Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XXXI. The Regatta
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window for the ventilation of the Grotto, which
was of course not blue then but just like the
dozens of other grottos on the island. Baedeker’s
information that the Blue Grotto had been
discovered in 1826 by the German painter Kopisch
was incorrect. The grotto was known in the
seventeenth century as Grotta Gradula and was
rediscovered in 1822 by the Capri fisherman
Angelo Ferraro who was even granted a life
pension for his discovery. As to the sinister
tradition of Tiberius handed down to posterity
in the Annals of Tacitus, I told Lord Dufferin
that history had never committed a worse blunder
than when condemning this great emperor to
infamy on the testimony of his principal accuser,
“a detractor of humanity,” as Napoleon had
called him. Tacitus was a brilliant writer but
his Annals were historical novels, not history.
He had to insert at random his twenty lines about
the Capri orgies in order to complete his picture
of the typical tyrant of the rhetorical school to
which he belonged. There was no difficulty in
tracing the more than suspect source from which
he had got hold of these foul rumours. I was
besides pointing out in my “Psychological Study
of Tiberius” that they did not even relate to the
Emperor’s life in Capri. That Tacitus himself
did not believe in the Capri orgies is evident
from his own narrative since they do not in any
way weaken his general conception of Tiberius
as a great emperor and a great man, “admirable
in character and in great esteem” to use his own
words. Even his far less clever follower,
Suetonius, introduces his filthiest stories with the
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