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Another and a yet loftier retreat had to be sought by the survivors of the Imperial vengeance, so that the ruined Capaccio the Old was abandoned for another settlement, which still exists as a miserable village amidst those barren hills that had ever looked down with jealous envy upon the proud city with its pillared temples.
Everybody asked the same thing, and he who belonged to that country had never seen a rose of Paestum.... Sometimes, just in order to satisfy the whim of tourists, he would bring rose bushes from Capaccio Vecchio and other mountain villages, rose bushes just like others with no difference except in price.... But he didn't wish to take advantage of anybody.
So great a number of old writers concur in this opinion Donnorso, Persico, Giannettasio, Mazzella, Anastasio, Capaccio that their testimony would alone be overwhelming, had these men been a little more careful as to what they called a "temple." Capasso, the acutest modern scholar of these regions, places it "in the neighbourhood of the Punta Campanella."
The poisonous air had caused the inhabitants to flee, and the few who insisted upon living within the shadow of the ancient temples had had to escape from the Saracen invasions, founding in the neighboring mountains a new country the humble town of Capaccio Vecchio. All the medieval constructions of the kingdom of Naples were the spoils of Paestum.
But as a matter of fact the existence of the Grotto was never wholly forgotten, for its beauties were certainly known to the old Italian chronicler Capaccio.
Its population of four million inhabitants were then consoled by the presence of no less than 120,000 holy persons to wit, 22 archbishops, 116 bishops, 65,500 ordained priests, 31,800 monks, and 23,600 nuns. Some of these ecclesiastics, like the Bishop of Capaccio, were notable brigand-chiefs. It must be confessed that the French were sufficiently coldblooded in their reprisals.
Every remaining piece of sculpture and of marble was removed, and it was only the vast size of the pillars of the three great temples, and the consequent difficulty attending their transport by boat across the bay or along the marshy ground of the coast line, that saved from destruction these magnificent relics of “the glory that was Greece.” But even humble Capaccio did not afford a final resting-place to the harried Paestani, for in the year 1245 the great Emperor Frederick II., who had been defied by the feudal Counts of Capaccio, besieged and utterly destroyed this stronghold of the mountains that had been the child of Poseidonia of the sea-girt plains.
In a body therefore the remaining citizens amid deep wailing left for ever the ancient city with its glorious temples, and retired to a strong position to the east. The spot chosen for the new residence of these exiles lay close to the source that supplied with pure water their ancient aqueduct, known for this reason as Caputaqueum, now corrupted into Capaccio.
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