Walker - 1967 - A geography of Italy

declined, but that their decline was not more rapid. The cities of the Northern
Plain which felt the initial fury o f invasion time after time, descended into the
Dark Ages by a series of steps rather than in one great leap. In quieter periods
they often regained some o f their importance as the countryside recovered and
trade trickled back. The ponderous machine o f Roman administration, which was
made use o f by the barbarians, was centred on the towns and ploughed on by
sheer momentum long after the original motive power had gone. Many o f the
northern cities rose many times from their ruins because o f the natural richness
o f their surroundings and the permanent importance o f the routes they controlled.
Such was Milan, originally a Celtic foundation which in the fourth century had
rivalled Rome in size, and, as the home o f St Ambrose, in ecclesiastical influence.
Sustained by the rich farms o f Lombardy, it lived through sack by Visigoths and
Huns, and became one o f the centres o f the Ostrogothic and later the Lombard
power. Padua, which in Roman times was little less important than Milan,
survived to become one o f Europe’s centres o f learning. The strategic importance
o f Verona assured its continuance and it was for a time a favourite residence o f
Theodoric. Pavia was privileged to be chosen as an Ostrogoth and later as a
Lombard capital, and maintained a law school which trained the administrators
the barbarians lacked. Aquileia was exceptional in that it was destroyed by the
Huns never to rise again. On the other hand refugees flying from the Huns found
safety in the islands o f the Adriatic lagoons, and so laid the foundations of
Venice, while Ravenna which had been a major Roman naval base became
increasingly important. Practically impregnable from the landward side, it controlled
the Via Aemilia route westwards into Lombardy and southwards into the
Peninsula. Honorius, Odovacar and Theodoric were at pains to possess it, and
under the Byzantines it became the pivot o f their power in Italy. Ravenna’s rise
underlined the decay o f Rome, now no longer the capital o f the Empire nor even
o f Italy. For centuries it had Uved less on its immediate surroundings than on the
corn and tribute o f distant lands, and if it survived into the Middle Ages,
shrunken within its ruins, it did so because o f new-foimd subsidies from all
Christendom. The classical city received its coup de grâce when the Goths
besieging Behsarius cut the aqueducts. The uncontrolled waters contributed to
the degeneration o f parts o f the Campagna into a malarial wilderness.
The defeat and expulsion o f the Goths from Italy by the Greeks between 536
and 553 reduced the cities and coimtryside to desolation. This was Italy’s nadir
even in the Dark Ages. Byzantine control had barely lasted a decade when the
Germanic Lombards under Alboin invaded North Italy through the vulnerable
Friuli march (568), and for roughly two centuries Italy was to be divided between
the hostile powers of Lombards centred on Pavia with semi-independent duchies
o f Friuli, Spoleto and Beneventum, on the one hand, and the Greeks entrenched
at Ravenna and a number o f isolated areas round the coast, on the other.
Unlike the Ostrogoths the Lombards came unashamedly as conquerors. There
was no pretence o f restoring the Empire and the Italians were regarded not as
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