CHAPTER XVII - BIEDA.—BLERA

Summary

Some things in it you may meet with, which are out of the common road; a Duke there is, and the scene lies in Italy.

—Beaumont and Fletcher.

Another Etruscan site of great interest, but very little known, is Bieda, a village five or six miles south-west of Vetralla. It is the representative of the ancient town of Blera, of which its name is an Italian corruption. Blera could not have been a place of importance, under either Etruscans or Romans. Not once is it mentioned by ancient historians, and its name only occurs in the catalogues of geographers. We know that it was a small town at the commencement of the Empire; that it was on the Via Clodia, between the Forum Clodii and Tuscania; and there ends our knowledge of it from ancient sources. That it had an existence in Etruscan times, we learn, not from the pages of history, but from the infallible records of its extant monuments.

Bieda is best visited from Vetralla. The road for the first two miles is the highway to Corneto and Civita Vecchia. We then turned off to the left, crossed some downs by a mere bridle-path, forded a stream in a wild, deep hollow, and reached the brow of a hill, whence the village of Bieda came into view, crowning an opposite height. The scenery here was very romantic. The height of Bieda was lofty and precipitous, and as usual was a tongue of rock at the junction of two glens, which separated it from corresponding heights of equal abruptness.