THE TIBER

STROTHER A. SMITH

HOUGH the Tiber is insignificant in size, compared

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with the great rivers of the world, it is one of the most famous, and even its tributaries, down to the smallest brook, have some historical or poetic association connected with them, or exhibit some singular natural peculiarity. Its stream is swelled by the superfluous waters of the historic Thrasymene; its affluents, the Velino and the Anio, form the celebrated Cascades of Terni and Tivoli; the Clitumnus and the Nar are invested with poetic interest by the verses of Virgil, Ovid, and Silius Italicus; while the Chiana presents the singular phenomenon of a river which, within the historic period, has divided itself into two, and now forms a connecting link between the Arno and the Tiber, discharging a portion of its waters into each. The smaller streams, also, the Cremera, the Allia, and the Almo, have each their legend, historical, or mythological; while the rivulet of the Aqua Crabra, or Marrana, recalls the memory of Cicero and his litigation with the company which supplied his establishment at Tusculum with water from the brook.

The Tiber rises nearly due east of Florence, and on the opposite side of the ridge which gives birth to the Arno. It issues in a copious spring of limpid water, which at the distance of a mile has force enough to turn

a mill. If we are to believe Bacci, it exhales so warm a vapour that snow, notwithstanding the elevation of the region, will not lie along its course within half a mile. For a distance of fifty-six miles it flows in a south-easterly direction through an elevated valley, in the upper part of which the cold, according to Pliny the younger, who had a villa there, was too great for the olive, and where the snow often accumulates to a considerable depth. Not far from Perugia it turns to the south, and about fourteen miles lower down by the windings of the stream, receives its first affluent, the Chiascia, which brings with it the Topino (anciently Tineas), and the waters of the classic Clitumnus, known to the readers of Virgil, Propertius, and Silius Italicus as the river on whose banks were bred, and in whose stream were washed, "the milk-white oxen which drew the Roman triumphs to the temples of the gods," and the same which is so picturesquely described by the younger Pliny. At a place called La Vene, one of the sources of the Clitumnus rises at the foot of a hill. Like the fountain of Vaucluse, it issues a small river from the earth, and according to Pliny, had sufficient depth of water to float a boat. It is clear as crystal, delightfully cool in summer, and of an agreeable warmth in winter. Near it stands a temple once sacred to the river god, but now surmounted by the triumphant cross. It seems to have been a favourite place of resort for the Romans, as far as their limited means of locomotion would permit; since even the ferocious Caligula, as Suetonius tells us, attended by his body-guard of Batavians, was among the visitors to these celebrated springs. The beauty of the scenery appears to have been the attraction; for there were no mineral sources, and a refined superstition would have

prevented the Romans from availing themselves of the agreeable temperature of the water to indulge in the luxury of bathing, rivers near near their sources being accounted sacred, and polluted by the contact of a naked body. Of all the misdeeds of Nero none, perhaps, contributed more to his unpopularity than his swimming, during one of his drunken frolics, in the source of the Aqua Marcia, the same which is brought by the aqueduct to Rome, and which rises in the mountains of the Abruzzi, where Nero was staying at the time.

When the news of this act of profanation arrived in the city it created a great sensation; and an illness with which he was shortly afterwards seized was attributed to the anger of the god.

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Seven miles lower down on the right, the Tiber receives the Nestore, a large and impetuous torrent, or torrentaccio, as it is called by the Italians. The Nestore, where it enters the Tiber flows in a bed of sand and shingle no less than a third of a Roman mile in width, and after heavy rains must bring down an enormous body of water. the Cina, one of its tributaries, by means of a tunnel, the overflow of the lake of Thrasymene is discharged. The emissary originates in the south-eastern bay of the lake, but when, or by whom, the work was executed is a matter of dispute. Thirty and a half miles further on, the Tiber is joined by the Chiana (anciently Clanis), which, after uniting with the Paglia, flows into it on the same side as the Nestore and in the neighbourhood of Orvieto.

The Paglia rises in the high volcanic mountain of Monte Amiata, and in summer is nearly dry; but its broad stony channel at Acquapendente shows what a contribution it must bring to the main stream in time of floods.