THE PRE-ROMAN EPOCH

1. The Geography of Italy

HORACE WAS AFRAID OF THE SEA; he called it Oceanus dissociabilis, the element which separates; and yet it was, even for the ancients, the element which unites.
Looking at the mountains, which run from Galicia to the Caucasus, from Armenia to the Persian Gulf, from the region of the Syrtes to the Pillars of Hercules, we recognize the higher parts of an immense basin, the bottom of which is filled by the Mediterranean. These limits, marked out by geography, are also, for antiquity, the limits of history, which never, save towards Persia, went too far from the coasts of the Mediterranean. Without this the space it occupies would have been the continuation of the African Sahara - an impassable desert; by means of it, on the contrary. the people settled on its shores have interchanged their ideas and their wealth, and if we except those ancient societies of the distant East, which always have remained apart from European progress, it is around this coast that the first civilized nations have taken shape. Italy therefore, by its position, between Greece, Spain, and Gaul, and by its elongated shape, which extends almost to the shores of Africa and towards the East, is in truth the centre of the ancient world, at once the nearest point to the three continents, which the Mediterranean washes and unites. Geography explains only a portion of history, but that portion it explains well; the rest belongs to men. According as they show in their administration wisdom or folly, they turn to good or evil the work of nature. The situation of Italy, therefore, will easily account for her varied destinies in ancient times, and in modern to a recent period; it accounts for the vigour and energy manifested outside her limits so long as her inhabitants formed an united people, surrounded by divided tribes; later, for the evils which overwhelmed her from all points of the horizon, when her power was exhausted and her unity destroyed; it accounts for Italy. in a word, mistress of the world around her, and Italy, the prize for which all her neighbors contended.
Another thing: if the position occupied by Italy at the very centre of the ancient world favored her fortune in the days of her strength, and procured her so many enemies in the time of her weakness, this very weakness, which at first delivered the peninsula to the Romans, and after them, for fourteen centuries, to the stranger, was chiefly due to her natural conformation...
Surrounded on three sides by the sea, and on the fourth by the Alps, Italy is a peninsula, which stretches towards the south in two points, while, at the north, it widens into a semi-circle of lofty mountains, above which towers majestically, with its sparkling snow, the summit sometimes called by the Lombards "dell' Italia." The summit next in height to Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, is not 600 feet lower than the giant of Europe. Italy, then, consists of two parts, a peninsular part and a continental part, each distinct by their configuration and their history. The one, a vast plain, formed from the alluvia of the great river which traverses it, has been at all times the battlefield of European ambition ; the other, a narrow ridge of mountains, hollowed by rapid torrents and rivers, and shaken by volcanoes, has almost always had an opposite fate.
This peninsula, which is Italy proper, is one of the most divided countries in the world. In its innumerable valleys, many of which are quite isolated, its inhabitants have acquired that love of independence which mountain populations have ever shown, but with it that other quality which compromises this much loved liberty —the desire of keeping to themselves. Every valley will have its state, every village its god. Never would Italy have come forth from its obscurity, had there not arisen in the midst of her tribes an active principle of combination. By dint of ability, of courage, and of perseverance, the Senate and its legions triumphed as well over natural obstacles as over the interests and passions protected by these ramparts. Rome united together all the Italian population, and made of the whole peninsula a single polity.
But, like the oak bent down and half split by Milo, which rises again, when the strength of the old athlete is exhausted, and seizes him in its turn, Nature, for the moment overcome by Roman energy, recovered her sway, and when Rome fell, Italy, once more free, returned to her constant divisions, up to the time when the modern idea of great nationalities recovered for her that which, twenty-three centuries ago, had been attained by the ablest policy supported by the most powerful military organization.
Italy was destined, then, by geographical position, to play a great part in the affairs of the world, whether she acted beyond her limits, or whether she became, herself, the prize of heroic struggles. Rome, too, is not an accident - a chance in the history of the peninsula ; it is the moment when the Italians, united for the first time, attained the promised end of their common efforts - the power begotten of union. Undoubtedly history has o begotten of union. Undoubtedly history has o

common interest, an incomparable prosperity became the glorious lot of this beautiful country, which possessed 3,500 miles of coast-line, with its brave population of mountaineers and sailors, with its fertile provinces, with its natural harbors at the foot of majestic forests—a country which had the command of two seas, and held the key of the passage from one to the other of the two great basins of the Mediterranean. Between the East, now -decaying through anarchy, and the West, still new to civilization, Italy, united and disciplined, naturally took the lead. This stage of humanity took ten centuries to dawn, grow, and spread, and its history forms what is called the History of Rome.
A modern poet, has, in a single line, given an exact description of this country:

"Ch' Apennin parte e'l mar circonda e l'Alpe."

The Alps, which divide Italy from the rest of Europe, extend, from Savona to Fiume, for a distance of about 1,150 kilometers (720 miles) ; the breadth of the mountain-mass is from 130 to 180 kilometers (82 to 113 miles) under the meridians of S. Gothard and the Septimer, of more than 260 kilometers (around 143 miles) in the ancient Tyrol. The perpetual snow, piled on the summits, forms an immense glacier, the melting of which feeds the rivers of upper Italy, and which traces against the sky its brilliant outline. But the water-shed, being nearer to Italy than to Germany, does not divide this broad mass into equal parts. Like all the great mountain chains of Europe the Alps have their slope less steep towards the North, whence all the invasions have come, and their precipitous descent towards the South, the side which has received them all. [note on the geographical circumstances favoring southbound invasions of Ancient Italy]. On the French and German side the mountains run to the plain by long spurs, which break the descent, while, from the Piedmont side Mont Blanc appears like a wall of granite, sheer for about 10,000 feet down from its summit. Man stops at the foot of these cliffs, on which hold neither grass nor snow ; and Northern Italy, having little Alpine pasture land, is not like the Dauphine, Switzerland, and the Tyrol, defended by a race of brave mountaineers. [short description of the Italian Alps]
This difference between the incline and extent of the two sides indicates one of the causes which ensured the first successes of the expeditions directed against Italy. Once masters of the northern side, the invaders had only a march of a day or two to bring them into the richest country. [more on the vulnerability of northern Italy]

Thus Italy has never been able to escape from invasions or to keep aloof from European wars, despite her formidable barrier of the Alps, with their colossal summits, "which, when seen close," said Napoleon, "seem like giants of ice, commissioned to defend the approach to that beautiful country."¹

The Limit of the Alps and The Apennines

The Alps' are joined, near Savona, by the Apennines, which traverse the whole peninsula, or rather, which have formed it and given it its character. Their mean height in Liguria is 1,000 meters (3,275 feet), but in Tuscany they are much higher, where the ridges of Pontremoli, between Sarzana and Parma, of Fiumalbo, between Lucca and Modena, of Futa, between Florence and Bologna, attain the height of 3,300 to 3,900 feet. Thus Etruria was protected for a long time by these mountains against the Cisalpine Gauls, and, for some months, against Hannibal. The highest summits of the whole chain of the Apennines are to the east of Rome, in the country of the Marsians and the Vestini: Velino, 8,180 feet ; and Monte Corno 9,520 feet, whence can be seen the two seas which wash Italy, and even the mountains of Illyria on the Eastern shore of the Adriatic_ At this height a peak of the Alps or the Pyrenees would be covered with perpetual snow; in the climate of Rome it is not cold enough to form a glacier, and Monte Corno loses its snow at the end of July ; but it always preserves its Alpine landscape, with the bears and the chamois of great mountains.
Three branches separate at the west from the central chain, and cover with their ramifications a considerable part of Etruria, Latium, and Campania. One of these branches, after sinking to the level of the plain, rises at its extremity in a rock, almost insular to the promontory of Circe (Monte Circello], where is shown the grotto of the mighty sorceress. Tiberius, who, on the question of demons, believed neither in those of the past nor in those of the present, had a villa built near this dreaded spot.
From the Eastern side of the Apennines there are

which one summit rises to the height of 5,283 feet. Ancient forests cover this mountain, ever beaten by the furious winds which toss the Adriatic. Below Venosa (Venusia) the Apennines separate into two branches, which surround the Gull of Taranto; the one runs through the land of Bari and Otranto, and ends in a gentle slope at Capo di Leuca; the other forms, through the two Calabrias, a succession of undulated tablelands, one of which, the Sila, 4,910 feet2 high, is not less than fifty miles long from Cosenza to Catanzaro.

Coin of Venusia

Covered formerly with impenetrable forests, the Sila was the shelter of fugitive slaves (Bruttians), and was the last retreat of Hannibal in Italy. Now fine pastures have partly taken the place of these forests, whence Rome and Syracuse obtained their timber. But the temperature there is always low for an Italian country, and notwithstanding its position in lat. 38°, snow remains during six months of the year. Still further to the south, one of the summits of the Aspromonte measures 4,368 feet high. Furthermore, while beyond Capo di Leuca there is only the Ionian Sea, beyond the lighthouse of Messina, we come to Etna and the triangle of the Sicilian Mountains, an evident continuation of the chain of the Apennines.
The two slopes of the Apennines do not differ less than the two sides of the Alps. [short description of Apulia].

On the narrow shore, which is washed by the Upper or Adriatic Sea, are rich pasture lands, woody hills, separated by the deep beds of torrents, a flat shore, no ports (importuosum Titus), no islands and a stormy sea, enclosed between two chains of mountains, like a long valley where the winds are pent in and rage at every obstacle they meet. [read about the side of the Adriatic that is ideal for harbors]. On the western side, on the contrary, the Apennines are more remote from the sea, and great plains, watered by tranquil rivers, great gulfs, natural harbors, numerous islands, as well as a sea usually calm, promote agriculture, navigation, and commerce. Hence a population of three distinct and opposite kinds: mariners about the ports, husbandmen in the plains, and shepherds in the mountains ; or, to call them by their historical names, the Italiotes and Etruscans, Rome and the Latins, the Marsians and the Samnites. [brief description of the geological causes behind the naval accessibility of the Italian Western Coast].
Yet these plains of Campania, of Latium, of Etruria, and of Apulia, notwithstanding their extent, cover but a very small part of a peninsula, which may be described generally as a country bristling with mountains, and intersected by deep valleys. Why need we wonder at persistent political divisions in a country so divided by nature herself? Aelian counted up as many as 1,197 cities, each of which had possessed, or aspired to, an independent existence.
The Apennines possess neither glaciers, nor great rivers, nor the pointed peaks of the Alps, nor the colossal masses of the Pyrenees. Yet their summits, bare and rugged, their flanks often outstripped and barren, the deep and wild ravines which furrow them, all contrast with the soft outlines and the rich vegetation of the sub-Apennine mountains. Add to this, at every step, beautiful ruins, recalling splendid traditions, the brightness. of the sky, great lakes, the rivers which tumble from the mountains, volcanoes with cities at their foot, and everywhere along the horizon the sparkling sea, calm and smooth, or terrible when its waves, lashed by the Sirocco, or by submarine convulsions, buffet the shore, and beat upon Amalfi, Baiae or Paestum.
Europe has no active volcanoes but in the peninsula and islands of Italy. In ancient times, subterranean fires were at work from the Carinthian Alps, where are found some rocks of igneous origin : - these reach as far as the island of Malta, a part of which is sunk into the sea. [a link between the volcanoes of ancient Italy and the African continent].
The basaltic mountains of Southern Tyrol, and of the districts of Verona, Vicenza, and Padua; near the Po the catastrophe of Velleja buried by an earthquake; in Tuscany, subterranean noises, continual shocks, and those sudden disturbances, which made Etruria the land of prodigies; on the banks of the Tiber, the ancient Roman tradition of Cacus vomiting forth flames, the gulf of Curtius, the volcanic matter which forms the very soil of Rome, and of all its hills . the Janiculum excepted ; the streams of lava from the hills of Albaa and Tusculum; the immense crater (38 miles in circumference), sunken edge of which shows us the charming lake of Albano and that of Nemi, which the Romans used to call the Mirror of Diana; the legend of Caeculus building at Praeneste walls of flames; the enormous pile of lava and debris on the sides of Mount Vultur, the islands rising from

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