The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 09

by Unknown

CHAPTER I. ITALY IN THE DARK AGE

[476-ca. 1100 A.D.]

In taking up the history of Italy we shall, for convenience, go back to the year 476, when the last legitimate emperor of old Rome in the West was overthrown, and briefly recapitulate the story of events during the period of invasion that immediately followed. It will be recalled that we have already covered the period from 476 to 1024 in much detail in our study of the Western Empire, in Volume VII. It will be unnecessary, therefore, to treat this epoch here in anything but the barest outline; and even this will involve unavoidable repetitions. Since the later emperors of the Holy Roman Empire continued for some centuries to invade Italy periodically, and to claim control over its affairs, it will be almost impossible to avoid repetition here also; but inasmuch as such monarchs as Conrad II, Henry IV, and Frederick II are necessarily given full treatment in the volumes devoted to Germany, we shall deal somewhat briefly with their Italian incursions in the present connection. A similar duplication of matter will necessarily be involved in dealing with the mediæval popes, whose history has already been chronicled in the previous volume.

The story of temporal affairs in Italy lacks unity from the beginning of the period under consideration till well towards the close of the nineteenth century. For the most part, except during the relatively brief periods when a strong emperor claimed dominion over all Italy, the territory of the Italian peninsula was divided into numerous petty kingdoms, no one of which attained supremacy over the others. First one and then another became prominent, but often contemporaneous events of local importance, having but slight world-historical importance, confuse the picture, and make the presentation of the history of Italy extremely difficult. We must necessarily overlook a large number of such petty details, endeavouring to select such events as have real importance, and to weld them into a continuous narrative. But at best the story of Italian history lacks dramatic unity; the scene shifts from one principality to another too frequently to make possible a really harmonious presentation. We have really to do with a collection of cities rather than with a nation. It is the old story of Greece over again; only here there are more cities competing for supremacy, with no one at any time quite so near success as Athens and Sparta respectively were at successive periods. Yet Milan, Venice, and Florence at times approached the goal if they did not quite attain it.[a]

Most of these cities were very old; the greater number flourished in at least equal splendour in the time of the Roman Empire; some, such as Milan, Verona, Bologna, Capua, were so considerable as to present an image of Rome, with their circus, their amphitheatre, their tumultuous and idle population, their riches and their poverty. Their administration was nearly republican, most commonly composed, after the example of Rome, of a curia, or municipal senate elected by the people, and of duumvirs, or annual consuls. In all these towns, among the first class of inhabitants were to be found the proprietors of the neighbouring land, lodged in palaces with their slaves and freedmen; secondly, the artisans and shopkeepers whom their necessities established around them; lastly, a crowd of idle people, who had preserved just enough of land to supply, with the strictest economy, the means of existence. It does not appear that there was any prosperous manufactory in Italy. All manual labour, as well in towns as in the country, was executed by slaves. Objects of luxury, for the most part, came from Asia. War had for a long time been the only occupation of the Italians; for a long period, too, the legions had been levied partly among the Romans, and partly among their allies in Italy: but, under the emperors, the distrust of the master seconded the luxurious effeminacy of the subject, the Italians finally renounced even war, and the legions were recruited only in Pannonia, Gaul, and the other provinces bordering on the Rhine and the Danube.

At a later period, the barbarians who menaced Rome were seduced by liberal pay to engage in its defence; and in the Roman armies the enemies of Rome almost entirely replaced the Romans. The country could not, as in modern states, supply the place of cities in recruiting the armies with a class of men accustomed to the inclemencies of the weather and inured to toil. The only labourers to be found were an oppressed foreign race, who took no interest in public affairs. The Romans cultivated their land either by slaves purchased from the barbarians and forced by corporal punishment to labour, or by coloni partiarii, to whom was given a small share in the harvest as wages; but, in order to oblige these last to content themselves with the least possible share, they were attached to the land, and nearly as much oppressed as slaves themselves. The proprietors of land varied as between these two systems, according as the price of slaves varied, or the colons (peasants, labourers) were more or less numerous; no cultivator of the land had any property in it.

The greater part was united in immense domains, sometimes embracing whole provinces, the administration of which was intrusted to freedmen, whose only consideration was, how to cultivate the land with the least possible expense, and how to extract from their labourers the greatest degree of work with the smallest quantity of food. The agriculturists, as well what were called freedmen as slaves, were almost all barbarians by birth, without any interest in a social order which only oppressed them, without courage for its defence, and without any pecuniary resources for themselves; their numbers also diminished with an alarming rapidity, partly from desertion, partly from new invasions of barbarians, who carried them off to sell as slaves in other Roman provinces, and finally from a mortality, the necessary consequence of poverty and starvation.

Italy, nevertheless, was supposed to enjoy a constant prosperity. During the entire ages of Trajan and the Antonines, a succession of virtuous and philosophic emperors followed each other; the world was in peace; the laws were wise and well administered; riches seemed to increase; each succeeding generation raised palaces more splendid, monuments and public edifices more sumptuous, than the preceding; the senatorial families found their revenues increase; the treasury levied greater imposts. But it is not on the mass of wealth, it is on its distribution, that the prosperity of states depends; increasing opulence continued to meet the eye, but men became more miserable; the rural population, formerly active, robust, and energetic, were succeeded by a foreign race, while the inhabitants of towns sank in vice and idleness, or perished in want, amidst the riches they had themselves created.