Wanderings in the Roman Campagna / by Rodolfo Lanciani.

  • Rodolfo Lanciani
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Wanderings in the Roman Campagna / by Rodolfo Lanciani. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of life. However, for a man of simple habits the nearest village [the Vicus Augustanus] is equally useful; it con¬ tains among other commodities three public baths, of which I avail myself whenever I happen to reach the villa unexpected and I have no time to wait for the furnace to be lighted. The whole coast is lined with villas, some adjoining one another, some separated by gardens. Seen from the water it looks like a city many miles long.” The largest and best of the three baths of which Pliny was an occasional patron has just been excavated, and although it appears to have been repaired and slightly altered in the second and third centuries, its main halls and basins date from before the age of Pliny. Here we have, therefore, a building which has echoed with his voice and beheld his presence, pavements which have been trodden by his feet, marble benches on which he has sat, and basins and piscinae in which he has bathed. Had Her Majesty the Queen been the first to enter this beautiful building, many more details could have been made clear, and many works of art could have been recovered from its richly decorated halls. Unfortunately these thermae have given shelter to a mediaeval colony of farmers or wood-cutters, and they must have burned into lime whatever pieces of marble fell into their hands. The illustrations on p. 329 represent some of the few bits of statuary which have escaped the kiln, and upon which the eye of Pliny may have rested while he was waiting for his bath. The journey from Laurentum to Antium by Lavi- nium (Pratica di Mare), Ardea, Aphrodisium (Campo Jemini), Xnvicastrum (L Incastro), and the sulphur springs (caldanse) is equally delightful whether you per-