e days--sometimes several days in succession--that the sea is
high and the boats cannot run between Naples, Sorrento, and Capri; and
the enforced seclusion is still the seclusion of the poet's dream. For
he shares it with Mithras, the "unconquered god of the sun," whose cult
influenced all the monarchs of Europe and who holds his court in the
Grotto de Matrimonia. Into this grotto one descends by a flight of
nearly two hundred feet; he strolls among the ruins of the villa of
Tiberius, where the very air is still vital and vocal with those strange
and tragic chapters of Roman life. The Emperor Augustus first founded
here palaces and aqueducts. Tiberius, who retired to Capri in the year
27 A.D., had his architects build twelve villas, in honor of the gods,
the largest of these being for Jupiter and known as the Villa Jovis. In
31 A.D. occurred that dramatic episode in Roman history, the fall of
Sejanus, and six years later Tiberius died. The vast white marble baths
he had built for him are now submerged on the coast, and boats glide
over the spot where they stood. The Villa Jovis stood on a cliff seven
hundred feet above the sea, and the traditions of the barbarities and
atrocities that took place there still haunt the island. The natives
apparently regard them as a certain title to fame, but the wise tourists
persistently ignore horrors; life is made for joy, sweetness, and charm;
it is far wiser to think on these things.

And there is charm and joy to spare on lovely Capri. "Sea-mists are
frequent in the early summer mornings, swathing the cliffs of Capri and
brooding on the smooth water till the day wind rises," says John
Addington Symonds. "Then they disappear like magic, rolling in
smoke-wreaths from the surface of the sea, condensing into clouds and
climbing the hills like Oceanides in quest of Prometheus, or taking
their station on the watch towers of the world as in the chorus of the
Nephelai. Such a morning may be chosen for the _giro_ of the island. The
Blue Grotto loses nothing of its beauty, but rather gains by contrast,
when passing from dense fog you find yourself transported to a world of
wavering subaqueous sheen. It is only through the very topmost arch that
a boat can glide into this cavern; the arch itself spreads downward
through the water so that all the light is transmitted from beneath and
colored by the sea. Outside the magic world of pantomime there is
nothing to equal these effects of blue and sil