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To understand the story of the Mountain, therefore, it is necessary for us to travel back in retrospect to ancient Roman days. In the first place, however, one word as to its present name that we use to-day, for all are familiar with Vesuvius, but comparatively few, until they visit Naples, have heard mention made of Monte Somma.
Egli con tutta segretezza mi ha consegnata una carta di somma importanza per l'orfona sua famiglia incaricando mi dirigerla a V. Sig. "MANTUA, Feb. 21, 1810. Yesterday, a few minutes before twelve, Mr. Andreas Hofer, late commander of the Tyrol, was shot here.
He was a fat, well-natured man, full of a smiling goodwill; and he stood before us in a radiant desperation. Would Eccellenza descend, look at the water in front, and decide whether to go on? The conductor desired to content; it displeased him to delay, ma, in somma! the rest was confided to the conductor's eloquent shoulders and eyebrows.
In these pre-Christian days Vesuvius, then known as Monte Somma, was not known to be a volcano, it never having shown any trace of eruption.
As the Italians approached each position they found it in the possession of a strong force of the enemy. On the right, however, Custoza and the heights between it and Somma Campagna had not been occupied by the Austrians. Here La Marmora placed the flower of his army, the Sardinian and Lombard Grenadiers, the latter commanded by Prince Amedeo.
Now, such pictures may be excellently well painted, greatly praised by connoisseurs, and held in "somma venerazione," but they are offensive as regards the religious feeling, and, are, in point of taste, mannered, fantastic, and secular. Here we must end our discourse concerning the Virgin and Child as a devotional subject.
In the year 63 the shores of the Bay of Naples were subjected to a distinctive earthquake. Others less severe followed in subsequent years. In an early morning in the year 79, a servant aroused the elder Pliny at Baiæ with the news that there was a wonderful cloud rising from Monte Somma.
On another occasion the King and Queen paid a visit to the afflicted district of the slopes of Monte Somma, where Ottajano and San Giuseppe had been almost buried by the continuous falling of burning material from the crater.
According to the Venetian legend, it was this identical effigy which was taken by the blind old Dandolo, when he besieged and took Constantinople in 1204, and brought in triumph to Venice, where it has ever since been preserved in the church of St. Mark, and held in somma venerazione. No mention is made of St.
Before leaving Vesuvius it may be observed that throughout all the eruptions of modern times the northern side of the mountain, that is the old crater and flank of Somma, has been secure from the lava-flows, and has enjoyed an immunity which does not belong to the southern and western side.
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