intoxicating wine; the
villagers are more classically graceful; the volcanic soil is more
fertile; the waves are bluer and the sun is brighter than elsewhere in
the land. None of the conquerors of Italy have had the force to resist
the allurements of the bay of Naples. The Greeks lost their native
energy upon these shores and realized in the history of their colonies
the myth of Ulysses' comrades in the gardens of Circe. Hannibal was
tamed by Capua. The Romans in their turn dreamed away their vigor at
Baiae, at Pompeii at Capreae, until the whole region became a byword for
voluptuous living. Here the Saracens were subdued to mildness, and
became physicians instead of pirates. Lombards and Normans alike were
softened down, and lost their barbarous fierceness amid the enchantments
of the southern sorceress.

[1] See above, p. 416, for the history of this unfortunate
prince. When Alexander ceded Djem, whom he held as a captive
for the Sultan at a yearly revenue of 40,000 ducats, he was
under engagements with Bajazet to murder him. Accordingly Djem
died of slow poison soon after he became the guest of Charles.
The Borgia preferred to keep faith with the Turk.

Naples was now destined to ruin for Charles whatever nerve yet remained
to his festival army. The witch too, while brewing for the French her
most attractive potions, mixed with them a deadly poison--the virus of a
fell disease, memorable in the annals of the modern world, which was
destined to infect the nations of Europe from this center, and to prove
more formidable to our cities than even the leprosy of the Middle
Ages.[1]

[1] Those who are curious to trace the history of the origin of
syphilis, should study the article upon the subject in Von
Hirsch, _Historisch-geographische Pathologie_ (Erlangen, 1860),
and in Rosenbaum _Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthum_
(Halle, 1845). Some curious contemporary observations
concerning the rapid diffusion of the disease in Italy, its
symptoms, and its cure, are contained in Matarazzo's _Cronaca
di Perugia_ (_Arch. Stor. It._ vol. xvi. part ii. pp. 32-36),
and in Portovenere (_Arch. St._ vol. vi. pt. ii. p. 338). The
celebrated poem of Fracastorius deserves to be read both for
its fine Latinity and for its information. One of the earliest
works issued from the Aldine press in 1497 was the _Libellus de
Epidemia quam vulgo morbum Gallicum vocant