XIII. On the garden of Virgil and the brass trumpet.
"On the border of the same city of Naples, as if on the opposite side, was the Mount of Virgins, on the slope of which, between the steep rocks and the difficult approach, Virgil had planted a garden planted with many kinds of herbs; in this is found the herb of Lucius, which blind sheep sometimes touch and immediately receive the most acute vision.
In the same was a bronze image holding a trumpet to its mouth, which whenever the south wind entered from the object, was immediately turned by the breath of the wind itself. But what this turning brought to Noti's convenience, hear.
There is a high mountain on the border of the city of Naples, embedded in the sea, overlooking the spacious Land of Labor beneath it. Here in the month of Madio it belches out a most terrible smoke, and sometimes throws out wood with very hot ashes, burnt to the color of coal. Whence they assert that a certain terrifying spark of Hell boils there. Therefore, when Notus blows, the hot dust burns up the crops and all the fruits, and thus the most fertile land is reduced to barrenness.
Because of this great loss to that region, Virgil, contemplating, as we have said, the great damage to that region, erected a statue on the opposite mountain with a trumpet, so that at the first sound of the blown horn and the impact of the incoming blast in the trumpet itself, Notus would be repelled and shaken by the force of the blow. Hence it happens that, whether that statue is either worn out by age or demolished by the malice of envious people, its former damage is often repaired."
Virgil's the Man? 👏 Thought this was some kind of early-warning system for the local volcano, but it reads like more of a volcano-repellent. IDK. Whatever.
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