Ravenna, A Study | Page 4

Romans after the defeat of Hannibal was the
re-establishment of their fortresses at Placentia, Cremona, and Mutina
(Modena), the second was the construction of a great highway which

connected Placentia through Mutina with the Via Flaminia at Rimini.
This was the work of the Consul Aemilius Lepidus in 187 B.C. and the
road still bears his name.
It is obvious then that the command of the way from Italy into
Cisalpine Gaul, or vice versa, lay in the hands of Rimini, and it is
significant that the political boundary between them was here marked
by a little river, the Rubicon, a few miles to the north of that city. The
command which Rimini thus held was purely political; it passed from
her to Ravenna automatically whenever that entry was threatened.
Why?
The answer is very simple: because Rimini could not easily be
defended, while Ravenna was impregnable.
Ravenna stood from fifteen to eighteen miles north and east of the
Aemilian Way and some thirty-one miles north and a little west of
Rimini. Its extraordinary situation was almost unique in antiquity and is
only matched by one city of later times--Venice. It was built as Venice
is literally upon the waters. Strabo thus describes it: "Situated in the
marshes is the great Ravenna, built entirely on piles, and traversed by
canals which you cross by bridges or ferry-boats. At the full tides it is
washed by a considerable quantity of sea water, as well as by the river,
and thus the sewage is carried off and the air purified; in fact, the
district is considered so salubrious that the (Roman) governors have
selected it as a spot in which to bring up and exercise the gladiators. It
is a remarkable peculiarity of this place that, though situated in the
midst of a marsh, the air is perfectly innocuous."[1]
[Footnote 1: Strabo, v. i. 7, tells us Altinum was similarly situated.]
[Illustration: Sketch Map or Ravenna region in more detail]
Ravenna must always have been impregnable to any save a modern
army, so long as it was able to hold the road in and out and was not
taken from the sea. The one account we have of an attack upon it before
the fall of the empire is given us by Appian and recounts a raid from
the sea. It is but an incident in the civil wars of Marius and Sulla when
Ravenna, we learn, was occupied for the latter by Metellus his
lieutenant. In the year 82 B.C., says Appian, "Sulla overcame a
detachment of his enemies near Saturnia, and Metellus sailed round
toward Ravenna and took possession of the level wheat-growing
country of Uritanus."

This impregnable city, the most southern of Cisalpine Gaul,
immediately commanded the pass between Cisalpine Gaul and Italy
directly that pass was threatened, and to this I say was due a good half
of its fame. The rest must be equally divided between the fact that the
city was impregnable, and therefore a secure refuge or _point d'appui_,
and its situation upon the sea.
Strabo in his account of Ravenna, which I have quoted above,
emphasises the fact rather of its situation among the marshes than of its
position with regard to the sea. This is perhaps natural. The society to
which he belonged (though indeed he was of Greek descent) loathed
and feared the sea with an unappeasable horror. No journey was too
long to make if thereby the sea passage might be avoided, no road too
rough and rude if to take it was to escape the unstable winds and waters.
That too was a part of Ravenna's strength. She was as much a city of
the sea as Venice is; but of what a sea?
The Adriatic, upon whose western shore she stood at the gate of Italy
and Cisalpine Gaul, was--and this partly because of the Roman horror
of the sea--the fault between Greek and Latin, East and West. To this
great fact she owes much of her later splendour, much of her unique
importance in those centuries we call the Dark Age.
Even to-day as one stands upon the height of the republic of S. Marino
and catches, faintly at dawn, the sunlight upon the Dalmatian hills, one
instinctively feels it is the Orient one sees.
This, then, is the cause of the greatness, of the opportunity for greatness,
of Ravenna: her geographical position in regard to the peninsula of
Italy, the Cisalpine plain, and the sea. Each of these exalt her in turn
and all together give her the unique and almost fabulous position she
holds in the history of Europe.
Because she held the gateway between Italy and the Cisalpine plain,
Caesar repaired to her when he was treating with the Senate for the
consulship, and from her he