Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1850 edition. Excerpt: ...they were removed by Count Roger. It is uncertain whether this was the theatre in which Alcibiades kept the Catanians engaged in useless debate, while his soldiers were making themselves masters of the city, but it appears more probable that it was of a later date. Adjoining these ruins is the Odeum, or small theatre, a considerable portion of which, and of the seats for the audience, is visible above ground. This appendage to a larger 126 BATHS. theatre was for some time supposed to be the only structure of the kind in existence, but a similar one has since been discovered in the grounds attached to the villa once occupied by Lucien Bonaparte at Frascati. The warm and cold baths, but particularly the former, are interesting, as the furnaces for heating water, and the rooms for the use of bathers, have been excavated, and may still be traced. Near the fire-place there is a niche, the precise object of which antiquaries were long perplexed in determining, until some one decided that it was a vapour bath, where those afflicted with lumbago and sciatica were accustomed to receive the fumes in the most convenient posture. Various other remains, such as tombs, tesselated pavements, and the ruins of a temple, said to be of Ceres, are pointed out by the ciceroni, but in so mutilated a condition as scarcely to deserve the attention of a traveller when on the spot, much less to justify the inflicting on my readers a description of them here. CHAPTER VIII. jETNA.--ITS GENERAL FEATURES. ANCIENT MENTION OF IT.--DIFFERENT ERUPTIONS.--NICOLOSI. SIGNOR GEMMELLARO.--CONE SUNSET. CASA INGLESA. SUNRISE.--CRATER. MONTE ROSSO.--FOSSA BELLA PALOMBA. RETURN HOME. September 19.--JEtna is, at Catania, the great and absorbing object of curiosity. The name by...