Excursion

We set out for an excursion to Horace’s villa—that famed Sabine farm the poet sings in his odes—which lies in the hills beyond Tivoli (his ancient Tibur) about forty miles from Rome. The road we travel is dotted with remembrances: Via Tiburtina recalls in its name its ancientness as the way to Tibur; the sulphur baths we pass were frequented then as now by curing Romans, and their waters once piped into Nero’s Golden House; the quarries we see are still producing the Travertine blocks (lapis Tiburtina) which built the Colosseum, etc.; we pass the ruins of circular tombs and catch glimpses of opus reticulatum, the distinctive Roman brickwork, in the olives which bank the hill we ascend to Tivoli.

We stop in Tivoli—not for the usual visit to Villa d’Este where all the busloads of tourists go, but for views, preliminary to his villa, of the scenes in old Tibur that Horace used to know, the places he frequented, the sights mentioned in his odes.