In The Steps of Aeneas

Extract

Few places in the world can possess more historical associations than the small stretch of country that reaches from Naples west-ward to the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is known as the ‘Campi Flegrei’, ‘the Burning Fields’, on account of the volcanic activity that has characterized it from the earliest times, and which the recent eruption of Vesuvius shows to be still a formidable feature of the neighbour-hood. In a space of some fifty square miles it contains names which have become the commonplaces of history and legend—Baia, Cuma, Pozzuoli, Averno—places associated for ever with a thousand famous and infamous men—Nero, Ovid, St. Paul, Hannibal, Augustus, Gregory the Great, Totila, Petrarch, Garibaldi. But for many it will be best remembered and most eagerly studied as the scene of the sixth book of the Aeneid; for the story of the Trojan hero's descent to the regions of the dead, while it is one of the greatest pieces of imaginative writing in existence, has a solid foundation in reality. Not only its atmosphere but also its topography can be recaptured to this day in the ‘Campi Flegrei’ a few miles from Naples.

That Virgil was well acquainted with this district is beyond doubt, even without the evidence of the sixth book of the Aeneid. The Georgics were written at Naples; and the poet, as friend and admirer of Augustus, must have spent many days among the emperor’s favourite haunts, examinig the famous landmarks and whatching the progress of the great engineering programmes that were being carried out in the Gulf of Pozzuoli.