Ravenna, a Study

, into the Adrian Sea, there stands, half abandoned in that soundless place, and often wrapt in a white shroud of mist, a city like a marv

, whether from Rimini by the lost and forgotten towns of Classis and Caesarea, or from Ferrara through all the bitter desolation of Comacchio, or across the endless marsh from Bologna

empty but indestructible, of tottering campanili, of sumptuous splendour and incredible decay, is the sepulchre of the great civilisation which Christianity failed to save alive, but t

t emperor of the West, founded a kingdom, and was in his turn supplanted by Theodoric the Ostrogoth. It was from her almost impregnable isolation that the attempt was made by Byzantium-it seemed and perhaps it was our only hope-to reconquer Italy and the West for civilisat

. In the first years of that government Ravenna became, and through the four hundred years of its unhampered life she remained, one of its greatest bulwarks. While upon its failure, as I have said, she suddenly assumed a position which for some three hundred and fifty years was unique not only in Italy but in Europe. And when with the re-establishment of an universal

er beauty, and her forlorn hope, than a history properly so called of Ravenna. But if we are to come to any real understanding of what she stood for, of what she meant to us once upon a time, we must first of all decide for ourselves what was the fundamental reason of her

into two absolutely different parts by a great range of mountains, the Apennines,

oper, and it consists as we know of a long narrow mountainous peninsula,

h of the Apennines is

pine

ost part of a vast plain divided from west to east by a great river, the Po

anics, on the west and the north, by the mightiest mountains in Europe, the Alps, which here enclose it in a vas

Sketch Map of

two hundred years, continually, though never with an enduring success, invaded Italy, and in 388 B.C. actually captured the City. Rome, however, had by the year 223 B.C. succeeded in planting her fortresses at Placentia and Cremona and in fortifying Mutina (Modena), when suddenly in 218 B.C. Hannibal unexpectedly descended into the Cisalpine plain and

d religious-what has secured her but Cisalpine Gaul? The valley of the Po, all this vast plain, appears in history as the cockpit of Europe, the battlefield of the Celt, the Phoenician, the Latin, and the Teuton, of Catholic and Arian, strewn with victories, littered with defeats, the theatre of those great wars which have built up Europe and the modern wor

between them must always have been of an immense importance. That entry and that road, when

me of peace that road and that entry were

curves southward to divide the peninsula in its entire length into two not unequal parts. This failure of the mountains quite to reach the sea leaves at this corner a narrow strip of lowland, of marshy plain in fact, betwee

Sketch Map of

, immediately after the first subjection of the Gauls south of the Po which had been largely his achievement, and for military and political business which that ach

road was in existence long before; but not a

the time of Aurelius Victor, if not of Ve

a, and Mutina (Modena), the second was the construction of a great highway which connected Placentia through Mutina with t

ficant that the political boundary between them was here marked by a little river, the Rubicon, a few miles to the north of that city. Th

Rimini could not easily be defend

ters. Strabo thus describes it: "Situated in the marshes is the great Ravenna, built entirely on piles, and traversed by canals which you cross by bridges or ferry-boats. At the full tides it is washed by a considerable quantity of sea water, as well as by the river, and thus the sewage is carried off

i. 7, tells us Altinum

ch Map or Ravenna r

fall of the empire is given us by Appian and recounts a raid from the sea. It is but an incident in the civil wars of Marius and Sulla when Ravenna, we learn, was occupied for the latter by Metellus his lieut

directly that pass was threatened, and to this I say was due a good half of its fame. The rest must be equally divided bet

ociety to which he belonged (though indeed he was of Greek descent) loathed and feared the sea with an unappeasable horror. No journey was too long to make if thereby the sea passage might be avoide

y because of the Roman horror of the sea-the fault between Greek and Latin, East and West. To this great fac

Marino and catches, faintly at dawn, the sunlight upon the Dal

position in regard to the peninsula of Italy, the Cisalpine plain, and the sea. Each of these exalt her in

r repaired to her when he was treating with the Senate for the consulship

enemy must be met and the peninsula with Rome within it, Hono

he held the key as it were of all Italy and through Italy of the West, Justinian there establishe

hecy, which indeed might seem never to have come true for her, this at least we must acknowledge, that sh