a Pelasgian town, and is called Thessalian. In ancient times, it was
situated, like Venice, in a lagoon, an arm of the sea extending from
the mouth of the Po to the south of Rimini. Ravenna was built there on
stakes like Venice. Such continued to be its condition in the time of
the Roman emperors. It was inaccessible from the main land, from which
it was separated by that arm of the sea, or rather by so shallow a marsh
that persons could reach the city only with very flat boats, and not
without a very accurate knowledge of the shallows. This strong position
was probably the reason why Ravenna subsequently became the seat of the
imperial government, for no place in Italy was considered sufficiently
strong even when protected by a courageous garrison. Ravenna at that
time was situated in the midst of the sea, and the streets were formed,
as at Venice, by means of canals, by which the communication between
its various parts was mainly kept up. A suburb of the name of _Classes_
was situated on the main land opposite. The lagoons have gradually been
filled up. During the Pelasgian period, the arm of the sea may have been
deep, but in the middle ages it was filled up. A pier was constructed
between Ravenna and the suburb Classes (near it was the military port,
whence the name Classes), and this pier seems to have greatly contributed
to the filling up of the lagoons. When Belisarius made war on the Goths,
Ravenna was still situated on the sea, but during the middle ages the
sea vanishes, and the history of this gradual change can be accurately
traced in documents. At present Ravenna is not only not a maritime town,
and without a trace of its ancient canals, but it is situated, like
Mexico, at a distance of from one and a half to two Roman miles from
the sea, and near Classes not a trace of a harbour is left. Ravenna’s
greatness belongs to the period of Rome’s decay. As early as the time of
Augustus, a fleet was stationed there for the purpose of enabling the
Romans, in case of a war or an insurrection, speedily to convey troops
to the frontiers of Noricum, and to Pannonia; and afterwards a fleet
was always ready there. In the time of Theodosius and Honorius, the
town became important as the seat of government; under the Goths, too,
it was the capital notwithstanding the unpleasantness of its situation;
during the period of the Lombards it was the seat of the exarch or
Greek governor of Italy. Hence the many extremely remarkable buildings,
which still distinguish Ravenna from all other towns, and there is no
place possessing so many edifices erected at a time when otherwise
very little was done in the way of building. At the time when Ravenna
became a capital, it had probably not yet reached its full extent; and
as its population greatly increased, it was necessary to enlarge and
embellish the place. Its decay began when it ceased to be the seat of
the exarch. The town is remarkable also in the history of the Roman law,
for notwithstanding its conquest by the Lombards, it never assumed the
character of a Germanic town. Hence it became the seat of the grammatical
and juristical schools, in which ancient literature continued to be
taught. The form in which the ancient scholiasts have come down to us
seems generally, speaking, to have been given to them in the school at
Ravenna. Savigny has shown that the Roman law was taught there until the
eleventh century, and that its juristical school was not transferred to
Bologna till the time when the Roman law became established beyond the
frontiers of Italy.
The ancient town of ARIMINUM (Rimini) is situated to the south-east of
Ravenna; it was a Latin colony established about the end of the fifth
century as a frontier fortress and a place of arms to protect the Romans
against the Cisalpine Gauls. The town is frequently mentioned in history,
especially during the Hannibalian and Gallic wars. The Romans there
awaited the invasion of the Gauls, the Apennines being impassable. A
friend once told me that he had always pronounced the name Arimīnum,
until many years ago his attention was directed to a passage of Lucan,
which shewed him that it ought to be pronounced Arimĭnum. Lucan is
sometimes useful in teaching us the correct pronunciation of names of
places, which do not elsewhere occur in poetry. Otherwise he is, on the
whole, not a pleasing writer, though in some points he contains valuable
information, but he is not sufficiently polished. It was through his
poem, that the gap in the second book of Caesar’s “Bellum Civile” was
discovered. But the most useless of all writers is Silius Italicus, and
yet some things may be gleaned even from his works; no ancient author, in
fact, is so bad, as not to furnish us with some useful information.
Further south on the coast, we find the towns of _Pisaurum_, _Fanum_, and
_Sena Gallia_, of which scarcely any thing is to be said.
GALLIA TRANSPADANA. The INSUBRIANS occupied almost exactly the modern
territory of Milan, for Ticinum was regarded as one of the Ligurian
towns. Comum also did not belong to Gallia Transpadana, which comprised
Milan, Lodi, and a part of the territory of Cremona. During the 200
years in which the Gauls were masters of that district, it contained,
properly speaking, no towns, and MEDIOLANUM, the principal place of the
Insubrians, was an open village, though it may have been very large. The
Romans treated the Insubrians more gently than the Boians, whence their
country was not so cruelly devastated. In consequence of its relation
to Rome, the village of Mediolanum became a town; but when or how this
happened, we have no means of ascertaining. In the time of Caesar and
Cicero, Mediolanum is already mentioned as a town, and, according to
the description of Strabo, it appears to have even been a considerable
one. The district of Milan is extremely fertile; its vicissitudes have
been terrible, but it has always been restored, the causes of which
must probably be sought in the particularly favorable circumstances of
its situation. It is certainly not owing to the peculiar character of
its inhabitants, of whom antiquity did not entertain any more favorable
opinion than that which is current about the modern Milanese, who
are said to be the most lazy and awkward among all the Italians. The
atmosphere is heavy, and both ancients and moderns assert, that this has
a great influence upon the inhabitants. Now this town of Milan which in
the time of Strabo appears as a considerable country town, ever continued
to increase under the emperors. In the letters of Pliny we find it spoken
of as a large place, in which, according to the custom of the time,
public teachers of rhetoric and grammar were appointed and salaried, and
formed what we might call a university. During the second century Milan
became larger and larger. In the war of the emperor Aurelian with the
Goths, it was devastated, but soon recovered again. The emperor Maximian
took up his residence there, so that it became a capital of the empire.
Ausonius who lived about eighty years later says, _Mediolani mira omnia_,
and _mirus_ at that time signified “beautiful” or “magnificent.” In the
reign of Theodoric it was a very large and important city, though this
emperor did not reside there. In the war of Belisarius its fate was very
melancholy: Datius, the bishop of Milan, had been intriguing with the
imperial general and promised to deliver up Milan to him; but the plan
was betrayed, the Goths entered Milan, and, if we can take the account in
Procopius literally, put the whole population to the sword. The calamity
must indeed have been fearful, though it can scarcely have been as bad
as it is said to have been. In the time of the Lombards we again find
it as a great city, though it was under a disadvantage because Pavia,
in its neighbourhood, was the capital of the Lombards; and a rivalry
between those two cities continued to exist until a late period of the
middle ages. This kind of hostility was quite common among the Italian
towns. In the case of large cities, this feeling may to some extent
be excused, though it cannot be justified; but at present, when those
towns are altogether devoid of character, that hatred is the only thing
which has been propagated to them from better and more glorious times.
Verona was the first Italian town in which I made a stay, and in which
I had any conversation with the people; they very soon began to speak
contemptuously of the other cities, to each of which some abusive name
was applied. Such were the first things I heard in Italy; the idea that
they are all countrymen and Italians is treated by them with ridicule;
and even the inhabitants of different towns under the same sovereign
have no fellow-feeling. When you speak to a Milanese, you find that he
does not regard the Veronese as his countrymen; the inhabitants of some
districts in Tuscany appear to him much more in that light, and he feels
as foreign to the Lombards as to the French. It is distressing to see
this distracted state of Italy. A Florentine treats it as a heresy and
flies into a passion, when you speak to him of a _favella Italiana_, he
cannot hear of anything but a _favella Toscana_. It is well known, that
the emperor Frederic Barbarossa afterwards destroyed Milan, and compelled
the inhabitants to live in five scattered villages; but they returned
nevertheless. Subsequently, the wars at the end of the fifteenth and the
beginning of the sixteenth century brought such severe sufferings upon
Milan, that it would necessarily have perished, if this were possible.
It fell into the hands of the Spaniards, and in the sixteenth century was
visited by a plague which carried off three-fifths of its inhabitants. In
the seventeenth century, the plague again made sad ravages, and destroyed
half the population. At present, it is still constantly increasing. He
who has a taste for classical antiquity cannot regard these Lombard towns
as belonging to it; for their importance does not commence until the
decline of the Romans.
COMUM was situated at a distance of about twenty miles from Milan; it
was a town of Alpine tribes of the Raetian race, and not Gallic. The
modern Como is not the same as the ancient Comum, but is identical with
the _Novocomum_ of ancient geography which was founded and honored with
privileges at a later period by Cn. Pompeius Strabo and Julius Caesar.
BERGAMUM also was not a Gallic town, but belonged to the mountain tribes
of the district. Brixia, like the whole district between Lodi and Mantua
belonged to the Cenomani.
LAUS POMPEIA, now Lodi, was founded by Cn. Pompeius Strabo, not, however,
as a Roman town, but “as a colony in a place already existing” in the
Roman dominion.[59]
BRIXIA is called a Cenomanian town, but it must not be inferred from this
that the Cenomani occupied the whole territory of Brixia, for the whole
valley of the Camuni was Raetian. The conquering Gauls did not dwell in
the mountains, but in the plains fitted for the breeding of cattle and
their rude agriculture. If we draw a line from lake Garda to Brixia, and
thence northward towards the Adda, so as to separate Bergamum from the
country of the Gauls, all the country north of that line did not belong
to Italy before the time of Augustus, not even in its wider sense, but
to the Alpine tribes. Catullus says of Brescia _Veronae mater amata
meae_, which is unaccountable, for Verona was a small Gallic town. It
is possible that Brixia may have been the seat of a conventus, somewhat
in the same relation in which the metropolis in Asia Minor stood to the
other towns; this is probable enough, or else Catullus alludes to the
ancient Etruscan times, in which case Brixia would be the mother city of
Verona.
MANTUA, according to Virgil (_Tusco de sanguine vires_) a Tuscan town;
the manner in which he speaks of it, shows that it was a town with a
territory, which was divided into twelve districts. Although he describes
it as a considerable town, it does not appear in this light, and we must
probably make some allowance for the poet’s partiality for his native
city. Its territory, however, may have been extensive, as is evident from
the fact that it was contiguous to that of Cremona.
VERONA, to the north of Mantua, is remarkable because for a considerable
period it was the seat of the Lombard kings, as before it had been the
residence of Theodoric, who in the German lays is called Dietrich of
Bern. There can be no doubt that the name of this far-famed chivalrous
town was transferred to Berne in Switzerland, which was built by duke
Berthold of Zähringen. Its ancient circumference may still be recognised,
and from it we see how small those towns in the north of Italy were
during the imperial period, in comparison with what they were in the
middle ages. The whole of Lombardy, Tuscany, and Venice were far more
flourishing in the middle ages than at any period in classical antiquity.
If we compare Italy during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with
what it was in the days of Cicero, it is as a garden compared with a
desert. The ancient town of Verona occupied scarcely one-fourth of the
extent which it had in the time of the princes of Della Scalla; it still
has the same circumference, but is desolate notwithstanding its 60,000
inhabitants. However, that Verona was a great and wealthy town even in
antiquity, may be seen from the splendid gate of the emperor Gallienus
(which also shews that it was a Roman colony), and from the splendid
amphitheatre. Its fate has not been so disastrous as that of Milan; for
throughout the middle ages it was not visited by a single great calamity.
It is singular to observe how some towns are ever visited by misfortunes,
while others are spared. Verona has acquired immortal celebrity from
being the birth-place of Catullus, who and Lucretius are unquestionably
the greatest Roman poets. The name C. Valerius is surprising, and people
have been foolish enough to connect it with the ancient Valerian gens;
but the fact is, that in the seventh century the Veronese must have had
some Valerius for their patron. The name is extremely common on the
stones which are dug out in the neighbourhood of Verona, and I have seen
the name Valerius with different cognomina on at least twelve or fifteen
of them. In antiquity the town was situated on a reach of the Athesis
(Adige), but it now occupies both sides of the river.
In the division made by Augustus, Verona was contained in the Regio
Veneta, but it is only in an improper sense that it can be said to have
belonged to the nation of the VENETI. No ancient writer distinctly states
to what race the Veneti belonged. They are said to have resembled the
Illyrians in dress and manners; but the very way in which this statement
is made, shows that its author did not regard them as Illyrians. Polybius
assuredly knew how to distinguish the Illyrian language, as well as
people in northern Germany can distinguish the Slavonian language without
having themselves any knowledge of it. I have no doubt that the Veneti
belonged to the race of the Liburnians, and that accordingly they were a
branch of the wide-spread Tyrrheno-Pelasgians, in consequence of which
they also became so easily Latinized. Patavium not only had its own
Trojan legends, but it was by no means a barbarous town like those of
Dalmatia; it must have had a different origin, otherwise it could not
have produced the most eloquent of Latin historians.
Within the territory of Venetia, we meet with a people called EUGANEI,
who seem to have been regarded as the more ancient inhabitants, among
whom, according to tradition, the Trojans established themselves. Two
things must be distinguished in the legend of Antenor, though it cannot
claim to be historically true. First, the Patavinians regarded Antenor
as their κτίστης, just as the Latin towns looked upon Aeneas as the
leader of a Trojan colony. Secondly, the fact of Antenor being described
as a leader of the Heneti, is a mere play upon words originating in the
resemblance of the names. In Venetia assuredly nothing was known about
the Heneti, a people in Paphlagonia. But, however this may be,—
PATAVIUM was a very ancient and large town, and it is strange that it
appears as such in Roman history all at once. It is mentioned as early as
the fifth century, during the expedition of the Spartan Cleonymus; it is
also spoken of at the time of Caesar and of the triumvirs. But Strabo is
the first who describes Patavium as a large town, and in such a manner
as to make it evident that it was an ancient place. He says that, next
to Rome, it was the wealthiest city of Italy, that Patavium alone had
500 Roman equites, each of whom, as is well-known, must have possessed
at least 100,000 denarii: this gives us some idea of the enormous amount
of local wealth. In the time of Augustus, it was a large commercial and
manufacturing place; the whole district is in fact very industrial,
and its colony, Venice, besides its commerce, is also celebrated for
its great industry. Patavium is always said to have been destroyed by
Attila: when he advanced as far as the Po, a number of inhabitants of
Patavium and other towns are said to have taken refuge in the islands
of the Venetian lagoons, and to have protected themselves there. I do
indeed believe, that the tempest of the Huns passed over all those towns,
and that the destruction was fearful; but I cannot believe that Padua
perished. It never ceased to be a town, and was an important place during
the Gothic and Lombard periods, and throughout the middle ages.
Nor can the foundation of the new city in the lagoons (Venice) have been
occasioned by that sudden invasion of the Huns; the place must have
been inhabited to some extent even before. This lay in the nature of
circumstances. Sailors, and other people of the same kind, sought refuge
in a place where they were beyond the reach of the barbarians. They went
there not only on account of the Huns, but of all barbarian immigrants,
for there they were safe against ill-treatment and other horrors, and
land was not the thing they wanted. When Theodoric reigned in Italy, they
were his faithful subjects; and they were afterwards under the dominion
of the Eastern empire. The discussions which were in vogue during the
seventeenth century, as to whether Venice could trace its liberties to
the Roman times, were silly and quite useless. There are what are called
Fasti of the Venetian consuls, but they are altogether apocryphal, a
forgery of the Lombard period; they contain only late Lombard names, and
do not appear to be authentic until the middle of the seventh century.
AQUILEIA, the extreme town of Italy, was a Roman colony planted for the
purpose of securing Venetia, of offering resistance to the Noricans
and extending the Roman dominion against them, of protecting the Roman
supremacy in the Adriatic, and of keeping up the communication by land
with Istria. The town, favoured by its situation, gradually increased,
and became an emporium for the commerce with the northern countries,
no doubt, even with the interior of Germany, to which the products of
the south, wine, oil, and the like were exported. It cannot be said
with certainty whether Aquileia was also a military colony. Under the
emperors, it was one of the largest cities, and was carefully fortified
as a place of arms for all Italy against the northern nations and the
Getae.
Italy extended in the north as far as Istria; but a part of Istria, as
far as Pola, was united in the division of Augustus with Italy; this
was founded upon the correct view that, according to the course of the
mountains, the frontier was formed by the highest ridge of the Julian
Alps and their whole continuation down to the southern point of Istria.
In this manner Istria was divided into two parts.
LIGURIA.
The part of the continent of Italy which remains to be considered, was
probably not regarded by Polybius as belonging to Italy, or at least
only partially. Liguria, in the widest sense, extended as far as Gaul,
nay, as far as the frontier of Spain; but Italian Liguria, in the sense
in which Augustus made it a part of Italy (not in the later sense in
which it signified the territory of Milan), comprised the Genoese Alps,
the continuation of the Alps forming the southernmost part of Piedmont,
and the hilly country about Turin, with Alessandria, and a part of
the territory of Montferrat. The Genoese Alps, that is, the range of
the Alpes Maritimae as far as Briançon and mount Cenis, are among the
highest and wildest parts of the Alps, while the more northern slopes
of the mountains as far as the Po and the Ticinus belong to the most
splendid and fertile parts of northern Italy. It is not a plain, like the
territory of Milan and the country on the lower Po, which is evidently,
like Egypt, an ancient bay of the sea, filled up in the course of time;
but it is a hilly country. Its population in ancient times was altogether
Ligurian, and the Salassi, in the valley of Aosta, are the only tribe,
mentioned in after times, regarding which it is uncertain whether they
were Ligurians or Celts; the Taurini were, in my opinion, Ligurians.
Although the language is changed in modern times, still the fact of
French being spoken by the inhabitants of the valley of Aosta, and not
Italian, is of some significance in connection with their origin: they
have changed their language in a manner analogous to their origin.
There is little resemblance between the French and the ancient Celtic,
there being only some analogy in grammar, but not in words; in the
south of France, on the other hand, as far as it was once inhabited by
Aquitanians, Iberians, and Ligurians, the people speak Provençal, while
the north of France, which was once inhabited by Celts, has a different
dialect. This Romano-French, which has grown on Celtic ground, extends
all over Savoy as far as Aosta, and shows that the country was originally
inhabited by Celts. The Alpine tribes in those parts were not completely
subdued until the time of Augustus. During the period of the decline of
the Etruscans, the Ligurians spread far into the interior of Tuscany;
and soon after the Hannibalian war, the Romans came in collision with
them, not because they had offended the Romans, but the latter only
wanted to gain a passage through their country to Spain. I have already
observed that physically we can distinguish the countries once inhabited
by Etruscans and Ligurians, and a greater contrast can scarcely exist. In
Etruria the powerful cities ruled as sovereigns over all the neighbouring
places and extensive territories; the Ligurians, on the other hand, were
absolutely democratic, and had scarcely any towns. A port town like Genoa
was a small place, but otherwise they lived in villages on the hills
and in the valleys; the equality subsisting among them has no parallel
anywhere except in modern Europe. They had no slaves; all were thoroughly
free, and the Ligurian, working in the sweat of his brow, performed as a
free labourer the services which were elsewhere the work of slaves. This
difference in character is clearly manifested in the kind of resistance
offered to the Romans by the Etruscans and by the Ligurians. For the
same reason Charlemagne found it infinitely more difficult to subdue
the Saxons and Frisians, for they were free people, and although there
were some serfs among them, yet freedom had never been really crushed.
The Turingians, on the other hand, who ruled over extensive territories,
in which the ancient inhabitants had become serfs, were conquered at a
blow; so also the Alemanni, who possessed a large country extending as
far as the lower Rhine: they had no basis. As they ruled over serfs, the
greater part of the population was foreign and hostile to them. On the
other hand, it took centuries to subdue the Obotritae and Slavonians,
who defended their own independence. Such, also, was the case of the
Ligurians: they consisted of a large number of small tribes, which
unfortunately defended themselves each separately. If they had kept
together, they would have been invincible, for each of them held out with
the most determined perseverance. Their misfortune makes one’s heart
ache: they were crushed by the Romans one by one, just as a strong wall
is demolished piece by piece. The conquerors were obliged to transplant
them into foreign countries; and one of their tribes is said by Pliny to
have been transplanted thirty times, in order to break up all connection
among them. Many thousands of them were led into southern Italy, and
settled in the modern kingdom of Naples, where their language was not
understood, and where they themselves were unwelcome neighbours. The
extraordinary industry of the Ligurians in agriculture and navigation,
their frugality, and in short, all that we know of them reflects great
honour upon them. We cannot, therefore, look upon their destruction with
less sadness than upon that of Numantia. Little can be said about the
geography of this people.
GENUA is situated on one of those spots which will always be the site of
a great commercial town, on account of the excellent harbour which nature
herself has made. Its situation is of that fortunate kind that it cannot
become unfavourable even in the course of time, like so many harbours
which have become useless during the middle ages by the accumulation of
sand or mud. After the Punic war, Genua was destroyed, but was restored
soon after; and there can be no doubt that even in antiquity it was a
respectable town.