25 February–3 March 1833

Still, melancholy old metropolis ! under the moon, last eve, how wan and grey it looked. Took a boat this morning and crossed the Porto Maggiore and sailed up the mouth of the river Anapus; full of canes and bulrushes and snails, and a very little, narrow, mean puddle to be famed in song. We did not go up so far as the fountain Cyane, but disembarked about three miles lower, where the stream was an oar's length wide. It was a pretty fable of Pluto's metamorphosis of Cyane, and if we had more time should have stamped on the very ground where " gloomy Dis " stamped, and the rather that our "plan" afterwards showed us this was the spot of the Athenian encampment. No wonder Proserpine gathered flowers ; they grow everywhere of prettiest forms and liveliest col- ours now in February, and I stopped ever and anon to pick them. On the banks of the Anapus grows the papyrus, the immortal plant. It is a sightly clean, green triangular stem, 20 feet high, surmounted by a bunch of threads which the people call parroca (periwig). We cut down a good many, and then crossed the fields to the columns of the Temple of Olympian Jove.

At dinner, a Frate dei Padri Capuccini was announced, who brought olives and lemons in his hand, and would accompany us to the Lato- mie of the church of St. John. Thither we went, and descended into subterranean caverns cut regularly in the living rock. Two Fathers and two boys attended with torches. On each side of the main passages were catacombs, some larger, some less. Occasionally the ceiling was vaulted up to admit light and air. I asked how far these long passages extended ; the friar said, he knew not how far, but the air was bad, and no one went further than we. Cicero visited them be- fore us.