If the Gauls had not been broken
by the plain, they would perhaps have overwhelmed Italy and Rome; if
Hannibal had found there enemies instead of friends, the Oriental
would not so nearly have overthrown Europe. It broke the Gothic
invasion, Attila never crossed it, it absorbed the worst of the
appalling Lombard flood; Italy remains to us because of it.
Now since Cisalpine Gaul thus secured Italy, the entry from the one to
the other, the road between them must always have been of an immense
importance. That entry and that road, whenever they were in dispute,
Ravenna commanded, and a good half of her importance lies in this.
I say whenever they were in dispute: in time of peace that road and
that entry were not in the keeping of Ravenna but of Rimini.
A study of the map will show us that though the Apennines shut off
Italy proper from Cisalpine Gaul along a line roughly from Genoa to
Rimini, actually that difficult and barren range just fails to reach
the Adriatic as it curves southward to divide the peninsula in its
entire length into two not unequal parts. This failure of the
mountains quite to reach the sea leaves at this corner a narrow strip
of lowland, of marshy plain in fact, between them.
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