¹ Feo, M., ‘Inquietudini filologiche del Petrarca: il luogo della discesa agli inferi (storia di una citazione)’, Italia Medioevale e Umanistica 17 (1974), 115–83, at p. 152.Google Scholar

² Clark, R.J., ‘The Avernian Sibyl's cave: from military tunnel to mediaeval spa’, forthcoming in Classica et Mediaevalia 47 (1996).Google Scholar

³ For the date and the missions see Wilkins, E.H., Studies in the Life and Works of Petrarch (Camb. Mass., 1955), 11–12Google Scholar, with further details in n. 10 below. Petrarch first visited the area in 1341, on the occasion of the pre-coronation examination by King Robert of Naples (Wilkins, p. 8).

⁴ Petrarch, , Fam. 5. 4Google Scholar, ed. Rossi, V., Francesco Petrarca: Le Familiari (Florence, 1934), II, 10–14, at p. 11.Google Scholar I have recuperated from Rossi's apparatus criticus the β text preserving Petrarch's reference to Homer (‘et, quod … descripta … ’), which the 1368 edition (α) supresses. The Basle 1554 edition is notoriously inaccurate, but it preserves the full text at this point (Opera, II. 713Google Scholar).

⁵ Petrarca, Francesco, Itinerario in Terra Sancta, ed. Lo Monaco, F. (Bergamo, 1990), 54–6.Google Scholar

⁶ Petrarch cross-referenced his postilla to Servius's word spelunca with the matching notation marks ∞. All is legible in the manuscript's facsimile Francisci Petrarcae Vergilianus codex ad Publii Vergilii Maronis diem natalem bis millesimum celebrandum quam simillime expressus atque in lucem editus … praefatus est Iohannes Galbiati etc. (Mediolani, 1930), fol. 95v.Google Scholar

⁷ Rossetti, D.R. (ed.), F. Petrarca: Poëmata minora III (Milan, 1834), 166–8.Google Scholar I have corrected imas in verse 40, but have not restored Petrarch's spelling, which Rossetti classicized.

⁸ Epistola Conradi cancellarii = I.M. Lappenberg (ed.), Arnaldi abbatis Lubecencis Chronica Slavorum, Bk V ch. 19, in Pertz, G.H. (ed.), Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores (Hannover, 1869), XXI. 192–6, at p. 196.Google Scholar Conrad's repetitive use of ‘ibidem’ is often very loose (see further n. 15 below) and in this paragraph (which follows immediately upon the one referring to Ischia partially quoted at n. 14 below) it means no more than the general area of Aeneas's descent within the Phlegraean Fields.

⁹ Feo, , ‘Inquietudini filologiche del Petrarca’ (above, n. 1), 170Google Scholar, citing William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum Anglorum, 2.170Google Scholar (on ‘Quomodo quidam thesauros Octoviani quaesierunt’) ed. Waitz, D.G., in Pertz, G.H. (ed.), Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores (Hannover, 1852), X. 463–4Google Scholar = Stubbs, W. (ed.) in Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores (London, 1887; Kraus repr. 1964), XC. 198–201Google Scholar; de Beauvais, Vincent, Speculum historiale 24.100, ed. by the Benedictines of Douai (Douai, 1624), IV. 998Google Scholar; Bersuire, Pierre, Reductorium morale 24. 72.7 (Venice, 1583), II. 690.Google Scholar Feo here warned against confusing this legend with other legends locating the subterranean treasure in Sicily or Rome (for example, William of Malmesbury, ed. Waitz in Pertz, II.169), and on p. 168 mentioned a second point of contact between Petrarch and Conrad, which is taken up below, in the Appendix.

¹⁰ Rossetti, D.R. (ed.), F. Petrarca: Poëmata minora II (Milan, 1831), 16.Google Scholar As Wilkins, , Studies in the Life and Works of Petrarch (above, n. 3), 220Google Scholar, said, this letter, in which Petrarch urged Barbato to be his guide in a tour of Baiae and near-by places, was written in Naples prior to 23 November, 1343, the date on which Petrarch's excursion with Barbato (and Giovanni Barrili) was made, as we learn from Fam. 5. 4.Google ScholarWilkins, therefore has supposed Metr. II. 7Google Scholar to have been written ‘within the period mid-October—22 November 1343’.

¹¹ See Amalfitano, P., Camodeca, G. and Medri, M. (eds), I Campi Flegrei: un itinerario archeologico (Venice, 1990), 151 and 153.Google Scholar

¹² di Falco, Benedetto, Descrittione dei luoghi antichi di Napoli e del suo amenissimo distretto, ed. Toscano, T.R., Toscano, G. and Grippo, M. (Cuen, 1992), 165–6Google Scholar = first known ed. Ioan. Paulo Sugganappo (Napoli, 1549; copies in Bibl. Univ. di Napoli, Rari 32, and Bibl. Vat. R.G. Storia VI.169), fols G6v-G7r. (T.R. Toscano, pp. 13ff. has shown why the widely alleged 1539 edition has never existed). By contrast, Benedetto di Falco elsewhere (pp. 131–2 = fols B7v-B8r in the 1549 edition) adopted Petrarch's view in Itinerarium Syriacum (ed. Lo Monaco, (above, n. 5), 58)Google Scholar that only the common man would believe that Vergil used magic powers to make the tunnel through the Crypta Neapolitana described below at n. 19.

¹³ Reported by, for example, Maiuri, A., The Phlegraean Fields (third edition) (Rome, 1958), 142Google Scholar, and Amalfitano, , Camodeca, and Medri, , I Campi Flegrei (above, n. 11), 178.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Epistola Conradi cancellarii, ed. Lappenberg, (above, n. 8), XXI. 196.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Epistola Conradi cancellarii, ed. Lappenberg, (above, n. 8), XXI. 195.Google Scholar ‘Ibidem’ refers to Baiae in the previous sentence to be quoted below, at n. 17, where Conrad described some Baian baths. However, the reader should be aware of the looseness with which place-names were used in early and late antiquity. The baths which Conrad described as ‘Baian’ are also called ‘Puteolan’ by Peter of Eboli in his poem to be quoted shortly below. The geographical designation is fluid due to the territorial extensions of both Baiae and Puteoli (modern Pozzuoli) in different periods. Thus both authors, although they use different geographical designations, were describing the same baths. And both geographical terms take in the region of Avernus. To illustrate further the matter in question, Suetonius, , Aug. 16Google Scholar referred to the above mentioned Partus Julius created out of the Avernian lake as being ‘at Baiae’ (apud Baias), where at the lakeside Conrad, also referring to Baiae, must have placed the Sibyl's dwelling — her Cumaean cave being no longer accessible in Conrad's day.

¹⁶ Kauffmann, C.M., The Baths of Pozzuoli: A Study of the Medieval Illuminations of Peter of Eboli's Poem (Oxford, 1959), 59.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Epistola Conradi cancellarii, ed. Lappenberg, (above, n. 8), XXI. 194–5.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Petrarch, , Fam. 5. 4, ed. Rossi, (above, n. 4), II.11–12Google Scholar (= Basle 1554 ed., Opera, II. 713Google Scholar). For further argumentation identifying the baths housing the sculptured figures see below, n. 20.

¹⁹ According to Strabo 5. 4.5, Cocceius built this tunnel and the Grotta di Cocceio, as in all probability he did the Grotta di Seiano through the southern extremity of Posillipo, as well as the other two tunnels mentioned earlier in this article. An extensive bibliography collected by Spargo, J.W., Virgil the Necromancer: Studies in Virgilian Legends (Cambridge (Mass.), 1934), 444–6Google Scholar, attests, to the popular belief that the crypta Neapolitana was created by Vergil the sorcerer, which Petrarch (above, n. 12) rejected.

²⁰ Petrarch prefaced the passage quoted at n. 18 with this more obvious mention of the baths: ‘Vidi rupes undique liquorem saluberrimum stillantes, et cuntis olim morborum generibus omniparentis nature munere adhibita … balnea’. The phrase ‘passim perforatos montes atque suspensos’ quoted at n. 18 therefore refers back to ‘rupes’, and Petrarch's mention there of the crypta Neapolitana merely illustrates the meaning of ‘perforatos’ but is otherwise a geographical interruption.

²¹ Ed. Lo Monaco (above, n. 5), 56.

²² Vss. 241–4, taken from an edition I am preparing of Peter's poem with slightly different punctuation here from D'Amato, J.M., Prolegomena to a Critical Edition of the Illustrated Medieval Poem De balneis Terre Laboris by Peter of Eboli (Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins, 1975), 433Google Scholar (which refers to Peter's poem by an alternative title).

²³ On this bath-building see Pagano, M. and Rougetet, J., ‘Le grandi terme dette ‘Tempio di Apollo’ sul Lago di Averno’, Puteoli 12–13 (1988–1989), 151–209.Google Scholar

²⁴ For a plan of and discussion on the rooms and the spring in the ‘Grotta’, see Pagano, M., Reddé, M. and Roddaz, J.M., ‘Recherches archéologiques et historiques sur la zone du lac d'Averne’, Mélanges de l'Ecole Française de Rome. Antiquité 94 (1982), 271–323, esp. pp. 297–319.Google Scholar The plan is reproduced along with photographs in Amalfitano, Camodeca, and Medri, , I Campi Flegrei (above, n. 11), 174–7.Google Scholar

²⁵ That this is not realized can be neatly illustrated from de Nolhac, Pierre, Érasme en Italie: Étude sur un épisode de la Renaissance suivie de douze lettres inédits d'Érasme (Paris, 1894 and new edition 1898), 83–4.Google Scholar This author here pointed out (citing Rhenanus, Beatus, Vie d'Érasme, from Vilae selectorum aliquot virorum ed. Bates, G. (London, 1681), 198–201Google Scholar) that Erasmus too, on his second journey to Naples, wished to see the ‘Sibyl's cave’. De Nolhac believed that this cave was in all probability not the Sibyl's cave on the Cumaean acropolis but the ‘bagno della Sibilla, près du lac Averne’, as described by Petrarch in the Itinerarium Syriacum. The ‘Sibyl's bath’ in Petrarch is, of course, not a cave, and — for the reason given above at the end of n. 15 — Erasmus was almost certainly referring to the Grotta della Sibilla beside Avernus.

²⁶ See Clark, ‘The Avernian Sibyl's Cave’ (above, n. 2), passim.

²⁷ For his skill and patience in designing the accompanying map I am greatly indebted to Gary McManus, the cartographer in Memorial University of Newfoundland's cartographic laboratory. For support of my research I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.