Ravenna, a Study. Edward Hutton
great man he was.
Julius Caesar, for all his mighty grasp of reality, had not perceived the enormous value, nay the necessity, of sea power, and because of this failure his career had been twice nearly cut short; at Ilerda, where the naval victory of Decimus Brutus over the Massiliots alone saved him; and at Alexandria. Both the liberators and Antony had possessed ships; but both had failed to use them with any real effect. It was Sextus Pompeius who forced Octavianus to turn to the sea, and when Octavianus became Augustus he did not forget the lesson. Sole master of the Mediterranean and of all its ships of war, he understood at once how great a support sea power offered him and his principate. Nor was the empire, while it was vigorous, though always fearful of and averse from the sea, ever to forget the power that lay in that command.
Thus it was that among the first acts of Augustus was the establishment of two fleets, as we might say, "in being" in the Mediterranean; the fleet of Misenum and the fleet of Ravenna; the latter with stations probably at Aquileia, Brundusium, the Piraeus, and probably elsewhere.
The fleet of Ravenna was, certainly after A.D. 70, probably about A.D. 127, entitled Praetoria. The origin of this title is unknown, but it was also borne by the fleet of Misenum and it distinguishes the Italian from the later Provincial fleets, the former being in closer relation to the emperor, just as the Praetorian cohorts were distinguished from the legions.
The emperor was, of course, head of all the fleets, which were, each of them, commanded by a prefect and sub-prefect appointed by him; and if we may judge from the recorded promotions we have, it would seem that the Misenate prefect ranked before the Ravennate and both before the Provincial. But in the general military system the navy stood lowest in respect of pay and position. The fleets were manned by freed men and foreigners who could not obtain citizenship until after twenty-six years' service. We find Claudius employing the marines of the Classis Ravennas to drain lake Fucinus, and it was probably Vespasian who formed the Legion II. Adjutrix from the Ravennate, even as Nero had formed Legion I. Adjutrix from the Misenate marines.
The Ravenna that Augustus thus chose to be the great base and port of his fleet in the eastern sea was, as we have seen, a place built upon piles in the midst of the marshes, impregnable from the land, and, because impregnable, able, whenever it was in dispute, to command the narrow pass between the mountains and the sea that was the gate of Italy and Cisalpine Gaul. Such a place, situated as it was upon the western shore of that sea which was the fault between East and West, was eminently suitable for the great purpose of the emperor. Pliny[1] indeed would seem to tell us that from time immemorial Ravenna had possessed a small port; but such a place, well enough for the small traders of those days, could not serve usefully the requirements of a great fleet. Therefore the first act of Augustus, when he had chosen Ravenna as his naval base, was the construction of a proper port and harbour, and these came to be named, after the fleet they served and accommodated, Classis. Classis was situated some two and a half miles from the town of Ravenna to the east-south-east. We may perhaps have some idea both of its situation and of its relation to Ravenna if we say that it was to that city what the Porto di Lido is to Venice.
[Footnote 1: Pliny, iii. 20; cf. also Strabo, v. 7.]
It is very difficult, in looking upon Ravenna as we see it to-day, to reconstruct it, even in the imagination, as it was when Augustus had done with it. To begin with, the sea has retreated several miles from the city, which is no longer within sight of it, while all that is left of Classis, which is also now out of sight of the sea, is a single decayed and deserted church, S. Apollinare in Classe. Strabo, however, who wrote his Geography a few years after Augustus had chosen Ravenna for his port upon the Adriatic, has left us a description both of it and the country in which it stood, from which must be drawn any picture we would possess of so changed a place. He speaks of it, as we have seen, as "a great city" situated in the marshes, built entirely upon piles, and traversed by canals which were everywhere crossed by bridges or ferry-boats. While at the full tide he tells us it was swept by the sea and always by the river, and thus the sewage was carried off and the air purified, and this so thoroughly, that even before its establishment by Augustus the district was considered so healthy that the Roman governors had chosen it as a spot in which to train gladiators.[1] That river we know from Pliny[2] was called the Bedesis; and the same writer tells us that Augustus built a canal which brought the water of the Po to Ravenna.
[Footnote 1: Strabo, v. 7.]
[Footnote 2: Pliny, iii. 20.]
Tacitus in his Annals[1] merely tells us that Italy was guarded on both sides by fleets at Misenum and Ravenna, and in his Histories[2] speaks of these places as the well known naval stations without stopping to describe them. While Suetonius,[3] though he mentions the great achievement of Augustus, does not emphasise it and does not attempt to tell us what these ports were like.
[Footnote 1: Tacitus, Ann. iv. 5.]
[Footnote 2: Tacitus, Hist. ii. 100; iii. 6, 40.]
[Footnote 3: Suetonius, Augustus.]
Perhaps the best description we have of Augustan Ravenna comes to us from a writer who certainly never saw the port in its great Roman days, but who probably followed a well established tradition in his description of it. This is Jornandes, who was born about A.D. 500 and was first a notary at the Ostrogothic court and later became a monk and finally bishop of Crotona. In his De Getarum Origins et Rebus Gestis he thus describes Ravenna:
"This city (says he) between the marshes, the sea, and the Po is only accessible on one side. Situated beside the Ionian Sea it is surrounded and almost submerged by lagoons. On the east is the sea, on the west it is defended by marshes across which there remains a narrow passage, a kind of gate. The city is encircled on the north by a branch of the Po, called the Fossa Asconis, and on the south by the Po itself, which is called the Eridanus, and which is there known as the King of Rivers. Augustus deepened its bed and made it larger; it flowed quite through the city, and its mouth formed an excellent port where once, as Dion reports [this passage of Dion Cassius is lost], a fleet of 250 ships could be stationed in all security. … The city has three names with which she glorifies herself and she is divided into three parts to which they correspond; the first is Ravenna, the last Classis, that in the midst is Caesarea between Ravenna and the sea. Built on a sandy soil this quarter is easily approached and is commodiously situated for trade and transport."
We thus have a picture of Ravenna as a triune city, consisting of Ravenna proper, the port Classis, and the long suburb between them, Caesarea, connected by a great causeway and everywhere watered by canals, the greatest of which was the Fossa Augusta by which a part of the waters of the Po were carried to Ravenna and thence to Classis and the sea; a city very much, we may suppose, what we know Venice to be, if we think of her in connection with the Riva, the great suburb of the Marina, and the Porto di Lido. At Classis we must understand there was room for a fleet of two hundred and fifty ships and accommodation for arsenals, magazines, barracks, and so forth, while there is one other thing we know of this port, and that from Pliny,[1] who tells us that it had a Pharos like the famous one of Alexandria. "There is another building (says he) that is highly celebrated, the tower that was built by a king of Egypt on the island of Pharos at the entrance to the harbour of Alexandria. … At present there are similar fires lighted up in numerous places, Ostia and Ravenna for example. The only danger is that when these fires are thus kept burning without intermission they may be mistaken for stars."
[Footnote 1: Pliny xxx. vi. 18]
Such was the splendour of Ravenna in the time of Augustus. His achievement so far as Ravenna was concerned was to understand her importance not only in regard to Italy and Cisalpine Gaul, an importance already discounted by the universal peace he had established, but in regard to the sea. He turned Ravenna into a first-class naval port and based his eastern fleet upon her; and this was so wise an act that, so long as the empire remained strong and unhampered, Ravenna appears as the great base of its sea power in the East.
In that long peace which Italy enjoyed under the empire we hear little of Ravenna. We know Claudius built a great gate called Porta Aurea, which was only destroyed in 1582; and we know that the great sea port had one weakness, the scarcity of good water for drinking purposes.