LICENZA.

From a Drawing by J. D. Harding.

"I WAS delighted with Rome, and was on horseback all round it many hours daily, besides in it the rest of my time, bothering over its marvels. I excursed and skirted the country round to Alba, Tivoli, Frascati, Licenza, &c." Lord Byron thus mentions Licenza as one of the scenes in the neighbourhood of Rome visited by him during his sojourn in the Eternal City.

It is a village in the Sabine mountains, about thirty-four miles from Rome. The chief object which travellers have in visiting Licenza, is to examine the site of Horace's villa, and the country which he has described as surrounding it. From many passages in his works, and particularly in his seventh Ode, it was supposed that he had but one villa, and that at Tivoli. What favoured this view was, that the river Anio formed the frontier of the Sabine country; so that his Sabine farm might as well have been at Tivoli as nine miles further up the river; it would still have been his Sabine farm. But the question is now set at rest: De Sancti has proved that Horace's Sabine

farm was near the modern Licenza, close to a stream called the Digetia, eleven miles from Tivoli, and two from Vico Varo, which Horace alludes to in the fourteenth Epistle, under the name of Varium. In consequence of De Sanctis' researches, excavations were made at Licenza, and the mosaic pavement of a villa discovered. Several springs in the immediate neighbourhood now divide the name and honours of the fountain of Blandusia.

Monte Libretti, in the view, was the ancient Mount Lucretilis; and the Temple of Vacuna was on the present Rocca Giovane.