ancient Puteoli, where are the remains of the famous mole (or bridge as others call it) of Caligula, intended to embrace or unite the two extremes of the bay of Baiae formed on one side by Puzzuoli and on the other by cape Misenus.  We alighted to take a dejeuner a la fourchette at Puzzuoli, and then went to visit the temple of Jupiter Serapis, which is a vast edifice and tho’ in ruins very imposing.  On wandering thro’ the enceinte of this famous temple, I thought of Apollonius of Tyana and his sudden appearance to his friend Damis at the porch of this very temple, when he escaped from the fangs of Domitian and when it was believed that, by means of magic art, he had been able at once to transport himself from the Praetorium at Rome to Puteoli.  As I said before, the bay included by cape Misenus and Puzzuoli is what is called Baiae.  The land is low and marshy from Puzzuoli to a little beyond the lake Avernus; but from Monte Nuovo it begins to rise and form high cliffs nearly all way to Cape Misenus.  It was on these high cliffs that the opulent Romans built their villas and they must have been as much crowded together as the villas at Ramsgate and Broadstairs.  We embarked in a boat at Puzzuoli to cross over to Baiae (i.e., the place where the villas begin), but we stopped on our way thither at a landing place nearly in the centre of the bay in order to visit the lake Avernus and the Cave of the Cumaean Sybil, described by Virgil, as the entrance into the realm of Pluto.  The lake Avernus, in spite of its being invested by the poets with all that is terrible in the mythology as a river of Hell, looks very like any other lake, and tho’ it is impregnated with sulphur, and emits a most unpleasant smell, birds do not drop down dead on flying over it as formerly.  The ground about it is marshy and unwholesome.  The silence and melancholy appearance of this lake and its environing groves of wood are not calculated to inspire exhilarating ideas.  Full of classic souvenirs we went to descend into the Cave of the Sybil, and as we descended I could not refrain from repeating aloud Virgil’s lines: 

  Di quibus imperium est animarum umbrasque silentes,[98] etc.

This descent really is fitted to give one an idea of the descent to the shades below, and what added to the illusion was that when we arrived at the bottom of the descent and just at the entrance of the cave where the Sybil held her oracles, we discovered four fierce looking fellows with lighted torches in their hands standing at the entrance.  My friend cried out Voila les Furies, and these proved to be our boatmen who, while we were contemplating the bolge d’Averno, had run on before to provide torches to shew us the interior of the grotto of the Sybil.  As this grotto is nearly knee-deep filled with water we got on the backs of the boatmen to enter it.  It is about twenty-five feet long, fifteen broad and the height about thirteen feet.  As we were neither devoured by Cerberus nor hustled by old Charon into his boat, we returned from the Shades below to the light of heaven, triumphant like Ulysses or Aeneas, considering ourselves now among the Pauci quos aequus amavit Jupiter.[99]