http://geology.19thcenturyscience.org/books/1904-Suess-Antlitz/README.htm
378
TEMPLE
OF
SERAPIS
NEAR
PUZZTJOLI
[PART III
appears, the Neapolitans resolved to raze the place to the ground. This
was done, and from that time the civitas Puteolana extended over the devas
tated region of Curnae as far as the west coast. This explains, for example,
the expression occurring in a diploma of Frederick's of the year 1489:
'In toto littore, seu maritima dictae Civitatis Puteolorum, usque ad flumen
The flu men Patriae, however, lies far beyond the Lago di
Patriae.'
Licola towards the north.
Thus the deeds of 1503 and 1511 refer, most
probably, not to regions within the bay of Puzzuoli, but to the broad
silted-up stretches of the west coast in the ancient region of Cumae, and the
grounds for the hypothesis of a negative movement at this time disappear .
3. 77w eruption of 1538.
We have now arrived at a critical episode,
that is, the formation of Monte Nuovo, which occurred in the last days
of the month of
September, 1538.
accounts of this event.
The first of these
We possess
four
contemporaneous
is
by the distinguished physician and man of
science, &rnome Por:io, who then occupied the chair of philosophy at the
It appears to have been written at the command
University of Naples.
of the Viceroy, Peter of Toledo, with the design of dispelling, by a faithful
representation of the occurrence as a natural event, the illusions fostered
among the people by imagination and superstition .
The second account was written by Marco Atonio deli Falco'rti, then in
the service of Bernardo Tasso, father of the great and unhappy poet at the
court of Salerno.
Tasso had passed through Rome without visiting Pope
Paul III, and now sent Falcorii with a letter of apology.
the latter witnessed the eruption .
On his journey
The third account is contained in a letter of Franeesco del Hero, who
was then representing the court of Tuscany at Naples'.
' On this
point the best information is to be found in a paper printed in Naples in
1775: Dissertazione corografico-istorica del1e due antiche distrutte cittit Miseno e Cunie.
Per lo rischiarimento delle ragioni del Regio Fisco contra lit Universith. di Puzzuoli, 4to,
p. 182, &c.
2 DE CONFLAGRATIONE
Agri Puteolani, Simonis Portii, illustr. D. Pet.ro Toledo, &c.,
&c. (The first edition appeared at Naples, without indication of date or place of printing,
in 1538 ; the second at Florence in 1551.) Edited by L. Giustiniani, I tre rarissimi opuscoli
di Simone Porzio, di Girol. Borgia e di Marcant. delli Falconi, scritti in occas. della
celebr. eruzione avven. in Puzzuoli nell' ann. 1538, Svo, Napoli, 1817, pp. 43-51. The
conclusion runs: 'Haec igitur mi Maecenaa scribenda duxi, ne 1-larioli, somniorumq.
interpretes, ac vulgares Astrologi alio tragant, quac na.tura duce proueniunt.'
DELL' INCEND1O DI POZZUOLO, MARCO ANTONIO DELLI Falconi all' Illustr.
Sig. Marchesa della Padula nel MDXXXVIII. Si venne per Marco Antonio Passaro
alli Fern Vecchi; also Giustiniani, pp. 285-330.
Letterj. di Francesco dcl Nero a Niccolô tie! Benino, sul terremoto di Pozzuolo, dal
quale ebbs origine la Montagna Nuova, nel 1538; printed from the manuscript in
Archivio storico ital., 184, IX, pp. 93-96; translated by Haagen von Mathiesen, Neue
Jahrb. Mm., 1846, pp. 702-707, and by M. Neumayr, Der Bericht des Francesco del Nero
Uber die Bildung des Monte Nuovo bei Neapel, op. cit., 1883, II, pp. 45-51.