We hear of the Romans touching here in 216 B.C., and of its destruction by the Carthaginians in 209 B.C. and immediate restoration by the Romans, who made it and Placentia their headquarters against the Ligurians. It was reached from Rome by the Via Aurelia, which ran along the north-west coast, and its prolongation, which later acquired the name of the Via Aemilia (Scauri); for the latter was only constructed in 109 B.C., and there must have been a coast-road long before, at least as early as 148 B.C., when the Via Postumia was built from Genua through Libarna (mod. Serravalle, where remains of an amphitheatre and inscriptions have been found), Dertona, Iria, Placentia, Cremona, and thence eastwards. We also have an inscription of 117 B.C. (now preserved in the Palazzo Municipale at Genoa) giving the text of the decision given by the patroni, Q. and M. Minucius, of Genua, in accordance with a decree of the Roman senate, in a controversy between the people of Genua and the Langenses or Langates (also known as the Viturii), the inhabitants of a neighbouring hill-town, which was included in the territory of Genua. But none of the other inscriptions found in Genoa or existing there at the present day, which are practically all sepulchral, can be demonstrated to have belonged to the ancient city; it is equally easy to suppose that they were brought from elsewhere by sea (Mommsen in Corp. Inscr. Lat. v. p. 884). It is only from inscriptions of other places that we know that it had municipal rights, and we do not know at what period it obtained them. Classical authors tell us but little of it. Strabo (iv. 6. 2, p. 202) states that it exported wood, skins and honey, and imported olive oil and wine, though Pliny speaks of the wine of the district as the best of Liguria (H.N. xiv. 67.)
The history of Genoa during the dark ages, throughout the Lombard and Carolingian periods, is but the repetition of the general history of the Italian communes, which succeeded in snatching from contending princes and barons the first charters of their freedom. The patriotic spirit and naval prowess of the Genoese, developed in their defensive wars against the Saracens, led to the foundation of a popular constitution, and to the rapid growth of a powerful marine. From the necessity of leaguing together against the common Saracen foe, Genoa united with Pisa early in the 11th century in expelling the Moslems from the island of Sardinia, but the Sardinian territory thus acquired soon furnished occasions of jealousy to the conquering allies, and there commenced between the two republics the long naval wars destined to terminate so fatally for Pisa. With not less adroitness than Venice, Genoa saw and secured all the advantages of the great carrying trade which the crusades created between Western Europe and the East. The seaports wrested at the same period from the Saracens along the Spanish and Barbary coasts became important Genoese colonies, whilst in the Levant, on the shores of the Black Sea, and along the banks of the Euphrates were erected Genoese fortresses of great strength. No wonder if these conquests generated in the minds of the Venetians and the Pisans fresh jealousy against Genoa, and provoked fresh wars; but the struggle between Genoa and Pisa was brought to a disastrous conclusion for the latter state by the battle of Meloria in 1284.
The commercial and naval successes of the Genoese during the middle ages were the more remarkable because, unlike their rivals, the Venetians, they were the unceasing prey to intestine discord—the Genoese commons and nobles fighting against each other, rival factions amongst the nobles themselves striving to grasp the supreme power in the state, nobles and commons alike invoking the arbitration and rule of some foreign captain as the sole means of obtaining a temporary truce. From these contests of rival nobles, in which the names of Spinola and Doria stand forth with greatest prominence, Genoa was soon drawn into the great vortex of the Guelph and Ghibelline factions; but its recognition of foreign authority—successively German, Neapolitan and Milanese—gave way to a state of greater independence in 1339, when the government assumed a more permanent form with the appointment of the first doge, an office held at Genoa for life, in the person of Simone Boccanera. Alternate victories and defeats of the Venetians and Genoese—the most terrible being the defeat sustained by the Venetians at Chioggia in 1380—ended by establishing the great relative inferiority of the Genoese rulers, who fell under the power now of France, now of the Visconti of Milan. The Banca di S. Giorgio, with its large possessions, mainly in Corsica, formed during this period the most stable element in the state, until in 1528 the national spirit appeared to regain its ancient vigour when Andrea Doria succeeded in throwing off the French domination and restoring the old form of government. It was at this very period—the close of the 15th and commencement of the 16th century—that the genius and daring of a Genoese mariner, Christopher Columbus, gave to Spain that new world, which might have become the possession of his native state, had Genoa been able to supply him with the ships and seamen which he so earnestly entreated her to furnish. The government as restored by Andrea Doria, with certain modifications tending to impart to it a more conservative character, remained unchanged until the outbreak of the French Revolution and the creation of the Ligurian republic. During this long period of nearly three centuries, in which the most dramatic incident is the conspiracy of Fieschi, the Genoese found no small compensation for their lost traffic in the East in the vast profits which they made as the bankers of the Spanish crown and outfitters of the Spanish armies and fleets both in the old world and the new, and Genoa, more fortunate than many of the other cities of Italy, was comparatively immune from foreign domination.
At the end of the 17th century the city was bombarded by the French, and in 1746, after the defeat of Piacenza, surrendered to the Austrians, who were, however, soon driven out. A revolt in Corsica, which began in 1729, was suppressed with the help of the French, who in 1768 took possession of the island for themselves (see [Corsica]: History).
The short-lived Ligurian republic was soon swallowed up in the French empire, not, however, until Genoa had been made to experience, by the terrible privations of the siege when Masséna held the city against the Austrians (1800), all that was meant by a participation in the vicissitudes of the French Revolution. In 1814 Genoa rose against the French, on the assurance given by Lord William Bentinck that the allies would restore to the republic its independence. It had, however, been determined by a secret clause of the treaty of Paris that Genoa should be incorporated with the dominions of the king of Sardinia. The discontent created at the time by the provision of the treaty of Paris as confirmed by the congress of Vienna had doubtless no slight share in keeping alive in Genoa the republican spirit which, through the influence of a young Genoese citizen, Joseph Mazzini, assumed forms of permanent menace not only to the Sardinian monarchy but to all the established governments of the peninsula. Even the material benefits accruing from the union with Sardinia and the constitutional liberty accorded to all his subjects by King Charles Albert were unable to prevent the republican outbreak of 1848, when, after a short and sharp struggle, the city, momentarily seized by the republican party, was recovered by General Alfonzo La Marmora.
Among the earlier Genoese historians the most important are Bartolommeo Fazio and Jacopo Bracelli, both of the 15th century, and Paolo Partenopeo, Jacopo Bonfadio, Oberto Foglietta and Agostino Giustiniano of the 16th. Paganetti wrote the ecclesiastical history of the city; and Accinelli and Gaggero collected material for the ecclesiastical archaeology. The memoirs of local writers and artists were treated by Soprani and Ratti. Among more general works are Bréquigny, Histoire des révolutions de Gênes jusqu’en 1748; Serra, La Storia dell’ antica Liguria e di Genova (Turin, 1834); Varesi, Storia della repubblica di Genova sino al 1814 (Genoa, 1835-1839); Canale, Storia dei Genovesi (Genoa, 1844-1854), Nuova istoria della repubblica di Genova (Florence, 1858), and Storia della rep. di Genova dall’ anno 1528 al 1550 (Genoa, 1874); Blumenthal, Zur Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsgeschichte Genua’s im 12ten Jahrhundert (Kalbe an der Saale, 1872); Malleson, Studies from Genoese History (London, 1875). The Liber jurium reipublicae Genuensis was edited by Ricotti in the 7th, 8th and 9th volumes of the Monumenta historiae patriae (Turin, 1854-1857). A great variety of interesting matter will be found in the Atti della Società Ligure di storia patria (1861 sqq.), and in the Giornale Ligustico di archeologia, storia, e belle arti. The history of the university has been written by Lorenzo Isnardi, and continued by Em. Celesia (2 vols., Genoa).
(T. As.)
[1] See Notizie degli scavi (1898), 395 (A. d’Andrade), 464 (G. Ghirardini).