To real peril, to fear of death, he seems to have had that native insensibility so notable always in men of genius, in whom the conviction of a higher destiny begets the feeling of a charmed life,such as Plutarch records of the first Caesar in peril of shipwreck on the river Anio.

With the same dexterous boldness which he had shown in his first Italian campaigns, he threw himself with a weak army between the armies and fortresses of the enemy, and led his troops through Samnium and along the Valerian Way past Tibur to the bridge over the Anio, which he passed and encamped on the opposite bank, five miles from the city.

When he crossed the Anio, he pitched his camp at the conflux of the rivers.

The whole thing was so sudden, that the enemy passed the Anio before the Roman army could meet and prevent them: great alarm therefore was felt at Rome.

But, besides that the strength of the Roman army had been thus augmented, a stratagem also was secretly resorted to, persons being sent to throw into the river a great quantity of timber that lay on the banks of the Anio, after it had been first set on fire; and the wood, being further kindled by the help of the wind, and the greater part of it, that was placed on rafts, being driven against and sticking in the piles, fired the bridge.

[Footnote 27: Tiber and Anio.

The rights of citizenship and land on the other side of the Anio were bestowed on them.

News was brought into the city during the night that a Sabine army had advanced as far as the river Anio, plundering the country: that the country houses there were being pillaged and set fire to indiscriminately.

The ashes of Marius he ordered to be dug up and scattered in the Anio, the only unpractical act we ever read of him committing.

Meanwhile, Hannibal advanced his camp to the Anio, three miles from the city, and fixing his position there, he advanced with two thousand horse from the Colline gate as far as the temple of Hercules, and riding up, took as near a view as he could of the walls and site of the city.

The next day Hannibal, crossing the Anio, drew out all his forces in order of battle; nor did Flaccus and the consuls decline to fight.

Crossing the Anio, he pitched his camp three miles from the city, and lastly, came up to the very walls and gates.

Add to these the defection of Italy, of the greater part of Sicily and Sardinia, and the last terror and panic, the Carthaginian camp pitched between the Anio and the walls of Rome, and the victorious Hannibal seen almost in our gates.

Still in the winter you may see the dazzling peak of the "gelidus Algidus" and "ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte"; and wandering at Tivoli in the summer, his description, "Domus Albuneae resonantis, Et praeceps Anio, et Tiburni lucus, et uda Mobililius pomaria rivis," is as true and fresh as if his words were of yesterday.

Forty years later another censor, Manius Curius Dentatus, brought a second supply, also by an underground channel, from the river Anio near Tibur (Tivoli), the water of which, never of the first quality, was used for the irrigation of gardens and the flushing of drains.

Amafinius Ambitu, lex de Anio, the river Anna Perenna, festival of Annona Antioch Antiochus (the physician) Antium, Cicero's villa at Antony Apodyterium Apollinares, Ludi.

At the fourth mile we crossed the rapid Anio, the ancient Teverone, formerly the boundary between Latium and the Sabine dominions, and at the tenth, came upon some fragments of the old Tibertine way, formed of large irregular blocks of basaltic lava.

The wind, blowing from it, bore us an overpowering smell of sulphur; the waters of the little river Solfatara, which crosses the road, are of a milky blue color, and carry those of the lake into the Anio.

From a platform on a brow of the hill, we looked down into the defile, at whose bottom the Anio was roaring, and caught a sideward glance of the Cascatelles, sending up their spray amid the evergreen bushes that fringe the rocks.

Gazing downward from the bridge, one sees the waters of the Anio tumbling into the picturesque grotto of the Sirens; around a rugged corner, a cloud of white spray whirls up continually, while the boom of a cataract rumbles down the glen.

The Anio bursts out of a cavern in the mountain-side, and like a prisoner giddy with recovered liberty, reels over the edge of a precipice more than two hundred feet deep.

The Cascatelles are formed by that part of the Anio, which is used in the iron works, made out of the ruins of Mecænas' villa.

[Footnote A: domus Albuneae resonantis, Et praeceps Anio, et Tiburni lucus, et uda Mobilibus pomaria rivis.]

Tibur I have not seen, nor the lakes that of old I had dreamt of; Tibur I shall not see, nor Anio's waters, nor deep en- Folded in Sabine recesses the valley and villa of Horace; Tibur I shall not see;but something better I shall see.