The Boar of Benevento.

CHAPTER XXV.

BENEVENTO.

BENEVENTO is extremely dirty, and as curious and interesting as it is dirty. Roman, Egyptian, and mediæval remains are all mixed up together in picturesque confusion. It is one of the many cities said to have been founded by Diomedes, and as a proof of this we were shown the bassorelievo in the cathedral belfry of the Calydonian boar. The ancient Samnite name was Maleventum, changed by the Romans soon after

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they defeated Pyrrhus close to the town, to the present name.

We had been recommended to go to the "Locanda di Benevento," "where our bustling host" did not, like Horace's, "nearly burn his house down whilst roasting lean thrushes," because there was not a fireplace in the house. Nicóla, the obliging and remarkably goodlooking young factotum, took us to the Stella d'Italia to dine, and on our return we were

Nicóla.

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received by a pleasant-looking old woman, who immediately asked me whether I did not think her husband very handsome. Seeing I did not understand, she laid hold of Nicóla by one ear and placed him before me. "Look at him! Is he not a beauty?" said she, half in joke, half in sober earnest. I afterwards heard that Nicóla was very fond of his wife, who might easily have been his mother.

Benevento must have been a splendid town before sieges and earthquakes nearly destroyed it. For more than sixty years Naples has drawn all the rare marbles for her churches and palaces from Benevento, and yet many a poor hovel has a doorway of "cipolino," or verd antique, or a column of lovely rose-coloured marble at the street corner, to prevent carriages from carrying away the plaster.

The walls, like the rest of the town, are a queer mixture of ancient and modern. At one corner is a fine marble basso-relievo of a Roman senator standing by a large basket, which seems full of rolls of papyri. The figure has been daubed chocolate colour, and St. Panaro written underneath. Cippi, columns, prancing horses, garlands, and here and there a huge marble head, are built into the brickwork.

The great triumphal arch of Trajan is the most

TRAJAN'S TRIUMPHAL ARCH.

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beautiful and most perfect monument of the kind existing; it is called Porta Aurea, and spans the road to Foggia, as it once did the Via Appia. Splendid sculptures decorate each front representing the Dacian wars of the Emperor, his entry into Rome, his apotheosis, and, most remarkable of all, his marriage with Sabina. The rosettes in the vault are quite intact, and on either front is the inscription stating that the Roman senate and people erected it to Trajan in the seventh year of his reign, A.D. 104. While we were lost in admiration of the gateway, a loud fanfare from a most discordant trumpet startled us.

Only small things, such as chickens, pigeons, eggs, &c., can pay the octroi at Porta Aurea, so whenever oxen or sheep, or a cart with wine or charcoal, comes along the Foggia road, the gatekeeper blows his trumpet to warn the guards to look out for smugglers along the line of wall leading to the other town-gate opposite the railway station. The gatekeeper was most communicative, and told me that the inscriptions had been in letters of pure gold, which even the "pagans" had respected when they took Benevento; but those "cani di Francesi " (French dogs) had lit great fires along the architrave and melted them. He also informed