Sessa Aurunca and Cicero

After his stay in Naples, Edward Hutton toured the Campania. He visited ancient Sessa Aurunca and nearby Formia, the site of the villa of Marcus Tullius Cicero, the ancient Roman lawyer, writer, and orator. Here is his account of the tragic death of that famous man.

   

There used to be places in the world as it were enchanted: one of these was Sessa Aurunca. Sessa remained to us from the Golden Age and perhaps in the Golden Age all Italy was as spellbound. The little town lay in a groin of antique lava, a combe rather, of the old volcano Roccamonfina, and was the ancient centre of the Aurunci who have left their name to the half ruined but still serviceable Roman bridge, whose majestic ivy-clad arches I used so often to visit.

 

And what a scene was there! The Gulf of Gaeta lay before one, not to be outdone for beauty. The coast curved like a sickle and Gaeta on its great headland, visionary, seemingly immaterial, half divined, closed the view westward. There in the inmost curve of the coast lay Formia where from his villa Cicero was used so often to write to Atticus. Southwood Monte Massico closed the view caressed by the bluest of seas. Somewhere there the Liris wandered. One seemed to be living in a picture by Claude, in a landscape serene and ideal like something in a dream. Here were the gracious trees, the broken fountain, the lonely stone-pine on the hillside. And there surely under the cypress a goatherd watched his sparse flock—I seemed to hear the faint notes of his pipe, while all the earth lay Danae to the sun….

 

Where has it gone? The broad black tarmac motor road has blotted out the dust and the stones of the Via Appia, the exhaust of the automobiles have silenced my shepherd’s pipe, the ruins of the Romans, rather tidied up, remain amid the ruins of my vision. …

 

I left Minturno in the evening light which glorified the exquisite classic landscape through which I passed almost in a dream, to Formia. There to find my friend and to sleep for I had had a long day, and, though the distance was not great, the days when I used to tramp all over Italy and scarcely feel tired were now long ago.  So Formia it was;  and after dinner I went to bed and as one will when weary began to think over the day, and then of Cicero and his villa here at Formia and his letters to Atticus and of the horrible end that came of it all in this very place.

 

It was Petrarch who loved and reproached him in one of those strange letters he wrote to Cicero’s Shade—it was Petrarch who asked him: “Why did you entangle yourself in so much contention, in such utterly profitless quarrels? Why did you forsake the leisure more suited to your age, your profession and your station in life? What madness drove you to assail Antony?”

 

Oh, have we not all asked him that?

 

But when he delivered those Philippics he was at the height of his glory, overwhelmed by rapturous applause, the very hero of the scene. … But those with whom he was dealing—did he not divine, did he not know, they were all selfish, cold-hearted place-seekers, politicians eager only to be in with the victor whoever and whatever he might b? And so when the fatal news arrived of the inion of Lepidus with Antony, the defection of Octavianus, who was actually marching on Rome itself, it was evident that all was lost. The usurpers were triumphant, and the lists of the proscribed—well, they could not but include the name of Marcus Tullius Cicero.

 

Warned of his danger at his Tusculan villa, he set out for the coast and embarked at Antium, but like Marius was driven by weather to land and make his way to Formiae, where sick in body and mind he sought his beloved villa, resolved no longer to fly from his fate. “Let me die in the country I have so often saved.” But as Antony’s murderers approached, his attendants forced him into a litter and hurried him through the woods towards the shore. They were overtaken and prepared to defend their master with their lives. But the old man bade them set down the litter and, holding his chin with his left hand as his wont was, he looked steadily on his murderers being as he was all squalid and unshorn; his countenance wasted with care; and stretching out of the litter he called upon his murderers to strike.

 

They cut off his head and his hands, which had written the Philippics, and bore them to Rome, where by the orders of Antony they were nailed to the Rostra after Fulvia, Antony’s wife, had thrust a hairpin through the tongue.

 

Cicero was in his sixty-fourth year. No one, not even those who have loved him best, can altogether defend the weakness of his character, inconsistent and irresolute as it was. But his death was courageous…and his death pays for all the weaknesses of his life. He was a good man. Besides, perhaps we owe to him and to Vergil the survival of Latin culture and civilization.

 

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Edward Hutton: Naples and Campania Revisited. London, 1958.Preface. Pp. 137-144.

Christmas Prophesy

 

 

 

Occasionally Edward Hutton would report on discussions he had with Italian friends. On one spring day he visited a friend at a Camaldoli monastery outside of Naples, and found him engaged in a heated discussion with a visiting French professor. They were discussing the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, Hutton's favorite Roman poet, in which the poet, only 40 years before the birth of Christ, had mentioned the birth of a son who would usher in a Golden Age. Here is his account of part of the discussion.

 

Now during the latter part of the discussion that learned professor from Naples whom everyone reveres had arrived on the terrazza unseen by any but myself. We had exchanged glances. He now came forward and was introduced. When he was seated he turned to Dom Costanzo his host and then to the Professor from abroad.

 

“I have heard,” he said, “part of your discussion, and if you permit… It seems to me there are two ways of interpreting this lovely Eclogue of Virgil’s. Looking at in in one way it becomes a supernatural prophecy; looking at it in another way it is merely historical and deals with events of Virgil’s own time. Both ways are right. But those who would interpret the poem simply historically, for the most part modern scholars, would generally deny that there is such a thing as the supernatural and consequently must interpret the poem simply historically or leave it alone. That is surely unfortunate. Nevertheless I think they may be right, not in their prejudice, but in their interpretation, without thereby condemning their opponents as wrong. To say of any verse of Vergil’s that we have got to the bottom of it is dangerous. I think in fact that this poem is a prophecy of the birth of Christ, but I do not think Vergil knew what he was saying. In other words I believe Virgil was supernaturally inspired, but was in himself in ignorance. …”

 

“In any case,” I said, “Vergil has prophesied the Birth of Christ whether he knew it or not, whether he intended it or not, whether he was acquainted with the Messianism of the Jews, or of the time, or not, and whether we like it or not. The Fourth Eclogue as Reinach has said is ‘la premiere en date des oeuvres chretienne’.”

 

“After all,” said the Professor from Naples, “a prophecy is something which is to be fulfilled. Vergil’s poem in its Christian sense has been fulfilled. Moreover a prophesy is largely what one can make of it. Now historically one can make nothing of the fourth Eclogue. What has the birth of a son to Pollio come to? And why should the birth of a son to Pollio bring in a Golden Age? On the other hand the whole of Christian antiquity with the exception of S. Jerome, from Constantine, Lactantius, S. Augustine, Abelard, Dante and Innocent III, to Marsilio Ficino and even to Alexander Pope has accepted the poem as a prophecy that has been fulfilled in the birth of Christ. It is only now, when Christianity and with it the supernatural are denied altogether, that the supernatural content of the poem is passionately and eagerly refuted, rather through hatred and material interpretation of things than for any other reason. If the critics are right then Virgil was wrong. Credo in Virgilium.

 

Does anyone believe that the authors of Ecclesiasticus or of the Song of Songs knew they were prophesying of the Blessed Virgin? Yet assuredly they were, as the whole world for more than a millennium has testified; or that Isaiah had any but at most the vaguest notion that the Puer natus est of whom he chanted was to be the Jesus Parvulus born in a stable at Bethlemen.?

 

A prophecy is to be tested by its fulfillment, and its fulfillment is to be tested by the judicum orbis terrarium. Few are the prophets who understand what they are prophesying."

 

 

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Edward Hutton: Naples and Campania Revisited. London, 1958.Preface. Pp. 99-100.

Port of Naples

  

 

 

Edward Hutton found the port of Naples the most interesting part of the city.

 

On coming out of the Castel Nuovo I like to stroll down to the Porto, the real centre of Naples, and wander along the quays, crowded with shipping, the view dusky with masts, quite round the Porto Mercantile, built first in 1302 by Charles II of Anjou, as far as the Villa del Popolo and the Porta del Carmine. Nothing in Naples is more interesting than the life of the harbour, and no monument in the strait ways of the city more beautiful than these living ships moving and sighing against the quays, as though longing for the open sea. And if life will not content one, there is to the south beyond the Castel Nuovo and the Porto Militaire the old Arsenale di Marina and the Darsena erected and contrived in 1577 by the Viceroy Don Inigo de Mendoza; there is the Faro, founded in the fourteenth century at the end of the Molo Angioino; and there is the Porto Piccolo, the representative perhaps of the Greek harbour of Neapolis; while at the east end of the Port stands the Castel del Carmine, which Ferdinand I of Aragon built in 1484, which was seized by Masaniello when he led the revolt of the people in 1647, and which now has come to nothing—a military bakehouse.

 

Close by the Castello is the Porta del Carmine, through which one re-enters the city and comes into perhaps the most famous of all the piazzas of Naples, the Piazza del Mercato, … From the Castel del Carmine and the famous piazza one passes by the picturesque and characteristic  Strada di Lavinaio or the broad Corso Garibaldi to the Castel Capuano, La Vacaria and the great Porta Capuano…. not only the finest gate in Naples, but being as it is the entry to the oldest and most crowded  part of the city, affords such a spectacle of the life of the people as is not to be matched. The whole street within and without the great and beautiful gate, together with the Via dei Tribunale, which leads to it is a continual fair and pandemonium of noise; jostling carts, barrows, caravans of mules, herds of goats, ox wagons and innumerable companies of peasants  throng in and out; the fruiterers, the sellers of shell-fish and nauseous coloured sweet drinks, of pottery, of images and rosaries, of every kind and sort of sweetmeats and biscuits, of chestnuts and the unknowable delicacies of the people, drive a furious trade accompanied by a universal yelling and gesticulation, that in the dust and blazing sun make certainly one of the most amazing spectacles the city affords. To all of which today are added the noise and chaos of every kind of motor-car.

 

The beautiful Gate was built in the end of the fifteenth century by Giuliano da Maiano for Ferdinand I of Aragon, whose arms still adorn it. By this way Charles V entered the city in 1535 when it was splendidly decorated with statues by Giovanni da Nola. Towering over it is the cupola of the Florentine church of Santa Caterina a Formello

 

 

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Edward Hutton: Naples and Campania Revisited. London, 1958.Preface. Pp. 34-35.

Neapolitans

  

 

 

 

Here are some of Edward Hutton's observations of the people of Naples.

 

In this boiling cauldron, after a little, when one’s first distress had passed, there remained an extraordinary fascination. The life of Naples was and is the life of the streets, of the decumani, salite, scale, rampe, of which it is full; everything takes place there in these narrow ways, even the toilet; and little by little one is compelled by the obscene spirit of the city to wander continually, and, only half ashamed, to watch these poor people in all their pathetic poverty and animalism, their amazing unself-consciousness, their extraordinary and meaningless violence of gesture and speech—and yes, their joy of life. Was the Neapolitan of antiquity like this?...

 

For the Neapolitan is indeed a highly composite person. Humanity and cruelty, bravery and cowardice , openness and deceit, thrift and prodigality are all jumbled together in him and it is a puzzle to know which predominates. He is among Italy’s best soldiers—always light-hearted, facetious and pertinacious, marvellously expressive, too, in his features and gestures. He is not more dishonest than anyone else, nor does he lie maliciously, but to glorify himself and to be agreeable. He is too easy-going to be vindictive, he is emotional, but not revengeful. And to call him lazy is the most absurd and ridiculous charge ever brought against people who are essentially indefatigable. Watch the facchini at the port; the boatmen and fishermen, too, toil for hours at the oar on a bit of bread and a crock of water. And the peasants have only to be seen at work, laborious and untiring in the blazing heat, to convince one of their energy. The Neapolitan is, however, a gambler, though not perhaps more than his brother of the English working-class. He is cruel to animals, but not to children….

 Observe a Neapolitan of the upper class; he never walks, he strolls. If he is in a hurry, if he is pressed for time, he takes a cab or a taxi, but generally he strolls; passiare, he calls it. He stops to speak with a friend or greets an acquaintance with an eloquent gesture, loiters past the shop windows, lingers in the Galleria scanning the cafes, stays to read the placards before the newspaper kiosks and the bills displayed before the theatres and of course arrives late at his destination. For the Neapolitan is a flaneur of flaneurs, yet with something Spanish too, which is not surprising considering his history. …

 

This strolling, this passiare, often turns to good account, for it is the long tradition of the Neapolitans to conduct their affairs in the open air, whether it be the toilet or a business transaction. In this they are still as Greek as their remote ancestors. There in the street, in the piazza, in the Galleria the Neapolitan is most likely to be fortunate in a combinazione. And who will say he is wrong, since the open air is that which glorifies this great southern city set in the most beautiful landscape in the world.

 

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Edward Hutton: Naples and Campania Revisited. London, 1958. Pp. 3-6.

Edward Hutton revisits Naples

  

 

 

 

Revisiting Naples in 1957 after an absence that spanned two world wars, Edward Hutton's initial response was disillusion.

 

To come to Naples from Rome through the now fallen majesty of the Campagna, along that sombre road under Anagni and Montecassino, or by the Pontine Marshes under the Valerian hills, past spellbound Norma and the lilied meres of Ninfa, or to enter it first without warning out of the loneliness, the silence and the beauty of the sea is to experience an astonishing disillusion.

 

For there is nothing, I think, in all the South, nothing certainly in Italy, quite like Naples in its sordid and yet tremendous vitality, a vitality that is sterile, that wastes itself upon itself. It is still, as Bergeret the friend of Fragonard found it, the most animated city in Europe. A place so restless and noisy and confused that it might be pandemonium, so drab that it is not really redeemed even by the Castel dell’ Ovo, the Castel Nuovo and Sant’ Elmo.

 

All this meanness is emphasized and accentuated  by the unrivalled beauty of the world in which Parthenope stands, the spacious and perfect loveliness of the great bay, shining and yet half lost in all the gold of the sun, between the dreamy headlands of Sorrento, of Posilipo, of Misenum; the threatening gesture, the incomparable outline of Vesuvius, the vision of Capri, of Procida and Ischia rising out of the sea, the colour of sea and sky, of valley and mountain and curved shore. For this is Campania, the true Arcady of the Romans, and here more than anywhere else, perhaps, the forms of the past clothed in our dreams are indestructible, and will outface even such a disillusion as Naples affords.

 

In this incomparable landscape Naples stands, not like Genoa nobly about an amphitheatre of hills, nor like Palermo in an enchanted valley, but in the deepest curve of her vast and beautiful bay, at the foot of the hills and upon their slopes, beneath the great and splendid fortress of Sant’ Elmo, which towers up over the city in shining beauty and pride, the noble feature of a place that, but for it, would be almost without any monumental splendour.

 

Sant’ Elmo towers there over the city upon the west; farther away and to the north, upon a scarcely lesser height, stands the great Bourbon palace of Capodimonte, while to the east, upon the far side of the fruitful valley of the Sebethus, rises the violent pyramid of Vesuvius now without its silver streamer of smoke. Seen from afar, and especially from the sea, there can be but few places in the world comparable with this; the vast and beautiful bay closed on the west by Capo Miseno, with its sentinel islands Ischia and Procida, and on the east by the by the great headland of Sorrento more than twenty miles away as the gull flies, and defended, as it were, seaward by the island of Capri, is dominated in the very midst by the height and beauty and strangeness of Vesuvius….

Once in the city, Hutton described the pandemonium of its streets.

 

These long streets the colour of mud, built from the lava of Vesuvius, lined with tall, forbidding houses balconied with iron; those narrow salite climbing up towards Sant’ Elmo or descending to the harbour and Santa Lucia, crowded and squalid and hung everywhere with ragged clothes drying in the squalid air;…the noise that here more than any other city in the world overwhelms everything in its confusion and meanness, the howling of children, the cries of the women, the shouting of the men vainly competing with the hooting of horns, the explosion of the open exhausts of the motor vehicles, the cracking of whips, the beating of hoofs, the sirens of steamers, the innumerable bells—not only those, here so harsh, of the churches, but as I remember them the brutal gongs of trams, the bells of cows and goats; the mere hubbub of human speech that seems more deafening than it is by reason of the appalling emphasis of gesture; all this horrified and confused the stranger, chiefly perhaps, because he could find nothing definite in its confusion for the mind to seize upon—the mind indeed being half paralyzed by the flood of undistinguishable things, not one of which was characteristic, but rather all together. The mere extent of the place too, shapeless as it is, stretching for miles in all its sordidness along the seashore, appalled one; for its disorder was a violent disorder, its voice the voice of the mob, cruel, blatant, enormous, signifying nothing. 

 

 

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Edward Hutton: Naples and Campania Revisited. London, 1958. Pp.  1-3.