and assailing him with more than usual impudence, he raised his fowl. ing-piece to his shoulder, and fired into the midst of them: several fell, and Don Luigi fled but in Sicily the only crimes which meet with universal indignation and certain punishment are those committed against the priesthood: the whole country was up in arms; men, women, and children joined in the pursuit, and the culprit was soon taken by dint of large sums of money he continued to defer his trial till the wounded all recovered, when, after the sacrifice of his whole property, and an imprisonment of two years, he was merely sentenced to perpetual banishment from Catania.

Our first movement at the Leon d'oro was to go to bed: having there enjoyed a few hours of comfortable repose, after the bivouac of the preceding night, I arose before my companion, and hastened, or rather flew on the wings of impatience to the fountain of Arethusa. I needed no guide but Cicero, who directed me along the ramparts of the city towards the extremity of the island, where I found the fountain, in the very situation which he designates, protected by a bastion of the wall from the encroachment of the sea, but diminished in size, and possessing neither its sweet waters, nor those sacred fish, which even in the extremity of famine were not to be touched without the vengeance of offended deities; not a vestige remained of its former splendour, of Diana's grove, or that statue of the goddess which adorned its banks; but I beheld Arethusa, the lovely Arethusa, so celebrated in songs of ancient minstrelsy, and so honoured in the choicest specimens of numismatic art, despoiled of all her charms, and degraded to the vile office of a public wash-tub. Instead of Diana's train, a tribe of bare-legged nymphs, with their petticoats tied above their knees, were dabbling in the stream, and soiling its purity by their daily occupation. Sad mortification this to one's classical predilections! The appearance of a stranger excited the most clamorous demands for charity amidst the conclave, and I was obliged to throw them all my small change for the sake of quiet. I then ventured to inquire, if this were the fountain

42

ACCOUNT OF ARETHUSA AND ALPHEUS.

Arethusa?"Chi saccia?" (or who knows?) was the interrogative answer, which, amongst the Sicilians, always implies ignorance of the question: one good woman, however, of more respectable appearance than the rest, wishing to impart all the information in her power, scrambled up the rock, and with much naivetè and vast variety of gesture, repeated to me a long story about a beautiful signorina of ancient times, who being persecuted by a terrible magician, fled to this spot and drowned herself in the fountain; her pursuer coming up and finding her dead body, changed the water out of revenge from sweet to bitter, and then threw himself headlong into the sea, where the waves have been in a state of perturbation ever since: the narrator then directed me to look over the wall into the great harbour, where I might see them still boiling up from the efforts of that wicked enchanter endeavouring to escape the pains of purgatory. I was amused with this piece of popular superstition, of which the principal circumstances bear a near resemblance to the old Grecian legend, and having rewarded the communicator, I turned towards an angle of the bastion, from whence I perceived a very strong ebullient spring rising with considerable violence to the surface of the water. It is called l'Occhio di Zilica, and is supposed by Arezzi and others to be the identical Alpheus emerging from his submarine excursion. This, however, is but the dream of an antiquarian: the ancients imagined, absurdly enough to be sure, that Alpheus rose in the very fountain of the nymph*; nor does any one, among the ancient poets or historians, allude to his exit in the harbour, or make mention of this ebullition: it proceeds probably from the same source as the fountain itself, and has been occa

Thus Virgil:-Alpheum fama est huc Elidis amnem

Occultas egisse vias subter mare, qui nunc

Ore, Arethusa, tuo Siculis confunditur undis.---Æn. iii.

And also Silius Italicus, lib. xiv.

Hic Arethusa suo piscoso fonte receptat

Alpheum sacræ portantem signa coronæ.

Pindar alludes to the exit of Alpheus within the island, by the expression 'Aμrvévμa σeμvòr ̓Αλφεοῦ.

ACCOUNT OF ARETHUSA AND ALPHEUS.

43

sioned by some of those violent earthquakes, which are recorded as having frequently changed the waters of Arethusa from sweet to bitter, and from bitter to sweet: some antiquarians even suppose the situation of the fountain itself to have been changed by the same causes, and that it formerly existed in the vicinity of Diana's temple; in which opinion I should be inclined to coincide, did not Cicero's description so accurately designate the present locality. Few things are more extraordinary than this blind belief of the ancients in the incredible story of Alpheus and Arethusa: poets indeed are licensed persons, and regular traders in fiction since the world began; but when so grave a character as Pliny* assures us seriously, in a treatise upon natural philosophy, that the garlands of conquerors and the dung of victims at the Olympian games, when thrown into the Alpheus, reappeared at Syracuse in the fountain of Arethusa, it is impossible to forbear smiling at the philosophy of antiquity. The origin of the fable is difficult to be accounted for; perhaps it may be referred to the lively genius and imagination which distinguished the Greeks, joined to that natural attachment of the mind to whatever in a foreign country recals to its recollection the beauties of our native land. At Pisa in Arcadia, was a beautiful spring from which two streams issued, called Alpheus and Arethusa; the Ortygian colonists observing a submarine stream in the island, for that of Arethusa is found to flow under the small harbour where it branches out in different directions†, invented the fable, and applied the old names to this newly-discovered favourite; the

• "Quædam flumina odio maris ipsa subeunt vada, sicut Arethusa Fons Syracusanus, in quo redduntur jacta in Alpheum qui per Olympiam fluvius Peloponnesiaco littori infunditur." Nat. Hist. lib. ii. "Et illa miraculi plena, Arethusam Syracusis fimum redolere per Olympia, verique simile quoniam Alpheus in ea insula sub ima maria permeat." Lib. xxxi. This idea spread also in Peloponnesus itself, for the priests of the Goddess of Safety at Egium in Achaia used to throw offerings from the altar into the sea, saying, they sent them to Arethusa in Sicily. Pausan. in Achaicis, xxiv. 2.

The channels were seen by Fazzello, and the waters are always found discoloured after heavy rains, probably from the sail of Acradina, in which are the springs.

G 2

44

CASTELLO DI MANIACE.

story grew, and Arethusa increased in fame with the celebrity of Syracuse *

Proceeding along the walls to the extreme point of the island, I observed a strong fort, called Il Castello di Maniace,' which defends the entrance of the harbour opposite to Plemmyrium. An ancient castle stood on this spot, which the Saracens destroyed in the year 878, when Syracuse was conquered by these barbarians, and lost its title of capital of Sicily. In the year 1038, George Maniaces, a general of the Byzantine emperor, with the assistance of the Normans, dispossessed the Mahometans of their conquest, and built the present fortress after a lapse of two years, the infidels returned in great force, and obliged the governor to evacuate, not only the fort, but the city; which he did by capitulation, reserving to himself the right of carrying off what christian relics he pleased. Happy ages! when the piety of a general could atone for the failure of his arms, and when the possession of a beatified mummy was deemed an equivalent for the loss of a capital! Maniaces, by virtue of his treaty, pounced upon the canonized bones of St. Eutychius, a worthy old bishop of Syracuse, and St. Clement, an honest Benedictine monk: but his greatest treasure was the body of Santa Lucia herself, the virgin martyr, and patroness of Syracuse, which he tore from the marble jaws of the tomb, and conveyed on board his ship: to make the party complete, he then sailed to Catania, where either by entreaties or by menaces, or both, he gained possession of its patroness Saint Agatha with her sacred veil, leaving thereby the unfortunate inhabitants exposed, without protection, to the next torrent which Mount Etna should vomit forth. With this ines

* It seems from Procopius (Vand. Rer. l. iii.) that in his time this fountain gave its name to the great harbour.

+ This veil, which covered the body of the Saint at her martyrdom, is the only infallible remedy that has yet been discovered by the Catanians, against an eruption of lava: being spread out before the torrent, it has the power of arresting its progress, or turning its direction. This surprising quality was discovered exactly one year after her death, during a terrible eruption of Mount Etna, when the in

INFAMOUS CONDUCT OF A MARQUESS GERACI.

45

timable cargo, he sailed to Constantinople, and laid his trophies at the feet of Theodora: the ultimate fate of the bishop and abbot is unknown; but the ladies have been recovered by their respective cities, and reinstated in their former honours*.

The castle, after its capture, was completed by the Saracens, and was a noble structure; but in 1704, the magazine being struck with lightning, 300 barrels of gunpowder exploded, and blew the greatest part of it into the air, destroying thirty-three Spaniards belonging to the garrison. Although a vast quantity of stones fell into the city, not a single inhabitant was injured; a miracle which was dutifully ascribed to the beatified Lucia, who, with outstretched wings, hovered over the island, and protected her devoted Syracusans: could their former patroness, the Diana Ewrpa, have done more than this? The castle has been since repaired, but the only Saracenic part remaining, is a richly ornamented gateway, upon which stood formerly two brazen rams, of exquisite Greek workmanship: turning upon pivots, like vanes, they served to point out the direction of the wind, which, blowing into their mouths, is said to have imitated the natural bleating of the animal. These monuments of ancient art were considered of such value as to be accepted by the infamous Giovanni Ventimiglia, Marquess of Geraci, from Alphonso King of Arragon and Sicily, as a recompence for his base services to that monarch; he having decoyed twenty Syracusan nobles, suspected of treason, into this fortress, and treacherously murdered them all during the conviviality of an entertainment†. When this wretch died, the memorials of his infamy were placed upon his

habitants bethought themselves of such a defence. "Nec spes eos fefellit," says Guarnerius (Dissert. iii. de Martyr. S. Agathæ, p. 58), "Simul ac enim sanctum illud vexillum furenti flammæ opponebatur, immobilis ea consistebat, nec amplius grassabatur. O vim fidei! O summam amoris potentiam! O immotum divinarum promissionum robur!" According to the abovementioned historian, the speeches and actions of this young lady before the Roman governor Quintianus, like those of many other virgin martyrs, were very devoutly immodest.

Saint Agatha was brought from Constantinople by two men named Geslibert and Goselin, and deposited in her native city, August 7th, 1127. These two benefactors were buried at Catania, and held in high estimation for their good services.-Vid. Guarnerii Dissert. iv. de translatione S. Agathæ, p. 66. + This horrid transaction occurred A. D. 1448. Vide Fazzello, Dec. 1, lib. iv.