Aver'nus

Aver'nus (Gr. Aornos, 'birdless'), called now Lago d'Averno, is a small, nearly circular lake in Campania, Italy, situated between Cumæ, Puteoli, and Baia. It is about a mile and a half in circumference, and occupies the crater of an extinct volcano. It is in some places as deep as 200 feet, and is almost completely shut in by steep and wooded heights. The sulphureous and mephitic vapours arising from the lake were believed in ancient times to kill the birds that flew over it; hence, according to some, its Greek appellation. Owing to its gloomy and awful aspect, it became the centre of almost all the fables of the ancients respecting the world of shades. Here was located Homer's entrance to the under world; here the Cimmerians are said to have dwelt in deep caverns, without ever coming into the light of day; here also were placed the Elysian fields, the grove of Hecate, and the grotto of the Cumean Sibyl. Agrippa caused the dense woods to be thinned, by which the place lost much of its wildness; and by a cutting connected it with the Lucrine Lake and the sea, so as to make it a kind of harbour, but the volcanic upheaval of the Monte Nuovo in 1538 altered the region, and made Avernus again an inland lake. On its east side are ruins of a temple of Apollo, on its south side what is shown as the famous grotto of the Sibyl.