Written after an unexpectedly difficult navigation in Tuscany, but an amazing find well worth the difficulty. I still wish that woman had been with me! I probably wouldn’t have written the following, but....
Knowing that a Roman ruin exists is not the same as finding it, or enjoying it. Too often ruins have been so scavenged, or so overbuilt that they are scarcely recognizable as Roman, much less than having once been a part of ancient activity, or commerce, or spirit. I had heard of a particular ruined town, Carsulae, supposedly only partially excavated, and otherwise untouched. The provincial map showed it to be south of the villa where I’m staying, just off a major highway, but with no road leading to it. Perhaps that is just as good, for if there were a good road, the site would have been overrun. With knowledge that the best of maps are not accurate, but feeling adventurous, I try to choose a route, starting from the dirt road that fronts the villa. Not 50 meters from the villa drive, there is the first intersection, and I make my first unmapped choice.
Although the dirt road I choose seems to go both south, towards Carsulae, and down hill, towards the river I must cross to get there, the road soon disappoints me. Coming out of the woods, the road begins to meander through the fields, then to ascend the hill, and finally intersects with other unmapped but nearly identical, and also unmarked, dirt roads. Each intersection is a gamble, there are no signs, no names, no indicators of population centers. The land ascends or descends seeming without being directed towards a ridge or river. There is no foresight except the sun, but as the road follows the contours of the volcanic hills, any attempt to follow the sun is meaningless.
Sometimes the roads are no better than Jeep tracks, over which my rented Opel protests the ruts and rocks. Although the roads are dry, the ruts are fossils of heavy rains, which must have come in the spring, turning the narrow tracks into impassable, probably dangerous, drainage channels. But now, clouds of dust trail every vehicle that moves; clouds that take minutes to settle, clouds that cover the car with a crust of white ash, build clods on the dead air portions of the bumpers and rear window. Following another car within a hundred meters is impossible.
Where there are any relatively level places, huge potholes, half the length or width of the car, force a twisting path along the already narrow track. Where the roads slope most severely, where the waters ran the fastest, the gullies must be bridged. Every entry to the beginning of a gully is with a strain to see the end, in the usually vain hope that the it will end without needing to be crossed.
I long for my Jeep, although I would not like to feed it the $100 every tank full would cost.
There is no turning back, for there is no place to turn. The fields along each side have been plowed by great rippers behind crawler tractors, and even my Jeep would founder if but a single wheel went off the dirt track. Finally, after some interminable time in first gear, a paved road is reached, with however the same unmarked choices as the dirt tracks I just left. Now trusting in
the sun, I make a choice, and finally a significant intersection is reached. That is, one intersection that must have caused so much confusion as to have propelled erection of some signs.
Now it is important to understand the vagaries of Italian road signs. As any road can, through manifold connections, lead to any place, no sign does any more than point out a general trend. And since, at the preceding intersection some particular array of signs had been placed, at each successive intersection honor must be given to a separate set of towns, and a different roster is posted. Sometimes, the best way is determined by aiming towards some remote place, as if to say that since Milan is generally northwest of Rome, and Venice is generally northeast, if you want to go from Todi to Perugia obviously the road to Venice is superior to the road to Pisa (of course Milan is not mentioned - one must innately understand that the way to Milan lies through Pisa). However, when there is just ahead, a town that does not appear on any map, or whose name has changed since the last cartographer recorded the town’s existence, then the priority of that town supplants any guide to the place you might actually want to get to.
Regardless, in twice or thrice the time it would have taken, had I originally backtracked the known route instead to having tried to find some direct path, I reach the highway. The highway alongside which Carsulae lies. Of course there is no mention of Carsulae on the highway exits, so once the general region is reached the challenge begins again. People ask what I saw in Italy, and seem surprised at the relatively small number of significant places I’ve been, but they do not understand the incredible amount of time it takes to find your way to any particular place. I lost track of the places I passed, and wanted to return to, but could not find again for the lack of the proper mistake at the beginning of my search. But, of such is the adventure made.
Following the same process as I used to get to the highway, and after innumerable sips at my water bottle (here, in recognition of the dry heat, water is sold in two liter bottles, not those piddling 12 ounce or 16 ounce bottles we get), I reach a fenced entrance to Carsulae. The gate is open, although I must park on the public road. As I’m locking the car, what appears to have been a student video crew, three men and a woman, are packing up their car. I take this as a good sign, an indication that there are things of visual interest within the fence.
Immediately upon entering, I am walking on a pavement of roughly shaped, large basalt cobbles. A sign announces that this is the via Flaminia, which I know from a prior trip is one of the old, primary Roman roads. Thus, this ghost town, which dates from a few years B.C., had once been a major highway settlement. Following the road, I try to catch the spirits of the thousands who must have passed here, two millennia ago. The road passes a small church, a mere 900 or a 1000 years old, which nonetheless is quite charming. Having been built after the fall of the empire, but before the elaborate designs of the urban cathedrals had filtered out to the provinces, the church is very simple. The sole remaining decorations are some worn frescos, and a window behind the altar. On examining the window, I discovered that it is not stained glass, as it first appeared, but a thin, rectangular slab of stone. It appears to be agate, it has the ochre stripes, but it may be a colored form of the alabaster that is so prevalent in the area of Volterra.
A man has read my entry into the guest book. He turns to me and my children with a broad smile, and thickly accented, says “Welcome New Jersey, welcome to this place”. I smile back, thank him in English, and then realizing that he has apparently exhausted his supply of English, I switch to my meager supply of Italian and thank him thus. He seems satisfied, and rejoining his wife and children, continues his investigations of the town.
I continue to follow the via Flaminia, there are ruins on both sides, arrayed like the buildings we see clustered along the main street of any large American town. There are many signs about, all in Italian, which announce on one side that I am standing in the temple of Gemini, then in front of the civic building, then near one of the four cisterns providing water. On the other side, there is the basilica, another cistern, then the amphitheater and finally the theater itself.
The amphitheater is small, nowhere near the size of the Flavian amphitheater, mis-named Colosseum in much later years. But, walking into the field, which has only been half excavated, and looking up into the stands, it is easy to transport myself, and wonder if I had lived here, would I have been in the stands, or part of the entertainment. The hot sun, and silence except for a few flying insects, helps the fantasy.
Seeking shelter from the sun, I wander towards the old, semi-circular theater. There are alleys and passageways between the theater and amphitheater, indicating that they had some combined function. Walking around the theater, I notice a series of chambers, arrayed beneath what had once been the theater seats. There are no signs to tell me what these were, but these chambers look most like cells. I suspect that they had been the cages for the wild beasts that were slaughtered for the games in the neighboring amphitheater.
Each of the chambers is about the size of a small bedroom, the walls are diamond blocked. The ceilings, which once must have been fairly low, are long gone, as are the loose stones which must have fallen from the groined arches which supported the seats, and formed the chamber tops. Open to the sky for some millennia, the sun shines into each chamber, but as the chambers are arrayed around the half circle, one can choose a space in which the position of the light and shadow is to your preference.
Entering a few, I find one chamber which seems cooler than the rest, and I pause to collect my energy, and think upon my next adventure. There is more to be seen in Carsulae, but I have absorbed a sense of the place, and I like it much. A search for food will follow, and then a return to the villa to cool off in the pool, and rest, and write. I turn, as if to share my thoughts with someone, but there is nobody near. My children are off, Anna is pouting for being forced to walk, and Ross is thinking about being a gladiator. My mind turns to reverie, as if to satisfy my need to share.
I want to draw you into one of those little cloisters, to embrace you in this soundless place. From the sunny side, I can see your form shimmer in the shadow, and I long to press your strong body against the cool side of that chamber. Against those ancient bricks, against that ruined wall that once some Roman laborer may have pressed his love, who came to feed him as he built it. I long to feel your lips, to taste the sweat upon your neck and from between your breasts. But I turn from that empty chamber, before the love and lust splits my sanity, before I pound and claw that wall like one of those disenfranchised, doomed beasts, two millennia ago. I turn back into the safe Italian sun, and towards the meandering roads.
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