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The day came when we had checked off the Posilipo, and the Grotto, Pozzuoli, Baiae, Cape Misenum, the Museum, Vesuvius, Pompeii, Herculaneum, the moderns buried at the Campo Santo; and we said, Let us go and lie in the sun at Sorrento. But first let us settle our geography.
I do not propose to include in this chapter any account of these centres of luxury and vice, which were far indeed from giving any rest or relief to the weary Roman; the society of Baiae was the centre of scandal and gossip, where a woman like Clodia, the Lesbia of Catullus, could live in wickedness before the eyes of all men.
There are not only over thirteen in the neighbourhood of Rome, but they are found also at Otricoli, Soriano, Spoleto, Vindena, Chiusi, Lucca, Castellamare, Prata by Avellino, Aquila, Puzzuoli, Baiae, Nola, Canesa, Tropea, Manfredonia, Venisa this last perhaps Jewish. There are five sets of them at Naples. Others in Malta. In Spain at Ancona, Siviglia, and Elvira.
"Then," he continued, "have yourself waked early, have your valet paint you and powder you and rouge you and fit you out with a wig like the head of hair you had before I made you impersonate Salinator, and with a false beard no one will suspect; have him rig you up in your favorite attire and load you with jewelry, then set off in my travelling-carriage for Baiae. Be out of Rome by sunrise.
At fashionable Baiae across the Bay there is nothing visible save a few shapeless ruins over the identity of which scholars dispute; at busy Puteoli there survive to-day but the ruined Amphitheatre, the Temple of Serapis, and the arches of the famous Mole, to prove to wondering posterity how great were the wealth, the population and the magnificence of a spot which is closely associated with all the power and culture of the Roman Empire in its zenith.
Therefore, its pores being thus opened and its texture rendered loose, it readily mixes with sand, and hence the two materials cohere as they dry, unite with the rubble, and make a solid structure. There is also a kind of powder which from natural causes produces astonishing results. It is found in the neighbourhood of Baiae and in the country belonging to the towns round about Mt. Vesuvius.
Cicero would arrive at Tusculum or Arpinum with some necessary books, and borrowing others as best he could, would sit down to write a treatise on ethics or rhetoric with amazing speed, having an original Greek author constantly before him. At places like Baiae serious work was of course impossible, and would have been ridiculed. There was no original thinker in this age.
After various adventures the fleet found itself united at Messina, whence it proceeded to Baiae. The election to the papacy of the Cardinal de' Medici one of their own Order as Clement VII., gave the Knights a powerful protector. He assigned Viterbo as a residence for the Order till a permanent home had been discovered.
After browsing among the stately ruins of Rome, of Baiae, of Pompeii, and after glancing down the long marble ranks of battered and nameless imperial heads that stretch down the corridors of the Vatican, one thing strikes me with a force it never had before: the unsubstantial, unlasting character of fame.
On the afternoon of that day, the lugger was carried close in with the northwest side of Ischia, which island she rounded at dusk, seemingly intending to anchor at Baiae, a harbor seldom without allied cruisers.
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