THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. JULY 1, 1828. ORIGINAL PAPERS. LETTERS TO THE STUDENTS OF GLASGOW. BY T. CAMPBELL. LETTER VI. In my last Letter I treated of the Alexandrian school, and of its principal ornaments down to the Augustan age. The name of that period will remind you that, before its close, the literary spirit of Rome had not only arisen, but reached its acmé, so that I shall now think it time to diverge from Greek to Roman literature. The debts of the Roman Muses to those of Greece are universally known; but let neither that fact, nor the trite familiarity of Latin names, make us indifferent to this subject. If all the works in the Latin tongue were but translations from the Greek, they would still afford us a conception of many productions that would have been otherwise unknown; and which might, at the worst estimate of the translating language, be likened to casts of perished sculptures, that may instruct and delight us, though their clay retains not the diaphonous surface of the original marble. But the Romans, though often, were by no means always, the mere translators of the Greeks; and even in remoulding Hellenic treasures, they were far from having left them unstamped with traits of their own proud and peculiar character. The language of Livy and Tacitus-the language that has been the most general interpretess between the ancient and modern world-the language of the most powerful people that ever existed, needs no apology for its claims upon our interest. What a spell to our associations lies in the name of Rome!— "The city that so long Reign'd absolute, the mistress of the world, The mighty vision that the Prophets saw, It is true that her history may often provoke us by the sight of merciless skill and strength usurping the honours and the very name of virtue. The Romans crushed in Italy and Greece more germs of civilization than they ever planted on the face of the earth. They were pitiless ravagers of the world; and unhappily their downfal was so long deferred, as not to give us the comfort of seeing the nations whom they oppressed avenged in their own generation. But, still, of all ancient histories, that of Rome affords the longest lessons in political experience. It shows us, in vast and clear views, the glory and usefulness of certain attributes, that would have been Rogers's "Italy." July, 1828.-VOL. XXIII. NO. XCI. B pure virtues in the Romans, if they had been exerted only in self-defence. It exhibits also a just reaction in the moral world, and inculcates the doctrine of a general Providence, by showing that all iniquitous earthly power tends to work its own overthrow. For Rome exhausted herself by her conquests, and poisoned herself with the fruits of her own rapacity, till at last she lay under the vengeance of the outraged world, like a blind and gigantic malefactor, so bloated and agonized as to be indebted to her executioners. The land where Roman greatness walked forth from its cradle had several other ancient appellations, such as Hesperia, Saturnia, and Enotria, besides that of Italia. Hesperia, however, was only a vague name, under which Spain also was sometimes included; and the other names belonged only to parts of Italy, though they were extended by poetic licence to the whole. The word Italia itself, in Greek geography, originally designated only what is now the South of Calabria; and no Greek writer before the Messinian Alcæus, in the year of Rome 557, can be found to have applied it to the whole Peninsula. Some sixty years later, Polybius uses the name of Italy in its widest extent; and in the Augustan age it had superseded every other prose appellation of the country. In spite of this narrow acceptation of the word Italia among the early Greeks, however, it is by no means clear that the Italians themselves had the same restricted geographical notion of the country to which they imparted their name. Conrad Mannert,* one of the ablest of modern classical geographers, contends that at every known period of history they attached the same idea as the moderns to the name of Italy. It is not contradicting this assertion to apply the qualifying recollection, that though the natives, in a general sense, considered all to be Italy from the Sicilian Straits to the Alps, yet, until the time of Augustus, they esteemed Cisalpine Gaul and Venetia less expressly Italian soil than the rest of the Peninsula. The former territory had been conquered, even in Roman times, by a people so distinct from the Southern Italians, that their long occupation of the land might seem, if one may use the expression, to have unitalianized it; whilst Venetia, on the eastern side of this northern part of Italy, was held by a race, in all probability, Sclavonic, and equally distinct in speech and breed both from the Gauls and Italians. These circumstances account for the country south of the Apennines and the Rubicon being held to be more expressly Italy than the region north of those boundaries. It may be added that Augustus, unlike the moderns, brought Istria within the limits of Italy. Yet, with these modifications, the assertion may still be hazarded that the Italians always meant the same territory that we mean by the name of Italy. In looking, indeed, at the map of the country, one is struck by the distinct boundaries which Nature has assigned to it as a mighty whole, investing it with the sea on two sides, and disjoining it from Europe by the Alps, that sweep round its northern amphitheatre. Such a country one might expect to have had early one wide-spread appellation. And if Mannert be right, Italy had this collective and not partial name from a primitive people, the Itali, who were more generally the ancestors of its subsequent population than either the Illyrian, Iberian, Hellenic, or Gaulish race, who, at different periods, made conquests in the Peninsula, some times mastering its coasts and sometimes its interior. Those earliest questions, however, in Italian antiquities are too abstruse and complex to be stated in narrow limits; and I shall avoid them as much as I can, since they bear but very remotely on the history of Roman literature. At the same time, before I enter on that subject, I am unwilling altogether to omit such a general notice of Italy as may bring before you some remembrances both of its past and recent state. As it is a country where civilization may be said scarcely ever to have died, the glories of its ancient and modern ages reciprocate a lustre on each other; and the imagination, in hearing of its classic places, demands to know what objects they now present to the traveller. Literary history, too, is but a dry study when it presents only books and authors, abstracted from all recollections of the scenery, climate, age, and people, in the midst of which they were produced. In speaking of Italy, preparatory to entering on the literature of Rome, I shall of course avoid going too far into such collateral objects of interest; but, for the present, I invite you to accompany me on the map of that country, whilst I endeavour to sketch its geographical picture. The stupendous Alps may be called the peculiar property of Italy; for though they branch into other countries, this country alone looks up to their whole semicircular chain, extending from the Gulf of Genoa to that of Venice. Hannibal was the first traveller over the Alps who was great enough to make them famous as the natural, though not impregnable, ramparts of Italy. It is clear that he must have passed over Mont Cenis. From thence alone could he have had a view through the vale of Souza to the distance of some thirty miles of the plain which is watered by the Po. Cæsar was the first who thought of subduing Transalpine Gaul. For this purpose he chose the nearest and already well-known way through the territory of the Salassii, over the Grecian Alps and the lesser Saint Bernard, by which route he was brought immediately to the exit of the Rhone out of the Lake of Geneva, and to the neighbourhood of the Helvetians. Eight years employed in his plan of conquering Gaul, Cæsar drew troops and warlike supplies to his army out of Italy, and every winter he came back thither in person over the same passes of the Alps with an increasing retinue. It was not, however, till Augustus's time that the Romans became very familiar with the Alps, when those mountainous tracts were opened up to them in all directions, and different names were assigned to their different portions. The lowest part of them that dips into the Gulf of Genoa, and separates Nice and Piemont, had been already denominated the Maritime Alps. New appellations, however, were now introduced. The chain that divided Gaul and Italy from the sources of the Var and the Stoura to Mont Iseran, were called the Cottian Alps, from Cottius, a Gallic chieftain that reminds us of Caractacus in Britain, though he was more fortunate. From thence to Mont Blanc the mountainous mass was called the Grecian Alps, owing to the fable of Hercules having entered Italy in that direction. From Mont Blanc extends a chain called the Pennine Alps, to Adula, or the greater Mont St. Bernard, which divides the Valey and the rest of Switzerland from Italy. Lastly, the Rhætian Alps cross the Tyrol and approach those of Carinthia, forming a suite of mountains six hundred miles in sweep, and unparalleled for grandeur and pictu requeness. The following enumeration of the ancient provinces of Italy, though different from the Augustan division, has been adopted by most geographical writers-namely, I, Liguria: II, Gallia Cisalpina: III, Venetia, including the Carni and Histria: IV, Etruria: V, Umbria and Picenum: VI, The Sabini, Æqui, Marsi, Peligni, Vestini, Marrucini: VII, Roma: VIII, Latium: IX, Campania: X, Samnium and the Frentani XI, Apulia, including Daunia and Messapia, or Japygia: XII, Lucania: XIII, Bruttii. I. Liguria. This land, in its old geographical meaning, extended into Gaul, and even to the Pyrenees, where Scylax speaks of the Ligurians and Iberians living together. But when the Romans had mastered Italy, the name of Liguria was limited to its north-western corner. On the west it was bounded by the river Varus, near the Maritime Alps; on the north by the Po, in its course eastward to the vicinity of Placentia. An oblique line along the Apennines as far as the source of the Macra, and then that river itself, formed its eastern limits; whilst the whole of its southern side was open to the sea. Liguria will thus be found to be represented on the modern map by the Duchy of Genoa, and by Southern Piemont up to Mont Viso. The known residence of the Ligurians in Italy is so remote, that we may safely reject all theories of their Gallic or Celtic or Spanish origin. As little could they be congenerous with the Veneti, who never came to this part of Italy. It may be concluded that they were pure and primitive Itali. Dionysius, indeed, makes them parents of the Siculi, and gives them a king of the name of Italus. That the Ligurians and Siculi lived together at Rome long before the time of Romulus, we are expressly told by Festus. The military character which Livy gives of this people surpasses even his accustomed eloquence. During the first Punic war, their troops were the mercenaries of Carthage; and it was not till long after the second, that Rome could be said to have subdued them. Accustomed as the Romans had been at that time to easier enemies, they would have much rather peaceably exchanged their own wine and oil for the honey and cattle and fine timber of the Ligurians, than have been obliged to besiege them in their highland castles, or to meet their brazen targets and terrific war-cry, that so often surprised them in the narrow glens. But to maintain a western dominion, the mountains of Liguria were an indispensable perch for the Roman Eagle. And after a struggle of eighty years those mountains were won at last; though not till the natives had been slaughtered or torn alive from their country almost by myriads. "Is hostis," says Livy of the Ligurians, "velut natus ad continendam inter magnorum intervalla bellorum Romanis militarem disciplinam erat: nec alia provincia militem magis ad virtutem acuebat. Nam Asia, et amenitate urbium, et copia terrestrium maritimarumque rerum, et mollitia hostium regiisque opibus, ditiores quam fortiores exercitus faciebat. In Liguribus omnia erant quæ militem excitarent loca montana et aspera quæ et ipsis capere labor est, et ex præ-occupatis dejicere hostem : itinera ardua, angusta, infesta insidiis; hostis levis et velox et repentinus, qui nullum usquam tempus, nullum locum quietum aut securum esse sineret oppugnatio necessaria munitorum castellorum laboriosa simul periculosaque inops regio quæ parsimoniâ astringeret milites, prædæ haud multum præberet." |