of the times when he tells us that tears were brought to
their eyes by the green boughs with the leaves upon them with which a
fire was made on the hearth. Hence for twenty-four miles the party was
bowled away in chaises to a little town that the poet does not name,
where water was sold, the worst in the world, he thought it, but where
the bread was very fine. Through Canusium they went to Rubi, reaching
that place fatigued because they had made a long journey and had been
troubled by rains. Two days more took them through Barium and Egnatia
to Brundusium, where the journey ended.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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