Planted (sometimes) in graveyards.
The last remarkable antiquity found at this site, to my knowledge, is a
stone vase, fished up some years ago out of the sea, into which it may
have fallen while being carried off by pious marauders for the purpose
of figuring as font in some church (unless, indeed, the land has sunk at
this point, as there is some evidence to show). I saw it, shortly after
its return to dry land, in a shed near the harbour of Cotrone; the
Taranto museum has now claimed it. It is a basin of purple-veined
pavonazzetto marble. Originally a monolith, it now consists of two
fragments; the third and smallest is still missing. This noble relic
stands about 85 centimetres in height and measures some 215 centimetres
in circumference; it was never completed, as can be seen by the rim,
which is still partially in the rough. A similar vessel is figured, I
believe, in Tischbein.
The small villa-settlement on this promontory is deserted owing to lack
of water, every drop of which has to be brought hither by sea from
Cotrone. One wonders why they have not thought of building a cistern to
catch the winter rains, if there are any; for a respectable stone crops
up at this end of the peninsula.
One often wonders at things. . . .
The column has been underpinned and strengthened by a foundation of
cement; rains of centuries had begun to threaten its base, and there was
some risk of a catastrophe. Near at hand are a few ancient walls of
reticulated masonry in strangely leaning attitudes, peopled by black
goats; on the ground I picked up some chips of amphorse and vases, as
well as a fragment of the limb of a marble statue. The site of this
pillar, fronting the waves, is impressively forlorn. And it was rather
thoughtful, after all, of the despoiling Bishop Lucifero to leave two of
the forty-eight columns standing upright on the spot, as a sample of the
local Doric style. One has fallen to earth since his day. Nobody would
have complained at the time, if he had stolen all of them, instead of
only forty-six. I took a picture of the survivor; then wandered a little
apart, in the direction of the shore, and soon found myself in a
solitude of burning stones, a miniature Sahara.
The temple has vanished, together with the sacred grove that once
embowered it; the island of Calypso, where Swinburne took his ease (if
such it was), has sunk into the purple realms of Glaucus; the corals and
sea-beasts that writhed among its crevices are en-gulphed under mounds
of submarine sand. There was life, once, at this promontory. Argosies
touched here, leaving priceless gifts; fountains flowed, and cornfields
waved in the genial sunshine. Doubtless there will be life again; earth
and sea are only waiting for the enchanter's wand.
All now lies bare, swooning in summer stagnation.
Calabria is not a land to traverse alone. It is too wistful and
stricken; too deficient in those externals that conduce to comfort. Its
charms do not appeal to the eye of romance, and the man who would
perambulate Magna Graecia as he does the Alps would soon regret his
choice. One needs something of that "human element" which delighted the
genteel photographer of Morano - comrades, in short; if only those sages,
like old Noia Molisi, who have fallen under the spell of its ancient
glories. The joys of Calabria are not to be bought, like those of
Switzerland, for gold.
Sir Giovati Battista di Noia Molisi, the last of his family and name,
having no sons and being come to old age without further hope of
offspring, has desired in the place of children to leave of himself an
eternal memory to mankind - to wit, this Chronicle of the most Ancient,
Magnificent, and Faithful City of Cotrone. A worthier effort at
self-perpetuation than that of Strangoli. . . .
A sturgeon, he notes, was caught in 1593 by the Spanish Castellan of the
town. This nobleman, puzzling whom he could best honour with so rare a
dainty, despatched it by means of a man on horseback to the Duke of
Nocera. The Duke was no less surprised than pleased; he thought mighty
well of the sturgeon and of the respectful consideration which prompted
the gift; and then, by another horseman, sent it to Noia Molisi's own
uncle, accompanied, we may conjecture, by some ceremonious compliment
befitting the occasion.
A man of parts, therefore, our author's uncle, to whom his Lordship of
Nocera sends table-delicacies by mounted messenger; and himself a mellow
comrade whom I am loath to leave; his pages are distinguished by a
pleasing absence of those saintly paraphernalia which hang like a fog
athwart the fair sky of the south.
Yet to him and to all of them I must bid good-bye, here and now. At this
hour to-morrow I shall be far from Cotrone.
Farewell to Capialbi, inspired bookworm! And to Lenormant.
On a day like this, the scholar sailed at Bivona over a sea so unruffled
that the barque seemed to be suspended in air. The water's surface, he
tells us, is "unie comme une glace." He sees the vitreous depths invaded
by piercing sunbeams that light up its mysterious forests of algae, its
rock-headlands and silvery stretches of sand; he peers down into these
"prairies pelagiennes" and beholds all their wondrous fauna - the
urchins, the crabs, the floating fishes and translucent medusae
"semblables a des clochettes d'opale." Then, realizing how this
"population pullulante des petits animaux marins" must have impressed
the observing ancients, he goes on to touch - ever so lightly! - upon
those old local arts of ornamentation whereby sea-beasts and molluscs
and aquatic plants were reverently copied by master-hand, not from dead
specimens, but "pris sur le vif et observes au milieu des eaux"; he
explains how an entire school grew up, which drew its inspiration from
the dainty ... apes and movements of these frail creatures.
