Trevi and the Temple of Clitumnus

  

 

 

In the vicinity of Trevi Edward Hutton visited the Temple of the ancient river god, Clitumnus.* In this brief chapter he quoted the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, as well as Roman authors Pliny and Virgil.

 

 

The way from Foligno to Trevi takes one at once almost into Virgilian country, the valley of the Clitumnus. If the night is spent at Montefalco—not so daring an adventure as it seems—one must drive to Trevi by a way as pleasant as any in the world, following the river as it flows, and crossing both river and railway to climb up to Trevi. But the way by San Martino is beautiful exceedingly, and the torrents after the rain only add to the charm of the road. All travellers have wondered at Trevi since she perched herself on the top of her precipitous hill, and though few of them visited her on her lonely height, she impressed her memory upon them even from a distance….

 

Well, I was tired, too, when I came to Trevi at sunset, and the inn was poor even for an Umbrian albergo. But I forgot the poverty of my room in the relief of being able to sleep; and, indeed, the bed was soft and clean, things common in Italy even in the poorest places….

 

In this Virgilian country, Hutton quoted eight lines from Virgil's second Georgic that mentioned snowy flocks and sacred bulls bathing in the river.

 

The white, the snowy flocks of Clitumnus, where are they now? And the bull that bathed in the sacred stream before it was led the chiefest victim to the temples of the gods, the triumphs of Rome; and those temples, are they quite gone from our world? Let us see.

 

As you set out for Spello, if you are wise enough to go by road--it is but twelve miles--when you have passed a third of the way you come to a tiny Temple high over the stream, which here among the trees and the grass has its source. And it is the Temple of the river god that you look on, in all its little splendour of silence and ruin. At least, I hope it is; but some speak of a Christian building and will not listen to Pliny. But however that may be, it is a place too beautiful for any to pass by. I confess that, following the advice of the younger Pliny, I bathed there beneath the glancing, whispering poplars, and found, as he had said, the water as cold as snow. But in vain, in vain, I looked for the god Clitumnus and could not find him, though Pliny said that he was there, “not naked but adorned with the toga”. And then in the shade, within sound of the beautiful river, I read again in Virgil. Is it not thus one might desire to spend endless days?

But for the traveller by road the sun is ever something of a god; imperious as he is, he commands our days. He was slanting down the sky, reminding me that Spello was still far and I alone, and night would follow him. So I set out at last with regret; and later I came to San Giacomo in Poseta, where I saw some of the finest Lo Spagnas in Italy, especially a Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, his masterpiece, though stolen from Filippo Lippi. And so I came to the gates of Spoleto.

 

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*Note. The river is now called the Clitunno and flows into a tributary of the Tiber.

 

Edward Hutton: Assisi and Umbria Revisited, London, 1953. Pp. 67-69.