In sailing round Caprea we were entertained with many rude prospects of rocks and precipices, that rise in several places half a mile high in perpendicular. At the bottom of them are caves and grottoes, formed by the continual breaking of the waves upon them. I entered one which the inhabitants call grotto oscuro, and after the light of the sun was a little worn off my eyes, could see all the parts of it distinctly, by a glimmering reflection that played upon them from the surface of the water. The mouth is low and narrow, but, after having entered pretty far in, the grotto opens itself on both sides in an oval figure of a hundred yards from one extremity to the other, as we were told, for it would not have been safe measuring of it. The roof is vaulted, and distils fresh water from every part of it, which fell upon us as fast as the first droppings of a shower. The inhabitants and Neapolitans who have heard of Tiberius's grottoes, will have this to be one of them; but there are several reasons that show it to be natural. For besides the little use we can conceive of such a dark cavern of salt waters, there are nowhere any marks of the chisel; the sides are of a soft mouldering stone, and one sees many of the like hollow spaces worn in the bottoms of the rocks, as they are more or less able to resist the impressions of the water that beats against them.

Not far from this grotto lie the Sirenum Scopuli, which Virgil and Ovid mention in Æneas's voyage; they are two or three sharp rocks that stand about a stone's throw from the south side of the island, and are generally beaten by waves and tempests, which are much more violent on the south than on the north of Caprea.

VOL. IV.

M

EN.

Jamque adeo scopulos Sirenum advecta subibat
Difficiles quondam, multorumque ossibus albos,
Tum rauca assiduo longè sale saxa sonabant.
Glides by the Syren's cliffs, a shelfy coast,
Long infamous for ships and sailors lost,
And white with bones: th' impetuous ocean roars,
And rocks rebellow from the sounding shores.

DRYDEN.

I have before said that they often find medals in this island. Many of those they call the Spintriæ, which Aretin has copied, have been dug up here. I know none of the antiquaries that have written on this subject, and find nothing satisfactory of it where I thought it most likely to be met with, in Patin's edition of Suetonius, illustrated by medals. Those I have conversed with about it, are of opinion they were made to ridicule the brutality of Tiberius, though I cannot but believe they were stamped by his order. They are unquestionably antique, and no bigger than medals of the third magnitude. They bear on one side some lewd invention of that hellish society which Suetonius calls monstrosi concubitus repertores, and on the other the number of the medal. I have seen of them as high as to twenty. I cannot think they were made as a jest on the emperor, because raillery on coins is of a modern date. I know but two in the upper empire, besides the Spintriæ, that lie under any suspicion of it. The first is one of Marcus Aurelius, where, in compliment to the emperor and empress, they have stamped on the reverse the figure of Venus caressing Mars, and endeavouring to detain him from the

wars.

-Quoniam belli fera manera Mavors
Armipotens regit, in gremium qui sæpe tuum se
Rejicit, æterno devinctus volnere amoris.

LUCR. lib. 1.

The Venus has Faustina's face, her lover is a naked figure with a helmet on his head, and a shield on his arm:

Tu scabie frueris mali quod in aggere rodit,
Qui tegitur, parmâ et galeâ.-

Juv. Sat. 5.

This unluckily brings to mind Faustina's fondness for the gladiator, and is therefore interpreted by many as a hidden piece of satire. But besides that such a thought was inconsistent with the gravity of a senate, how can one imagine that the fathers would have dared affront the wife of Aurelius, and the mother of Commodus, or that they could think of giving offence to an empress whom they afterwards deified, and to an emperor that was the darling of the army and people?

The other medal is a golden one of Gallienus preserved in the French king's cabinet; it is inscribed Galliena Augusta, pax ubique, and was stamped at a time when the emperor's father was in bondage, and the empire torn in pieces by several pretenders to it. Yet, if one considers the strange stupidity of this emperor, with the senseless security which appears in several of his sayings that are still left on record, one may very well believe this coin was of his own invention. We may be sure, if raillery had once entered the old Roman coins, we should have been overstocked with medals of this nature; if we consider there were often rival emperors proclaimed at the same time, who endeavoured at the lessening of each other's character, and that most of them were succeeded by such as were enemies to their predecessor. These medals of Tiberius's were never current money, but rather of the nature of medallions, which seem to have been made on purpose to

perpetuate the discoveries of that infamous society. Suetonius tells us that their monstrous inventions were registered several ways, and preserved in the emperor's private apartments. Cubicula plurifariam disposita tabellis ac sigillis lascivissimarum picturarum et figurarum adornavit, librisque Elephantidis instruxit: ne cui in operá edenda exemplar impetrata schema deesset. The Elephantis here mentioned is probably the same Martial takes notice of for her book of postures:

In Sabellum.

Facundos, mihi de libidinosis
Legisti nimium, Sabelle, versus:
Quales nec Dydimi sciunt puellæ,
Nec molles Elephantidos libelli.
Sunt illic Veneris novæ figuræ:
Quales, etc.-

Lib. xii. Ep. 43.

Ovid mentions the same kind of pictures that found a place even in Augustus's cabinet.

Scilicet in domibus vestris, at prisca virorum
Artifici fulgent corpora picta manu;

Sic que concubitus varios Venerisque figuras
Exprimat, est aliquo parva tabella loco.

DE TRIST. lib. 2.

There are several of the sigilla, or seals, Suetonius speaks of, to be met with in collections of ancient intaglios.

But I think what puts it beyond all doubt that these coins were rather made by the emperor's order than as a satire on him, is because they are now found in the very place that was the scene of these his unnatural lusts:

-Quem rupes Caprearum tetra latebit
Incesto possessa seni?-

CL. de 4 Cons. Hon.

Who has not heard of Caprea's guilty shore,
Polluted by the rank old emperor.

FROM NAPLES TO ROME, BY SEA.

I TOOK a felucca at Naples to carry me to Rome, that I might not be forced to run over the same sights a second time, and might have an opportunity of seeing many things in a road which our voyage writers have not so particularly described. As in my journey from Rome to Naples I had Horace for my guide, so I had the pleasure of seeing my voyage from Naples to Rome described by Virgil. It is, indeed, much easier to trace out the way Æneas took, than that of Horace, because Virgil has marked it out by capes, islands, and other parts of nature, which are not so subject to change or decay as are towns, cities, and the works of art. Mount Pau

silypo makes a beautiful prospect to those who pass by it at a small distance from it lies the little island of Nisida, adorned with a great variety of plantations, rising one above another in so beautiful an order, that the whole island looks like a large terrace-garden. It has two little ports, and is not at present troubled with any of those noxious steams that Lucan mentions:

-Tali spiramine Nesis

Emittit Stygium nebulosis aera saxis.

Nesis' high rocks such Stygian air produce,
And the blue breathing pestilence diffuse.

Lib. 6.

From Nisida we rowed to cape Miseno. The extremity of this cape has a long cleft in it, which was enlarged and cut into shape by Agrippa, who made this the great port for the Roman fleet that served