Free Republic

Nineteen centuries of foundered orgy looked up at the hydroairplane which last week waltzed high over Lake Nemi in the Alban hills back of Rome. And Giuseppe Cultrera, Etruscan scholar in the plane,* looked down from the vantage of his flying height through Nemi's waters and could see what none but groping divers theretofore had seen—the sunken Golden Barge whereon epileptic Emperor Caligula, great-grandson of Augustus, and his minions held their carouses.

The greatest naumachia of all time was the naval engagement staged by Claudius. As Augustus' lake was too small, the mad emperor decided to use the Fucine Lake (now called the Lago di Fucino) some sixty miles to the east of Rome. This lake had no natural outlet and in the spring it often flooded many miles of surrounding county. To overcome this trouble, a tunnel three and a half miles long had been cut through solid rock from the lake to the Litis River to carry off the surplus water. This job had taken thirty thousand men eleven years...