the great drama of Athens.  And here is testimony to the fact:  all manner of comic masks, of grotesque visages; mouths distorted into impossible grins, eyes leering and goggling, noses extravagant.  I sketched a caricature of Medusa, the anguished features and snaky locks travestied with satiric grimness.  You remember a story which illustrates this scoffing habit:  how the Roman Ambassador, whose Greek left something to be desired, excited the uproarious derision of the assembled Tarentines—­with results that were no laughing matter.

I used the opportunity of my conversation with the Director of the Museum to ask his aid in discovering the river Galaesus.  Who could find himself at Taranto without turning in thought to the Galaesus, and wishing to walk along its banks?  Unhappily, one cannot be quite sure of its position.  A stream there is, flowing into the Little Sea, which by some is called Galeso; but the country-folk commonly give it the name of Gialtrezze.  Of course I turned my steps in that direction, to see and judge for myself.

To skirt the western shore of the Mare Piccolo I had to pass the railway station, and there I made a few inquiries; the official with whom I spoke knew not the name Galeso, but informed me that the Gialtrezze entered the sea at a distance of some three kilometres.  That I purposed walking such a distance to see an insignificant stream excited the surprise, even the friendly concern, of my interlocutor; again and again he assured me it was not worth while, repeating emphatically, “Non c’e novita.”  But I went my foolish way.  Of two or three peasants or fishermen on the road I asked the name of the little river I was approaching; they answered, “Gialtrezze.”  Then came a man carrying a gun, whose smile and greeting invited question.  “Can you tell me the name of the stream which flows into the sea just beyond here?” “Signore, it is the Galeso.”

My pulse quickened with delight; all the more when I found that my informant had no tincture of the classics, and that he supported Galeso against Gialtrezze simply as a question of local interest.  Joyously I took leave of him, and very soon I was in sight of the river itself.  The river?  It is barely half a mile long; it rises amid a bed of great reeds, which quite conceal the water, and flows with an average breadth of some ten feet down to the seashore, on either side of it bare, dusty fields, and a few hoary olives.

The Galaesus?—­the river beloved by Horace; its banks pasturing a famous breed of sheep, with fleece so precious that it was protected by a garment of skins?  Certain it is that all the waters of Magna Graecia have much diminished since classic times, but (unless there have been great local changes, due, for example, to an earthquake) this brook had always the same length, and it is hard to think of the Galaesus as so insignificant.  Disappointed, brooding, I followed the current seaward, and upon the shore, amid scents of mint and rosemary, sat down to rest.