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So the cemetery of Lucera, with its ordered walks drowned in the shade of cypress roses and gleaming marble monuments in between is a charming retreat, not only for the dead. The Belvedere, however, is not my promenade. My promenade lies yonder, on the other side of the valley, where the grave old Suabian castle sits on its emerald slope.
At Venosa one thinks of Roman legionaries fleeing from Hannibal, of Horace, of Norman ambitions; Lucera and Manfredonia call up Saracen memories and the ephemeral gleams of Hohen-staufen; Gargano takes us back into Byzantine mysticism and monkery.
Lastly, the internal police, and the kernel of the army for foreign service, was composed of Saracens who had been brought over from Sicily to Nocera and Lucera men who were deaf to the cry of misery and careless of the ban of the Church.
That was what he had always been given to understand. . . . And how did I like Lucera? Rather a dull little place, was it not? Nothing like Paris, of course. Still, if I could delay my departure for some days longer, they would have the trial of a man who had murdered three people: it might be quite good fun.
I find it hard to sum up in one word the character of Lucera the effect it produces on the mind; one sees so many towns that the freshness of their images becomes blurred. The houses are low but not undignified; the streets regular and clean; there is electric light and somewhat indifferent accommodation for travellers; an infinity of barbers and chemists. Nothing remarkable in all this.
Lissus, an ancient city of Macedonia, Alessio Litavicus, one of the Aedui, G. vii. 37; his treachery and flight, G. vii. 38 Lucani, an ancient people of Italy, inhabiting the country now called Basilicate Luceria, an ancient city of Italy, Lucera Lucretius Vespillo, one of Pompey's followers, C. iii. 7 Lucterius or Laterius, one of the Cadurci, vii. 5, 7 Lusitanians, light-armed troops, C. i. 48
The Cincinnatus note dominates here, and with an agricultural population no city can be kept clean. But Venosa has one inestimable advantage over Lucera and most Italian towns: there is no octroi.
He says little of the great writers of his age; that, too, is a weakness of youth whose imagination lingers willingly in the past or future, but not in the present. The Hohenstauffen period does not attract him. He rides close to the magnificent Castel del Monte but fails to visit the site; he inspects the castle of Lucera and says never a word about Frederick II or his Saracens.
The gods take wondrous shapes, sometimes. As the train moved from Lucera to Foggia and thence onwards, I had enjoyed myself rationally, gazing at the emerald plain of Apulia, soon to be scorched to ashes, but now richly dight with the yellow flowers of the giant fennel, with patches of ruby-red poppy and asphodels pale and shadowy, past their prime.
These are the delights of Lucera: to sit under those old walls and watch the gracious cloud-shadows dappling the plain, oblivious of yonder assemblage of barbers and politicians. As for those who can reconstruct the vanished glories of such a place happy they! I find the task increasingly difficult.
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