not the right way to approach Terracina, which ought to be first seen from the straight stretch of the Via Appia between Velletri and Terracina. Horace saw it thus, 'impositum saxis late candentibus'; and many a traveller in modern times from Rome to Naples, including Mr Evelyn, approached it in the same way.

A short tour of inspection reveals the superb position of Terracina. The Volscian Mountains turn here in a gentle curve seawards, terminating in a bold headland, the Monte S. Angelo. On the west side of the hill the city slopes towards the plain where lie the sinister Pontine Marshes urbs prona in paludes,' as Livy describes it. The gleaming white of the limestone on the heights, which is set off by dark patches of oak and other trees, gives place lower down to cultivated soil fruitful with vines, olives, and corn. Its sheltered site near the sea and its southern aspect secure for the place a singularly soft climate, which, though debilitating in the summer, is purely enjoyable in the early spring. So noble a situation, lifted above the malarious marshes, a meeting-place of sea and mountain breezes, was marked out by nature for a city of importance. Its value was recognised by the ancient Volscians, who erected here one of their chief towns; and it remained a place of note after it was conquered by the Romans and through later ages.

'Terracina' is the modern form of the name given to the town by the Romans (Tarracina or Tarracinae). Its original Volscian name was Anxur; and this was used by Horace and other Latin poets, possibly in part because it lent itself better to the requirements of verse. Some say that the primitive name referred to a youthful tutelary: deity who afterwards came to be identified with the Roman Jupiter. The fragments of the ancient Volscian city still extant suggest that it was a place of first-rate importance. It probably enabled the sturdy Volscian race to extend its territory northwards to Velletri and Antium (Anzio) and southwards as far as Cumae.

The conquest of Terracina by the Romans was a long and arduous business. The year 397 B.C. is given as the date of the completion of its subjection; and by the year 348 a Latin colony was founded here. Anxur was a port, the Volscians having been one of the first Italian peoples

to construct a harbour with a pier. The port was greatly improved under the Romans, especially after the construction of the Via Appia (312 B.C.). This famous road from Rome to southern Italy passed through Terracina, the only point where it touched the sea. This of itself would give importance to the place, since much of the merchandise sent to Rome from the south would be landed here. In addition, the celebrated defile to the east of Monte S. Angelo, known to the Romans as Lautulae, was the natural entrance from southern Italy into Latium; and its proximity gave great strategic value to the town. It became the customary stopping-place for Roman travellers to the south; and in this way the Romans came to hear of its mild salubrious climate, and its famous mineral springs, which vied with those of Baiae. By the year 200 B.C. a considerable number of patrician families had erected villas here; and towards the end of the Republic the town became one of the principal places to which the Romans repaired for their villeggiatura, sharing the honour with the line of coast between Antium and Circeii.

The reign of Augustus brought a new prosperity to Terracina; and this prosperity was maintained and increased during the first two centuries of the Empire. The town was enlarged, a new quarter of villas with amphitheatre, baths, etc., springing up on the plain below and reaching beyond the canal. Of the splendour which fell on Terracina in the prosperous Roman days we have a hint in the Greek statue of Sophocles in the Lateran Museum, found in the plain near Terracina in 1838. Under Trajan and Antoninus Pius the old port was improved by the addition of piers, docks, and vaulted warehouses, so that it was able to compete with Antium and Cumae. The prosperity of the city was greatly furthered by the renovation, on solid substructures, of the Via Appia by Nerva and Trajan.

The decline of Rome after the reign of Diocletian, and the invasions of Italy by the barbarians, made a rude end of this prosperity. In common with the whole of the Roman Campagna, the territories about Terracina were depopulated and fell out of cultivation, becoming a great morass and a breeding-ground for the malarial germ. The Via Appia went out of repair, so that even the com

paratively few noble Roman families surviving were unable to visit the city. In addition, the port became choked up with sand, and the city was seriously damaged by fire. As a result of all this, the population dwindled to a comparatively few fever-stricken families. Yet the old mountain-town showed a dogged vitality. Christianity is said to have marked out the place for one of her first sanctuaries, and for the scene of some of her early martyrdoms. It is possible that St Paul, who passed through Terracina on his way from Pozzuoli to Rome, dropped a seed which afterwards germinated into a religious community. A church was erected here, and probably a bishopric too, soon after the official recognition of the new religion by Constantine. A vigorous attempt to revive some of the past greatness of the town was made towards the end of the fifth century by Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, who added to its defences and went some way towards overcoming the two great evils which had led to its abandonment by a partial draining of the marshes and by a new restoration of the Via Appia. Theodoric's brave efforts had, however, no lasting effect. When Rome fell into utter ruin and misery under later invasions, Terracina sank into a second and yet profounder state of neglect and penury.

At an early date Terracina appears to have been claimed by the Papacy as lying within its territory. Its position, at the extreme limit of this territory, and open to the sea, exposed it to attack. From the time of Gregory the Great we read of a series of attempts, by both Greeks and Lombards (who sometimes joined their forces), to seduce the citizens from their allegiance to the Papal See; while, so late as the time of Charlemagne, the Neapolitans and the Greeks managed to invade and occupy the town. In addition to these attacks by land, it suffered, during the ninth century, from assaults by sea from the Saracens; on one occasion being taken and ravaged by these marauders, when, it is supposed, its ancient forum was destroyed. The fear of losing their frontier-town led two Popes in the eleventh century to place it under the guardianship of a carefully-selected Papal delegate.

The conquest of southern Italy by the Normans made an end of most of these attacks on Terracina. Gregory VII

gave self-government to the city (1074), after which date it could boast of possessing a senate, consuls, and the rest. Soon after this, Terracina is referred to as a place visited by the Popes, one being crowned here, another laying down his crown; while others, including Gelasius II, the unhappy bearer of the mantle for a few months only, sought refuge in the town from Emperor and Antipope. Among the harassers who drove the Popes to this place of refuge were the powerful and warlike clans which caused so much turmoil and pillage in Italy during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Frangipani appear to have seized Terracina for a time, since we read of the rocca or castello which they erected here, a building afterwards destroyed and rebuilt by the citizens in the reign of Eugenius III (1145-1153). In Terracina, as elsewhere in Italy, the hour of fierce battle, with its din and confusion, was also the hour of a vigorous architectural self-recreation. The thirteenth century marks the zenith of its medieval greatness, the period during which it could boast of three castles and a goodly number of churches and monasteries. It was in this century too that the Cathedral was improved and redecorated.

The continuation of attempts to capture the town, including a successful one by Naples, led Pius II in 1460, on receiving from its inhabitants a petition to take over the city, to entrust the custody of it to his nephew, Antonio Piccolomini. The city did not, however, enter on a lasting peace before the year of general pacification, 1499. Yet, though peace had been secured, other causes than war continued to keep down the population. The adjacent lowlands were invaded by marshes; and in the sixteenth century an epidemic broke out that again reduced the number of inhabitants. Towards the end of this century the work of draining the marshes was seriously begun ; but it was not until the close of the eighteenth century that a considerable improvement was effected by Pius VI, who cut the canal, Linea Pia, which runs by the side of the Via Appia.

Some ancient Italian cities are literally città morte, their stream of life being quite dried up, whether they show an imposing mass of ancient buildings like Pompeii or Selinunte, or, like Cumae, are hardly more than

sepulchral tumuli, in which vestiges of the past life await, for their resurrection, a more prosperous state of the archæological purse. From these wholly dead cities there stand apart others which still live on, preserving in a more or less recognisable form their ancient name. And among these again we may distinguish such as disclose no considerable memorials of their antiquity from those which expose to the stranger's gaze, in clear and impressive lineaments, a record of their remote history. Terracina falls into the category intermediate between the extremes of the purely ancient and the largely modern type. It is a populous and thriving town to-day, even though it lies in a backwater of the stream of progress; at the same time it shows the stranger, with clearness and an almost lavish fullness, monuments of its ancient history. Not only have we vestiges of its medieval story, but the Roman occupation has left us a number of noble relics, while even the older Volscian city still speaks to us out of imposing fragments of cyclopean masonry.

From the hotel on the Marina the visitor will naturally begin his exploration of the city by turning to the adjacent east gate, the Porta di Napoli. To the right lies the little bay in which fishing boats gently rock themselves in the sun. To the left rises the smooth surface of a vertical rock of some 120 feet, bearing a series of incised Roman numerals, which mark the height downward from the top. This is the famous cutting known as Taglio di Pesco Montano.' When Appius cut his famous road, the rocky end of the promontory reached the sea, and so the road had to be carried up above Terracina round the hinder slope of Monte S. Angelo. In order to avoid this toilsome passage, an attempt was made by the Roman engineers, so early as the year 184 B.C., to construct a raised causeway in the sea. Since, however, this was practicable only for pedestrians, one of the earlier Emperors resolved on the yet bolder expedient of cutting a gap in the rocky promontory, and so keeping the road to the south on the low level near the sea. The Pesco Montano, which is hardly noticed by the old travel books, is certainly one of the curious sights of Italy, illustrating a noteworthy side of Roman engineering.