tanza cxv. lines 1, 2, and 3.

The respectable authority of Flaminius Vacca would incline us to believe
in the claims of the Egerian grotto.[654] He assures us that he saw an
inscription in the pavement, stating that the fountain was that of
Egeria, dedicated to the nymphs. The inscription is not there at this
day, but Montfaucon quotes two lines[655] of Ovid [_Fast._, iii. 275,
276] from a stone in the Villa Giustiniani, which he seems to think had
been brought from the same grotto.

This grotto and valley were formerly frequented in summer, and
particularly the first Sunday in May, by the modern Romans, who attached
a salubrious quality to the fountain which trickles from an orifice at
the bottom of the vault, and, overflowing the little pools, creeps down
the matted grass into the brook below. The brook is the Ovidian Almo,
whose name and qualities are lost in the modern Aquataccio. The valley
itself is called Valle di Caffarelli, from the dukes of that name who
made over their fountain to the Pallavicini, with sixty _rubbia_ of
adjoining land.

There can be little doubt that this long dell is the Egerian valley of
Juvenal, and the pausing place of Umbritius, notwithstanding the
generality of his commentators have supposed the descent of the satirist
and his friend to have been into the Arician grove, where the nymph met
Hippolitus, and where she was more peculiarly worshipped.

The step from the Porta Capena to the Alban hill, fifteen miles distant,
would be too considerable, unless we were to believe in the wild
conjecture of Vossius, who makes that gate travel from its present
station, where he pretends it was during the reign of the Kings, as far
as the Arician grove, and then makes it recede to its old site with the
shrinking city.[656] The tufo, or pumice, which the poet prefers to
marble, is the substance composing the bank in which the grotto is sunk.

The modern topographers[657] find in the grotto the statue of the nymph,
and nine niches for the Muses; and a late traveller[658] has discovered
that the cave is restored to that simplicity which the poet regretted
had been exchanged for injudicious ornament. But the headless statue is
palpably rather a male than a nymph, and has none of the attributes
ascribed to it at present visible. The nine Muses could hardly have
stood in six niches; and Juvenal certainly does not allude to any
individual cave.[659] Nothing can be collected from the satirist but
that