THE PRE-ROMAN EPOCH
1. The
Geography of Italy (contd.)
At the present time the activity of
the subterranean fires seems to -be concentrated in the middle of
this line, in Vesuvius, whose eruptions are always threatening the
charming towns which insist on remaining close to this formidable
neighbor; in- Etna, which, in one of its convulsions, tore away
Sicily from Italy [010201] and in the Lipari Islands situated in the
centre of the seismic sphere of the Mediterranean. In the north we
find only craters half-filled up [010202], the volcanic hills of
Rome, of Viterbo, and of St. Agatha, near Sessa, the hot streams and
springs of Tuscany, the fires or " hot springs " of Pietra, Mala,
and Barigazzo, and lastly those of the "Orto dell' Inferno," the
Garden of Hell.' Before the year 79 A.D. Vesuvius appeared to be an
extinct volcano; population and culture had reached its summit,
when, suddenly reviving, it buried Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae
under an enormous mass of ashes and dust. In the year 472, according
to Procopius, such was the violence of the eruption, that the ashes
were carried by the winds as far as Constantinople. In 1794 one of
these streams of incandescent lava, which are sometimes 8 miles
long, from 300 to 1,200 feet in breadth, and from 24 to 30 feet in
depth, destroyed the beautiful town of Torre del Greco. Stones were
hurled to the distance of 1,300 yards; vegetation far away was
destroyed by mephitic gases; and within a radius of 10 miles, people
went with torches at mid-day.
Naples and Mount Vesuvius
Humboldt has observed that the
frequency of the eruptions varies inversely with the size of the
volcano. Since the crater of Vesuvius has diminished, its eruptions,
though less violent, have become almost annual. Its terrors are no
more, its curiosity remains. Rich travelers come from all parts, and
the Neapolitans, who have short memories, while exhuming Herculaneum
and Pompeii, say of their volcano, "It is the mountain which vomits
gold."
In 1669, the inhabitants of Catania had likewise ceased to believe,
in the old tales of the fury of Etna, when an immense stream of lava
came down upon their town, passed through the -walls, and formed in
the sea a gigantic mole in front of the harbor. Fortunately, this
formidable volcano, whose base is 113 miles in circumference, from
whose summit there is a view of 750 miles in extent, and which has
grown, by excessive piles of lava, to the height of 10,870 feet, has
very rarely any eruptions. Stromboli, on the contrary, in the Lipari
Islands, shows from afar by night its diadem of fire, by day a dense
mantle of smoke.
Enclosed between Etna, Vesuvius and Stromboli, as in a triangle of
fire, Southern Italy is often shaken to her foundations. During the
last three centuries no less than a thousand earthquakes are
recorded, as if that part of the peninsula were lying on a bed of
moving lava. That of 1538 [010203] cleft the soil near Pozzuoli, and
there came forth from it Monte Nuovo, 459 feet high, which filled up
the Lucrine Lake, now only marked by a small pond. In 1783 the whole
of Calabria was wrecked, and forty thousand people perished. The sea
itself shared these horrible convulsions; it receded, and then
returned 42 feet above its level. Sometimes new islands appear; thus
have risen one after another the Lipari Islands. In 1831 an English
man-of-war, on the open sea off the coast of Sicily, felt some
violent shocks, and. it was thought she had grounded : it was a new
volcano opening. Some days after an island appeared about 230 feet
high. The English and the Neapolitans were already disputing its
ownership, when the sea took back in a storm the volcanoes gift.
[010204]
For Southern Italy, the danger lies in subterranean fires, for in
Northern and Western Italy it lies in water, either stagnant and
pestilential, or overflowing and inundating the country and filling
up the ports with sand. From Turin to Venice, in the rich plain
watered by the Po, between the Apennines and the Alps, not a single
hill is to be seen; and consequently the torrents, which rush down
from the belt of snowy mountains, expose it to dreadful ravages by
their inundations.[010205] These torrents have, indeed, created the
whole plain, by filling up with alluvial deposits the gulf which the
Adriatic Sea had formed there, and whose existence is proved by the
remains of marine animals found in the environs of Piacenza and
Milan, [010206] as well as by the sea-fish which still haunt its
lakes.
Springing from Mount Viso, and rapidly swelled by the waters which
run down from the slopes of the Alpine Giant, [010207] the Po is the
greatest river of Italy, and one of the most celebrated in the
world. If it had a free outlet into the Adriatic, it would open to
navigation and commerce a magnificent territory. But the condition
of all rivers, flowing into seas, which, like the Mediterranean,
have no tides, renders them unfit for sea navigation. The Italian
torrents bring to the Po quantities of mud and sand, which raise its
bed[010208] and form at its mouth that delta before which the sea
recedes each year about 220 feet.
As of Adria
Adria, which preceded Venice in the
command of the Adriatic, is at the present day more than 19
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Miles inland; Spina another great
seaport was, in the time of Strabo, 30 stadia from the coast, which
in former times it used to touch; [010209] and Ravenna, the station
of the Imperial fleet, is now, surrounded by woods and marshes.
Venice, also, has too long suffered the channels of its lagoons to
be stopped up by the alluvium of the Brenta.
Canals and Pine-Forest of Ravenna
The port of Lido, from which the fleet
which carried forty thousand crusaders went forth, is now only
navigable for small boats, and that of Albiola is called the "Porto
secco (dry port)."
The north-east extremity of Italy is surrounded by a semicircle of
mountains, which send forth to the Adriatic several streams, whose
ravine-beds afford an easy defense against any invasion from the
Julian Alps. Of all these obstacles the last and most formidable is
the Adige, a broad and mighty river at its very departure from the
mountains.
In peninsular Italy the Apennines are too near both seas to send
them great rivers. However, the Arno is 75 miles long, and the Tiber
190 miles. But this king of ancient rivers is sad to look at; its
waters, constantly filled with reddish mud - cannot be used for
drinking or bathing, and in order to supply the deficiency, numerous
aqueducts brought into Rome the water of the neighbouring mountains.
Hence one of the characteristics of Roman architecture: triumphal
arches and military roads for the legions; amphitheatres and
aqueducts for the towns. Moreover, all the water courses of the
Apennines have the capricious character of torrents ;[010210] wide
and rapid in spring-time, they dry up in summer, and are at all
times almost useless for navigation.[010211] But how beautiful and
picturesque. is the scenery along the banks of their
streams,[010212] and in the valleys where their tributaries descend!
The waterfalls of Tivoli, the most charming. of sights, make a
delightful contrast to the wild grandeur of the Roman campagna ; and
near Terni, at the Cascade delle Marmore, the Velino falls into the
Nera from a vertical height of 540 feet, then rushes in cataracts
over the huge boulders which it has brought down from the mountain.
All the lakes of Upper Italy are, like those of Switzerland, hollow
valleys (Lake Maggiore, 39 square miles ; Como, 35 ; Iseo, 14 ;
Garda, 34) where the streams from the mountains have accumulated
till they have found in the belt of rocks and land the depression
whence they have made their escape and given rise to rivers. Those
of the peninsula, on the contrary, filling up ancient craters or
mountain basins, have no natural outlets, and often threaten, after
long rains or the melting of the snow, to inundate the surrounding
country : such were the overflowing of Lake Albano, the signal of
the downfall of Veil, and those of Lake Fucino, which at times rose
54 feet, and has lately been drained. There are others, as Lake
Bolsena, a kind of inland sea, 25 miles round, and the famous
Trasimene lake, resulting from an earthquake.[010213].
The rains have filled up these natural
cavities, and as the neighbouring mountains are low they supply just
sufficient water to compensate the loss produced by evaporation.
There hardly issue from them even insignificant rivers. Lake
Trasimene, at its greatest depth, does not reach 30 feet, and it
will soon ha--e the fate of Lake Fucino.
Stagnant waters cover a part of the coast to the West and to the
South : it is the realm of fever. The younger Pliny speaks of the
unhealthiness of the coasts of Etruria, where the Maremma, which the
Etruscans had once drained, was re-appearing. In Latium the sea
formerly reached to the foot of the mountains of Setia and
Map of Pontine Marshes
Privernum, about 9 miles in from the
present coast;[010214] from the time of Strabo, the whole coast from
Ardea to Antium was marshy and unhealthy ; at Antium the Pontine
marshes commenced. Campania had the marshes of Minturnae and of
Linternum. Further South, the Greeks of Buxentum, of Elea, of
Sybaris, and of Metapontum had to dig thousands of canals to drain
the soil before putting in the plough. Apulia, as far as Mount
Vultur, had been a vast lagoon, as well as the country around the
mouths of the Po, fully 100 miles south of its modern mouth.
[010215] Lombardy also was, for a long time, an immense marsh, and
to the Etruscans are attributed the first embankments of the Po. The
banks of the Trebia, the territories of Parma, of Modena, and of
Bologna, had not been drained 'till the works of AEmilius Scaurus,
who, during his censorship (109 B.C.), made navigable canals between
Parma and Placentia.[010216] There is nothing so charming and so
treacherous as those |
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plains of the Mal'aria ; [010217] a
clear sky, fertile land, where an ocean of verdure waves
under the sea-breeze; all around there is calm and silence; an
atmosphere mild and warm, which seems to bring life but carries
death. "In the Maremma," says an Italian proverb, "one grows rich in
a year, but dies in six months."
"La Maremma,
Dilettevole molto e poco sana" [010218]
"How many peoples, once flourishing
and powerful, are sleeping here their last sleep!" Cities also can
die "Oppida posse mori," said the poet Rutilius, when contemplating,
fifteen centuries ago, the crumbling ruins of a great town of
Etruria.
To restrain and direct their streams was then, for the Italians, not
only a means, as with other people, of gaining lands for
agriculture, but a question of life and death. These lakes at the
summit of mountains, these rivers overflowing their banks every
spring, or changing their beds, these marshes, which under an
Italian sun so quickly breed the plague, compelled them to constant
efforts. Whenever they stopped,. all that they had conquered with so
much trouble reverted to its pristine state. [010219] Today the
delightful retreat of the Roman nobles; Paestum, with its fields of
roses so much beloved by Vergil—tepidi rosaria Paesti; rich Capua,
Cumae, which was once the most important city of Italy, Sybaris,
which was the most voluptuous, are in the midst of stagnant and
fetid waters, in a fever-breeding plain, where the decaying soil
consumes more men than it can feed.' Pestilential miasma, solitude,
and silence have also Conquered the shores of the Gulf of Taranto,
once covered with so many towns ; leprosy and elephantiasis in
Apulia and Calabria exhibit the hideous diseases of the
inter-tropical regions, traversed by " untamed waters." In Tuscany,
120 miles of coastline, in Latium, 82 square miles of land, have
been abandoned to poisonous influences. Here the wrath of man has
aided that of nature. Rome had ruined Etruria and exterminated the
Volscians ; but water invaded the depopulated country ; the malaria,
extending gradually from Pisa to Terracina, reached Rome herself ;
and the eternal city expiates now, in the midst of her wastes and
her unhealthy climate, the merciless war waged by her legions.
[010220] At the point where but lately the Maremma of Tuscany and
that of the States of the Church join the saddest of solitudes meets
the eye ; not a lint nor a tree to be seen, but huge fields of
asphodel, the flower of the tomb. One day, about fifty years ago, a
vault, hidden under the grass, gave way under the heavy tread of an
ox ; it was a funeral chamber.
 Excavations
were prosecuted. In a little time 2000 vases and dry, but scorching;
the palm-tree, which, at Reggio, some times ripens its fruit, the
aloes, the medlar, the orange and the lemon; on the coast the
olives, which are the source, as formerly, of the wealth of the
country ; further up, for 2000 feet, forests of chestnut trees
covering a part of the Sila. But from Pisa to the middle of
Campania, between the sea and the foot of the mountains, the malaria
reigns; the soil is abandoned to herdsmen, and although very
fertile, waits for the labor of man to produce its old return.
Already, in Tuscany, tenant-farming is driving back the Maremma, and
the land. is peopled again wherever it is drained.
Above these plains, on the first slopes of the Apennines, from
Provence to Calabria, there extends the district of the olive, the
mulberry tree, the arbutus, the myrtle, the laurel, and the vine.
This latter grows so freely that it may be seen reaching the top of
the poplars which support it; and, in the time of Pliny, a statue of
Jupiter used to be shown at Populonia carved in a vine trunk.
Further up, on the mountain, come chestnut trees, oaks, and elms ;
then fir trees and larch. The summer snow and the freezing wind
remind one of Switzerland -but for the flood of dazzling light from
the Italian sky.
But it is in the valley of the Po,
when coming down from the Alps, that the traveler receives his first
and most pleasant impressions. From Turin, as far as Milan, he keeps
in view the line of the glaciers, which the setting sun colors with
brilliant tints of rose and purple, and makes them glitter like a
magnificent conflagration spreading along the sides and on the
summits of the mountains. In spite of the vicinity of the perpetual
snow the cold does not descend far on this rapid slope ; and when
the sun bursts forth in the immense amphitheatre of the valley of
the Po, its rays, arrested and reflected by the wall of the Alps,
raise the temperature, and scorching heat succeeds suddenly the cold
air of the lofty summits. But the number of the streams, the
rapidity of their courses, the direction of the valley, which opens
on the Adriatic and receives all its breezes, cool the atmosphere,
and give Lombardy a most delightful climate. The inexhaustible
fertility of the soil, enriched by the deposits of so many rivers,
causes everywhere a very rich vegetation. In one night, it is said,
grass which has been cut shoots up afresh, [010221] and the land,
which no culture exhausts, never lies fallow.
Such is the general aspect of Italy—a land of continual contrasts :
plains and mountains, snow and scorching heat, dry and raging
torrents, limpid lakes formed in ancient craters, and pestilential
marshes concealing beneath the herbage once populous cities. At
every step a contrast : the vegetation of Africa at the foot of the
Apennines ; on their summits the vegetation of the north. Here,
under the clearest sky, the malaria, bringing death in one night to
the sleeping traveler ; there, lands of inexhaustible fertility,
[010222] and above, the volcano with its threatening lava.
Elsewhere, in the space of a few leagues, sixty-nine craters and
three entombed towns. At the north, rivers which inundate the lands
and repel the sea ; at, the south, earthquakes opening unfathomable
depths or overthrowing mountains. |
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