The Digital Ark: Early Modern Collections of Curiosities in England and Scotland, 1580-1700
Confetti di Tivoli [ARK00054]
Attached People: Collector (major) - Bargrave, John (1610-1680)Location(s): Current location at - Canterbury Cathedral Library and Archives (Library and/or Archive) -> Canterbury Cathedral (Institution)
Annotation:[Canterbury Catalog: Small oval box containing Tiber "gravel" also with Bargrave's original label: "Confetti Di Tivoli/ The sand of Teverone that Entereth in/ to the Tiber not farr fro~ Rome/ John Bargrave". Confetti translates as "uncountable" and has come to be used to describe a large quantity of small items. The Aniene River, formerly called the Teverone or in Latin, Anio, is a 98 km river in Lazio, Italy. It flows down from the mountains at Trevi nel Lazio and goes westward past Subiaco, Vicovaro, and Tivoli into the Tiber. In antiquity, most of the Roman aqueducts had their sources either from the Aniene or from streams flowing into it. Bargrave writes "Item., Confetti di Tivoli, a box full of sugar plums of the town of old Tybur, now called Tivoli. They seem to be so like sugar plums that they will deceive any man that only seeth them, especially when the counterfeit amand and muske comfeits, made out of the same materials, are mixed amongst them. But the things themselves are nothing but the gravel or sand of the river of Tybur. The plumms are of a chaunchy or brimstony matter".] (undated)