The Old Roman World : the Grandeur and Failure of Its Civilization. John Lord
Italian Cities.]
[Sidenote: Memorable cities.]
Italy itself was no inconsiderable state—a beautiful peninsula, extending six hundred and sixty geographical miles from the foot of the Alps to the promontory of Leucopetra. Its greatest breadth is about one hundred and thirty miles. It was always renowned for beauty and fertility. Its climate on the south was that of Greece, and on the north that of the south of France. The lofty range of the Apennines extended through its entire length, while the waters of the Mediterranean and the Adriatic tempered and varied its climate. Its natural advantages were unequaled, with a soil favorable to agriculture, to the culture of fruits, and the rearing of flocks. Its magnificent forests furnished timber for ships; its rich pastures fed innumerable sheep, goats, cattle, and horses; its olive groves were nowhere surpassed; its mountains contained nearly every kind of metals; its coasts furnished a great variety of fish; while its mineral springs supplied luxurious baths. There were no extremes of heat and cold; the sky was clear and serene; the face of the country was a garden. It was a paradise to the eye of Virgil and Varro, the most favored of all the countries of antiquity in those productions which sustain the life of man or beast. The plains of Lombardy furnished maize and rice; oranges grew to great perfection on the Ligurian coast; aloes and cactuses clothed the rocks of the southern provinces; while the olive and the grape abounded in every section. The mineral wealth of Italy was extolled by the ancient writers, and the fisheries were as remarkable as agricultural products. The population numbered over four millions who were free, and could furnish seven hundred thousand foot and seventy thousand horse for the armies of the republic, if they were all called into requisition. The whole country was dotted with beautiful villas and farms, as well as villages and cities. It contained twelve hundred cities or large towns which had municipal privileges. Mediolanum, now Milan, the chief city in Cisalpine Gaul, in the time of Ambrose, was adorned with palaces and temples and baths. It was so populous that it lost it is said at one time three hundred thousand male citizens in the inroads of the Goths. It was surrounded with a double range of walls, and the houses were elegantly built. It was also celebrated as the seat of learning and culture. Verona had an amphitheatre of marble, whose remains are among the most striking monuments of antiquity, capable of seating twenty-two thousand people. Ravenna, near the mouth of the Padus (Po), built on piles, was a great naval depot, and had an artificial harbor capable of containing two hundred and fifty ships of war, and was the seat of government after the fall of the empire. Padua counted among its inhabitants five hundred Roman knights, and was able to send twenty thousand men into the field. Aquileia was a great emporium of the trade in wine, oil, and salted provisions. Pola had a magnificent amphitheatre. Luna, now Spezzia, was famous for white marbles, and for cheeses which often weighed a thousand pounds. Arutium, now Avezzo, an Etrurian city, was celebrated for its potteries, many beautiful specimens of which now ornament the galleries of Florence. Cortona had walls of massive thickness, which can be traced to the Pelasgians. Clusium, the capital of Porsenna, had a splendid mausoleum. Volsinii boasted of two thousand statues. Veii had been the rival of Rome. In Umbria, we may mention Sarsina, the birthplace of Plautus; Mevania, the birthplace of Propertius; and Sentinum, famous for the self-devotion of Decius. In Picenum were Ancona, celebrated for its purple dye; and Picenum, surrounded by walls and inaccessible heights, memorable for a siege against Pompey. Of the Sabine cities were Antemnae, more ancient than Rome; Nomentum, famous for wine; Regillum, the birthplace of Appius Claudius, the founder of the great Claudian family; Reate, famous for asses, which sometimes brought the enormous price of 60,000 sesterces, about $2320; Cutiliae, celebrated for its mineral waters; and Alba, in which captives of rank were secluded. In Latium were Ostia, the seaport of Rome; Laurentum, the capital of Latinus; Lavinium, fabled to have been founded by Aeneas; Lanuvium, the birthplace of Roscius and the Antonines; Alba Longa, founded four hundred years before Rome; Tusculum, where Cicero had his villa; Tibur, whose temple was famous through Italy; Praeneste, now Palestrio, remarkable for its citadel and its temple of Fortune; Antium, to which Coriolanus retired after his banishment, a favorite residence of Augustus, and the birthplace of Nero, celebrated also for a magnificent temple, amid whose ruins was found the Apollo Belvidere; Forum Appii, mentioned by St. Paul, from which travelers on the Appian Way embarked on a canal; Arpinum, the birthplace of Cicero; Aquium, where Juvenal and Thomas Aquinas were born, famous for a purple dye; Formiae, a favorite residence of Cicero. In Campania were Cumae, the abode of the Sibyl; Misenum, a great naval station; Baiae, celebrated for its spas and villas; Puteoli, famous for sulphur springs; Neapolis, the abode of literary idlers; Herculaneum and Pompeii, destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius; Capua, the capital of Campania, and inferior to Rome alone; and Salernum, a great military stronghold. In Samnium were Bovianum, a very opulent city; Beneventum, and Sepinum. In Apulia were Sarinum; Venusia, the birthplace of Horace; Cannae, memorable for the great victory of Hannibal; Brundusium, a city of great antiquity on the Adriatic, and one of the great naval stations of the Romans; and Tarentum, the rival of Brundusium, a great military stronghold. In Lucania were Metapontum, at one time the residence of Pythagoras; Heraclea, the seat of a general council; Sybaris, which once was the mistress of twenty-five dependent cities, fifty stadia in circumference, and capable of sending an army of three hundred thousand [Footnote: Anthon, Geog. Diet.] men into the field—a city so prosperous and luxurious that the very name of Sybarite was synonymous with voluptuousness.
[Sidenote: Pompeii.]
Such were among the principal cities of Italy. More than two hundred and fifty towns or cities are historical, and were famous for the residence of great men, or for wines, wool, dyes, and various articles of luxury. The ruins of Pompeii prove it to have been a city of great luxury and elegance. The excavations, which have brought to light the wonders of this buried city, attest a very high material civilization; yet it was only a second-rate provincial town, of which not much is commemorated in history. It was simply a resort for Roman nobles who had villas in its neighborhood. It was surrounded with a wall, and was built with great regularity. Its streets were paved, and it had its forum, its amphitheatre, its theatre, its temples, its basilicas, its baths, its arches, and its monuments. The basilica was two hundred and twenty feet in length by eighty feet in width, the roof of which was supported by twenty-eight Ionic columns. The temple of Venus was profusely ornamented with paintings. One of the theatres was built of marble, and was capable of seating five thousand spectators, and the amphitheatre would seat ten thousand.
[Sidenote: Sicily and Sardinia.]
[Sidenote: Richness of Sicily.]
[Sidenote: Syracuse.]
But Italy, so grand in cities, so varied in architectural wonders, so fertile in soil, so salubrious in climate, so rich in minerals, so prolific in fruits and vegetables and canals, was only a small part of the empire of the Caesars. The Punic wars, undertaken soon after the expulsion of Pyrrhus, resulted in the acquisition of Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa, from which the Romans were supplied with inexhaustible quantities of grain, and in the creation of a great naval power. Sicily, the largest island of the Mediterranean, was not inferior to Italy in any kind of produce. It was, it was supposed, the native country of wheat. Its honey, its saffron, its sheep, its horses, were all equally celebrated. The island, intersected by numerous streamy and beautiful valleys, was admirably adapted for the growth of the vine and olive. Its colonies, founded by Phoenicians and Greeks, cultivated all the arts of civilization. Long before the Roman conquest, its cities were famous for learning and art. Syracuse, a Corinthian colony, as old as Rome, had a fortress a mile in length and half a mile in breadth; a temple of Diana whose doors were celebrated throughout the Grecian world, and a theatre which could accommodate twenty-four thousand people. No city in Greece, except Athens, can produce structures which vie with those of which the remains are still visible at Agrigentum, Selinus, and Segesta.
[Sidenote: Carthage.]
Africa was one of the great provinces of the empire. It virtually embraced the Carthaginian empire, and was settled chiefly by the Phoenicians. Its capital, Carthage, so long the rival of Rome, was probably the greatest maritime mart of antiquity, next to Alexandria. Though it had been completely destroyed, yet it became under the emperors no inconsiderable city, and was the capital of a belt of territory extending one hundred and sixty miles, from the Pillars of Hercules to the bottom of the great Syrtis, unrivaled for fertility. Its population once numbered seven