Part 22

In the later political geography of the Romans, Gallia Cisalpina is divided into two parts which are very different from each other, viz., _Gallia Cispadana_ and _Gallia Transpadana_. In political terminology the latter acquired a greater extent, not being limited to the country between the Ticinus and lake Garda, but also comprising Venetia. The inhabitants of all this country, who received the _jus Latii_, were called _Transpadani_. The _Cispadani_ are not much spoken of, which arose from particular circumstances, which I will explain to you because history does not do it. I have mentioned to you, that the whole country south of the Po, from Piacenza to the frontier of Picenum, was inhabited by two Gallic tribes, the Boians and Senones. The Senones were extirpated to a man, as, e.g., the Eretrians were extirpated by the Persians. The Romans invaded their country, burnt down their villages, and carried off their women and children into slavery; the men, capable of bearing arms, who in their despair returned, like beasts of prey whose young ones are taken from them, to save their families, were completely defeated, and those who escaped fled to the Boians. The whole of modern Romagna became a complete desert, such as we sometimes find in the history of Germany, e.g., the desert of the Avars in the time of Charlemagne, and Servia, after its devastation by Attila, when it was in such a condition that the ambassadors of Theodosius II. travelled seven days without finding any other traces of man, except the bodies of the murdered inhabitants. After its devastation, the Romans gave up the country partly to Roman citizens and partly to Italicans, who might cultivate it as they pleased, for it had become _ager publicus_. C. Flaminius afterwards distributed a portion of it _viritim_ among Roman citizens. There now arose in those extensive districts entirety new settlements, the names of which are of a peculiar character: _Faventia Pollentia_, _Florentia_ and _Placentia_ are all names derived from verbs implying a favourable omen. Other places are termed _Fora_, and according to the American practice they might be called territories; they were inhabited by Roman citizens, who fully enjoyed the benefits of the Roman law, but did not form corporations. They lived isolated from one another, and thus were deprived of that advantage which was so important in antiquity, I mean, of the privileges of corporations: they had no magistrates to administer justice, whence there were many acts which they could not perform at all. It was contrary to the feelings of the Romans to appoint magistrates according to districts, and it was for this reason that they instituted Fora, places in which court-houses were built, and where a praefect, appointed by the praetor urbanus, resided, and where, accordingly, judicial business could be transacted.

The Boians survived the Senones about ninety years; during the Hannibalian war, they were enraged against the Romans, who, by fortifying and colonising Placentia and Cremona, had planted the yoke upon their necks, but the vengeance of the Romans was such, that in the course of about ten years they extirpated the whole Boian nation. A fragment of Cato in Pliny (iii. 15) furnishes express testimony on this subject, and the account in Livy, too, speaks distinctly enough. After this, no Boians are mentioned in Italy. In treating of Roman history, and especially of the _Lex de Gallia Cisalpina_, the question often presents itself to us, how it happens that in Cicero’s time we hear such frequent mention of Gallia Transpadana, while Gallia Cispadana is never spoken of. The matter is explained by what I have said. The Gallic population of the latter was utterly annihilated; in regard to the Senones, it is expressly attested, and the survivors of the Boians were not more numerous than, for example, those of the Indian tribes in America. The whole country then was taken possession of by Romans and Italicans in the manner before described, and several colonies, such as Mutina, Bononia, Parma, etc., were established in it; the country, however, was partly _ager publicus_ and partly _ager divisus_. In this manner, the whole country south of the Po was severed from Gaul, and all that remained of Gaul consisted of a small territory north of the Po, between the Ticinus and the lake of Garda; and this latter is the country of the Insubrians and Cenomanians, who, together with the Venetians, formed those Transpadani, who, through Cn. Pompeius Strabo, obtained the _jus Latii_ of the later kind.

The following are the towns in the territory of Gallia Cispadana, proceeding from west to east:—PLACENTIA, the first Roman colony in those districts, was established two years before Hannibal’s passage over the Alps. Like Cremona, it was situated on the northern bank of the river, and its fortification was one of the most energetic measures for maintaining the Roman dominion in those parts.

PARMA, a Latin colony, was founded like MUTINA after the Hannibalian war.

BONONIA, anciently called Felsina, and at present Bologna, was a remarkable place even in antiquity on account of its favourable situation, though it can in no way be compared with what it was during its subsequent greatness. We may estimate its ancient circumference with tolerable accuracy from the extent of the town in the middle ages, which, however, was scarcely the fifth part of what it is at present.

In the subsequent province of Flaminia, which ever since the time of the exarchate was called _Romania_ (Romagna), there existed several towns between Bologna and Rimini, such as _Faventia_, _Forum Cornelii_, _Forum Popillii_, and others. Most of them were as ancient as the time of the Roman republic, but their history is unimportant. Ever since the beginning of the exarchate, their sad celebrity is that their defence and conquest are much spoken of.

RAVENNA, the centre of the whole province of Flaminia, was originally 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.