another little tributary is Anghiara, where in 1440 a terrible battle
was fought between the Milanese troops, under command of the gallant
free-lance Piccinino, and the Floren-tines, led by Giovanni Paolo
(commonly called Giampaolo) Orsini; and a little farther, on the main
stream, Città di Castello recalls the story of a long siege which it
valiantly sustained against Braccio da Montone, surnamed Fortebraccio
(Strongarm), another renowned soldier of fortune of the fifteenth
century.

[Footnote 1: _The Pilgrimage of the Tiber_, by Wm. Davies.]

[Illustration: LAKE THRASIMENE.]

As the widening flood winds on through the beautiful plain, a broad
sheet of water on the right spreads for miles to the foot of the
mountains, whose jutting spurs form many a bay, cove and estuary. It
was in the small hours of a night of misty moonlight that our eyes,
stretched wide with the new wonder of beholding classic ground, first
caught sight of this smooth expanse gleaming pallidly amid the dark,
blurred outlines of the landscape and trees. The monotonous noise and
motion of the train had put our fellow-travelers to sleep, and when it
gradually ceased they did not stir. There was no bustle at the little
station where we stopped; a few drowsy figures stole silently by in
the dim light, like ghosts on the spectral shore of Acheron; the whole
scene was strangely unreal, phantasmal. "What can it be?" we asked
each other under our breaths. "There is but one thing that it can
be--Lake Thrasimene." And so it was. Often since, both by starlight
and daylight, we have seen that watery sheet of fatal memories, but
it never wore the same shadowy yet impressive aspect as on our first
night-journey from Florence to Rome.