"
This impregnable city, the most southern of Cisalpine Gaul,
immediately commanded the pass between Cisalpine Gaul and Italy
directly that pass was threatened, and to this I say was due a good
half of its fame. The rest must be equally divided between the fact
that the city was impregnable, and therefore a secure refuge or _point
d'appui_, and its situation upon the sea.
Strabo in his account of Ravenna, which I have quoted above,
emphasises the fact rather of its situation among the marshes than of
its position with regard to the sea. This is perhaps natural. The
society to which he belonged (though indeed he was of Greek descent)
loathed and feared the sea with an unappeasable horror. No journey was
too long to make if thereby the sea passage might be avoided, no road
too rough and rude if to take it was to escape the unstable winds and
waters. That too was a part of Ravenna's strength. She was as much a
city of the sea as Venice is; but of what a sea?
The Adriatic, upon whose western shore she stood at the gate of Italy
and Cisalpine Gaul, was--and this partly because of the Roman horror
of the sea--the fault between Greek and Latin, East and West.
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