Feb
7th
Tue
7th
It is an observation of L’abbé du Bos that Italy is warmer at present than it was in ancient times. The annals of Rome tell us - says he - that in the year 480 ab UC the winter was so severe that it destroyed the trees. The Tyber froze in Rome and the ground was covered with snow for forty days. When Juvenal describes a superstitious woman he represents her as breaking the ice of the Tyber that she might perform her ablutions:
Hybemum fracta glacie descendet in amnem
Ter matutino Tyberi mergetur.
He speaks of that river’s freezing as a common event. Many passages of Horace suppose the streets of Rome full of snow and ice. We should have more certainty with regard to this point had the ancients known the use of thermometers. But their writers without intending it give us information sufficient to convince us that the winters are now much more temperate at Rome than formerly. At present the Tyber no more freezes at Rome than the Nile at Cairo. The Romans esteem the winters very rigorous if the snow lie two days and if one see for eight and forty hours a few icicles hang from a fountain that has a north exposure
Hybemum fracta glacie descendet in amnem
Ter matutino Tyberi mergetur.
He speaks of that river’s freezing as a common event. Many passages of Horace suppose the streets of Rome full of snow and ice. We should have more certainty with regard to this point had the ancients known the use of thermometers. But their writers without intending it give us information sufficient to convince us that the winters are now much more temperate at Rome than formerly. At present the Tyber no more freezes at Rome than the Nile at Cairo. The Romans esteem the winters very rigorous if the snow lie two days and if one see for eight and forty hours a few icicles hang from a fountain that has a north exposure
— Hume, On the populousness of the antient nations
