somewhere near the Porta Capena was a spot in which it was supposed
Numa held nightly consultations with his nymph, and where there was a
grove and a sacred fountain, and fanes once consecrated to the Muses;
and that from this spot there was a descent into the valley of Egeria,
where were several artificial caves. It is clear that the statues of the
Muses made no part of the decoration which the satirist thought
misplaced in these caves; for he expressly assigns other fanes
(_delubra_) to these divinities above the valley, and moreover tells us
that they had been ejected to make room for the Jews. In fact, the
little temple now called that of Bacchus, was formerly thought to belong
to the Muses, and Nardini[660] places them in a poplar grove, which was
in his time above the valley.

It is probable from the inscription and position, that the cave now
shown may be one of the "artificial caverns," of which, indeed, there is
another a little way higher up the valley, under a tuft of alder bushes;
but a _single_ grotto of Egeria is a mere modern invention, grafted upon
the application of the epithet Egerian to these nymphea in general, and
which might send us to look for the haunts of Numa upon the banks of the
Thames.

Our English Juvenal was not seduced into mistranslation by his
acquaintance with Pope: he carefully preserves the correct plural--

"Thence slowly winding down the vale we view
The Egerian _grots_: oh, how unlike the true!"

The valley abounds with springs,[661] and over these springs, which the
Muses might haunt from their neighbouring groves, Egeria presided: hence
she was said to supply them with water; and she was the nymph of the
grottos through which the fountains were taught to flow.

The whole of the monuments in the vicinity of the Egerian valley have
received names at will, which have been changed at will. Venuti[662]
owns he can see no traces of the temples of Jove, Saturn, Juno, Venus,
and Diana, which Nardini found, or hoped to find. The mutatorium of
Caracalla's circus, the temple of Honour and Virtue, the temple of
Bacchus, and, above all, the temple of the god Rediculus, are the
antiquaries' despair.

The circus of Caracalla depends on a medal of that emperor cited by
Fulvius Ursinus, of which the reverse shows a circus, supposed,
however, by some to represent the Circus Maximus. It gives a very good
idea of that place of exercise. The soil has been but little raised, if
we may