to which it is possible
to assign them, we are forced to refer to the same period of
construction, hewn as they were to the height of a thousand feet in the
solid rock, vied in boldness with almost any achievement of Roman
engineering. The smallness of the space--for the lower part of the
island within which these relics are crowded is little more than a mile
and a half either way--adds to the sense of wonder which the size and
number of these creations excite. All that remains too, it must be
remembered, is the work of but a few years. There is no ground for
believing that anything of importance was added after the death of
Tiberius or begun before the old age of Augustus.

We catch glimpses indeed of the history of the island long before its
purchase by the aged Emperor. Its commanding position at the mouth of
the great Campanian bay raised it into importance at a very early
period. The Teleboes whom tradition named as its first inhabitants have
left only a trace of their existence in the verse of Vergil; but in the
great strife between the Hellenic and Tyrrhenian races for the
commercial monopoly of Southern Italy Capri, like Sorrento, was seized
as a naval station by the Etruscans, whose alliance with the Phoenicians
in their common war against the Greeks may perhaps explain the vague
legends of a Semitic settlement on the island. The Hellenic victory of
Cumae however settled the fate of Capri, as it settled the fate of the
coast; and the island fell to the lot of Neapolis when the "new city"
rose in the midst of the bay to which it has since given its name. The
most enduring trace of its Greek colonization is to be found in the
Greek type of countenance and form which endears Capri to artists; but
like the cities of the mainland it preserved its Greek manners and
speech long after it had passed with Neapolis into the grasp of Rome.
The greater proportion of its inscriptions, even when dating from the
Imperial period, are in Greek. Up to the time of Augustus however it
played in Roman story but the humble part of lighting the great
corn-fleet from Egypt through the Strait of Sorrento. Statius tells us
of the joy with which the sailors welcomed the glare of its Pharos as
they neared the land, the greeting they addressed to its cliff, while on
the other hand they poured their libations to the goddess whose white
temple gleamed from the headland of Sorrento. Its higher destinies began
with a chance visit of Augustus wh