"
No historian of Ravenna, and certainly no writer upon the fall of the
empire, has cared to understand what Ravenna was. Gibbon complains
that he lacks "a local antiquarian and a good topographical map;" yet
it is not so much the lack of local knowledge that leads him
unreservedly to censure Honorius for his retreat upon Ravenna, as the
fact that he has not perhaps really grasped what Ravenna was, what was
her relation to Italy and Cisalpine Gaul, and especially how she stood
to the sea, and what part that sea played in the geography and
strategy of the empire.
For my part I shall maintain that, whatever may be the truth as to the
private character of Honorius, which would indeed be difficult to
defend, he was wisely advised by those counsellors who conceived his
retreat from Milan to Ravenna; that this retreat was not a mere
flight, but a consummate and well thought out strategical and
political move, and that any other would have been for the worse and
would probably have involved the West in an utter destruction.
Cisalpine Gaul, at this crisis, as always both before and since, was
the great and proper defence of Italy; not the Alps nor the Apennines
but Cisalpine Gaul broke the barbarians, and, in so far as it could be
materially saved, saved Italy and our civilisation, of which Rome was
the soul.
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