By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy Read online

  costume: a short petticoat of scarlet, much embroidered, and over it a

  blue skirt, rolled up in front and gathered in a sort of knot behind

  the waist; a bodice adorned with needlework and metal; elaborate

  glistening head-gear, and bare feet. The town-folk have no peculiarity

  of dress. I observed among them a grave, intelligent type of

  countenance, handsome and full of character, which may be that of their

  brave ancestors the Bruttii. With pleasure I saw that they behaved

  gently to their beasts, the mules being very sleek and

  contented-looking. There is much difference between these people and

  the Neapolitans; they seem to have no liking for noise, talk with a

  certain repose, and allow the stranger to go about among them

  unmolested, unimportuned. Women above the poorest class are not seen in

  the streets; there prevails an Oriental system of seclusion.

  I was glad to come upon the pot market; in the south of Italy it is

  always a beautiful and interesting sight. Pottery for commonest use

  among Calabrian peasants has a grace of line, a charm of colour, far

  beyond anything native to our most pretentious china-shops. Here still

  lingers a trace of the old civilization. There must be a great good in

  a people which has preserved this need of beauty through ages of

  servitude and suffering. Compare such domestic utensils—these oil-jugs

  and water-jars—with those in the house of an English labourer. Is it

  really so certain that all virtues of race dwell with those who can

  rest amid the ugly and know it not for ugliness?

  The new age declares itself here and there at Cosenza. A squalid

  railway station, a hideous railway bridge, have brought the town into

  the European network; and the craze for building, which has disfigured

  and half ruined Italy, shows itself in an immense new theatre—Teatro

  Garibaldi—just being finished. The old one, which stands ruinous close

  by, struck me as, if anything, too large for the town; possibly it had

  been damaged by an earthquake, the commonest sort of disaster at

  Cosenza. On the front of the new edifice I found two inscriptions, both

  exulting over the fall of the papal power; one was interesting enough

  to copy:—

  “20

  SEPT

  ., 1870.

  QUESTA

  DATA

  POLITICA

  DICE

  FINITA

  LA

  TEOCRAZIA

  NEGLI

  ORDINAMENTI

  CIVILI

  . IL DI

  CHE

  LA

  DIRA

  FINITA

  MORALMENTE

  SARA

  LA

  DATA

  UMANA

  .”

  which signifies: “This political date marks the end of theocracy in

  civil life. The day which ends its moral rule will begin the epoch of

  humanity.” A remarkable utterance anywhere; not least so within the

  hearing of the stream which flows over the grave of Alaric.

  One goes to bed early at Cosenza; the night air is dangerous,

  and—Teatro Garibaldi still incomplete—darkness brings with it no sort

  of pastime. I did manage to read a little in my miserable room by an

  antique lamp, but the effort was dispiriting; better to lie in the dark

  and think of Goth and Roman.

  Do the rivers Busento and Crati still keep the secret of that “royal

  sepulchre, adorned with the splendid spoils and trophies of Rome”? It

  seems improbable that the grave was ever disturbed; to this day there

  exists somewhere near Cosenza a treasure-house more alluring than any

  pictured in Arabian tale. It is not easy to conjecture what “spoils and

  trophies” the Goths buried with their king; if they sacrificed masses

  of precious metal, then perchance there still lies in the river-bed

  some portion of that golden statue of Virtus, which the Romans melted

  down to eke out the ransom claimed by Alaric. The year 410 A.D. was no

  unfitting moment to break into bullion the figure personifying Manly

  Worth. “After that,” says an old historian, “all bravery and honour

  perished out of Rome.”

  CHAPTER IV

  TARANTO

  Cosenza is on a line of railway which runs northward up the Crati

  valley, and joins the long seashore line from Taranto to Reggio. As it

  was my wish to see the whole of that coast, I had the choice of

  beginning my expedition either at the northern or the southern end; for

  several reasons I decided to make straight for Taranto.

  The train started about seven o’clock in the morning. I rose at six in

  chill darkness, the discomfort of my room seeming worse than ever at

  this featureless hour. The waiter—perhaps he was the landlord, I left

  this doubt unsolved—brought me a cup of coffee; dirtier and more

  shabbily apparelled man I have never looked upon; viler coffee I never

  drank. Then I descended into the gloom of the street. The familiar

  odours breathed upon me with pungent freshness, wafted hither and

  thither on a mountain breeze. A glance upwards at the narrow strip of

  sky showed a grey-coloured dawn, prelude, I feared, of a dull day.

  Evidently I was not the only traveller departing; on the truck just

  laden I saw somebody else’s luggage, and at the same moment there came

  forth a man heavily muffled against the air, who, like myself, began to

  look about for the porter. We exchanged greetings, and on our walk to

  the station I learned that my companion, also bound for Taranto, had

  been detained by illness for several days at the Lionetti, where, he

  bitterly complained, the people showed him no sort of attention. He was

  a commercial traveller, representing a firm of drug merchants in North

  Italy, and for his sins (as he put it) had to make the southern journey

  every year; he invariably suffered from fever, and at certain

  places—of course, the least civilized—had attacks which delayed him

  from three days to a week. He loathed the South, finding no

  compensation whatever for the miseries of travel below Naples; the

  inhabitants he reviled with exceeding animosity. Interested by the

  doleful predicament of this vendor of drugs (who dosed himself very

  vigorously), I found him a pleasant companion during the day; after our

  lunch he seemed to shake off the last shivers of his malady, and was as

  sprightly an Italian as one could wish to meet—young, sharp-witted,

  well-mannered, and with a pleasing softness of character.

  We lunched at Sybaris; that is to say, at the railway station now so

  called, though till recently it bore the humbler name of Buffaloria.

  The Italians are doing their best to revive the classical place-names,

  where they have been lost, and occasionally the incautious traveller is

  much misled. Of Sybaris no stone remains above ground; five hundred

  years before Christ it was destroyed by the people of Croton, who

  turned the course of the river Crathis so as to whelm the city’s ruins.

  Francois Lenormant, whose delightful book, La Grande Grece, was my

  companion on this journey, believed that a discovery far more wonderful

  and important than that of Pompeii awaits the exc
avator on this site;

  he held it certain that here, beneath some fifteen feet of alluvial

  mud, lay the temples and the streets of Sybaris, as on the day when

  Crathis first flowed over them. A little digging has recently been

  done, and things of interest have been found; but discovery on a wide

  scale is still to be attempted.

  Lenormant praises the landscape hereabouts as of “incomparable beauty”;

  unfortunately I saw it in a sunless day, and at unfavourable moments I

  was strongly reminded of the Essex coast—grey, scrubby fiats, crossed

  by small streams, spreading wearily seaward. One had only to turn

  inland to correct this mood; the Calabrian mountains, even without

  sunshine, had their wonted grace. Moreover, cactus and agave, frequent

  in the foreground, preserved the southern character of the scene. The

  great plain between the hills and the sea grows very impressive; so

  silent it is, so mournfully desolate, so haunted with memories of

  vanished glory. I looked at the Crathis—the Crati of Cosenza—here

  beginning to spread into a sea-marsh; the waters which used to flow

  over golden sands, which made white the oxen, and sunny-haired the

  children, that bathed in them, are now lost amid a wilderness poisoned

  by their own vapours.

  The railway station, like all in this region, was set about with

  eucalyptus. Great bushes of flowering rosemary scented the air, and a

  fine cassia tree, from which I plucked blossoms, yielded a subtler

  perfume. Our lunch was not luxurious; I remember only, as at all worthy

  of Sybaris, a palatable white wine called Muscato dei Saraceni.

  Appropriate enough amid this vast silence to turn one’s thoughts to the

  Saracens, who are so largely answerable for the ages of desolation that

  have passed by the Ionian Sea.

  Then on for Taranto, where we arrived in the afternoon. Meaning to stay

  for a week or two I sought a pleasant room in a well-situated hotel,

  and I found one with a good view of town and harbour. The Taranto of

  old days, when it was called Taras, or later Tarentum, stood on a long

  peninsula, which divides a little inland sea from the great sea

  without. In the Middle Ages the town occupied only the point of this

  neck of land, which, by the cutting of an artificial channel, had been

  made into an island: now again it is spreading over the whole of the

  ancient site; great buildings of yellowish-white stone, as ugly as

  modern architect can make them, and plainly far in excess of the actual

  demand for habitations, rise where Phoenicians and Greeks and Romans

  built after the nobler fashion of their times. One of my windows looked

  towards the old town, with its long sea-wall where fishermen’s nets

  hung drying, the dome of its Cathedral, the high, squeezed houses,

  often with gardens on the roofs, and the swing-bridge which links it to

  the mainland; the other gave me a view across the Mare Piccolo, the

  Little Sea (it is some twelve miles round about), dotted in many parts

  with crossed stakes which mark the oyster-beds, and lined on this side

  with a variety of shipping moored at quays. From some of these vessels,

  early next morning, sounded suddenly a furious cannonade, which

  threatened to shatter the windows of the hotel; I found it was in

  honour of the Queen of Italy, whose festa fell on that day. This

  barbarous uproar must have sounded even to the Calabrian heights; it

  struck me as more meaningless in its deafening volley of noise than any

  note of joy or triumph that could ever have been heard in old Tarentum.

  I walked all round the island part of the town; lost myself amid its

  maze of streets, or alleys rather, for in many places one could touch

  both sides with outstretched arms, and rested in the Cathedral of S.

  Cataldo, who, by the bye, was an Irishman. All is strange, but too

  close-packed to be very striking or beautiful; I found it best to

  linger on the sea-wall, looking at the two islands in the offing, and

  over the great gulf with its mountain shore stretching beyond sight. On

  the rocks below stood fishermen hauling in a great net, whilst a boy

  splashed the water to drive the fish back until they were safely

  enveloped in the last meshes; admirable figures, consummate in graceful

  strength, their bare legs and arms the tone of terra cotta. What slight

  clothing they wore became them perfectly, as is always the case with a

  costume well adapted to the natural life of its wearers. Their slow,

  patient effort speaks of immemorial usage, and it is in harmony with

  time itself. These fishermen are the primitives of Taranto; who shall

  say for how many centuries they have hauled their nets upon the rock?

  When Plato visited the Schools of Taras, he saw the same brown-legged

  figures, in much the same garb, gathering their sea-harvest. When

  Hannibal, beset by the Romans, drew his ships across the peninsula and

  so escaped from the inner sea, fishermen of Tarentum went forth as

  ever, seeking their daily food. A thousand years passed, and the fury

  of the Saracens, when it had laid the city low, spared some humble

  Tarentine and the net by which he lived. To-day the fisher-folk form a

  colony apart; they speak a dialect which retains many Greek words

  unknown to the rest of the population. I could not gaze at them long

  enough; their lithe limbs, their attitudes at work or in repose, their

  wild, black hair, perpetually reminded me of shapes pictured on a

  classic vase.

  Later in the day I came upon a figure scarcely less impressive. Beyond

  the new quarter of the town, on the ragged edge of its wide,

  half-peopled streets, lies a tract of olive orchards and of seed-land;

  there, alone amid great bare fields, a countryman was ploughing. The

  wooden plough, as regards its form, might have been thousands of years

  old; it was drawn by a little donkey, and traced in the soil—the

  generous southern soil—the merest scratch of a furrow. I could not but

  approach the man and exchange words with him; his rude but gentle face,

  his gnarled hands, his rough and scanty vesture, moved me to a deep

  respect, and when his speech fell upon my ear, it was as though I

  listened to one of the ancestors of our kind. Stopping in his work, he

  answered my inquiries with careful civility; certain phrases escaped

  me, but on the whole he made himself quite intelligible, and was glad,

  I could see, when my words proved that I understood him. I drew apart,

  and watched him again. Never have I seen man so utterly patient, so

  primaevally deliberate. The donkey’s method of ploughing was to pull

  for one minute, and then rest for two; it excited in the ploughman not

  the least surprise or resentment. Though he held a long stick in his

  hand, he never made use of it; at each stoppage he contemplated the

  ass, and then gave utterance to a long “Ah-h-h!” in a note of the most

  affectionate remonstrance. They were not driver and beast, but comrades

  in labour. It reposed the mind to look upon them.

  Walking onward in the same direction, one approaches a great wall, with

  gateway sentry-guarded; it is the new Arsenal, the pride of
Taranto,

  and the source of its prosperity. On special as well as on general

  grounds, I have a grudge against this mass of ugly masonry. I had

  learnt from Lenormant that at a certain spot, Fontanella, by the shore

  of the Little Sea, were observable great ancient heaps of murex

  shells—the murex precious for its purple, that of Tarentum yielding in

  glory only to the purple of Tyre. I hoped to see these shells, perhaps

  to carry one away. But Fontanella had vanished, swallowed up, with all

  remnants of antiquity, by the graceless Arsenal. It matters to no one

  save the few fantastics who hold a memory of the ancient world dearer

  than any mechanic triumph of to-day. If only one could believe that the

  Arsenal signified substantial good to Italy! Too plainly it means

  nothing but the exhaustion of her people in the service of a base ideal.

  The confines of this new town being so vague, much trouble is given to

  that noble institution, the dazio. Scattered far and wide in a dusty

  wilderness, stand the little huts of the officers, vigilant on every

  road or by-way to wring the wretched soldi from toilsome hands. As

  became their service, I found these gentry anything but amiable; they

  had commonly an air of ennui, and regarded a stranger with surly

  suspicion.

  When I was back again among the high new houses, my eye, wandering in

  search of any smallest point of interest, fell on a fresh-painted

  inscription:—

  “

  ALLA

  MAGNA

  GRAECIA

  .

  STABILIMENTO

  IDROELETTROPATICO

  .”

  was well meant. At the sign of “Magna Graecia” one is willing to accept

  “hydroelectropathic” as a late echo of Hellenic speech.

  CHAPTER V

  DULCE GALAESI FLUMEN

  Taranto has a very interesting Museum. I went there with an

  introduction to the curator, who spared no trouble in pointing out to

  me all that was best worth seeing. He and I were alone in the little

  galleries; at a second or third visit I had the Museum to myself, save

  for an attendant who seemed to regard a visitor as a pleasant novelty,

  and bestirred himself for my comfort when I wanted to make sketches.

  Nothing is charged for admission, yet no one enters. Presumably, all

  the Tarentines who care for archaeology have already been here, and

  strangers are few.

  Upon the shelves are seen innumerable miniature busts, carved in some