Looking Down Upon Squillace, One Sees Its Houses Niched
Among Huge Masses Of Granite, Which Protrude From The Scanty Soil,
Or Clinging To The Rocky Surface Like Limpet Shells.
Was this the
site of Scylaceum, or is it, as some hold, merely a mediaeval refuge
which took the name of the old city nearer to the coast?
The
Scylaceum of the sixth century is described by Cassiodorus - a
picture glowing with admiration and tenderness. It lay, he says,
upon the side of a hill; nay, it hung there "like a cluster of
grapes," in such glorious light and warmth that, to his mind, it
deserved to be called the native region of the sun. The fertility of
the Country around was unexampled; nowhere did earth yield to
mortals a more luxurious life. Quoting this description, Lenormant
holds that, with due regard to time's changes, it exactly fits the
site of Squillace. Yet Cassiodorus says that the hill by which you
approached the town was not high enough to weary a traveller, a
consideration making for the later view that Scylaceum stood very
near to the Marina of Catanzaro, at a spot called Roccella, where
not only is the nature of the ground suitable, but there exist
considerable traces of ancient building, such as are not
discoverable here on the mountain top. Lenormant thought that
Roccella was merely the sea-port of the inland town. I wish he were
right. No archaeologist, whose work I have studied, affects me with
such a personal charm, with such a sense of intellectual sympathy,
as Francois Lenormant - dead, alas, before he could complete his
delightful book.
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