is said to have been originally celebrated with human sacrifice; and even in Imperial times the priest, usually a gladiator or a fugitive slave, could only win his position by slaying his predecessor in fight, after having plucked a mistletoe bough from Diana's sacred grove. Strangely enough he bore the title of rex.* Of the temple itself nothing is now to be seen, though excavations have brought its plan to light; and all that is visible is the great platform on which it stood, with the walls, decorated with niches, which supported it in front and protected it from landslips at the back. These belong perhaps to the end of the Republic or the early Empire. Off the temple were anchored the now famous ships of Nemi, two great floating palaces with marble pavements and waterpipes of lead for fountains, bearing the name of Caligula; the ends of some of the beams are decorated with heads of lions and of wolves in bronze, with rings to which small boats might be moored. They are beautiful works of art of the first century of the Empire, and give some idea of the magnificence of the whole conception. Above the temple rises the village of Nemi, also medieval, with a picturesque castle now belonging to the Ruspoli; it has a lofty round central tower of the twelfth or thirteenth century.

Behind Nemi one may ascend eastward into the romantic Valle Vivaro, between the inner and the outer crater ring; but we shall speak of this further on, and we may now rather return to the Via Appia. The modern road diverges from the ancient a mile from Genzano, not to return to it until it reaches the Pomptine plain below Cisterna. From the point of separation, one obtains a remarkable view of the straight white ribbonlike line through the flat unhealthy swamps, which have given so much trouble to engineers ever since Roman days. The road can be seen almost as far as the gates of Terracina, which is just hidden from us by the Punta di Leano. Here the eighteenth milestone of the ancient road, erected by Nerva, was found a year or two back, in making a new and more direct road to Velletri. It has been set up as near its old place as possible; but the pavement of the ancient Via Appia, which was well preserved, and which

* See, on the history of this cult, Dr Frazer's 'Golden Bough,' passim.

is shown in one of Labruzzi's best sketches,* has of necessity been removed. We, however, may keep to the undulating road of Papal days, in order to visit Civita Lavinia, which occupies a projecting spur, thrown far forward into the Campagna, so that it commands a view also of the hills behind, of Velletri, and of the Volscian Mountains, which now first come into prominence.

The acropolis of the primitive Latin city of Lanuvium occupied in all probability a vineclad hill to the north of the modern village, on the southern slopes of which are some remains, again of the Imperial period, of another famous sanctuary of Latium-the temple of Juno Sospes, from whose treasury, as from that of Diana, Octavian borrowed money to enable him to fit out his fleet against Antony. Excavations, however, have brought to light archaic decorative terracottas which go back to the fifth century before Christ, and the temple itself, which is older than the colonnades of concrete, faced with opus reticulatum, of which considerable remains exist. The possessions of the temple extended, it seems, as far as the flat coast land, which is spread out before us like a map; for a tile, bearing the legend Sacra Lanuvio stamped upon it, was found as far away as Fogliano, between Anzio and Monte Circeo. The latter is clearly visible from here, dominating all the coast and the Pomptine Marshes; and one may see the sun lighting up its limestone rocks, which rise precipitously from the sea. Still further out lie the islands of the Ponza group, places of banishment now as in Roman days.

The medieval fortifications of Civita Lavinia are well preserved. The city was picturesque, with two gates, and was built upon the site of the Roman town, some of the buildings of which still exist. From the lower end of the village, where the remains of a temple of Hercules may be seen in a modern barn, the ancient road to the coast begins its course; and a practised eye may trace it right across the plain until it enters the forests of Nettuno.

* Carlo Labruzzi, a Roman artist, travelled along the Via Appia from Rome to Benevento in November 1789, in company with Sir Richard Colt Hoare of Stourhead. He made a series of 226 drawings for Sir Richard, which formed a part of the Stourhead library, and are now in my collection. Sir Richard, who had learned Labruzzi's style, himself made 47 drawings of the Via Latina from Rome to Capua in the following year, which I also possess. (Mélanges de l'École Française,' xxiii (1903), 375 ff.)

These are still in part untouched, though even there the woodland is making way for cultivation.

Leaving Civita Lavinia, we return to the highroad, and soon reach the scanty remains of the Roman poststation of Sub Lanuvio, the name of which sufficiently indicates its nature and origin. It lies at the point where our road crosses the straight line of the ancient Via Appia, which here passes through low hills on its way out to the plains. We pass over one of its culverts, adapted to the uses of the modern road, and on the left above us see the medieval castle of S. Gennaro. The road, paved in places with the little cubes of selce which are so much used in Rome itself (forming surely the most unpleasant pavement that man ever invented), is very undulating, and it is not surprising that modern motor traffic has abandoned it. It passes through the fertile vineyards near Velletri, which often conceal remains of Roman villas, and after some miles reaches the town.

Velletri is a place of Volscian origin (the ancient name Velitrae differs but slightly from the modern), and fought against Rome with the other cities of the Volscian Mountains, from which it is separated by only a few miles of low country, now mostly cornland and pasture. Later, it became noteworthy as the native place of the Gens Octavia, the family of Augustus. The present town contains hardly any traces of the Roman period; even the antiquities which have been found hereabouts have for the most part passed to museums in other lands. Of medieval houses, on the other hand, there are not a few; and the lofty campanile of the cathedral, which is otherwise uninteresting, is a very fine example of the fourteenth century style so common in Rome itself— square, with many storeys, the openings in which are adorned with slender marble columns. The material, however, is in this case mainly the black lava (selce), and bricks are only used in bands. Apart from this, the most remarkable building in the town is the Palazzo Ginnetti, erected by Martino Lunghi the elder. In the stucco decorations of the loggia the baroque spirit seems to have run riot; but the stone staircase, with its open arches, is more dignified. It stands at one end of the palace, and leads right up to the roof, from which the view at evening is wonderful. One day I remember, when

the roofs of the town were still bathed in yellow light, while the wooded mountains of the outer crater were in shadow; the cold limestone of the Volscian range on the other hand had lost the sun entirely, and was bathed in light without shadow-clear and gray, but yet soft. The landings of this splendid stairway are still decorated with ancient statues, the scanty remains of a fine collection which once adorned the palace; and one or two others stand in picturesque abandonment in the garden. Otherwise the town, the largest in the Alban Hills, is mainly remarkable as the seat of a flourishing wine-trade. It was once on the route to Naples, but now the main railway line has deserted it, and passes by the shorter route on the other side of the Alban Hills.

Behind Velletri the outer rim of the crater turns north-eastwards, and the lower slopes are less adapted for cultivation This is spreading now with some rapidity, and the woods here, as elsewhere, are in places being cut down; but much still remains untouched, and what vineyards there are are neither of so old standing nor so productive as those we have seen. The character of the district changes entirely; one may say broadly that in the whole of the eastern half of the outer crater there are no villages, and one may go far before even reaching a human habitation. In Roman times, too, this district was far more sparsely populated than that which we have just left. The summits of the range are still entirely covered with forest, the resort of brigands until early in last century. On one of them must have stood the temple of Diana on Mount Algidus, but I have searched them all in vain. Relics of the Middle Ages are not wanting, especially on the Maschio d' Ariano, a great mass of rock crowned by a large castle, which was under the sway of the Counts of Tusculum, but was ceded by one of them to Alexander III in 1179, and demolished in the fifteenth century. Nearer to our own day it was the refuge of the bandit Gasparone, whose initials may still be seen scratched on the cement wall of a water-tank. Some have thought to see actual remains of the temple here in what are really the ruins of a church dedicated to St Silvester, the natural successor of Diana, whose temple has probably been obliterated by the castle.

We may follow the summits one by one, or we may