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Or, to vary the simile, this acropolis, with its close-packed alleys, is the throbbing heart of Taranto; the arsenal quarter its head; and that other one well, its stomach; quite an insignificant stomach as compared with the head and corroborative, in so far, of the views of Metch-nikoff, who holds that this hitherto commendable organ ought now to be reduced in size, if not abolished altogether. . . .
It was to these points that he wished to decoy Nelson; for this end had he sent his troops to Taranto, and kept up French intrigues in Corfu, the Morea, and Egypt; it was for this purpose that he charged that wily spy Méhée to inform Drake that the Toulon fleet was to take 40,000 French troops to the Morea, and that the Brest fleet, with 200 highly trained Irish officers, was intended solely for Ireland.
I thought with regret of the tepid nights of Taranto and Castrovillari, and cursed my folly for climbing into these Arctic regions; wondering, as I have often done, what demon of restlessness or perversity drives one to undertake such insane excursions. Leaving the hospitable shepherds in the morning, we arrived after midday, by devious woodland paths, at the Madonna di Pollino.
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.
We had landed at Salerno, and we had been turned back from Cava, and we had tried to cross towards Taranto by a pass over Mount Alburno, but we had been driven back for want of food, and so we had come down among the marshes by Paestum, where those great temples stand alone. I had some vague idea that by Paestum it might be possible to find a boat or something, and take once more to sea.
Now, after little more than a decade of constitutional rule, brigandage has almost disappeared from the face of the land, and travellers are comparatively safe. When Victor Emmanuel and the Italian troops entered Rome and took possession of it as the Capital of Italy, free from the Alps to Taranto, they found it a city of ruins, squalor, and hardly habitable in a sanitary point of view.
The pirates in the Adriatic were first the Narentans and next the Saracens, who devastated the coasts of Dalmatia in 840, fruitlessly besieging Ragusa for fifteen months, and afterwards taking Taranto and Bari. In 842 they defeated the Venetians at Taranto, and, on the octave of Easter, took Ossero and burnt it.
Indeed, the town is strangely quiet, considering its size and aspect of importance; one has to search for a restaurant, and I doubt if more than one cafe exists. At my hotel the dining-room was a public trattoria, opening upon the street, but only two or three military men the eternal officers made use of it, and I felt a less cheery social atmosphere than at Taranto or at Catanzaro.
Near the Jesuit church, half-way down the slope of the hill, is a half-buried Roman arch of the time of Severus, ornamented equally on both sides, perhaps a memorial of one of the ancient gates. It is known as the Arco di Riccardo, from some fancied connection with Richard Cœur de Lion. The finest objects in the Civic Museum are two pieces of antique Greek metal-work found at Taranto.
"Our middle classes," said my friend the Italian deputy of whom I have already spoken, "are like our mules: to be endurable, they must be worked thirteen hours out of the twelve." But these have no industries to keep them awake, no sports, no ambitions; and this has gone on for long centuries, In Taranto it is always afternoon.
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