Republican Rome, Vol. 4: A History of All Nations (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Sinopsis

Excerpt from Republican Rome, Vol. 4: A History of All Nations

Venusia, and from Lago di Celano to the Caudine Passes. The oppor tunities which nature offered to a people striving for the control of a united land could only gain their full importance when this people was able to develop such political and military qualities as were actually exhibited by the Romans, and as at a later time enabled them to make this middle peninsula of Southern Europe the basis of a world supremacy, - a supremacy which belonged to Italy as long as it was able to produce an inexhaustible supply of vigorous men.

The appearance of Italy as regards vegetation was essentially different in antiquity from what it is to-day. In the earliest period the peninsula had a distinctly northern aspect, very difierent from that of the lands of the Orient, of Sicily, and even of Greece, and was cov ered with vast forests of evergreens, of beeches, and of oaks. The Hellenes knew Italy for centuries as a land especially fruitful in cattle, in the products of Hooks and forest, and in grain. At a later time the Italian output of grain, except in the plains of the Po, greatly diminished, while cattle-raising and pasturage correspondingly in creased. Grecian civilization introduced into Italy, through the colonies in Sicily and Lower Italy, many plants and methods of cultiva tion, such as it had received from the East. The relations of the Romans to Carthaginian Africa and the Orient likewise had influence on vegetation and agriculture. Before the close of the period of the Roman kings, there were acclimated and widely spread in Italy the fig tree, the vine, and the olive. In the middle of the fifth century b.c., wheat was added to the indigenous grains. Under the Republic a large part of the forests, through extensive clearing and excessive use of wood for building, for export, and for the construction of fleets, had already disappeared; and in the time of the Empire, when Italy was still wooded, the wasting was uninterruptedly continued. The loss of the forests was attended with many evils - increasing violence of the riyers, increase of drought, advance of malaria, and depopulation of many districts. On the other hand, through a more general cultivation of gardens, Italy was changed into a vast orchard. It was not till the late Empire that the orange and lemon were acclimatized, trees whose attractive appearance in Southern Italy to-day so delights the dweller of the North.

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