The Streamlet
"Calamo" Flows Through The Valley I Ascended From Acri, And At Its Side,
A Little Way Out Of The Town, Stands The Fountain "Pompeio" Where The
Brigands, Not Long Ago, Used To Lie In Wait For Women And Children
Coming To Fetch Water, And Snatch Them Away For Ransom.
On the way up, I
had glimpses down a thousand feet or more into the Mucone or Acheron,
raging and foaming in its narrow valley.
It rises among the mountains
called "Fallistro" and "Li Tartari" - unquestionably Greek names.
On this river and somewhere above Acri stood, according to the scholarly
researches of Lenormant, the ancient city of Pandosia. I do not know if
its site has been determined since his day. It was "very strong" and
rich and at its highest prosperity in the fourth century B.C.; after the
fall of Sybaris it passed under the supremacy of Croton. The god Pan was
figured on some of its coins, and appropriately enough, considering its
sylvan surroundings; others bear the head of the nymph Pandosia with her
name and that of the river Crathis, under the guise of a young shepherd:
they who wish to learn his improper legend will find it in the pages of
Aelian, or in chapter xxxii of the twenty-fifth book of Rhodiginus,
beginning Quae sit brutorum affectio, etc. [Footnote: Brunii a
brutis moribus: so say certain spiteful writers, an accusation which
Strabo and Horace extend to all Calabrians. As to the site of Pandosia,
a good number of scholars, such as old Prosper Parisius and Luigi Maria
Greco, locate it at the village of Mendicino on the river Merenzata,
which was called Arconte (? Acheron) in the Middle Ages.
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