nay, when the inhabitants were far advanced in civilisation, for among
the objects contained in the funereal urns were implements of writing.
At the close of the skirmish between the Romans and Etruscans, near
Albano, in which Aruns, the son of Lars Porsenna, was slain, whose
tomb may still be seen on the spot, a noise like that which Livy
mentions was heard among the surrounding hills.

But the most extraordinary of all the volcanic phenomena within the
historical period was the sudden rising on two memorable occasions of
the waters of the Alban Lake, which now lie deep down within the basin
of an extinct crater. The first swallowed up the royal palace of Alba,
and was so sudden and violent that neither the king nor any of his
household had time to escape. The other occurred during the romantic
siege of the Etruscan city of Veii, near Rome, by Camillus, four
hundred years before Christ. The waters on that occasion rose two
hundred and forty feet in the crater almost to the very edge, and
threatened to overflow and inundate the surrounding country, when they
were withdrawn by a subterranean canal cut in the rock, and poured
into the Tiber by a connecting stream. This emissary, which may still
be seen, was constructed owing to a hint given by an Etruscan
soothsayer, that the city of Veii would not be captured till the
Alban Lake was emptied into the sea. The deep winding cavern on the
face of the Aventine Hill, said to have been inhabited by the
monstrous giant Cacus, the son of Vulcan, who vomited fire, and was
the terror of the surrounding inhabitants, was evidently of volcanic
origin; and the local tradition from which Virgil concocted his fable
was undoubtedly derived from a vivid recollection of the active
operations of a volcano. When Evander, as described in the eighth
_AEneid_, conducted his distinguished guest to the top of the Tarpeian
Rock, in after ages so famous as the place of public execution, and
composed of very hard lava, he assured him that an awful terror
possessed the place, and that some unknown god had his abode there.
The shepherds said it was Jupiter, and that they had often seen him
kindling his lightnings and hurling his thunderbolts from thence.
Evander then pointed to the ruined cities of Saturnia and Janiculum,
on either side of the Tiber, whose destruction had been caused by the
wrath of the god. There can be no doubt that this fable clothed with
supernatural colouring some volcanic phenome