It is barely half a mile long; it rises
amid a bed of great reeds, which quite conceal the water, and flows
with an average breadth of some ten feet down to the seashore, on
either side of it bare, dusty fields, and a few hoary olives.
The Galaesus? - the river beloved by Horace; its banks pasturing a
famous breed of sheep, with fleece so precious that it was protected
by a garment of skins? Certain it is that all the waters of Magna
Graecia have much diminished since classic times, but (unless there
have been great local changes, due, for example, to an earthquake)
this brook had always the same length, and it is hard to think of
the Galaesus as so insignificant. Disappointed, brooding, I followed
the current seaward, and upon the shore, amid scents of mint and
rosemary, sat down to rest.
There was a good view of Taranto across the water; the old town on
its little island, compact of white houses, contrasting with the
yellowish tints of the great new buildings which spread over the
peninsula. With half-closed eyes, one could imagine the true
Tarentum. Wavelets lapped upon the sand before me, their music the
same as two thousand years ago. A goatherd came along, his flock
straggling behind him; man and goats were as much of the old world
as of the new. Far away, the boats of fishermen floated silently. I
heard a rustle as an old fig tree hard by dropped its latest leaves.
On the sea-bank of yellow crumbling earth lizards flashed about me
in the sunshine. After a dull morning, the day had passed into
golden serenity; a stillness as of eternal peace held earth and sky.
"Dearest of all to me is that nook of earth which yields not to
Hymettus for its honey, nor for its olive to green Venafrum; where
heaven grants a long springtime and warmth in winter, and in the
sunny hollows Bacchus fosters a vintage noble as the Falernian - - "
The lines of Horace sang in my head; I thought, too, of the praise
of Virgil, who, tradition has it, wrote his Eclogues hereabouts.
Of course, the country has another aspect. in spring and early
summer; I saw it at a sad moment; but, all allowance made for
seasons, it is still with wonder that one recalls the rapture of the
poets. A change beyond conception must have come upon these shores
of the Ionian Sea. The scent of rosemary seemed to be wafted across
the ages from a vanished world.
After all, who knows whether I have seen the Galaesus? Perhaps, as
some hold, it is quite another river, flowing far to the west of
Taranto into the open gulf. Gialtrezze may have become Galeso merely
because of the desire in scholars to believe that it was the classic
stream; in other parts of Italy names have been so imposed. But I
shall not give ear to such discouraging argument.
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