"Here we lack only one [sign] to prove that we are on the barren shore of the much-sung and feared Lake Averno: what others, historians and poets, have written about it is confirmed here by the truth, and our eyes give us full faith in it. Here is the continuous circle of mountains, in whose deepest centre the lake lies, and remains so completely hidden that whether it is winter or summer, dawn or dusk, or the sun rises at midday, it can never be seen, even with a reflection of light, or be seen by it: therefore this unhappy water, in the melancholy brown that it always shows, seems to have the darkness of hell mixed in it to blacken it even more. Behold the thick forests that gather around it, and again blind it, doubling its shadows. Enclosed on all sides, it has nowhere to lead even a thin thread of water out, and move as if alive; but everything stagnates between its banks, everything within itself becomes swampy, and like a corpse of water, it stinks. Of the Cimmerians who have their dwellings nearby, I can only point with my finger and tell you that they live there in their underground caves: whether they are alive or dead, no one knows for sure, because their home is also their tomb. On this other side, it will be easy for you to recognise in that great cleft in the mountain the dark and frightening mouth, or rather chasm, into which anyone who has the courage to enter the bowels of the earth must throw himself, and descend alive, if he can, to the Elysian Fields, or else, and more likely, to Hell. All that is missing is to see some unwary flock of birds flying through the air that hangs over and broods over the lake, entering it and attracting the pestilential vapour that exhales from it, poisoning themselves and falling down, I know not whether stunned or dead. But to linger so long on this unhappy shore, with the stench of sulphur biting our brains and strangling us, would be to pay too high a price for our curiosity. (from “Il lago Averno”, p. 343)"