A very real difference, at this
particular moment. . . .
There is an end of philosophizing.
They have ousted me from my pleasant quarters, the landlady's son and
daughter-in-law having returned unexpectedly and claiming their
apartments. I have taken refuge in a hotel. My peace is gone; my days in
Taranto are numbered.
Loath to depart, I linger by the beach of the Ionian Sea beyond the new
town. It is littered with shells and holothurians, with antique tesserae
of blue glass and marble fragments, with white mosaic pavements and
potteries of every age, from the glossy Greco-Roman ware whose
delicately embossed shell devices are emblematic of this sea-girt city,
down to the grosser products of yesterday. Of marbles I have found
cipollino, pavonazzetto, giallo and rosso antico, but no harder
materials such as porphyry or serpentine. This, and the fact that the
mosaics are pure white, suggests that the houses here must have dated,
at latest, from Augustan times.
[Footnote: Nor is there any of the fashionable verde antico, and
this points in the same direction. Corsi says nothing as to the date of
its introduction, and I have not read the treatise of Silenziario, but
my own observations lead me to think that the lapis atracius can
hardly have been known under Tiberius. Not so those hard ones:
