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Updated: June 2, 2025
A grand panorama then lay before us. Naples looked bright and magnificent under the sunlight. The sea was so smooth that the buildings and towers and convents and spires were reflected in the water. On our left lay the Bay of Baiae, with its castles and temples and baths, dating from the days of the Roman Republic. To the right lay Castellamare, Sorrento, and the island of Capri.
Glyndon not only felt indisposed on that day to meet Zicci, but he felt also a strong desire to defeat the mysterious prophecy that the meeting should take place. Into this wish Merton readily entered. The young men agreed to be absent from Naples that day. Early in the morning they mounted their horses and took the road to Baiae.
There lies Naples, the voluptuous syren, reclining carelessly on the seashore; there, Portici, Castellamare, and Sorrento, the very names of which awaken in the imagination a thousand thoughts of poetry and love; there are Pausilippo, Baiae, Puozzoli, and those vast plains, where the ancients fancied their Elysium, sacred solitudes which one might suppose peopled by the men of former days, where the earth echoes under foot like an empty grave, and the air has unknown sounds and strange melodies.
Baiae, epitome of the luxury and profligacy, of the splendor and crime of the most sensual years of the Roman empire, spread there its temples, palaces, and pleasure-gardens, which crowded the low slopes, and extended over the water; and yonder is Cape Misenum, which sheltered the great fleets of Rome.
Anicetus, admiral of the fleet at Misenum, and a former instructor of Nero, suggested the expedient of a pretended public reconciliation, in virtue of which Agrippina should be invited to Baiae, and on her return should be placed on board a vessel so constructed as to come to pieces by the removal of bolts.
Open, Sesame! seems, as ever, to be the countersign of her life. Even the palace gates swung wide to her: most of them with the more readiness because she had already passed through other gates Mrs. Grainger's, for instance. Baiae, apparently, is a topsy-turvy world in which, if one alights upside down, it is difficult to become righted. To alight upside down, is to alight in a palace.
A writer, from whom we have just quoted, makes comparison between Baiae and Brighton or Trouville; but in reality the fashionable American resort of Newport has more in common with the old classical watering-place than any modern European sea-side resort.
It may be observed that most great personages have some favourite place, some cherished Baiae, at which they love to throw off their state, and to play the amiable instead of the splendid; and Bath at that time, from its gayety, its ease, the variety of character to be found in its haunts, and the obliging manner in which such characters exposed themselves to ridicule, was exactly the place calculated to please a man like Mauleverer, who loved at once to be admired and to satirize.
Yet, if I were to locate the Sirens geographically, I should place the beneficent desires on this coast, and the dangerous ones on that of wicked Baiae; to which group the founder of Naples no doubt belonged. Nowhere, perhaps, can one come nearer to the beautiful myths of Greece, the springlike freshness of the idyllic and heroic age, than on this Sorrentine promontory.
After my seclusion at Baiae, up to the terrible events which I am about to narrate, by far the most important of my experiences had been my personal observations of the fights of Palus the Gladiator and what I had heard and thought about him. Therefore I have narrated those at length and first. Now I approach the story of my most dreadful miseries.
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