Part 5

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 set out to possess himself of all that great government.

Because she was impregnable, and held both the plain where the enemy must be met and the peninsula with Rome within it, Honorius retreated to her from Milan when Alaric crossed the Alps.

Because she was set upon the sea, and that sea was the fault between East and West, and because she held the key as it were of all Italy and through Italy of the West, Justinian there established his government when the great attempt was made by Byzantium to reconquer us from the barbarian.

"Ravenna Felix" we read on many an old coin of that time, and whatever we may think of that title or prophecy, which indeed might seem never to have come true for her, this at least we must acknowledge, that she was happy in her situation which offered such opportunities for greatness and so certain an immortality.

JULIUS CAESAR IN RAVENNA

When we first come upon Ravenna in the pages of Strabo, its origin is already obscured; but this at least seems certain, that it was never a Gaulish city. Strabo tells us that "Ravenna is reputed to have been founded by Thessalians, who, not being able to sustain the violence of the Tyrrheni, welcomed into their city some of the Umbri who still possess it, while they themselves returned home." The Thessalians were probably Pelasgi, but apart from that Strabo's statement would seem to be reasonably accurate. At any rate he continually repeats it, for he goes on to tell us that "Ariminum (Rimini), like Ravenna, is an ancient colony of the Umbri, but both of them received also Roman colonies." Again, in the same book of his Geography, he tells us: "The Umbri lie between the country of the Sabini and the Tyrrheni, but extend beyond the mountains as far as Ariminum and Ravenna." And again he says: "Umbria lies along the eastern boundary of Tyrrhenia and beginning from the Apennines, or rather beyond these mountains (extends) as far as the Adriatic. For commencing from Ravenna the Umbri inhabit the neighbouring country ... all allow that Umbria extends as far as Ravenna, as the inhabitants are Umbri."

We may take it, then, that when Rome annexed Ravenna it was a city of the Umbri, and we may dismiss Pliny's statement that it was a Sabine city altogether for it is both improbable and inexplicable.

When Ravenna received a Roman colony we do not know, for though Strabo states this fact, he does not tell us when it occurred and we have no other means of knowing. All we can be reasonably sure of is that this Umbrian city on the verge of Cisalpine Gaul, hemmed in on the west by the Lingonian Gauls, received a Roman colony certainly not before 268 B.C. when Ariminum was occupied. The name of Ravenna, however, does not occur in history till a late period of the Roman republic, and the first incident in which we hear of Ravenna having any part occurs in 82 B.C., when, as I have already related, Metellus, the lieutenant of Sulla, landed there or thereabouts from his ships and seems to have made the city, already a place of some importance, the centre of his operations.

Ravenna really entered history--and surely gloriously enough--when Julius Caesar chose it, the last great town of his command towards Italy, as his headquarters while he treated with the senate before he crossed the Rubicon.

"Caesar," says Appian, "had lately recrossed the straits from Britain, and, after traversing the Gallic country along the Rhine, had passed the Alps with 5000 foot and 300 horse, and arrived at Ravenna which was contiguous to Italy and the last town in his government." This was in 50 B.C. The state of affairs which that act was meant to elucidate may be briefly stated as follows.

The Roman republic, still in the midst of the political, social, and economic revolution whose first phase was the awful civil wars of Marius and Sulla, had long been at the mercy of Pompey the opportunist, Crassus the plutocrat, and Julius Caesar--the first Triumvirate. Crassus had always leaned towards Caesar and the entente between Caesar and Pompey had been strengthened by the marriage of the latter with Caesar's daughter Julia, who was to die in the midst of the crisis 54 B.C. In 58 B.C., the year following this marriage, Caesar went to take up his great command in the Gauls, but Pompey remained in Rome, where every day his influence and popularity were failing while the astonishing successes of Caesar made him the idol of the populace. In 55 B.C. Pompey was consul for the second time with Crassus. He received as his provinces the two Spains, but he governed them by his legates and remained in the neighbourhood of the City. Crassus received the province of Syria, and the appalling disasters of the Parthian war, in which he most miserably lost life and honour, seemed to give Pompey the opportunity for which he had long been waiting. He encouraged the growing civil discord which was tearing the state in pieces, and with such success that the senate was compelled to call for his assistance. In 52 B.C. he became sole consul, restored order, and placed himself at the head of the aristocratic party which he had deserted to become the great popular hero when he was consul with Crassus in 70 B.C.

Now Caesar had long watched the astonishing actions of Pompey, and had no intention of leaving the fate of the republic to him and the aristocracy. He does not seem to have wished to break altogether with Pompey, but only to hold him in check. At his meeting with Pompey at Luca (Lucca) in 56 B.C. he had been promised the consulship for 48 B.C. when his governorship came to an end, and he now determined to insure the fulfilment of this promise which would place him upon a legal equality with his rival. For the rest he knew that he was as superior to Pompey as a statesman as he was as a soldier, and he did not apparently anticipate any difficulty in out-manoeuvring him in the senate and in the forum. Caesar, then, claimed no more than an equality with Pompey and the fulfilment of his promise; but these he determined to have. All through the winter of 52-51 B.C. he was arming. Well served by his friends, among whom were Mark Antony and Curio the tribunes, in 50 B.C., "having gone the circuit for the administration of justice," as Suetonius tells us, "he made a halt at Ravenna resolved to have recourse to arms if the senate should proceed to extremity against the tribunes of the people, who had espoused his cause." But first he determined for many reasons to send ambassadors to Rome, to request the fulfilment of the promise made to him at Luca. Pompey, who was not yet at open enmity with him, determined, although he had made the promise, neither to aid him by his influence nor openly to oppose him on this occasion. But the consuls Lentulus and Marcellus, who had always been his enemies, resolved to use all means in their power to prevent him gaining his object.

At this juncture Caius Curio, tribune of the people, came to Caesar in Ravenna. Curio had made many energetic struggles in behalf of the republic and Caesar's cause; but at last, when he perceived that all his efforts were in vain, he fled through fear of his enemies and Caesar's to Ravenna and told Caesar all that had taken place; and, seeing that war was openly being prepared against Caesar, advised him to bring up his army and to rescue the republic.

Now Caesar was not ignorant of the real state of affairs, but he was perhaps not yet ready to act, or he hoped in fact to save the ancient state; at any rate, he gave it as his opinion that particular regard should be had to the tranquillity of the republic, lest any one should assert that he was the originator of civil war. Therefore he sent again to his friends, making through them this very moderate request, that two legions and the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum should be left him. No one could openly quarrel with such a reasonable demand and the patience with which it was more than once put forward; for when Caesar could not obtain a favourable answer from the consuls, he wrote a letter to the senate in which he briefly recounted his exploits and public services, and entreated that he should not be deprived of the favour of the people who had ordered that he, although absent, should be considered a candidate for the consulship at the next election. He stated also that he would disband his army if the senate and the Roman people desired it, provided that Pompey would do the same. But he stated also that, as long as Pompey retained the command of his army, there could be no just reason why Caesar should disband his troops and expose himself to the power of his enemies.

This was Caesar's third offer to his opponents. He entrusted the letter to Curio, who travelled one hundred and sixty miles in three days and reached the City early in January. He did not, however, deliver the letter until there was a crowded meeting of the senate and the tribunes of the people were present; for he was afraid lest, if he gave it up without the utmost publicity, the consuls would suppress it. A sort of debate followed the reading of the letter, but when Scipio, Pompey's mouthpiece, spoke and declared, among other things, that Pompey was resolved to take up the cause of the senate now or never, and that he would drop it if a decision were delayed, the majority, overawed, decreed that Caesar should "at a definite and not distant day give up Transalpine Gaul to Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, and Cisalpine Gaul to Marcus Servilius Nonianus and should dismiss his army, failing which he should be esteemed a traitor. When the tribunes, of Caesar's party, made use of their right of veto against this resolution not only were they, as they at least asserted, threatened in the senate house itself by the swords of Pompeian soldiers and forced, in order to save their lives, to flee in slaves' clothing from the capital, but the senate, now sufficiently overawed, treated their interference as an attempt at revolution, declared the country in danger, and in the usual form called the burgesses to take up arms, and all the magistrates faithful to the constitution to place themselves at the head of the armed."

That was on January 7th. Five days later Caesar was on his way at the head of his troops to invade Italy and, without knowing it, to found the empire, that universal government out of which we are come.

It was with one legion that Caesar undertook his great adventure. That legion, the Thirteenth, had been stationed near Tergeste (Trieste), but at Caesar's orders it had marched into Ravenna in the first days of January. Upon the fateful twelfth, with some secrecy, while Caesar himself attended a public spectacle, examined the model of a fencing school, which he proposed to build, and, as usual, sat down to table with a numerous party of friends, the first companies of this legion left Ravenna by the Rimini gate, to be followed after sunset by its great commander; still with all possible secrecy it seems, for mules were put to his carriage, a hired one, at a mill outside Ravenna and he went almost alone.

The road he travelled was not the great way to Rimini, but a by-way across the marshes, and it would seem to have been in a wretched state. At any rate Caesar lost his way, the lights of his little company were extinguished, his carriage had to be abandoned, and it was only after wandering about for a long time that, with the help of a peasant whom he found towards daybreak, he was able to get on, afoot now, and at last to reach the great highway. That night must have tried even the iron nerves and dauntless courage of the greatest soldier of all time.

Caesar came up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, the sacred boundary of Italy and Cisalpine Gaul in the narrow pass between the mountains and the sea. "There," says Suetonius, whose account I have followed, "he halted for a while revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was about to take. At last turning to those about him, he said: 'We may still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge nothing is left us but to fight it out in arms.'"

Now while he was thus hesitating, staggered, even he, by the greatness of what he would attempt, doubtless resolving in silence arguments for and against it, and, if we may believe Plutarch, "many times changing his opinion," the following strange incident is said to have happened.

A person, remarkable, says Suetonius, for his noble aspect and graceful mien, appeared close at hand sitting by the wayside playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds herding their flocks thereabout, but a number of the legionaries also gathered round to hear this fellow play, and there happened to be among them some trumpeters, the piper suddenly snatched a trumpet from one of these, ran to the river, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other side. Upon which Caesar on a sudden impulse exclaimed: "Let us go whither the omens of the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. The die is cast." And immediately at the head of his troops he crossed the river and found awaiting him the tribunes of the people who, having fled from Rome, had come to meet him. There in their presence he called upon the troops to pledge him their fidelity, with tears in his eyes, Suetonius assures us, and his garments rent from his bosom. And when he had received their oath he set out, and with his legion marched so fast the rest of the way that he reached Ariminum before morning and took it.

The fall of Ariminum was but a presage, as we know, of Caesar's triumph. In three months he was master of all Italy. From Ravenna he had emerged to seize the lordship of the world, and out of a misery of chaos to create Europe.

III

RAVENNA IN THE TIME OF THE EMPIRE

That great revolutionary act of Julius Caesar's may be said to have made manifest, and for the first time, the unique position of Ravenna in relation to Italy and Cisalpine Gaul. In the years which followed, that position remained always unchanged, and is, indeed, more prominent than ever in the civil wars between Antony and Octavianus which followed Caesar's murder; but with the establishment of the empire by Octavianus and the universal peace, the pax romana, which it ensured, this position of Ravenna in relation to Italy and to Cisalpine Gaul sank into insignificance in comparison with her other unique advantage, her position upon the sea. For Octavianus, as we shall see, established her as the great naval port of Italy upon the east, and as such she chiefly appears to us during all the years of the unhampered government of the empire.

In the civil wars between Antony and Octavianus, however, she appears still as the key to the narrow pass between Italy and Cisalpine Gaul. Let us consider this for a moment.

Antony, as we know, after that great scene in the senate house when the supporters of Pompey and the aristocrats had succeeded in denying Caesar everything, had fled to Caesar at Ravenna. In the war which followed he had been Caesar's chief lieutenant and friend. At the crucial battle of Pharsalus in 48 B.C. he had commanded, and with great success, the left wing. In 44 B.C. he had been consul with Caesar and had then offered him the crown at the festival of the Lupercalia. After Caesar's murder he had attempted, and not without a sort of right, to succeed to his power. It was he who pronounced the speech over Caesar's body and read his will to the people. It was he who obtained Caesar's papers and his private property. It cannot then have been without resentment and surprise that he found presently a rival in the young Octavianus, the great-nephew and adopted son of the dictator, who joined the senate with the express purpose of crushing him.