Pliny the Younger (c. 61/62-113), like his uncle Pliny the Elder (c. 23-79), was a man of well-rounded scholarly interests, including natural history. The younger Pliny, when he was not practicing law, or offering professional financial advice, or serving as an administrative official of the Roman Empire, he often passed his free time by writing letters to his friends and acquaintances, regaling them about his interests, including the aforementioned subject of natural history. He liked to emphasize Italy’s own natural wonders, and in his opinion, one such wonder of nature resided in his own extended family’s property.
Pliny the Younger, through his wife’s grandfather, became responsible for a body of water known then as Lake Vadimon, near the ancient Italian locale of Ameria (approximately the modern Amelia region of Umbria). The lake was located to the northwest of what is now the town of Orte. Back in Pliny’s day, the body of water was an impressive sight. As a sacred place, people believed that the water had healing properties. But, most strikingly, the lake appeared to be perfectly round to the naked eye. The environment there was noticeably marshy in nature, with water-plants thriving on the lake, creating buoyant masses that looked like floating islands. Pliny the Younger proudly described his family’s sacred lake, comparing it to exotic overseas natural attractions. He wrote:
“My wife’s grandfather had asked me to look at his property in Ameria. While going round I was shown a lake at the foot of the hills called Lake Vadimon, and at the same time told some extraordinary facts about it. I went down to look at it, and found it was perfectly round and regular in shape, like a wheel lying on its side, without a single irregular bend or curve, and so evenly proportioned that it might have been artificially shaped and hollowed out. It is subdued in colour, pale blue with a tinge of green, has a smell of sulphur and a mineral taste, and the property of healing fractures. It is of no great size but large enough for the wind to raise waves on its surface. There are no boats on it, as the waters are sacred, but floating islands, green with reeds and sedge and the other plants which grow more profusely on the marshy ground at the edge of the lake. Each island has its peculiar shape and size, and all have their edges worn away by friction, as they are constantly knocking against each other and the shore…The small islands often attach themselves to the larger, like small boats to a merchant ship, and both large and small sometimes appear to be racing each other; or they are all driven to one side of the lake to create a headland where they cling to the shore” (Pliny the Younger, Letters, 8.20).
Despite the sacred nature of the lake, the surrounding fields were evidently home to roving cattle, which could result in comical sights. According to Pliny, it was not uncommon for cows to wander their way onto the beached water-plant islands, and the floating masses had enough buoyancy to carry an unsuspecting cow out for a journey on the lake. Pliny reported, “Cattle are often known to walk on the islands while grazing, taking them for the edge of the lake, and only realize that they are on moving ground when carried off from the shore as if forcibly put on board ship, and are terrified to find themselves surrounded by water; then, when they land where the wind has carried them, they are no more conscious of having ended their voyage than they were of embarking on it” (Pliny the Younger, Letters, 8.20).
Unfortunately, in the current day, there is very little water left above ground at the site of the lake. Back in Pliny’s day, he wrote of how, “Another feature of the lake is the river leading from it, which is visible for a short distance before it enters a cave and continues its course at a great depth” (Letters, 8.20). It seems that, over the millennia, the majority of the lake water has flowed down into those deepening underground caves, decreasing the size of the lake as the outflow outpaced the replenishing inflow. Given its greatly reduced size, the lake can no longer sustain the great floating plant masses that once carried cattle across the water.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Cropped Lake Albano and Castel Gandolfo, by Camille Corot (1796–1875) [Public Domain] via MET, with A Cow by Jan Vrolijk, dated 1879, [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and Rijksmuseum).
Sources:
- The Letters of Pliny the Younger, translated by Betty Radice. New York: Penguin Classics, 1963, 1969.
