You glance up, and there a thousand feet above you loom the heights of Monte Solario, and peeping round their corner shine the lights of Anacapri. You elevate your glance, and the stars like diamonds sparkle in the unclouded sky.
The town itself is a world in miniature. You fool that you are in a toy city. The streets are so narrow that you can almost stretch across them, yet their windows are ablaze with all the tempting bait of a Paris shop.
The national costumes of the natives have almost vanished, but there is one old patriarch with a long snowy-white beard, sitting on the steps wearing his red beret, blue jersey, and wound round him a bright sash made of fishing not dyed scarlet.
His trousers are pale blue, and he smokes a long curved wooden pipe as he broods on other days. He is a relic of the past thrown upon the shores of time. A new world parades before him and casts curious glances at his garments, which to toll the truth outrival in picturesqueness the drab fashions of today.
The women of Capri attract more than a passing glance.
They may have done injustice to themselves by discarding their own costumes in order to keep abreast of the times. Yet one thing they have not been able to shed, and that is their good looks. I wonder from which ancestry they get their well-marked features from Grecian, Roman, Arab, or Turkish, for all have had their hand in the moulding of this peculiar race?
The island itself gives them their splendid carriage. Its steep stair-ways, up which they carry heavy loads upon their heads, compel them to walk with a stately step; but it is their kindly hearts which prompt the welcoming smile and ready salutation.
An atmosphere of affability surrounds them.
Their very “Buon giorno, Signore!” wins your sympathy at once.
You feel that there must be a gentle strain somewhere in the blood of this people.
Now you are anxious to know a little about the history of this “Italian Jewel” one of the most famous in the world. The fact that there is so much tragedy about it makes you wonder why its natives are so light-hearted. The Emperor Augustus gets the credit of having discovered the excellence of its air. In 29 B. C. on his return from Asia he landed at Capri. It was at one of those periods in his life when he needed a little encouragement. Some wise sage on the island seized the opportunity, and showed him an old withered oak which at his coming had put forth fresh shoots.
Now, although Augustus was still a young man he was superstitious.
He regarded this as a good omen, and felt kindly disposed to an island which had extended to him, if not tho olive branch, an oak one full of promise.
He desired to possess the place and so exchanged it for Ischia. Thus for good or evil it passed into imperial hands. It is, of course, Tiberius who has given Capri its greatest notoriety.
In these days a great deal of whitewash is being used to plaster this sinner into a saint, and to discredit the testimony of Suetonius and Tacitus. Of the bed-rock fact of the presence of Tiberius on the island I had a striking proof only a short time ago. While I was writing by my window a loud explosion shook the house and a piece of stone hit my balcony.
A few inches more and Capri might have boon spared another volume! On making enquiries as to the cause I found – but tell it not to the archaeologists of Rome – that men were blasting an old Tiberian wall to make a drain.
After that convincing evidence the latest structures of the myth-idea in my mind were shattered. Tiberius is a hard fact, and I am inclined to swallow Tacitus.
Tiberius, like some more modern potentates of Rome, had a weakness for voluntary seclusion. He went into banishment at Rhodes for seven years, and then spent the last eleven years of his life in the privacy of Capri.
Book one of our Hotels in Capri and Anacapri:
JW Marriott Capri Tiberio *****
J.K. Place Capri *****
Villa Marina *****
Hotel Punta Tragara *****
Caesar Augustus *****
Portofino World, a world apart.
