y,
having leapt on to him, began to scratch his back, bite his ears,
stroke his sides. Suddenly, porker was uppermost and the cat,
pretending to struggle for life, under his forefeet. It was the only
amusing incident I met with at Squillace, and the sole instance of
anything like cheerful vitality.

Above the habitations stand those prominent ruins which had held my eye
during our long ascent. These are the rugged walls and windows of a
monastery, not old enough to possess much interest, and, on the
crowning height, the heavy remnants of a Norman castle, with one fine
doorway still intact. Bitterly I deplored the gloomy sky which spoiled
what would else have been a magnificent view from this point of
vantage--a view wide-spreading in all directions, with Sila northwards,
Aspromonte to the south, and between them a long horizon of the sea.
Looking down upon Squillace, one sees its houses niched among huge
masses of granite, which protrude from the scanty soil, or clinging to
the rocky surface like limpet shells. Was this the site of Scylaceum,
or is it, as some hold, merely a mediaeval refuge which took the name
of the old city nearer to the coast? The Scylaceum of the sixth century
is described by Cassiodorus--a picture glowing with admiration and
tenderness. It lay, he says, upon the side of a hill; nay, it hung
there "like a cluster of grapes," in such glorious light and warmth
that, to his mind, it deserved to be called the native region of the
sun. The fertility of the Country around was unexampled; nowhere did
earth yield to mortals a more luxurious life. Quoting this description,
Lenormant holds that, with due regard to time's changes, it exactly
fits the site of Squillace. Yet Cassiodorus says that the hill by which
you approached the town was not high enough to weary a traveller, a
consideration making for the later view that Scylaceum stood very near
to the Marina of Catanzaro, at a spot called Roccella, where not only
is the nature of the ground suitable, but there exist considerable
traces of ancient building, such as are not discoverable here on the
mountain top. Lenormant thought that Roccella was merely the sea-port
of the inland town. I wish he were right. No archaeologist, whose work
I have studied, affects me with such a personal charm, with such a
sense of intellectual sympathy, as Francois Lenormant--dead, alas,
before he could complete his delightful book. But one fears that, in
this instance, he ju