THE PRE-ROMAN EPOCH
1. The
Geography of Italy (conclusion)
Every climate, every property of the
soil combined—in short, a reduced picture of the ancient world, yet
with its natural peculiarities strongly marked. [note: This can be
maintained without any systematic survey. Has not Italy the sun of
Africa; the valleys and mountains of Greece and Spain; the thick
forests, the plains, the marshes of Gaul ; indented coasts and
harbors like Asia Minor ; and even the valley of the Nile, in that
of the Po ; both are the product of these rivers, with their delta,
their lagoons, and their great maritime cities, Adria or Venice,
Alexandria or Damietta, according to the age ? " The Veneti," says
Strabo (V. i. 5, " had constructed in their lagoons, canals and
dikes, like those of Lower Egypt." In another passage Ravenna
recalls to him Alexandria. See in the 4th chapter of the 6th book,
the different causes he assigns for the superiority of Italy. It has
even been established that all the geological formations are
represented in Italy, and although mining operations are not well
prosecuted they give rise to an annual exportation of 600,000 tons
of the value of 100 millions (of sterling pounds)...]
View of Roman
Campagna
In the midst of this nature,
capricious and fickle, but everywhere energetic for good as for
evil, there appear peoples whose. diversity of origin will be stated
in the following pages ; but we know, already, by the study of the
Italian soil, that the population, placed in conditions of
territory and climate varying with each canton, will not be molded
by any one of those physical influences whose action, always the
same, produced civilizations uniform and impervious to external
influences.
In this general description of Italy we only glance in passing at
the hills of Rome, which, notwithstanding their modest size, surpass
in renown the proudest summits of the world. They deserve careful
study. The earth is a great book wherein science studies
revolutions, beside which
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frieze of which bears
heads of oxen, in remembrance of the sacrifices made
before the tomb.] From this lava, when consolidated,
Rome procured the flagstones with which she paved
the Appian Road, and which remain to this day.
The Roman campagna, formed in the midst of waters,
whose gentle undulations or level surface it
reproduces in turn, changed afterwards by the
volcanoes of the Alban Hills, is furrowed by little
hills and low ground, "a humpy soil", as Montaigne
once said, "a soil whose cavities are filled with
fresh water. Once they were limpid lakes, now they
are unhealthy pools"; [note: The season of
(Malaria) fever (typhoid, now so common, is
apparently a new scourge to the city, arising from
modern causes—Ed.) extends from June to October.
Horace especially dreaded the autumn (Od. 11. xiv.
15 ; Sat. II. vi. 10; see also Ep. I. vii. 5). M.
Colin; the chief physician of the French army,
attributes the malaria in the Campagna di Roma less
to the effluvia of the marshes, since the Pontine
marshes do not reach so far, than to the exhalations
from a soil, very fertile, and untilled, under a sky
of fiery heat during the day time, from July to
October, and comparatively very moist and cold
during the night. (Traite des fievres
intermittentes, 1870.)...]
A learned man, Brocchi, attributes to the influence
of the aria cattiva, the gloomy, violent, and
irritable temper of those who carry in their veins
the germs of the fever of the Maremma. This has been
noticed by all travelers ; while, under a beautiful
sky, and on the shore of the bright sea of the Gulf
of Naples, the people are merry, playful, and noisy,
the people of Rome, on the other hand, in the midst
of their majestic and stern country, are gloomy, silent, and
prompt with the knife. We shall find this harshness of character
running through the whole history of Rome, for though man may call
himself intelligent and free, the surrounding influences of nature
impress their mark upon him, and for the majority this mark is
indelible.
We might assert the same influences
for all animals alike; for the buffaloes and great oxen with
formidable horns, which wander about the country of Roman campagna
are as savage as the herdsmen who drive them, and it is dangerous
for a stranger to venture near them..
While the volcano was furnishing Rome with indestructible paving for
her military roads, the waterfalls of Tivoli, larger then than they
are now, and the waters of the neighboring lakes, saturated with
carbonic acid or sulphurated hydrogen, formed the travertino, a
light and whitish limestone, which hardens in the air and takes warm
and orange-colored tints. With this stone Rome built all her
temples, the Coliseum, and other monuments of the Empire. The
architecture of a |
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But though superstitious the people
were also energetic. What they asked from the gods they were ready
to demand from their toil ; and this struggle against Nature
prepared the way for the struggle against men. In this work of
improving the Roman soil they were helped by the Etruscans, who knew
how to drain marshy plains and. to build imperishable monuments for
the leading away of subterranean waters.
The entrance of Etruscan art into Rome
was a geographical necessity, as also was the laborious and rough
life of the first Romans. With art many also of the civil and
religious institutions of Etruria migrated to Rome.
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the valley of the Po that their moraines were not far from the
Adriatic, the Tuscan Sea covered the Roman plain. It
formed in it a semi-circular gulf, of which Soracte
and the promontory of Circei were the headlands. It
is considered that the Campagna
di Roma from Civita Vecchia to Terracina is 91
miles in length, and that from the Mediterranean
to the mountains its breadth is more than 27 miles.
As far inland as Rome, the mountains are in some
parts distant only from 3 to 5 miles. The Anio falls
into the Tiber at less than three miles distance
from Rome.. At the bottom of this primordial sea,
volcanoes burst forth, and their liquid lava was
deposited by the water in horizontal beds, which, at
the present day, from Rome as far as Radicofani, are
found mingled with organic remains.
The Extinct Volcanoes of Alba
When this lava has become solidified by time and the
.action of water, it becomes the peperino, the
close-grained tufo of which Rome, both under the
Kings and the Republic, was built. When the lava.
remains in a granulous state it produces the
pozolana, from which was made the tenacious cement
of the Roman walls. Of this the Seven Hills, on the
left bank, are formed. The Capitol alone is almost entirely composed of a
porous tufo ; a more solid substance seemed needed
for the hill which was destined to. be the throne of
the world. [Ampere “l'Histoire _Romaine a Rome”
(vol. i p.8).]
When the formidable volcanoes of the Alban Hills had
lifted Latium above the sea, the lava, which came
from their craters, spread over the sides of the
mountain, and one of the hot streams descended
across the new plain as far as Capo di Bove. [note:
Capo di Bove is the part of the Appian Road, where
is the tomb of Caecilia Metella, the |
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nation depends on the materials which it has at
hand. The bricks give London its dullness, while Paris owes its elegance to the
French limestone, so easy to handle. Marble made Athens sparkling with beauty.
Rome was severe with her grayish peperino, massive with her travertino cut in
large blocks, until the time came when she was able, with -the costly marbles
unloaded at Ostia, to indulge in all the splendors of architecture ; " so that
her very ruins are glorious, and still does she retain, in her tomb, the marks
and image of her Empire " (Montaigne).
The Tiber was much larger than it is at the present day, for it received then
all the Chiana, perhaps a part of the Arno, and carried to the sea, with the
streams of the Sabine territory
those of a great part of the Tuscan Apennines. A large and deep lake once
covered the site of Rome, and on the Pincian, Esquiline, Aventine, and
Capitoline Hills, fluvial shells are found, 130 to 160 feet above the present
Tiber.
The river, barred probably by the hills of Decimo, had accumulated its waters
behind that obstacle, which at length it succeeded in sweeping away.
Man appeared early on this soil. In the post-tertiary strata of the basin of
Rome his remains are found, and some cut or polished flints along with the bones
of the cervus elephas, of the reindeer, and of the bos primigenius: Implements
of stone were followed, as everywhere, by implements of bronze. Man, then armed,
was able to con¬tend against the fauna, and afterwards against nature herself.
But many centuries passed before his efforts produced any useful effects. In the
first days of Rome, the Forum, the Campus Martins, the Velabrum, the valley
between the Aventine and the Palatine hills (Vallis Murcia), which ultimately
the Circus Maximus filled up entirely, in short all the low-lying lands at the
foot of the Seven Hills were marshlands, where the river often returned, and
where, it still returns.
It is from a slough that the most beautiful city in the world was destined to
rise.
For the purpose of self-defense, the Capitoline and Aventine were secure
refuges; but in order to live and spread, she must descend from the hills and
overcome the wandering or stagnant waters over which already the malaria began
to hover. Fever had early an altar on the Palatine, where they attempted, by
prayer and sacrifices, to charm away its fatal influence.
For the Latins the Fever was the God Februus, to whom was consecrated the month
of February, during which purificatory sacrifices were offered, hence the verb
februare, to purify. [Yet surely it seems strange that so healthy a month should
be chosen for this purpose. |
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of man are but child's play. When the geologist
examines the soil of Rome and its environs he finds
it formed, like the rest of the peninsula, from the
two-fold action of volcanoes and water. Remains have
there been found of the elephant, the mastodon, the
rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus, proving that at a
certain period of geological time, Latium formed a
part of a vast continent with an African
temperature, and one in which great rivers ran
through vast plains. At another epoch, when the
glaciers descended so far into 