Volume 2 — ITALY. (continued 6)

The immigration of the Gauls into those parts is assigned by Livy in a most unhistorical manner to the time of Tarquinius Priscus; he has no other reason for it than the very legendary connection supposed to have existed between this emigration of the Gauls, and the settlement of the Phocaeans at Massilia. There is much more probability in the statement, that not long before the attack upon Rome by the Senones, the Gauls had first poured down upon all Italy in great masses. This is supported by the express testimony of Polybius, that they had shortly before come across the Alps, and also by the tradition that they took Melpum in the same year in which Veii was taken by Camillus (358). Just at that time, the Etruscans on quitting Veii seem to have turned their attention to an object of greater interest in a different direction. About that same time the Gauls appear in Slavonia and Lower Hungary, where they stirred up the Triballians, and according to an ancient tradition the Gauls migrated at the same time across the Alps and across the Rhine. They evidently marched into Italy through Switzerland, which may previously have been inhabited by quite different tribes. The ruins on the Ottilienberg in Alsace have a complete Etruscan appearance; they strongly resemble the fortifications of Volaterrae, and are situated on the plateau of a hill: they are altogether foreign to the Celtic character; the Celts had nothing of the kind. The supposition of the antiquarians of Alsace, ever since the time of Schoepflin, that, as those ruins are not Celtic, they belong to the decaying period of Rome, perhaps the reign of Valentinian, is extremely unfortunate. These ruins are far more ancient than the Celtic period, and belong to a people, which was expelled by the Gauls. The great Gallic migration was a mighty commotion extending from the frontiers of Spain to the Ukraine. In the subsequent counter-movement of the Slavonic migrations, the Gauls were driven back from east to west; and then they appear under the name of Cimbri together with the Germanic nation of the Teutones, and return to their ancient homes as ravaging conquerors.

The Gauls who settled south of the Alps consisted of several tribes, partly entire and partly ἀποδασμοὶ of those of which a portion remained behind in Gaul. In this light we must view the Boians; very few of them may have remained in Gaul itself; the greater part advanced into the country south of the Po, and another branch settled in Bavaria and Bohemia. On the whole there were about four or five Gallic tribes which settled in Italy on both sides of the Po; but besides them large numbers of volunteers, individuals and roaming vagabonds joined and strengthened one tribe or the other. I shall enumerate them in the order in which we find them established, beginning in the west. The Ticinus forms the frontier between the Gauls and Ligurians, as it still forms that between the territories of Milan and Piedmont.

1. The Insubrians, in the modern territory of Milan proper.

2. The Cenomanians, in the territory of Brescia and Bergamo, between lake Garda and the mouth of the Po.

3. The Boians, in the south of the latter; their territory is made too small in all our maps; they occupied the county from Piacenza to the sea, including Parma, Modena, Reggio, Bologna and Ferrara. They were divided, according to Cato, into 112 pagi.

4. The Senones, in the modern Romagna and Urbino, as far as the Aesis and the frontiers of Picenum.

5. The Lingones must have occupied the country to the north of the former, that is Ferrara and the territory of Rovigo.

In the later political geography of the Romans, Gallia Cisalpina is divided into two parts which are very different from each other, viz., Gallia Cispadana and Gallia Transpadana. In political terminology the latter acquired a greater extent, not being limited to the country between the Ticinus and lake Garda, but also comprising Venetia. The inhabitants of all this country, who received the jus Latii, were called Transpadani. The Cispadani are not much spoken of, which arose from particular circumstances, which I will explain to you because history does not do it. I have mentioned to you, that the whole country south of the Po, from Piacenza to the frontier of Picenum, was inhabited by two Gallic tribes, the Boians and Senones. The Senones were extirpated to a man, as, e.g., the Eretrians were extirpated by the Persians. The Romans invaded their country, burnt down their villages, and carried off their women and children into slavery; the men, capable of bearing arms, who in their despair returned, like beasts of prey whose young ones are taken from them, to save their families, were completely defeated, and those who escaped fled to the Boians. The whole of modern Romagna became a complete desert, such as we sometimes find in the history of Germany, e.g., the desert of the Avars in the time of Charlemagne, and Servia, after its devastation by Attila, when it was in such a condition that the ambassadors of Theodosius II. travelled seven days without finding any other traces of man, except the bodies of the murdered inhabitants. After its devastation, the Romans gave up the country partly to Roman citizens and partly to Italicans, who might cultivate it as they pleased, for it had become ager publicus. C. Flaminius afterwards distributed a portion of it viritim among Roman citizens. There now arose in those extensive districts entirety new settlements, the names of which are of a peculiar character: Faventia Pollentia, Florentia and Placentia are all names derived from verbs implying a favourable omen. Other places are termed Fora, and according to the American practice they might be called territories; they were inhabited by Roman citizens, who fully enjoyed the benefits of the Roman law, but did not form corporations. They lived isolated from one another, and thus were deprived of that advantage which was so important in antiquity, I mean, of the privileges of corporations: they had no magistrates to administer justice, whence there were many acts which they could not perform at all. It was contrary to the feelings of the Romans to appoint magistrates according to districts, and it was for this reason that they instituted Fora, places in which court-houses were built, and where a praefect, appointed by the praetor urbanus, resided, and where, accordingly, judicial business could be transacted.

The Boians survived the Senones about ninety years; during the Hannibalian war, they were enraged against the Romans, who, by fortifying and colonising Placentia and Cremona, had planted the yoke upon their necks, but the vengeance of the Romans was such, that in the course of about ten years they extirpated the whole Boian nation. A fragment of Cato in Pliny (iii. 15) furnishes express testimony on this subject, and the account in Livy, too, speaks distinctly enough. After this, no Boians are mentioned in Italy. In treating of Roman history, and especially of the Lex de Gallia Cisalpina, the question often presents itself to us, how it happens that in Cicero’s time we hear such frequent mention of Gallia Transpadana, while Gallia Cispadana is never spoken of. The matter is explained by what I have said. The Gallic population of the latter was utterly annihilated; in regard to the Senones, it is expressly attested, and the survivors of the Boians were not more numerous than, for example, those of the Indian tribes in America. The whole country then was taken possession of by Romans and Italicans in the manner before described, and several colonies, such as Mutina, Bononia, Parma, etc., were established in it; the country, however, was partly ager publicus and partly ager divisus. In this manner, the whole country south of the Po was severed from Gaul, and all that remained of Gaul consisted of a small territory north of the Po, between the Ticinus and the lake of Garda; and this latter is the country of the Insubrians and Cenomanians, who, together with the Venetians, formed those Transpadani, who, through Cn. Pompeius Strabo, obtained the jus Latii of the later kind.

The following are the towns in the territory of Gallia Cispadana, proceeding from west to east:—Placentia, the first Roman colony in those districts, was established two years before Hannibal’s passage over the Alps. Like Cremona, it was situated on the northern bank of the river, and its fortification was one of the most energetic measures for maintaining the Roman dominion in those parts.

Parma, a Latin colony, was founded like Mutina after the Hannibalian war.

Bononia, anciently called Felsina, and at present Bologna, was a remarkable place even in antiquity on account of its favourable situation, though it can in no way be compared with what it was during its subsequent greatness. We may estimate its ancient circumference with tolerable accuracy from the extent of the town in the middle ages, which, however, was scarcely the fifth part of what it is at present.

In the subsequent province of Flaminia, which ever since the time of the exarchate was called Romania (Romagna), there existed several towns between Bologna and Rimini, such as Faventia, Forum Cornelii, Forum Popillii, and others. Most of them were as ancient as the time of the Roman republic, but their history is unimportant. Ever since the beginning of the exarchate, their sad celebrity is that their defence and conquest are much spoken of.

Ravenna, the centre of the whole province of Flaminia, was originally a Pelasgian town, and is called Thessalian. In ancient times, it was situated, like Venice, in a lagoon, an arm of the sea extending from the mouth of the Po to the south of Rimini. Ravenna was built there on stakes like Venice. Such continued to be its condition in the time of the Roman emperors. It was inaccessible from the main land, from which it was separated by that arm of the sea, or rather by so shallow a marsh that persons could reach the city only with very flat boats, and not without a very accurate knowledge of the shallows. This strong position was probably the reason why Ravenna subsequently became the seat of the imperial government, for no place in Italy was considered sufficiently strong even when protected by a courageous garrison. Ravenna at that time was situated in the midst of the sea, and the streets were formed, as at Venice, by means of canals, by which the communication between its various parts was mainly kept up. A suburb of the name of Classes was situated on the main land opposite. The lagoons have gradually been filled up. During the Pelasgian period, the arm of the sea may have been deep, but in the middle ages it was filled up. A pier was constructed between Ravenna and the suburb Classes (near it was the military port, whence the name Classes), and this pier seems to have greatly contributed to the filling up of the lagoons. When Belisarius made war on the Goths, Ravenna was still situated on the sea, but during the middle ages the sea vanishes, and the history of this gradual change can be accurately traced in documents. At present Ravenna is not only not a maritime town, and without a trace of its ancient canals, but it is situated, like Mexico, at a distance of from one and a half to two Roman miles from the sea, and near Classes not a trace of a harbour is left. Ravenna’s greatness belongs to the period of Rome’s decay. As early as the time of Augustus, a fleet was stationed there for the purpose of enabling the Romans, in case of a war or an insurrection, speedily to convey troops to the frontiers of Noricum, and to Pannonia; and afterwards a fleet was always ready there. In the time of Theodosius and Honorius, the town became important as the seat of government; under the Goths, too, it was the capital notwithstanding the unpleasantness of its situation; during the period of the Lombards it was the seat of the exarch or Greek governor of Italy. Hence the many extremely remarkable buildings, which still distinguish Ravenna from all other towns, and there is no place possessing so many edifices erected at a time when otherwise very little was done in the way of building. At the time when Ravenna became a capital, it had probably not yet reached its full extent; and as its population greatly increased, it was necessary to enlarge and embellish the place. Its decay began when it ceased to be the seat of the exarch. The town is remarkable also in the history of the Roman law, for notwithstanding its conquest by the Lombards, it never assumed the character of a Germanic town. Hence it became the seat of the grammatical and juristical schools, in which ancient literature continued to be taught. The form in which the ancient scholiasts have come down to us seems generally, speaking, to have been given to them in the school at Ravenna. Savigny has shown that the Roman law was taught there until the eleventh century, and that its juristical school was not transferred to Bologna till the time when the Roman law became established beyond the frontiers of Italy.

The ancient town of Ariminum (Rimini) is situated to the south-east of Ravenna; it was a Latin colony established about the end of the fifth century as a frontier fortress and a place of arms to protect the Romans against the Cisalpine Gauls. The town is frequently mentioned in history, especially during the Hannibalian and Gallic wars. The Romans there awaited the invasion of the Gauls, the Apennines being impassable. A friend once told me that he had always pronounced the name Arimīnum, until many years ago his attention was directed to a passage of Lucan, which shewed him that it ought to be pronounced Arimĭnum. Lucan is sometimes useful in teaching us the correct pronunciation of names of places, which do not elsewhere occur in poetry. Otherwise he is, on the whole, not a pleasing writer, though in some points he contains valuable information, but he is not sufficiently polished. It was through his poem, that the gap in the second book of Caesar’s “Bellum Civile” was discovered. But the most useless of all writers is Silius Italicus, and yet some things may be gleaned even from his works; no ancient author, in fact, is so bad, as not to furnish us with some useful information.

Further south on the coast, we find the towns of Pisaurum, Fanum, and Sena Gallia, of which scarcely any thing is to be said.

Gallia Transpadana. The Insubrians occupied almost exactly the modern territory of Milan, for Ticinum was regarded as one of the Ligurian towns. Comum also did not belong to Gallia Transpadana, which comprised Milan, Lodi, and a part of the territory of Cremona. During the 200 years in which the Gauls were masters of that district, it contained, properly speaking, no towns, and Mediolanum, the principal place of the Insubrians, was an open village, though it may have been very large. The Romans treated the Insubrians more gently than the Boians, whence their country was not so cruelly devastated. In consequence of its relation to Rome, the village of Mediolanum became a town; but when or how this happened, we have no means of ascertaining. In the time of Caesar and Cicero, Mediolanum is already mentioned as a town, and, according to the description of Strabo, it appears to have even been a considerable one. The district of Milan is extremely fertile; its vicissitudes have been terrible, but it has always been restored, the causes of which must probably be sought in the particularly favorable circumstances of its situation. It is certainly not owing to the peculiar character of its inhabitants, of whom antiquity did not entertain any more favorable opinion than that which is current about the modern Milanese, who are said to be the most lazy and awkward among all the Italians. The atmosphere is heavy, and both ancients and moderns assert, that this has a great influence upon the inhabitants. Now this town of Milan which in the time of Strabo appears as a considerable country town, ever continued to increase under the emperors. In the letters of Pliny we find it spoken of as a large place, in which, according to the custom of the time, public teachers of rhetoric and grammar were appointed and salaried, and formed what we might call a university. During the second century Milan became larger and larger. In the war of the emperor Aurelian with the Goths, it was devastated, but soon recovered again. The emperor Maximian took up his residence there, so that it became a capital of the empire. Ausonius who lived about eighty years later says, Mediolani mira omnia, and mirus at that time signified “beautiful” or “magnificent.” In the reign of Theodoric it was a very large and important city, though this emperor did not reside there. In the war of Belisarius its fate was very melancholy: Datius, the bishop of Milan, had been intriguing with the imperial general and promised to deliver up Milan to him; but the plan was betrayed, the Goths entered Milan, and, if we can take the account in Procopius literally, put the whole population to the sword. The calamity must indeed have been fearful, though it can scarcely have been as bad as it is said to have been. In the time of the Lombards we again find it as a great city, though it was under a disadvantage because Pavia, in its neighbourhood, was the capital of the Lombards; and a rivalry between those two cities continued to exist until a late period of the middle ages. This kind of hostility was quite common among the Italian towns. In the case of large cities, this feeling may to some extent be excused, though it cannot be justified; but at present, when those towns are altogether devoid of character, that hatred is the only thing which has been propagated to them from better and more glorious times. Verona was the first Italian town in which I made a stay, and in which I had any conversation with the people; they very soon began to speak contemptuously of the other cities, to each of which some abusive name was applied. Such were the first things I heard in Italy; the idea that they are all countrymen and Italians is treated by them with ridicule; and even the inhabitants of different towns under the same sovereign have no fellow-feeling. When you speak to a Milanese, you find that he does not regard the Veronese as his countrymen; the inhabitants of some districts in Tuscany appear to him much more in that light, and he feels as foreign to the Lombards as to the French. It is distressing to see this distracted state of Italy. A Florentine treats it as a heresy and flies into a passion, when you speak to him of a favella Italiana, he cannot hear of anything but a favella Toscana. It is well known, that the emperor Frederic Barbarossa afterwards destroyed Milan, and compelled the inhabitants to live in five scattered villages; but they returned nevertheless. Subsequently, the wars at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century brought such severe sufferings upon Milan, that it would necessarily have perished, if this were possible. It fell into the hands of the Spaniards, and in the sixteenth century was visited by a plague which carried off three-fifths of its inhabitants. In the seventeenth century, the plague again made sad ravages, and destroyed half the population. At present, it is still constantly increasing. He who has a taste for classical antiquity cannot regard these Lombard towns as belonging to it; for their importance does not commence until the decline of the Romans.

Comum was situated at a distance of about twenty miles from Milan; it was a town of Alpine tribes of the Raetian race, and not Gallic. The modern Como is not the same as the ancient Comum, but is identical with the Novocomum of ancient geography which was founded and honored with privileges at a later period by Cn. Pompeius Strabo and Julius Caesar.

Bergamum also was not a Gallic town, but belonged to the mountain tribes of the district. Brixia, like the whole district between Lodi and Mantua belonged to the Cenomani.

Laus Pompeia, now Lodi, was founded by Cn. Pompeius Strabo, not, however, as a Roman town, but “as a colony in a place already existing” in the Roman dominion.⁠[59]⁠

Brixia is called a Cenomanian town, but it must not be inferred from this that the Cenomani occupied the whole territory of Brixia, for the whole valley of the Camuni was Raetian. The conquering Gauls did not dwell in the mountains, but in the plains fitted for the breeding of cattle and their rude agriculture. If we draw a line from lake Garda to Brixia, and thence northward towards the Adda, so as to separate Bergamum from the country of the Gauls, all the country north of that line did not belong to Italy before the time of Augustus, not even in its wider sense, but to the Alpine tribes. Catullus says of Brescia Veronae mater amata meae, which is unaccountable, for Verona was a small Gallic town. It is possible that Brixia may have been the seat of a conventus, somewhat in the same relation in which the metropolis in Asia Minor stood to the other towns; this is probable enough, or else Catullus alludes to the ancient Etruscan times, in which case Brixia would be the mother city of Verona.

Mantua, according to Virgil (Tusco de sanguine vires) a Tuscan town; the manner in which he speaks of it, shows that it was a town with a territory, which was divided into twelve districts. Although he describes it as a considerable town, it does not appear in this light, and we must probably make some allowance for the poet’s partiality for his native city. Its territory, however, may have been extensive, as is evident from the fact that it was contiguous to that of Cremona.

Verona, to the north of Mantua, is remarkable because for a considerable period it was the seat of the Lombard kings, as before it had been the residence of Theodoric, who in the German lays is called Dietrich of Bern. There can be no doubt that the name of this far-famed chivalrous town was transferred to Berne in Switzerland, which was built by duke Berthold of Zähringen. Its ancient circumference may still be recognised, and from it we see how small those towns in the north of Italy were during the imperial period, in comparison with what they were in the middle ages. The whole of Lombardy, Tuscany, and Venice were far more flourishing in the middle ages than at any period in classical antiquity. If we compare Italy during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with what it was in the days of Cicero, it is as a garden compared with a desert. The ancient town of Verona occupied scarcely one-fourth of the extent which it had in the time of the princes of Della Scalla; it still has the same circumference, but is desolate notwithstanding its 60,000 inhabitants. However, that Verona was a great and wealthy town even in antiquity, may be seen from the splendid gate of the emperor Gallienus (which also shews that it was a Roman colony), and from the splendid amphitheatre. Its fate has not been so disastrous as that of Milan; for throughout the middle ages it was not visited by a single great calamity. It is singular to observe how some towns are ever visited by misfortunes, while others are spared. Verona has acquired immortal celebrity from being the birth-place of Catullus, who and Lucretius are unquestionably the greatest Roman poets. The name C. Valerius is surprising, and people have been foolish enough to connect it with the ancient Valerian gens; but the fact is, that in the seventh century the Veronese must have had some Valerius for their patron. The name is extremely common on the stones which are dug out in the neighbourhood of Verona, and I have seen the name Valerius with different cognomina on at least twelve or fifteen of them. In antiquity the town was situated on a reach of the Athesis (Adige), but it now occupies both sides of the river.

In the division made by Augustus, Verona was contained in the Regio Veneta, but it is only in an improper sense that it can be said to have belonged to the nation of the Veneti. No ancient writer distinctly states to what race the Veneti belonged. They are said to have resembled the Illyrians in dress and manners; but the very way in which this statement is made, shows that its author did not regard them as Illyrians. Polybius assuredly knew how to distinguish the Illyrian language, as well as people in northern Germany can distinguish the Slavonian language without having themselves any knowledge of it. I have no doubt that the Veneti belonged to the race of the Liburnians, and that accordingly they were a branch of the wide-spread Tyrrheno-Pelasgians, in consequence of which they also became so easily Latinized. Patavium not only had its own Trojan legends, but it was by no means a barbarous town like those of Dalmatia; it must have had a different origin, otherwise it could not have produced the most eloquent of Latin historians.

Within the territory of Venetia, we meet with a people called Euganei, who seem to have been regarded as the more ancient inhabitants, among whom, according to tradition, the Trojans established themselves. Two things must be distinguished in the legend of Antenor, though it cannot claim to be historically true. First, the Patavinians regarded Antenor as their κτίστης, just as the Latin towns looked upon Aeneas as the leader of a Trojan colony. Secondly, the fact of Antenor being described as a leader of the Heneti, is a mere play upon words originating in the resemblance of the names. In Venetia assuredly nothing was known about the Heneti, a people in Paphlagonia. But, however this may be,—

Patavium was a very ancient and large town, and it is strange that it appears as such in Roman history all at once. It is mentioned as early as the fifth century, during the expedition of the Spartan Cleonymus; it is also spoken of at the time of Caesar and of the triumvirs. But Strabo is the first who describes Patavium as a large town, and in such a manner as to make it evident that it was an ancient place. He says that, next to Rome, it was the wealthiest city of Italy, that Patavium alone had 500 Roman equites, each of whom, as is well-known, must have possessed at least 100,000 denarii: this gives us some idea of the enormous amount of local wealth. In the time of Augustus, it was a large commercial and manufacturing place; the whole district is in fact very industrial, and its colony, Venice, besides its commerce, is also celebrated for its great industry. Patavium is always said to have been destroyed by Attila: when he advanced as far as the Po, a number of inhabitants of Patavium and other towns are said to have taken refuge in the islands of the Venetian lagoons, and to have protected themselves there. I do indeed believe, that the tempest of the Huns passed over all those towns, and that the destruction was fearful; but I cannot believe that Padua perished. It never ceased to be a town, and was an important place during the Gothic and Lombard periods, and throughout the middle ages.

Nor can the foundation of the new city in the lagoons (Venice) have been occasioned by that sudden invasion of the Huns; the place must have been inhabited to some extent even before. This lay in the nature of circumstances. Sailors, and other people of the same kind, sought refuge in a place where they were beyond the reach of the barbarians. They went there not only on account of the Huns, but of all barbarian immigrants, for there they were safe against ill-treatment and other horrors, and land was not the thing they wanted. When Theodoric reigned in Italy, they were his faithful subjects; and they were afterwards under the dominion of the Eastern empire. The discussions which were in vogue during the seventeenth century, as to whether Venice could trace its liberties to the Roman times, were silly and quite useless. There are what are called Fasti of the Venetian consuls, but they are altogether apocryphal, a forgery of the Lombard period; they contain only late Lombard names, and do not appear to be authentic until the middle of the seventh century.

Aquileia, the extreme town of Italy, was a Roman colony planted for the purpose of securing Venetia, of offering resistance to the Noricans and extending the Roman dominion against them, of protecting the Roman supremacy in the Adriatic, and of keeping up the communication by land with Istria. The town, favoured by its situation, gradually increased, and became an emporium for the commerce with the northern countries, no doubt, even with the interior of Germany, to which the products of the south, wine, oil, and the like were exported. It cannot be said with certainty whether Aquileia was also a military colony. Under the emperors, it was one of the largest cities, and was carefully fortified as a place of arms for all Italy against the northern nations and the Getae.

Italy extended in the north as far as Istria; but a part of Istria, as far as Pola, was united in the division of Augustus with Italy; this was founded upon the correct view that, according to the course of the mountains, the frontier was formed by the highest ridge of the Julian Alps and their whole continuation down to the southern point of Istria. In this manner Istria was divided into two parts.

Liguria.

The part of the continent of Italy which remains to be considered, was probably not regarded by Polybius as belonging to Italy, or at least only partially. Liguria, in the widest sense, extended as far as Gaul, nay, as far as the frontier of Spain; but Italian Liguria, in the sense in which Augustus made it a part of Italy (not in the later sense in which it signified the territory of Milan), comprised the Genoese Alps, the continuation of the Alps forming the southernmost part of Piedmont, and the hilly country about Turin, with Alessandria, and a part of the territory of Montferrat. The Genoese Alps, that is, the range of the Alpes Maritimae as far as Briançon and mount Cenis, are among the highest and wildest parts of the Alps, while the more northern slopes of the mountains as far as the Po and the Ticinus belong to the most splendid and fertile parts of northern Italy. It is not a plain, like the territory of Milan and the country on the lower Po, which is evidently, like Egypt, an ancient bay of the sea, filled up in the course of time; but it is a hilly country. Its population in ancient times was altogether Ligurian, and the Salassi, in the valley of Aosta, are the only tribe, mentioned in after times, regarding which it is uncertain whether they were Ligurians or Celts; the Taurini were, in my opinion, Ligurians. Although the language is changed in modern times, still the fact of French being spoken by the inhabitants of the valley of Aosta, and not Italian, is of some significance in connection with their origin: they have changed their language in a manner analogous to their origin. There is little resemblance between the French and the ancient Celtic, there being only some analogy in grammar, but not in words; in the south of France, on the other hand, as far as it was once inhabited by Aquitanians, Iberians, and Ligurians, the people speak Provençal, while the north of France, which was once inhabited by Celts, has a different dialect. This Romano-French, which has grown on Celtic ground, extends all over Savoy as far as Aosta, and shows that the country was originally inhabited by Celts. The Alpine tribes in those parts were not completely subdued until the time of Augustus. During the period of the decline of the Etruscans, the Ligurians spread far into the interior of Tuscany; and soon after the Hannibalian war, the Romans came in collision with them, not because they had offended the Romans, but the latter only wanted to gain a passage through their country to Spain. I have already observed that physically we can distinguish the countries once inhabited by Etruscans and Ligurians, and a greater contrast can scarcely exist. In Etruria the powerful cities ruled as sovereigns over all the neighbouring places and extensive territories; the Ligurians, on the other hand, were absolutely democratic, and had scarcely any towns. A port town like Genoa was a small place, but otherwise they lived in villages on the hills and in the valleys; the equality subsisting among them has no parallel anywhere except in modern Europe. They had no slaves; all were thoroughly free, and the Ligurian, working in the sweat of his brow, performed as a free labourer the services which were elsewhere the work of slaves. This difference in character is clearly manifested in the kind of resistance offered to the Romans by the Etruscans and by the Ligurians. For the same reason Charlemagne found it infinitely more difficult to subdue the Saxons and Frisians, for they were free people, and although there were some serfs among them, yet freedom had never been really crushed. The Turingians, on the other hand, who ruled over extensive territories, in which the ancient inhabitants had become serfs, were conquered at a blow; so also the Alemanni, who possessed a large country extending as far as the lower Rhine: they had no basis. As they ruled over serfs, the greater part of the population was foreign and hostile to them. On the other hand, it took centuries to subdue the Obotritae and Slavonians, who defended their own independence. Such, also, was the case of the Ligurians: they consisted of a large number of small tribes, which unfortunately defended themselves each separately. If they had kept together, they would have been invincible, for each of them held out with the most determined perseverance. Their misfortune makes one’s heart ache: they were crushed by the Romans one by one, just as a strong wall is demolished piece by piece. The conquerors were obliged to transplant them into foreign countries; and one of their tribes is said by Pliny to have been transplanted thirty times, in order to break up all connection among them. Many thousands of them were led into southern Italy, and settled in the modern kingdom of Naples, where their language was not understood, and where they themselves were unwelcome neighbours. The extraordinary industry of the Ligurians in agriculture and navigation, their frugality, and in short, all that we know of them reflects great honour upon them. We cannot, therefore, look upon their destruction with less sadness than upon that of Numantia. Little can be said about the geography of this people.

Genua is situated on one of those spots which will always be the site of a great commercial town, on account of the excellent harbour which nature herself has made. Its situation is of that fortunate kind that it cannot become unfavourable even in the course of time, like so many harbours which have become useless during the middle ages by the accumulation of sand or mud. After the Punic war, Genua was destroyed, but was restored soon after; and there can be no doubt that even in antiquity it was a respectable town.

Augusta Taurinorum, a military colony of Augustus, was likewise a considerable town, but not to be compared with what it came to be at a later period. In comparison with the modern city of Turin, it was no doubt always a small place. On the whole, you must not conceive such military colonies to have been very large; the ancient Roman towns were much smaller than those of modern times; we generally imagine them to have been larger on account of the importance they have in history; but on an average they were not larger than, for example, Bonn. A place of the extent of Cologne, would have been a very considerable town in the time of the Romans. After the decline of Rome under the emperors, Italy had rather a numerous population, but in the age of Cicero and Augustus, as I have already remarked, it was certainly far more thinly peopled than at present. The population of the modern kingdom of Naples, north of the Faro, is reported to be 6,000,000, while under Charles V. it is said to have amounted to only 600,000. It is, indeed, said that, under Charles V., families were counted and not persons; but admitting that the number of persons was 2,000,000, which is the highest that can be made out, still it is an undoubted fact, that in less than three centuries the population has become more than trebled. I do not believe that, in the reign of Augustus, the population was larger than under Charles V. The astonishment with which Polybius and others mention the fact, that previously to the Hannibalian war, Italy as far as the Cisalpine frontier had 700,000 men capable of bearing arms, is too decisive to allow us to suppose that the country was thickly peopled. Italy clearly reminds us of the condition of Germany after the Thirty Years’ war, of which we have descriptions in books of travel; and that state of Italy, as we see from Lucan, continued until a late period. I have read a description of Germany by an Italian who travelled in the country thirty years after the war, and who saw the villages and buildings everywhere in ruins, and even the towns were full of heaps of ruins and decaying houses.

The valley of Aosta, the country of the Salassians, is remarkable for its gold-dust and gold-washings in the river Doria. Gold still exists there, but little, for such veins often are entirely drained.

Sicilia.

In passing on to the islands, I shall first speak of Sicily, the queen of the islands in the Mediterranean. It derives, like Italy and most other countries, its name from its inhabitants, and Sicilia is the country of the Siculi. I have already said that Itali and Siculi are the same name in different dialects, and that accordingly both denote the same people. The general tradition of antiquity is, that the Siculi migrated from Italy into the island, and pushed the Sicani, its previous inhabitants, into the western and southern parts. Those who go back to the mythical ages, represent the island in the most ancient times as inhabited by Gigantes, Cyclopes, and Laestrygones. It is a widely-spread opinion among the ancients, that the Sicani belonged to the race of the Iberians. The Sicani called themselves Autochthons, while, according to others, they had come from Iberia, having been displaced by Ligurians; but such an emigration, so far across the sea and by so many intermediate countries as the Balearian islands and Sardinia, or, if you please, along the coast of Africa, is incredible in the case of a people like the Iberians, who never were great navigators. I believe that, in this account, we can keep only to this one point, that, according to the conviction of those who most thoroughly understand the circumstances, the Sicani belonged to the Iberian race, even if we admit that the tradition about their emigration is without foundation; and this is very possible. It is equally possible that the story about the emigration of the Siculi from Italy is without foundation; at least our authorities for it are not authentic. Another question is, as to whether the Sicani and Siculi were everywhere different people; the testimonies of the ancients must, of course, be of the greatest weight to us in this matter. I am not one of those who build history upon the mere names of nations, and am, therefore, not much inclined to lay great stress upon the resemblance of the two names; but Virgil uses Sicani and Siculi as synonymous, and this leads us to infer that he probably had more ancient authors before him, who had done the same. It is true also, that such a change of form is not unprecedented, for Aequus, Aequanus, Aequulus, Aequicus, and Aequiculus, are only derivatives from the same basis; and in like manner we might regard Sicanus and Siculus as simple derivatives of the stem Sicus. I should believe this to be quite correct, were it not that the ancients speak so positively of the Iberian origin of the Sicani. I should, in fact, reject this origin, were it not certain that Iberians existed in Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearian islands, and in ancient times, when the Celts dwelt as far as the Sierra Morena, probably even on the coast of Africa. The Basque language is foreign to all European languages known to us; it belongs, as it were, to a different part of the world. But however this may be, the two nations in Sicily were different from each other, though we cannot say whether the difference was one of race or of a less striking nature. The Siculi inhabited the north-eastern part of the island, and the Sicani the southern and western.

At the time when the Phoenicians were in possession of the most important islands of the Aegean, as Thasos and Cythera, and had settlements in most of the Cyclades; they also occupied strong points on the coast of Sicily; they were generally small places in little islands, headlands and the like, not being intended as agricultural settlements, but as factories. But they disappeared in consequence of the Greek colonies, which commenced at an early period, and according to the traditions from annals of which Thucydides probably made indirect use through Antiochus, soon after the beginning of the Olympiads. The colonies came from two of the Greek tribes, the Dorians and Chalcidians. In Italy, there was, properly speaking, only one Doric city that was really great, whereas in Sicily Doric cities preponderated both in number and greatness, witness Syracuse, which Timaeus calls the largest Greek city, Agrigentum, which was but little inferior to Syracuse, Gela, Selinus, and Camarina. Zancle (afterwards Messana), Naxos, Leontini, Catana, and Himera, on the north coast, were of Chalcidian origin. All the towns on the north-east, on a line from Syracuse to Palermo, were Chalcidian, and those on the south-west of it were Dorian. In speaking of the towns of Sicily, I shall make some deviation from the general rule I have hitherto followed, and enumerate them not in their natural succession, but according to their magnitude.

Sicily, like most other countries which are surrounded by the sea on two sides, presents the physical character of two different countries. In Andalusia and Algarvia, the character of the animal and vegetable world up to the mountains is African; and, in like manner, the southern part of Sicily is completely African, and the palm-tree grows there as beautifully as in Tunis and Tripoli; but the country north of cape Heraeum is quite different.

If we except the south-western coast and the district about Leontini, Sicily is altogether a mountainous country. Mount Aetna is the real central knot of the island, and the highest mountains proceed from it in a north-eastern direction as far as cape Pelorus just opposite to Italy. The Heraean range likewise proceeds from Aetna in a western direction, while another chain extends southwards. This last range is considerably lower than the others, but still high enough to form the watershed between the eastern and western coast. In the part between Palermo and Messina, the mountains approach very close to the coast, so that often two places situated on the coast are not connected by a road, just as is the case in many parts of Liguria. Hence, during the wars of the Romans, we never find that the northern coast formed their scene of operation, which it is in all the wars on the south coast, for in this latter part there are roads, and armies can move. But on the northern coast there never was any communication either in the Punic wars or in those of the middle ages and modern times. It is of importance to know this in order to understand the history of the first Punic war.

Aetna is the highest mountain both of Italy and Sicily; it had only very few eruptions in antiquity, but they were sometimes of a violence which has never been equalled in modern times. According to Thucydides, the third eruption, after the settlement of the Greeks in Sicily, occurred in his own days, in the time of the Peloponnesian war. We need not, however, scrupulously insist on this number, for it is possible that all the eruptions were not recorded, and that there had been some at a time when no annals were yet kept. The eruptions of which we know, belong to Olympiads 70, 82,⁠[60] and Olymp. 88, 3, or the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war. The greatest subsequent eruption in ancient times occurred after the death of Caesar. A still more terrible one is recorded by the earliest Byzantine writers of the age of the Greek emperor Anastasius or Zeno. During the eruption in the age of Caesar, the ashes are said to have been thrown as far as Peloponnesus and Africa, which is probably no exaggeration; but it seems scarcely possible that, in the reign of Anastasius, the ashes should have been carried as far as Constantinople, though it certainly is very difficult positively to assert anything about these powers of nature.

Eryx (monte S. Giuliano), situated in an isolated position on the western promontory, is a mountain of great historical interest. It is high, but a tame mountain, and is celebrated for its temple of Venus Erycina; but it has been immortalised in history by the defence of Hamilcar Barcas, who was blockaded there by the Romans for years, and maintained himself in spite of all difficulties: that defence is one of the greatest events in military history.

Whether Sicily derived the name Trinacria from its three promontories, which seems to us very probable, or whether this is only apparent, and the name arose from a Siculian town of a similar name (Trinacia or Thrinacia), independently of the form of the island, is one of those questions, concerning which it is best to confess that they cannot be satisfactorily answered.

Syracusae, at first probably Syracusa, was the greatest Greek city in Sicily. The plural form of the name probably did not come into use until the time when several towns were united in one great city; afterwards, during the decline of the language, it was again called Syracusa. There exists an abridgment of six books (from 21 to 26) of Diodorus Siculus, which was no doubt made in Sicily itself, but at a late period, for it already contains several modern Greek expressions, and among others, also the form Syracusa. Those of the Byzantine writers who did not want to write learnedly, likewise have the singular. It is well known that Syracuse was a Corinthian colony led out by the Bacchiad Archias; the first settlement was formed in the island of Ortygia (to which the modern Siragossa also is confined), for the sake of safety against the attacks of the inhabitants of the interior. It commenced its career as a commercial place; and this first colony was small like all the other Greek settlements, as, for example, Cyrene. The island in the Doric dialect was called νᾶσος, and the Romans also retained this name (Nasos), as we know from Cicero’s Verrine orations. A suburb of the name of Achradina (from ἀχράς, the wild pear-tree) arose on the main land opposite the island. This suburb, which increased considerably, is the Syracuse of the middle period, that is, under the first Gelo and the first Hiero, until the time of the Peloponnesian war. Nasos then became the Acra, but Achradina alone was fortified. By the side of this latter, again two large suburbs arose, Neapolis and Tycha; they seem to have commenced at two different gates, and perhaps ran parallel to each other, but were separated by a considerable intervening space. They, too, became important towns, so that Syracuse was a tetrapolis. The last two of these places which had not been fortified at all, or only feebly, were surrounded by Dionysius with a wall which he constructed at a distance of about three miles from the island. Above Syracuse there runs a range of hills, and you may easily understand its situation, by comparing it with the neighbourhood of Bonn, the plain extending between the Vorgebirge and the Rhine: the city must be conceived to be situated in the plain upon the Rhine, whence it gradually extends towards the Vorgebirge. These hills, which, just like our Vorgebirge, bound the plain stretching to the sea, were called Epipolae. They were from early times surmounted by forts, the object of which was to protect the district in the petty wars with the Siculians; during the Athenian war also they were very dangerous on account of the great enlargement of the city. Dionysius then fortified the city by building two mighty walls up the heights, so as to enclose those forts which now became citadels. The whole of the intermediate space between the walls, however, must not be imagined to have been covered with buildings, for between Neapolis and Tycha there were extensive tracts which can never have been built upon; the quarries also could not be built over, as is clear from the whole surface of the ground. But the circumference of the city was enormous.

The misfortunes of Syracuse are very painful: it was visited by such a succession of devastations that we can hardly understand how it could maintain itself: it must have possessed an unusual degree of vital power. I believe that its happiest period was the reign of the last Hiero, though the population may at that time already have been much smaller than it had been in the earlier prosperous periods. In the Hannibalian war, when the city was taken by the Romans, Neapolis and Tycha were completely destroyed, and the alleged mildness of Marcellus was of no avail, for the work of destruction was completed with barbarous fury. At the capture of Achradina, Marcellus ordered to spare the lives of the inhabitants, and not to carry away a free-born Syracusan into slavery. This is always praised as an act of great humanity; but a new fragment in the excerpts from Diodorus shows that this apparently humane order did not prevent the complete pillage of the city: the Syracusans were robbed of everything, and freedom alone was granted to them. But this gift rendered their condition worse even than that of slaves, who received at least some food from their masters, while the free men died of hunger, no person supplying them with anything. Thus it happened that many a free man gave himself out to be a slave in order to find a purchaser and food. This is probably the most fearful occurrence in all ancient history. After that time there existed in Neapolis and Tycha only a few isolated buildings and temples, and the population disappeared; even in Achradina only very few inhabitants appear to have remained, for in Cicero’s time the real population was again confined to the island of Nasos; the same appears to have been the condition of the city under the emperors, and at present it is still the same. Under Augustus a Roman colony was established there; still, however, the whole island of Sicily was so essentially Greek, that under the emperors it was always regarded as a part of Greece. Even at the time of the Norman conquest, in the eleventh century of our era, Greek and Arabic were the only languages spoken there.

Although the Syracusans are not among those Greeks who excite our sympathy for them in the highest degree, yet their history is one of the most melancholy in ancient times. The whole of Greek history is very saddening in its course, but none more so than that of Syracuse, and if we seriously contemplate it, it is heartrending. The Syracusans throughout show a lawlessness which rendered them incapable of governing themselves; their only salvation was a mild usurper, as, for example, the last Hiero; he was a mild and kindly man, although even he did things which make us shudder; but this was natural in the case of Greek usurpers. The history of Syracuse begins with an aristocratic form of government, the first settlers ruling over a considerable territory, and the ancient inhabitants having become serfs (κιλλικύριοι). Servitude afterwards disappears, and a demos is formed, which is increased by new settlers from all parts of Greece, and has to struggle with the lords of the soil (γάμοροι). Gelo, one of these lords, put himself at the head of the demos, and for the sake of appearances established a democracy, but set himself up as tyrant. Under Hiero, Syracuse was extremely prosperous; with him the tyrannis ceased and democracy was restored, but was found wanting as soon as it was put to the test, and a struggle gradually arose between the wealthy few and the multitude. During this struggle there arose Dionysius I., an ambitious man, not a benefactor of the people, though he was useful in several respects, for the people could not do without a ruler. He was succeeded by his unworthy son, quite a detestable person; it was now impossible to live without a usurper, but it was equally impossible to endure him. The distressing condition became worse in consequence of the unsuccessful undertaking of Dion, respecting whom Plato was so singularly mistaken, and whom he regarded in the light of his own ideal of what a man should be. Timoleon, a really great man, expelled Dionysius by force, and restored happiness and prosperity to the city for a period of twenty years. He ruled solely by his personal authority, and the people, for once, were grateful to him. After his death, fresh divisions arose, and Agathocles, a bold but oriental miscreant of unprincipled impudence, usurped the supreme power. Under his dominion of Syracuse became great and brilliant, but not prosperous: it was fearfully ill used; it became a den of robbers, and mercenaries of every description deluged the city with torrents of blood. Long protracted, and devastating internal wars then followed, after which came the more than fifty years’ reign of Hiero, during which Syracuse was confined to a small territory. It often ruled over the whole island; but the state of things was ever changing.

The population of Syracuse is estimated at 1,200,000 souls; and this number is adopted in a great many books, but it is quite inconceivable. The population of all Sicily at present amounts to from 1,600,000 to 1,700,000, and seventy or eighty years ago it was only 1,200,000. How then is it possible, that Syracuse alone should have had such a population of free men? Diodorus indeed speaks of thirty myriads, but they must be understood as the numbers in the Roman census, that is, as comprising not only the citizens of Syracuse, but including all the inhabitants of the towns which stood to Syracuse in the relation of isopolity. Hence we may assume that Syracuse itself, at the time of its highest prosperity, contained within its walls at the most 200,000 inhabitants, including both free men and slaves, and I should be surprised to find that it actually did amount to so much. You remember that Thebes, when it was destroyed by Alexander, contained only 30,000 persons of every age, rank, and sex. The statements about the population in antiquity are monstrously exaggerated; the numbers are not always fictitious, but are founded upon misunderstandings.

Agrigentum (Ἀκράγας, according to the common derivation of such names, where ς is changed into ntum) was the second large city in Sicily. Plans of it are found in books of travel, and in Graevius’ Thesaurus; but nothing can be more erroneous than they are, for towns in the neighbourhood are represented as parts of Agrigentum, which they never were. It was a Rhodian colony, and was inferior in greatness to Syracuse alone. The population is said to have amounted to 200,000 souls; but the case is quite similar to that of Syracuse, as is clear from another statement, which mentions only 20,000. Both numbers may be correct, if we take the 20,000 as that of the real citizens, and the 200,000 as comprising all the isopolites of Agrigentum. But notwithstanding all this, the population of Sicily in ancient times was far larger than it is at present; its numbers in the towns of the island change with incredible rapidity. In the middle ages, Messina had 140,000 inhabitants; at the end of the seventeenth century, the ill-usage of the Spaniards reduced them to somewhat less than 100,000, and the plague brought them down to 90,000; afterwards, by the systematic oppression, the object of which was to crush Messina and to raise Palermo, they were reduced to 40,000; and before the earthquake their number amounted only to 25,000; at present it is said to be 70,000. Such is the vitality in those southern countries, and such are the changes in their population. In the north, too, fluctuations occur, but not to the same extent as in the south, where people have so few wants, and many can live in the open air without a cover for their heads until some favourable opportunity occurs. Immense ruins of Agrigentum still exist: it was situated on a hill and was visible from the sea at a great distance, whence Virgil says, Arduus hic Acragas ostendit maxima longe moenia. I have already directed your attention to the fact that moenia signifies “large buildings in a city;” the walls of Agrigentum had nothing striking, and parts of them ran in the valley, so that Virgil cannot have alluded to them. The buildings of the city were not yet quite completed when they were destroyed in the Carthaginian war; they were much larger than those at Syracuse or any other of the Greek towns of Sicily. Before the war in Olymp. 93, Agrigentum was the wealthiest city in the island; but the stories of the riches of particular citizens, as, for example, of Gellias, which Diodorus relates after Timaeus, are quite fabulous, for Timaeus was credulous. In Olymp. 93, Agrigentum was taken and completely destroyed by the Carthaginians; the town was defended in the most unfortunate manner, or not defended at all: the Greek generals during that war were so wretched and senseless, that the Agrigentines had enough to do in trying to save themselves, leaving their city with all its treasures a prey to the enemy. It was afterwards restored indeed, but the new town was only a shadow of what it had been before. In consequence of the treaties by which Selinus was ceded to the Carthaginians, Agrigentum was re-united with the Greek part of Sicily, of which Syracuse, under Dionysius and Timoleon, was the capital. Afterwards the character of the wars between the Greeks and Carthaginians was no longer as destructive as it had been before, for Carthage was satisfied with subduing and ruling over the Greek towns. After the reign of Agathocles, Agrigentum again fell into the hands of the Carthaginians. In the first Punic war, it was taken by the Romans, and on that occasion one part of its inhabitants made their escape, while others perished or were sold as slaves. Towards the end of the Punic war, it was again implicated in an insurrection against the Romans, in consequence of which it became so desolate that the Romans, to prevent the complete extinction of the place, established there colonists from other Sicilian towns. Agrigentum is indeed mentioned in Cicero’s Verrine orations, but it is clear that it was quite an insignificant town; under the Roman emperors it remained in the same condition, and may have been of little more importance than the modern Girgenti. The gigantic ruins of the ancient city are situated on the plateau of the hill: the severest blow it ever received was that in Olymp. 93, and subsequent earthquakes also contributed to its destruction.

Selinus, nearer the western promontory, was likewise a Dorian settlement. It was an extensive, wealthy, and important town at the time when the Carthaginians, after the unsuccessful attempt under Gelo, who confined them to their three factories, Motye, Panormus, and Soloeis, were expelled from all other parts of the island. But during the unfortunate Carthaginian war, by means of which Dionysius raised himself, it was the first town that was captured and destroyed. After that time, it is indeed still mentioned, and in fact never ceased to exist, but was never again incorporated with the Greek portion of Sicily. It remained subject to Carthage, as long as she had any possessions in the island, and then came into the hands of the Romans, but never acquired any importance.

Gela, likewise an ancient Dorian settlement, was abandoned by its Greek inhabitants during the Carthaginian war, and destroyed by the Carthaginians. Even before this, the place had several times changed its population: in the time of Gelo it was restored, but after the repeated destructions by its enemies, it recovered only partially. It received its death-blow shortly after the time of Agathocles, when Phintias, the tyrant of Agrigentum, transplanted its inhabitants to the town of Phintias, founded by himself.

Camarina experienced the same fate as Gela.

On the southern coast there existed, at different times, several Doric towns, as Heraclea in the territory of Agrigentum, Acrae, and Casmenae, but they are of no importance.

Naxos, the most ancient among the Chalcidian or Ionian settlements, was situated between mount Aetna and the Sicilian straits; it was in fact the earliest Greek colony in Sicily. It is doubtful whether Naxos was destroyed by Gelo or Hiero. During the great period of Sicilian history its name is not mentioned.

Zancle, afterwards Messene or Messana; the cause of this change of name is obscure. The story about Gorgus, the son of Aristomenes, and Manticlus, is untenable and chronologically impossible. Still, however, there must have been a mixture of Messenians which gave rise to the name. Samians, who had fled from their own country, treacherously took possession of the town in which they had been hospitably received. More than two hundred years later, their descendants were punished for the deed by the Campanian mercenaries of Agathocles, who butchered the inhabitants who had allowed them a passage through their town. After this time the place was always called Messana, while the inhabitants bore the name of Mamertines, which was the general designation for Oscan mercenaries. These Mamertines retained their Italian character, without becoming hellenised in any way; and even as late as the time of Verres we find them mentioned with their Oscan names, the praenomen and the nomen gentilicium. Their coins, however, have inscriptions in Greek characters, and I have no doubt that in the course of time the Mamertines also became hellenised. The Roman element in the western countries was powerful in regard to the Celts, Iberians and others; but it was unable to cope with the Greeks, against whom the Romans did not gain one inch; no Greek town ever became Latinised, unless all its inhabitants perished. Among non-Greek nations, such as the Pannonians, Dardanians, and the other tribes in those countries, the Latin language became predominant within an extremely short period. The name Mamertines remained in use until the time of the Roman emperors, but it then disappears, and the name Messana is again generally employed.

Catana, likewise a considerable Chalcidian town, was situated near the river Simaethus, at the foot of mount Aetna. Hiero I. carried away the inhabitants, and founded a new town; but after his death everything was restored. After the time of the Athenian expedition, Catana was nearly always under the influence of Syracuse.

Tauromenium, in the neighbourhood of Naxos between mount Aetna and Messana, was founded in the time of Timoleon. It was situated on mount Tauros, which was quite inaccessible. The derivation of its name ἀπὸ τῆς ἐπὶ τοῦ Ταύρου μονῆς is strange. With the exception of Phintias, it was the youngest of the Greek towns in Sicily. These late colonies are essentially different from the earlier ones: they had no oecistae and no institutions according to the ancient forms, but being the result of circumstances they did not observe the traditionary formalities. Tauromenium was very strong by its situation; and, in consequence of the nature of its locality, its ruins are more perfectly preserved than those of any other Greek city in Sicily. The splendid theatre was cut in a semicircle into the rock, and still exists in its ancient beauty. In the history of literature, Tauromenium is celebrated as the birth-place of the historian Timaeus, who, as we have learned only recently, spent the greater part of his long life of ninety years in exile at Athens, where in all probability he also died. The fifty years of his exile embrace the whole reign of Agathocles.

Leontini was situated at some distance from the coast. It is a mistake in translations and other books to call this town Leontium, a name which does not occur anywhere. Its original name must have been Λεοῦς, although this form is not found in the extant monuments either. As Messana was called Mamertini, from its Oscan inhabitants, so also in the case of Leontini, the name of the people was used as the name of the town. It was the chief place in the most fertile corn district of Sicily, and the campi Leontini are often mentioned on this account. The town was destroyed by the Syracusans at least three times, but always recovered itself.

Himera, on the north coast, was a colony of Chalcidians mixed with Dorians, but in such a manner that the νόμιμα Χαλκιδικὰ prevailed. In Olymp. 93, it was destroyed by the Carthaginians. The town itself was never restored, but around some hot springs in the neighbourhood (θερμὰ Ἱμεραῖα) a small town of the name of Therma, or Thermae, arose, whose inhabitants were called Thermitani. This town is remarkable as the birth-place of Agathocles, who, though a monster, is yet an important person in history. Himera was one of the genuine ancient Greek colonies.

On the north coast between Himera and Messana, there were several Greek towns of uncertain origin, which were probably founded by neighbouring cities, and were afterwards inhabited by Greeks of all kinds. Places of this kind are Cephaloedion, Mylae, and Calacte; they are not of great importance, and I cannot here enter into any detail about them.

In the time of Thucydides there existed three Punic towns on the north-west coast of Sicily, viz., Soloeis, Motye, and Panormus. Motye was the principal place among them, and stood to Carthage in the same relation as Utica, Leptis, and others. About thirty years before the passage of Xerxes into Europe, at the time of the expulsion of Tarquin, the Carthaginians were already in possession of a province in Sicily; they then concluded a treaty with Rome, which has been preserved by Polybius. Ancient Greek history gives us no information about this, but rather makes it appear as if their attempt in the time of Gelo to establish themselves in Sicily had been the first; but the treaty with Rome is indubitable. The statement that the victory of Salamis, and that of Gelo over the Carthaginians at Himera, took place on the same day, a coincidence on which Herodotus lays great stress, is likewise untenable, for it is opposed to the account which we have in the Parian marbles from Timaeus. The origin of the fiction evidently lies in the desire to have a parallel. Gelo’s victory must be dated seven or nine years later than the time to which it is assigned by Diodorus. After that defeat, the Carthaginians always maintained themselves on the north-western coast, where no Greek town existed. When, in the course of time, the power of the Carthaginians had greatly increased, and when they displayed a love of conquest, the neighbouring town of Egesta threw itself into their arms. The Greeks in Sicily were, on the one hand, extremely careless, and on the other fool-hardy in giving provocation, and these circumstances gave rise to the unfortunate war with Carthage. In the second war with Dionysius, Motye, which until then, had been the chief place of the Carthaginians, was destroyed. They now built a new town, Olymp. 100, of the name of Lilybaeum: when it was taken by the Romans, it had existed about 150 years. It was the seat of the Carthaginian government, a regular Carthaginian eparchy being established in those parts, which is always called ἡ Φοινικικὴ ἐπαρχία. Bochart’s etymologies, from the Semitic languages, are often quite without foundation, but he explains the name Lilybaeum quite correctly as ‎‏‎‏ללבי‏‎, that is, opposite to Libya. Soloeis was an unimportant place.

Panormus became a great town under the dominion of the Carthaginians. It is strange that both Soloeis and Panormus are Greek names; the money coined in the latter place at the time of the Carthaginian dominion in Sicily, is likewise Greek, from which we must infer that Panormus was not a Punic colony like Lilybaeum. The natural advantages of its situation are very great: it has an excellent harbour, as even its name intimates, and its site is in a beautiful fertile plain on the coast, above which mount Hercte rises at the entrance of the harbour. This mountain was a very important post during the first Punic war.

Lilybaeum remained an important place even under the Romans, though its name is afterwards but rarely mentioned. The Romans, for financial purposes, divided Sicily into two provinces, viz., Syracuse and Lilybaeum; they were governed by one praetor, but had different financial administrations, because the systems of taxation were different in the two parts. So long as Carthage existed, the Romans kept up Lilybaeum as a place of arms and a military port; but the place afterwards lost this importance, because its harbour was gradually filled with sand. It is at present known only for its excellent vineyards.

Drepana, the modern Trapani, near Lilybaeum, was another strongly fortified port town of the Carthaginians, and is still of importance. All these places act a conspicuous part in the first Punic war.

Egesta, or Segesta, was situated in the neighbourhood of Drepana. Thucydides says that its inhabitants were Trojans; and the unanimous voice of antiquity calls the Egestans and the Elymi, there and about mount Eryx, Trojans. I have explained my opinion on this point in my Roman History, and shewn that Trojans here means Tyrrhenians or Pelasgians, like those occupying the coasts of Italy and Sardinia. The name Trojans, therefore, seems to have been a general Pelasgian name, which was commonly applied to the Mysian Trojans, because they were the most important, just as the name Hellenes was commonly given to the people of Argos. All these nations were connected by religion and their common sanctuary of Samothrace, the Trojan character of which is undeniable. The Segestans are called by the Greeks barbarians, and they were certainly non-Greeks; but when we consider the ruins of their temples, which are not only grand but splendid, and are in no way inferior to the most beautiful Greek edifices; and when we see their coins, which equal the finest specimens made in Greece, we must confess that the word “barbarian” cannot be understood here in the same sense in which it is applied to Thracians, Getae, and Macedonians, who were not even able correctly to imitate the formation of Greek words. Afterwards, Segesta, like all the rest of the island, became completely hellenised; Cicero always calls the Siculi Greeks, and the names of the Segestans, wherever they occur in history, are Greek. Segesta was an unfortunate place, for it was the occasion of the deplorable expedition of the Athenians to Sicily, of which we can only lament the final issue. It would have been fortunate, if the Athenians had been able to carry it out with energy, for the fate of Greece would have taken a different direction. The Segestans have much to answer for to Sicily, to Greece, and to all the world, for they misled the Athenians by their delusive promises. After the defeat of the Athenians, the Chalcidian towns one by one concluded peace, and the Segestans, abandoned by every one, were obliged to throw themselves into the arms of the Carthaginians. Under their protection, the town was safe and prosperous for a period of about ninety years, until the time when the power of Agathocles reached its highest point. But when Agathocles was victorious for a time, it was taken by the sword, and treated like Magdeburg in the Thirty Years’ war. Afterwards a population again assembled there; in the first Punic war Segesta is mentioned again, and submits to the Romans under an appeal to its Trojan origin.

The towns in the interior of Sicily were originally partly Siculian and partly Sicanian, though it is now impossible to draw a line of demarcation between them. In the north, about mount Aetna as far as Henna, all the towns, such as Henna, Centuripa, Agyrion, Halesa, Aluntion, and many others, were probably Siculian. The Siculians, even after the time of Gelo, formed distinct states and had their own kings. Diodorus compiled his history in a most unsystematic manner: when he is engaged with the history of a nation, and it occurs to him, that he has dwelt upon it long enough, and that he has neglected another, he all at once breaks off and begins to discuss the latter. Such is the case in his history of Sicily: he is often very minute, relating the events of a nation year after year, but then he is for a time quite silent about it. After the time of Gelo and Hiero, we find a Siculian kingdom, under a prince called Ducetius, which was very dangerous to the Siceliots.⁠[61] Afterwards we see the Siculians broken up into many small states, some of which were hellenised at a very early period. The power of the Greek tyrants often extended very far into the interior; and those of Syracuse at times ruled almost over the whole island; during such times, Greeks settled in all parts of it. These things are often mentioned only accidentally, as for example, in the case of Diodorus himself, who is called a Siceliot, though he belonged to a Siculian town. At that time the Siculian and Sicanian languages no longer existed and Greek was spoken everywhere.

Henna, situated in the centre of the country, was the most important of all the Siculian towns. Henna, and not Enna, is the correct spelling, for so we find it on a very ancient Greek coin; and only later Latin ones have Enna, whereas all the good Latin MSS., such as the Codex Puteanus of Livy, as well as the inscriptions, have the H, as in ordo populusque Hennensis; in after-times the pronunciation was modified. I do not, however, mean to say, that if you find Enna in a poet, you must at once correct it into Henna, for such things depend upon authority; the ancients often pronounced a word with an aspiration, which we cannot accurately imitate, and which, therefore, has disappeared in Italian and other modern languages. Henna is celebrated as the central seat of the worship of Demeter and Persephone, which spread thence into Italy, and was also adopted by the Greeks. It was probably different from the worship of Demeter at Eleusis; but we cannot speak positively about this matter, and in my opinion, it is a mere waste of learning and ingenuity to institute inquiries about it.

Centuripa (Centuripini, Κεντόριπα), near the slope of mount Aetna, was the greatest town of the interior at the time of the Romans. In the age of Cicero, its citizens were the wealthiest in all Sicily. In the first Punic war, they had been enabled by circumstances, about which we have no information, to put themselves in an extremely favourable relation to the Romans; this had been done at a time when the other Siculian places had allowed themselves to be tempted to rise against Rome; and in consequence of this, Centuripa was honoured with great privileges. It derived special advantages from the extensive confiscations which were often made of whole districts. On such occasions, the Roman equites speculated to acquire large estates, and the Centuripans undertook as farmers (aratores), or agricultural speculators, the cultivation of large districts; the existence of such aratores is known from Cicero’s Verrine orations. Centuripa then remained the centre of Sicilian agriculture, probably until a very late period. Agyrion was situated in the neighbourhood of Centuripa.

I have already said in general how Sicily became a desolate country. When many towns had already been destroyed in the wars of Agathocles, the first Punic war, which lasted twenty-four years, was extremely destructive, because it was carried on at the expense of that small country; the Syracusan kingdom alone, which was in the enjoyment of order and protection, was exempted. Then followed the second Punic war, and the senseless insurrection of the Syracusans and of nearly all the inhabitants of the island. They were punished by the Romans in such a manner, that all cultivation disappeared from the greater part of the island; the towns perished and were changed into large estates; the corn-fields in the interior were changed into pastures, on which large numbers of cattle and hosts of slaves were kept, while the free population was almost entirely extirpated. Hence the insurrection of Eunus, in the year of Rome 620; a war was then carried on with great exertion for years, and was not brought to a close until several Roman armies had been defeated. Thirty years later, a second similar Servile war broke out, which, though it did not last quite as long as the first, yet completely ruined several towns: the slaves took possession of the fortified places, and annihilated the free population. As regards the period of the Roman emperors, we only know that Augustus established colonies in some places, but the rest of the island was quite desolate, there being only some large estates and stations for post horses. The Regestum of pope Gregory the Great, which contains the last accounts of Sicily before it fell into the hands of barbarians, shows the island in this wretched condition. The Roman see possesses large estates in Sicily, and the correspondence with their stewards reveals to us the condition of the island and the nature of such estates: we see that the country was in a state of utter decay.

Sardinia.

Sardinia fully confirms the observation regarding the identity of the physical character of countries on two sides of the same sea. There does not exist a more senseless notion than to imagine that rivers form the natural boundaries between two countries; the same physical features appear on both sides of a river: rivers are lines of communication, but mountains separate countries from one another. The Suabian and Bavarian races are separated by the range of the Vorarlberg. Sardinia, in its physical structure, belongs to Africa, if not wholly, at least its southern part as far as the mountains. This character shows itself both in the vegetation and in the animal life of the country: the musimon, an animal foreign to all the rest of Europe, is not found anywhere out of Africa except in Sardinia.⁠[62] The character of the population also is African, whence Cicero, in his speech for Scaurus, says: Afer aut Sardus sane, si ita se isti malunt nominari. The island is not, like Sicily, traversed by lofty mountains; it is only in the northern part that the mountains reach any considerable height; the rest is only a hilly country; many parts of the coast are plains, extensive and low marshy districts, which may be termed savannahs, whence great quantities of salt are obtained there. The physical identity with Africa manifests itself also in another very important point: the opposite coasts of Sardinia and Africa are celebrated for their banks of coral, while they are not found near Sicily, Spain, or the Balearian islands.⁠[63]⁠

According to the most ancient tradition, the inhabitants of Sardinia were Tyrrhenians, who appear in various forms and personifications, in the story about Aristaeus, in the Iolai, and in many other ways. If Tyrrhenians did exist there, they can only have been settlers on the coasts, for a part of the inhabitants, such as the Noraces and Balari, were certainly of Iberian origin, and belonged to the same race as the inhabitants of the Balearian islands. In regard to others again, it is equally certain that they were of Libyan origin, for they are stated to have resembled the Berbers in language, in bodily structure, complexion, and hair. The Sardi Montani, perhaps a mixture of Iberians and Libyans, were in later times confined to the mountains. These mountains, however, must not be conceived as Alps, for heights of a less lofty character were sufficient for those people to maintain themselves in them. The highlands of Scotland also do not contain any high mountains, they are only inaccessible, and yet the population has maintained itself there throughout all the changes of nations. The sea-coast was occupied at an early time by Punic colonies, which afterwards became masters of the island, with the exception of the interior, over which they exercised no other influence than that which a powerful nation on the coast always possesses over the other inhabitants. In like manner the Dutch did not rule over the interior of Ceylon, the prince of Candy being sovereign, though he was obliged to comply with the wishes of the Dutch whenever they insisted upon it. Such was the condition of Sardinia during the second Punic war, when we meet with Hampsicora and Hiostus as Sardinian princes. The Punic settlements consisted for the most part of Carthaginians mixed with Libyans, as the Carthaginians themselves were a mixed race (Λιβυφοίνικες), or with Greeks from Sicily and Magna Graecia. The Libyans must not be conceived as negroes: in their physical features they are not very unlike Europeans, and scarcely differ at all from southern Europeans, so that the mixture could take place without any difficulty. The mixture of the Libyphoenices with the Sardinians is attested by Cicero in an interesting fragment of his speech for Scaurus. The Punic language accordingly predominated everywhere on the coast, and all the known names of the Sardinians are Punic, e.g., Aris, genitive Arinis, which is nothing else than the Hebrew Aaron; so also Caralis and others. I said before, that Sardinia, near the coast, has extensive low grounds, which are, for the most part, marshy and unhealthy: this peculiarity, (aër gravis), which is still the reason of the scanty population of the island, was known even to the historians of antiquity; the country was very dangerous to the Roman soldiers, many of whom died there of fevers. This we see from Tacitus’ annals⁠[64] to have been the case in the time of Tiberius, and such it continues to be at the present day; in most parts it is impossible to remove the unhealthy character of the land by cultivation.

There are still many Punic remains in Sardinia; but there also are a few Cyclopean walls, which can neither be ascribed to the Punians nor to the Sardinians of the interior, but must be Greek. They are minutely discussed in Millot’s description of Sardinia, which is a bad book, but contains valuable information about those Cyclopean walls. Timaeus spoke of ruins which were referred to the Iolai, the alleged ancient Greek colonists. Most of the antiquities that have been dug out of the ground, belong to the Roman period, but some also are Punic and have Punic inscriptions. Many belong to the rude barbarians of the interior, especially certain hideous and deformed idols resembling those of the Wends and American Indians.

There were no towns in the interior of Sardinia, the mountaineers living either in villages or caves; their dress consisted, as at present, of skins of the musimon (mastrucae Sardorum), forming a sort of fur jackets. They were very poor mountaineers, and the only booty the Romans made there consisted of slaves. In a letter of pope Gregory the Great, in his Regestum, a people of the name of Barbaricini is mentioned in the interior, and this confirms the identity of the Sardinians with the Libyans, for Barbaricini is only a derivative form of Barbari, a name by which the Greeks and Romans designated more particularly the Berbers in Africa. During the Punic period there were, properly speaking, only three towns that were of any importance, viz., Caralis, Sulci, and Nora.

Caralis, the modern Cágliari (not Cagliári, as it is commonly pronounced, for the inhabitants themselves say Cágliari), was the Carthaginian capital with an excellent harbour.

Sulci and Nora, likewise of Phoenician origin, are mentioned indeed in history, but were places of no particular importance. Considerable ruins of the Roman period are still found at Nora, and Caralis has what is called a beautiful ancient theatre. In the accounts I have seen of it, it is called so, but owing to the uncritical manner in which the subject is treated, I cannot say whether it is a real theatre or an amphitheatre.

Sardinia is still the country in which European civilisation and the change of manners resulting from it, have taken less root than in any part of Europe: those who regard civilisation as an evil, must consider Sardinia to be a paradise. In no country have witches been burnt at so recent a period, and the practice, perhaps, still prevails; the government has not yet been able to suppress the custom of taking revenge for bloodshed. The villages make war upon one another, and no one can travel with safety along the high roads, unless he purchase the protection of a party or a village, as in the East, or else he must acquire the rights of hospitality. According to the accounts we have of the condition of the island, we may imagine it to be something like that which certain persons call the golden period of the middle ages. But with all this barbarism, the greatest immorality prevails, especially among the priests. The country is in a perfect state of anarchy, being governed according to ancient privileges, which have never been changed at all; the country population is in a state of complete dissolution. When the island has an able governor, he can keep order only by the utmost rigour, without which he can do absolutely nothing. It is deplorable that, in these circumstances, the administration of the island is not entrusted to able men, the propriety of which I have often urged. I sometimes desired natives of Sardinia to come to me that I might examine their language, which is very peculiar; you cannot say that it is Italian, it contains indeed very much Latin, but much also that is quite foreign. The Sardinian mountaineers are said to have many words in their dialect which are radically different from all other European languages. As much information has at present been collected about the Berber language, my object was to question the natives and to examine their words to see whether they were Berber or Basque. But I could not succeed, the people were too timid and did not come. I have now placed my hope upon a friend, Count Castiglione, of Milan, a great linguist, who has studied the language of the Berbers; he may perhaps be more successful. The island, from the earliest times, always made the impression of a wild and ungenial country, which, poor as it was, was severely treated by the Carthaginians, for they are said to have forbidden the cultivation of grain, in order to compel the Sardinians to import their supplies from Spain and Africa. In like manner Spain, for a long time, would not tolerate the cultivation of European grain in her American possessions, and when at length she allowed it, she forbade the planting of olives and vines.

It was the universally established opinion among the ancients, that Sardinia was the largest island, and larger than Sicily. This opinion, though erroneous, is found in all ancient writers, and we cannot say what may have given rise to it.

Corsica.

Whether Corsica and the Greek name Κύρνος are etymologically connected with each other, must be left undecided; I for my part believe, that the resemblance of the first syllable in the two names is only accidental. Corsica was regarded by the ancients as still more wild, uninhabitable, unhealthy, and barbarous than Sardinia; it was inhabited partly by Ligurians and partly by Iberians, and its inhabitants maintained their independence till about the time of the first Punic war, when the Carthaginians seem to have established themselves in the island, at least near its magnificent harbours. It would indeed be inconceivable, if they had overlooked a harbour like that of S. Lorenzo. It is self-evident, however, that the inhabitants of the interior remained quite independent, for even the Genoese, though they lived so much nearer the island, were never able entirely to subdue them. At present it is, properly speaking, in a state of anarchy, though it is connected with the powerful monarchy of France; what, therefore, must have been its condition under the Carthaginians, whose dominion did not last long! At an earlier time the Phocaeans had attempted to settle at Alalia (Aleria), but had not succeeded. The Romans undertook an expedition to it as early as the first Punic war; but the only result of it was, that they expelled the Carthaginians, without they themselves being able to take possession of the island. It was not till a much later period that they subdued it, but they seem to have felt that it was not worth while to spend so much money and blood for the purpose of enabling themselves to remain there.

Mariana and Aleria are the only two towns of Corsica deserving to be noticed; both were Roman military colonies, the former founded by Marius, and the latter by Sulla. At the time of the Roman emperors, Corsica, like several islands in the Archipelago, served as a place to which condemned persons were exiled, relegatio in insulam.

Corsica is altogether a mountainous island, with the exception of a narrow tract of coast, which forms unhealthy lowlands with small rivers. The mountains are not high, and form one of the ramifications of the Apennines, but are very impassable and intricate.

Hispania.

The name Hispania, as Bochart correctly states, is in all probability of Punic origin, derived from ‎‏צפן‏, Sapan, Span, from which, an i being prefixed, Ispania, or Hispania, was formed. In southern as well as eastern languages, the pronunciation of an s, followed by a consonant, is facilitated by prefixing a vowel, whence Scipio, in ordinary life, is called Iscipio. You recollect the notion of the Greeks about the four parts of the world, according to which Hesperia was the western and Europe the northern part; in this division, Spain was a part of Hesperia. The Greeks called the people Iberians, the country Iberia, and the river Iberus. This name of the river must have been of native origin or have been used by the Carthaginians, for the Romans also employed it, though they called the people Hispani and the country Hispania. We do not know by what name the people called themselves; it is possible that the Basque language may throw light upon it; but in the masterly treatise on that language by Baron Humboldt, nothing is said about this point. Afterwards, and in the Acts of the Apostles, the country was called Spania, and it may have borne this name generally among the Alexandrians and in the unjustly decried Hellenistic language. The Byzantine writers also call it so, unless they employ the correct name Iberia.

Spain is destined by nature, almost more than Italy, to form one compact state; no one can have a doubt about this, when looking at the three seas by which it is surrounded. Nevertheless, however, it did not become united as one whole till a late period, though this happened before the time of which we have written records; for there can be no doubt that previously it was divided into two distinct countries. On the one side, the Pyrenees formed its natural boundary towards Gaul (in the course of time, however, they were crossed, and the Iberians ruled over the country from the Garonne to the Rhone); but at an earlier period another natural boundary line was formed by the Sierra Morena, an extensive range of mountains, which, for a couple of centuries, formed the boundary between the Christian and Mahommedan parts of Spain. These same mountains, no doubt, also separated the Iberians from the Celts. The heights in the north of Spain, whence the Tagus, Durius, and Minius, flow towards the sea, and whence, on the other side, smaller rivers carry their waters towards the Ebro, were inhabited by Celts, who are also called Celtiberians. Other Celts bearing the name Celtici dwelt in Algarbia and the Portuguese Estremadura, and others again inhabited the province Entre Douro e Minho in the north of Portugal. These three Celtic nations were quite isolated in Spain. The Celtiberians were not pure Celts, but as even their name indicates, a mixture of Celts and Iberians; but the Celts in Portugal are expressly stated to have been pure Celts. These latter attracted the attention even of the ancients, especially of the excellent Posidonius, who made so many correct observations, but allowed himself in this instance to be misled. He is of opinion that the Celts had immigrated into Spain, for he reasoned thus: as the Celts could migrate into Italy and across the Danube as far as the Dniepr, it was far less difficult for them to enter the neighbouring country of Spain. But such isolated parts of a nation cannot have arrived in a country by immigration; on the contrary, the Iberians appear extending themselves and in possession of Aquitania and Languedoc at a very early period; how then could the Celts, not being able to maintain the Pyrenees, have spread over the whole peninsula? It is probable, nay almost evident, that it was the Iberians that migrated and extended themselves, and this opinion agrees with the most ancient traditions of the Celts in Ammianus Marcellinus, according to which they were once masters of all the west of Europe, but were expelled from many parts. If we suppose that the Celts dwelt as far as the Sierra Morena, and that the Iberians, perhaps reinforced by their kinsmen from Africa, pressed them forward, this supposition would account for some Celtic ruins which are still extant, and the Celts may have capitulated in a manner similar to that described in the book of Joshua. As one part of England was occupied by Germans so completely as to destroy every trace of the ancient inhabitants, while elsewhere, as e.g., in Devonshire, the Britons, in large numbers, lived among the Germans and became mixed with them; so the Iberians expelled the ancient Celtic population, wherever the nature of the country did not protect it; but the Celts maintained themselves in the mountains between the Tagus and the Iberus, and the Iberians only subdued them, and then settled among them. In the course of time the two nations became amalgamated, and thus formed the Celtiberians, whose character, however, is essentially Iberian.