a town of Italy, in the kingdom of Naples, Campania, Naples, and in the Farther Principate, with a bishop's see. E. Long. 15° 30' N. Lat. 40° 40'.

Campagna di Roma, anciently Latium, a province of Italy, bounded on the west by the Tiber and the sea, on the south-west by the sea, on the south by Terra di Lavoro, on the east by Abruzzo, and on the north by Sabina. Though the soil is good, it produces little or nothing, on account of the heavy duties on corn; and though the waters are good, the air is unwholesome. It is subject to the Pope, and is about 60 miles in length, on the Mediterranean sea.

It has been generally thought that the air of this country hath something in it peculiarly noxious during the summer time; but Mr Condamine is of opinion that it is not more unhealthy than any other marshy country. His account follows. "It was after the invasion of the Goths in the fifth and sixth centuries that this corruption of the air began to manifest itself. The bed of the Tiber being covered by the accumulated ruins of the edifices of ancient Rome, could not but raise itself considerably. But what permits us not to doubt of this fact is, that the ancient and well-preserved pavement of the Pantheon and its portico is overflowed every winter; that the water even rises there sometimes to the height of eight or ten feet: and that it is not possible to suppose that the ancient Romans should have built a temple in a place so low as to be covered with the waters of the Tiber on the least inundation. It is evident, then, that the level of the bed of this river is raised several feet; which could not have happened without forming there a kind of dikes or bars. The choking up of its canal necessarily occasioned the overflow and reflux of its waters in such places as till then had not been subject to inundations: to these overflows of the Tiber were added all the waters that escaped out of the ancient aqueducts, the ruins of which are still to be seen, and which were entirely broken and destroyed by Totila. What need, therefore, of anything more to infect the air, in a hot climate, than the exhalations of such a mass of stagnating waters deprived of any discharge, and become the receptacle of a thousand impurities, as well as the grave of several millions both of men and animals? The evil could not but increase from the same causes while Rome was exposed to the incursions and devastations of the Lombards, the Normans, and the Saracens, which lasted for several centuries. The air was become so infectious there at the beginning of the 13th century, that Pope Innocent III. wrote, that few people at Rome arrived at the age of forty years, and that nothing was more uncommon there than to see a person of sixty. A very short time after the popes transferred the seat of their residence to Avignon: during the seventy-two years they remained there, Rome became a desert; the monasteries in it were converted into stables; and Gregory XI. on his return to Rome, in 1376, hardly counted there 30,000 inhabitants. At his death began the troubles of the great schism in the west, which continued for upwards of 50 years. Martin V., in whom this schism ended in the year 1429, and his first successors, were able to make but feeble efforts against so inveterate an evil. It was not till the beginning of the 16th century, that Leo X., under whom Rome began to resume her wonted splendour, gave himself some trouble about re-establishing the salubrity of the air; but the city being shortly after besieged twice successively by Charles V., saw itself plunged again into all its old calamities; and from 85,000 inhabitants, which it contained under Leo X., it was reduced under Clement VIII., to 32,000. In short, it is only since the time of Pius V., and Sextus V., at the end of the 16th century, that the popes have constantly employed the necessary methods for purifying the air of Rome and its environs, by procuring proper discharges for the waters, drying up the humid and marshy grounds, and covering the banks of the Tiber and other places reputed uninhabitable with superb edifices. Since that time a person may dwell at Rome, and go in or out of it at all seasons of the year. At the beginning, however, of the present century, they were still afraid to lie out of the city in summer, when they had resided there; as they were also to return to it, when once they had quitted it. They never ventured to sleep at Rome, even in broad day, in any other house than their own. They are greatly relaxed at present from these ancient scruples: I have seen cardinals, in the months of July and August, go from Rome to lie at Frascati, Tivoli, Albano, &c. and return the next or the following days to the city, without any detriment to their health: I have myself tried all these experiments, without suffering the least inconvenience from them; we have even seen, in the last war in Italy, two armies encamped under the walls of Rome at the time when the heats were most violent. Yet notwithstanding all this, the greater part of the country people dare not still venture to lie during that season of the year, nor even so much as sleep in a carriage, in any part of the territory comprehended under the name of the Campagna of Rome."