Chapter X: Part 10

Within the territory of Tuscia or Etruria, we find on the banks of the Tiber a place, or rather a tribe, which in all our maps is described as a part of Etruria, but which the ancients, Strabo, e.g., expressly say did not belong to Etruria. This is the people of the FALISCANS. Respecting their nationality, the ancients have in reality only this negative statement, and we cannot ascertain to what race they belonged, except by divination and indirect evidence. Virgil in his Aeneid speaks of _Aequi Falisci_, which the commentators, and even the ancient scholiasts, taking _Aequi_ as an adjective, translate “just Faliscans”; but it is highly probable that _Aequi_ is a name, and that we have to regard the expression in the same light as, e.g., _Chaonii Campi_, where Campi is explained even by the scholiasts as the name of a people. The identity of the Aequians and Faliscans is confirmed also by other evidence. Among the Faliscans we find the word _hirpus_, whence their language may be inferred to be a branch of the Oscan, in which, as we have seen, this word signifies a wolf. Lastly, the name of the Faliscans may be traced at once to that of the Volscians, _Volsci_, _Volisci_, _Falisci_; and as we know that they were of foreign, that is, non-Etruscan origin, we cannot, considering the geographical position of the people, doubt the correctness of the view here expounded. There is some plausibility also in the other tradition which is traced to Cato, that the country, before it was taken possession of by the Faliscans, was inhabited by Siculians. This quite agrees with our supposition of successive conquests. The most ancient inhabitants were Pelasgians, who were succeeded by an Ausonian people, and the latter again are pushed onward by the Sabines; for it should be observed, that the Sabines did not penetrate between these Faliscans and Aequians and the Volscians until a later period.

The Faliscans had several towns, of which FALERII was the most important. For reasons which are quite unknown to us, the Romans, after the first Punic war, conquered and destroyed this town. This fact is all we know; but we may suppose that the place, to escape from oppression, was tempted to a rash and inconsiderate act, for the condition of Italy was then such as to render any undertaking against Rome hopeless. The town was afterwards restored. Near Civita Castellana, there is a place called Falera, which is no doubt the ancient Falerii; Faliscan inscriptions are still found there. It was a deeply rooted mistake among the first scholars after the revival of letters, to suppose that Civita Castellana was the ancient Veii; but this error was refuted even by Lucas Holstenius. The real town of Falerii was situated a little to the east of it.

Mount SORACTE, which is always visible from Rome, was in the country of the Faliscans. Horace, in one of his Odes, speaks of Soracte as being covered with snow, and this has given rise to the erroneous inference, that the climate of Rome is now changed and milder than in antiquity. The Abruzzi, Leonessa, and other heights, may be covered with snow, without its being cold at Rome, but when there is snow on mount Soracte the cold at Rome is severe. This is indeed not often the case; but when it does happen, the snow-capped Soracte, is seen very distinctly from Rome. Horace has not availed himself of a poetical license in this respect. I mention this, because people, very frequently, if not generally, speak of poetical license as if an inaccurate expression in a poet ought to be pardoned. There may, indeed, be poets of this kind, as, for example, Ausonius, and Greek poets of the period of decay; and modern poets, too, very frequently make use of such licenses; but it is quite certain that the good poets of antiquity give to things only such epithets as are quite clear and true to their own minds.

UMBRIA.

Of this country I have little to say. Umbria, in its proper sense, in which the name is used by the Romans, is situated for the most part in the Apennines, though we cannot even positively assert that it extended to the southern slope of the Apennines. But in more ancient times it extended much farther on both sides. There is great probability in the tradition that the Umbrians were confined to their small territory by the Etruscans, who are said to have taken 300 Umbrian towns. This number, however, must not be taken literally, for it is only a general number like μυρίοι, and _sexcenti_. Its earlier and larger extent is also attested by the river Umbro in the territory of Siena, and by the fact, that even at a later time a part of Etruria continued to be called Umbria. At one period the Umbrians also possessed the whole country about Rimini as far as the mouth of the Padus; there they were either expelled or subdued by the Gauls, or, as is still more probable, completely extirpated, for the Gauls were most fearful enemies and barbarians in the strictest sense of the term, annihilating and devastating everything that came in their way. During the Roman period, the Umbrians were extremely weak, and down to the fifth century, when the Romans came in contact with them, they were no doubt tributary to the Gauls. What could they in fact have done against such an enemy? They were obliged either to repel them or pay tribute to them. We know that other neighbouring tribes did so, whence it is probable that the Umbrians did the same. The Gauls, who so often advanced to the lower Tiber, cannot have come through any other country but Umbria, for the Etruscans in their towns defended themselves against them, and were protected in the north by the Apennines. Hence the unfortunate country of Umbria had constantly to suffer from the passages of the Gauls, who, in like manner, always took their road to Apulia through Picenum.

At the time when the Umbrians come in contact with the Romans, they seem to act as one nation, though it does not follow from this that they actually formed one state. A fact, however, which may seem to support this view is, that the different districts of the country are mentioned under the name of _tribus_ or _plagae_ (_tribus Materina_, _Sapinia_), which denote parts of one great whole. Yet this union, if it did exist, can have embraced only a portion, for the Sarsinates, or Sassinates, stood apart, and in the war of Pyrrhus they alone, for a time, defended their independence against the Romans. The Umbrians allowed themselves to become involved in the war of the Samnites and Gauls, but appear to have carried it on without energy; and a treaty seems to have been concluded with them similar to that with the Etruscans, for both are mentioned among the nations which supported Scipio. I am well aware that Italicans did the same, but they did it in a different manner.

Several of the Umbrian towns were made Roman colonies, especially _Spoletium_ and _Narnia_, previously called _Nequinum_; both places were fortified by the Romans (Narnia after the second Samnite war, and Spoletium afterwards), for the purpose of keeping the country in subjection, and of protecting the frontier against the Gauls.

All Umbria was full of towns: _Hispellum_, _Tuder_, _Fulginium_, _Assisium_, _Camerinum_, and _Iguvium_ (Gubbio), were places of considerable importance. In the last of them, tables have been dug out of the ground with inscriptions in Etruscan and in another language in Latin characters; the latter language seems to resemble the Latin and Oscan. When once the Oscan language shall be better known, more light will perhaps be thrown upon the Umbrian language also. The name _Umbria_ and the Greek Ὀμβρικοὶ seem actually to be akin to Ὀπικοί, which is in fact intimated in a passage of Philistus; whence the Umbrians probably belonged to the great Ausonian race. So far as I have seen Umbria, it is a very excellent and picturesque country; the Apennines are there much more beautiful than in Tuscany; they are covered with particularly fine forests, and have magnificent, rich, and fertile valleys. All the rest of Italy is ill-suited to the breeding of oxen, but Umbria has the most splendid kinds: I have seen a herd of white oxen near the well of Clitumnus, which consisted of the finest and noblest animals of the kind; they were like those in southern Poland and Russia. The cattle here in Germany is wretched. The extension and change of the races of animals in Italy may be traced back to the times of antiquity: buffaloes, for example, were introduced into Campania in the seventh century, when the country was almost a wilderness.

GALLIA CISALPINA OR TOGATA.

Down to the middle of the fourth century, the country beyond the Apennines was called northern Etruria, but after that time it bore the name _Gallia Cisalpina_ or _Togata_, but it extended further than Etruria proper, for the sea-coast as far as the river Aesis never belonged to Etruria.

The country now called Lombardy in its narrower sense, was inhabited in the earliest times by Ligurians, as is clear from most indubitable indications, and hence we must suppose, that subsequently they were driven by the Etruscans across the Ticinus. But these events belong to too remote an epoch, and I cannot say much either of this or of the Etruscan period. Certain it is that Etruscan towns existed in those parts, and that Etruscans dwelt there as the conquerors of the Ligurians and as the lords of the land; and there can be no doubt that after descending from the Alps the Etruscans established their first settlements there. _Melpum_ is said to have been a great Etruscan settlement in the neighbourhood of Milan; and _Felsina_ (Bononia), _Mutina_, _Parma_, and _Brixia_, are spoken of in the same way. _Verona_ is sometimes called Raetian and sometimes Etruscan, and _Mantua_ is called Etruscan by Virgil. It is possible that Verona may have been termed Raetian because it was situated on the Raetian frontier, and may for all this have been an Etruscan town.

The immigration of the Gauls into those parts is assigned by Livy in a most unhistorical manner to the time of Tarquinius Priscus; he has no other reason for it than the very legendary connection supposed to have existed between this emigration of the Gauls, and the settlement of the Phocaeans at Massilia. There is much more probability in the statement, that not long before the attack upon Rome by the Senones, the Gauls had first poured down upon all Italy in great masses. This is supported by the express testimony of Polybius, that they had shortly before come across the Alps, and also by the tradition that they took Melpum in the same year in which Veii was taken by Camillus (358). Just at that time, the Etruscans on quitting Veii seem to have turned their attention to an object of greater interest in a different direction. About that same time the Gauls appear in Slavonia and Lower Hungary, where they stirred up the Triballians, and according to an ancient tradition the Gauls migrated at the same time across the Alps and across the Rhine. They evidently marched into Italy through Switzerland, which may previously have been inhabited by quite different tribes. The ruins on the Ottilienberg in Alsace have a complete Etruscan appearance; they strongly resemble the fortifications of Volaterrae, and are situated on the plateau of a hill: they are altogether foreign to the Celtic character; the Celts had nothing of the kind. The supposition of the antiquarians of Alsace, ever since the time of Schoepflin, that, as those ruins are not Celtic, they belong to the decaying period of Rome, perhaps the reign of Valentinian, is extremely unfortunate. These ruins are far more ancient than the Celtic period, and belong to a people, which was expelled by the Gauls. The great Gallic migration was a mighty commotion extending from the frontiers of Spain to the Ukraine. In the subsequent counter-movement of the Slavonic migrations, the Gauls were driven back from east to west; and then they appear under the name of Cimbri together with the Germanic nation of the Teutones, and return to their ancient homes as ravaging conquerors.

The Gauls who settled south of the Alps consisted of several tribes, partly entire and partly ἀποδασμοὶ of those of which a portion remained behind in Gaul. In this light we must view the _Boians_; very few of them may have remained in Gaul itself; the greater part advanced into the country south of the Po, and another branch settled in Bavaria and Bohemia. On the whole there were about four or five Gallic tribes which settled in Italy on both sides of the Po; but besides them large numbers of volunteers, individuals and roaming vagabonds joined and strengthened one tribe or the other. I shall enumerate them in the order in which we find them established, beginning in the west. The Ticinus forms the frontier between the Gauls and Ligurians, as it still forms that between the territories of Milan and Piedmont.

1. The INSUBRIANS, in the modern territory of Milan proper.

2. The CENOMANIANS, in the territory of Brescia and Bergamo, between lake Garda and the mouth of the Po.

3. The BOIANS, in the south of the latter; their territory is made too small in all our maps; they occupied the county from Piacenza to the sea, including Parma, Modena, Reggio, Bologna and Ferrara. They were divided, according to Cato, into 112 pagi.

4. The SENONES, in the modern Romagna and Urbino, as far as the Aesis and the frontiers of Picenum.

5. The LINGONES must have occupied the country to the north of the former, that is Ferrara and the territory of Rovigo.

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.

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.

AUGUSTA TAURINORUM, a military colony of Augustus, was likewise a considerable town, but not to be compared with what it came to be at a later period. In comparison with the modern city of Turin, it was no doubt always a small place. On the whole, you must not conceive such military colonies to have been very large; the ancient Roman towns were much smaller than those of modern times; we generally imagine them to have been larger on account of the importance they have in history; but on an average they were not larger than, for example, Bonn. A place of the extent of Cologne, would have been a very considerable town in the time of the Romans. After the decline of Rome under the emperors, Italy had rather a numerous population, but in the age of Cicero and Augustus, as I have already remarked, it was certainly far more thinly peopled than at present. The population of the modern kingdom of Naples, north of the Faro, is reported to be 6,000,000, while under Charles V. it is said to have amounted to only 600,000. It is, indeed, said that, under Charles V., families were counted and not persons; but admitting that the number of persons was 2,000,000, which is the highest that can be made out, still it is an undoubted fact, that in less than three centuries the population has become more than trebled. I do not believe that, in the reign of Augustus, the population was larger than under Charles V. The astonishment with which Polybius and others mention the fact, that previously to the Hannibalian war, Italy as far as the Cisalpine frontier had 700,000 men capable of bearing arms, is too decisive to allow us to suppose that the country was thickly peopled. Italy clearly reminds us of the condition of Germany after the Thirty Years’ war, of which we have descriptions in books of travel; and that state of Italy, as we see from Lucan, continued until a late period. I have read a description of Germany by an Italian who travelled in the country thirty years after the war, and who saw the villages and buildings everywhere in ruins, and even the towns were full of heaps of ruins and decaying houses.

The valley of Aosta, the country of the Salassians, is remarkable for its gold-dust and gold-washings in the river Doria. Gold still exists there, but little, for such veins often are entirely drained.

SICILIA.

In passing on to the islands, I shall first speak of Sicily, the queen of the islands in the Mediterranean. It derives, like Italy and most other countries, its name from its inhabitants, and Sicilia is the country of the Siculi. I have already said that Itali and Siculi are the same name in different dialects, and that accordingly both denote the same people. The general tradition of antiquity is, that the Siculi migrated from Italy into the island, and pushed the Sicani, its previous inhabitants, into the western and southern parts. Those who go back to the mythical ages, represent the island in the most ancient times as inhabited by Gigantes, Cyclopes, and Laestrygones. It is a widely-spread opinion among the ancients, that the Sicani belonged to the race of the Iberians. The Sicani called themselves Autochthons, while, according to others, they had come from Iberia, having been displaced by Ligurians; but such an emigration, so far across the sea and by so many intermediate countries as the Balearian islands and Sardinia, or, if you please, along the coast of Africa, is incredible in the case of a people like the Iberians, who never were great navigators. I believe that, in this account, we can keep only to this one point, that, according to the conviction of those who most thoroughly understand the circumstances, the Sicani belonged to the Iberian race, even if we admit that the tradition about their emigration is without foundation; and this is very possible. It is equally possible that the story about the emigration of the Siculi from Italy is without foundation; at least our authorities for it are not authentic. Another question is, as to whether the Sicani and Siculi were everywhere different people; the testimonies of the ancients must, of course, be of the greatest weight to us in this matter. I am not one of those who build history upon the mere names of nations, and am, therefore, not much inclined to lay great stress upon the resemblance of the two names; but Virgil uses Sicani and Siculi as synonymous, and this leads us to infer that he probably had more ancient authors before him, who had done the same. It is true also, that such a change of form is not unprecedented, for _Aequus_, _Aequanus_, _Aequulus_, _Aequicus_, and _Aequiculus_, are only derivatives from the same basis; and in like manner we might regard _Sicanus_ and _Siculus_ as simple derivatives of the stem _Sicus_. I should believe this to be quite correct, were it not that the ancients speak so positively of the Iberian origin of the Sicani. I should, in fact, reject this origin, were it not certain that Iberians existed in Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearian islands, and in ancient times, when the Celts dwelt as far as the Sierra Morena, probably even on the coast of Africa. The Basque language is foreign to all European languages known to us; it belongs, as it were, to a different part of the world. But however this may be, the two nations in Sicily were different from each other, though we cannot say whether the difference was one of race or of a less striking nature. The Siculi inhabited the north-eastern part of the island, and the Sicani the southern and western.

At the time when the Phoenicians were in possession of the most important islands of the Aegean, as Thasos and Cythera, and had settlements in most of the Cyclades; they also occupied strong points on the coast of Sicily; they were generally small places in little islands, headlands and the like, not being intended as agricultural settlements, but as factories. But they disappeared in consequence of the Greek colonies, which commenced at an early period, and according to the traditions from annals of which Thucydides probably made indirect use through Antiochus, soon after the beginning of the Olympiads. The colonies came from two of the Greek tribes, the Dorians and Chalcidians. In Italy, there was, properly speaking, only one Doric city that was really great, whereas in Sicily Doric cities preponderated both in number and greatness, witness Syracuse, which Timaeus calls the largest Greek city, Agrigentum, which was but little inferior to Syracuse, Gela, Selinus, and Camarina. Zancle (afterwards Messana), Naxos, Leontini, Catana, and Himera, on the north coast, were of Chalcidian origin. All the towns on the north-east, on a line from Syracuse to Palermo, were Chalcidian, and those on the south-west of it were Dorian. In speaking of the towns of Sicily, I shall make some deviation from the general rule I have hitherto followed, and enumerate them not in their natural succession, but according to their magnitude.