C., when, as I have already related, Metellus, the lieutenant of
Sulla, landed there or thereabouts from his ships and seems to have
made the city, already a place of some importance, the centre of his
operations.
Ravenna really entered history--and surely gloriously enough--when
Julius Caesar chose it, the last great town of his command towards
Italy, as his headquarters while he treated with the senate before he
crossed the Rubicon.
"Caesar," says Appian, "had lately recrossed the straits from Britain,
and, after traversing the Gallic country along the Rhine, had passed
the Alps with 5000 foot and 300 horse, and arrived at Ravenna which
was contiguous to Italy and the last town in his government." This was
in 50 B.C. The state of affairs which that act was meant to elucidate
may be briefly stated as follows.
The Roman republic, still in the midst of the political, social, and
economic revolution whose first phase was the awful civil wars of
Marius and Sulla, had long been at the mercy of Pompey the
opportunist, Crassus the plutocrat, and Julius Caesar--the first
Triumvirate.
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