Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

BOOK V.

ITALY AND THE RISE OF THE ROMAN

STATE.

FROM THE EARLIEST ACCOUNTS TO THE SUBJUGATION OF ITALY BY ROME, IN B.C. 264.

VOL. II.-9.

ROME AND HER EMPIRE.

131

CHAPTER XIX.

ITALY AND ITS PRIMITIVE POPULATIONS.

"ITALIA, too, ITALIA! looking on thee,

Full flashes on the soul the light of ages,

Since the fierce Carthaginian almost won thee,
To the last halo of the chiefs and sages

Who glorify thy consecrated pages:

Thou wert the throne and grave of empires; still

The fount at which the panting mind assuages

Her thirst of knowledge, quaffing there her fill,

Flows from the eternal source of ROME's imperial hill."-BYRON.

ROME AND HER EMPIRE-ITS RELATION TO ITALY-DESCRIPTION OF THE PENINSULA-THE ALPS AND APENNINES-COMPARISON WITH GREECE-NATURAL UNITY OF ITALY-ITS PRIMITIVE INHABITANTS-ITS THREE CHIEF STOCKS-THE IAPYGIAN RACE-THE ITALIAN RACE ITS TWO DIVISIONS, LATIN AND SABELLIAN-THE ETRUSCANS-THEIR COUNTRYTHEIR ORIGIN-TYRRHENIANS AND RASENNA-THE ETRUSCAN LANGUAGE-THEIR EARLY POWER BY LAND AND SEA-RELATIONS TO GREECE AND CARTHAGE-THEIR DECLINE AND CONQUEST BY THE ROMANS-THE ETRUSCAN CONFEDERACY-THEIR RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS ETRUSCAN ᎪᏒᎢ AND SCIENCE-ARCHITECTURE SEPULCHRES-STATUARY AND METAL-WORK-PAINTINGS—DOMESTIC LIFE SCIENCE, BORROWED BY THE ROMANS.

THE power which was destined at length to raise an universal empire on the ruins of the eastern monarchies, of the free states of Greece, and of the commercial oligarchy of Carthage, combined in itself the strongest points of the systems that it superseded. A material force, if not so vast, yet truly greater than that wielded by any oriental despot, was regulated by political principles, of which a regard for law was the most conspicuous, and all was consolidated by the mighty bond of an aristocratic government based on a patriarchal foundation. If the Hellenic republics were fitted to give the freest scope to personal and political liberty, the polity of Rome was an instrument specially adapted to achieve imperial power abroad by subordinating individual freedom to the concentrated action of the state. This mighty power was purchased at the price of an internal struggle, which, when it had once broken out, became perpetual, between the privileges of the ruling class, often abused to the most selfish ends, and the claims of the lower orders to personal freedom and political power. Just when the conquest of the countries which form the seat of ancient civilization—the countries lying round the basin of the Mediterranean -was completed, this internal conflict was brought to its crisis by

the utter corruption of the state through the plunder of the world. Under a single ruler the government of the empire was consolidated, from the borders of Caledonia and the banks of the Rhine and Danube to the Libyan Desert and the cataracts of the Nile: and the barbarian tribes, that had long been pressing down from regions as yet beyond the pale of civilization, were kept at bay, till the work of diffusing Christianity throughout the Roman world was completed. Then the empire and classic paganism fell together; and the deluge of nations that overflowed them settled down into the new order of the modern world.

[ocr errors]

To comprehend rightly the origin of this power, we must not be content to take our stand upon the Seven Hills of Rome, and to look round upon Italy, as if it were a foreign country, to be gradually brought under the sway of the new city. It is necessary at first to regard Rome from the Italian point of view rather than Italy from the Roman. Nay more, in speaking of Italy, even as a geographical expression," we must greatly modify our present conception of its meaning. Fitted as the peninsula, with its large adjacent island, is to form one great state, from the Alps to the Adriatic, the Ionian, and the African seas, and ardent as must be the hopes of every friend of human progress to see it thus united, the consummation is a vision of the future, not a tradition of the early past. As a strictly ethnic term, the country of the Itali, or Siceli, or Siculi (for the words are varieties of one)* were confined to Sicily and the southern half of the peninsula; and even in the wider meaning, in which it embraced several other tribes, it could not be extended, in any proper sense, north of the Apennines.†

As in the case of Greece, the physical formation of the peninsula had a marked influence on the political relations of its inhabitants. It resembles Greece in projecting far out into the waters of the Mediterranean, upheld by central highlands; but the highlands of Italy do not ramify, like those of Greece, into a network of ridges, cutting up the whole country into valleys comparatively isolated, nor do their extremities run out into the sea so as to form the

* The interchange of the hard mutes, c and t, and the loss of the initial s—both among the commonest changes in language-account for the difference. Siceli and Siculi are Greek and Latin varieties. The old Italian tradition, which derives the name of the peninsula from a King Vitalus, or Vitulus, serves to show that the word began with a consonant.

The name acquired this wider meaning after the conquest of the Italian states by the Romans, about B.C. 264. It was not till the time of Augustus that it was made to include the whole region up to the Alps.

CHAIN OF THE ALPS.

133

deeply indented coast-line and chains of islands, which made the Greeks of necessity a race of adventurous mariners. The mountains of the Italian peninsula form one great continuous chain; their slopes and valleys spread out into more extensive and connected spaces: the coast-line, though long, is very regular, undulating in wide bays rather than deep gulfs. These differences will be more clearly seen from a description of the whole peninsula, with the vast plain which stretches across its head, and which, though not properly a part of ancient Italy, has always been closely connected with its history.

Viewed in this wider sense, the land of Italy is the western division of that beautiful region of Southern Europe, which is enclosed in so marked a way by the gigantic chain of the Alps and its prolongations eastward to the Black Sea. These mountains, the grand passes of which are ascended by a long and gradual slope from the north side, sink down abruptly on the south, as if to form a rampart about the fair lands at their feet. This sudden. descent upon the southern side forms one of the chief charms of that first passage over the Alpine chain, which marks an epoch in the traveller's life, when

"He instantly receives into his soul

A sense, a feeling, that he loses not

A something that informs him 'tis an hour

Whence he may date henceforward and forever."

The chain, so venerable for its towering height and the diadem of perpetual snow, from which it receives its name,* results from the most recent of the great upheavings by which our continent has been formed. The primitive rocks have burst through all the superincumbent strata, to give the crowning beauty to the face of the country, in such ranges as those of Scandinavia, the western mountains of our own islands, of Brittany, and the Spanish peninsula, the Atlas in Africa, and the Pyrenees, Alps, Apennines and Balkan on the opposite shores of the Mediterranean basin. The primitive chain of the High Alps has been thrown up in that remarkable curve which encloses the great plain of Northern Italy. On both its flanks lie those great secondary strata, of which the most conspicuous is the "Jura limestone," so called

Alp is generally supposed to be the root so common in Celtic (as in Albion, Albany, &c.), and which also appears in the Latin albus and alba, signifying white. Singularly enough, however, the name Alp is applied in Switzerland, not to the high mountains (which are called horns, peaks, needles, &c., or by the figurative names of Giant, Monk, Virgin, &c.), but to the upland pastures of comparatively moderate elevation, such as the Wengern Alp.

« FöregåendeFortsätt »