the southern estuary of the Po. Round Ravenna extended a vast morass,
for the most part under shallow water, but rising at intervals into
low islands like the Lido or Murano or Torcello which surround Venice.
These islands were celebrated for their fertility: the vines and
fig-trees and pomegranates, springing from a fat and fruitful soil,
watered with constant moisture, and fostered by a mild sea-wind and
liberal sunshine, yielded crops that for luxuriance and quality
surpassed the harvests of any orchards on the mainland. All the
conditions of life in old Ravenna seem to have resembled those of
modern Venice; the people went about in gondolas, and in the early
morning barges laden with fresh fruit or meat and vegetables flocked
from all quarters to the city of the sea.[1] Water also had to be
procured from the neighbouring shore, for, as Martial says, a well at
Ravenna was more valuable than a vineyard. Again, between the city and
the mainland ran a long low causeway all across the lagune like that
on which the trains now glide into Venice. Strange to say, the air of
Ravenna was remarkably salubrious: this fact, and the ease of life
that prevailed there, and the security afforded by the situation of
the town, rendered it a most desirable retreat for the monarchs of
Italy during those troublous times in which the empire nodded to its
fall. Honorius retired to its lagunes for safety; Odoacer, who
dethroned the last Cæsar of the West, succeeded him; and was in turn,
supplanted by Theodoric the Ostrogoth. Ravenna, as we see it now,
recalls the peaceful and half-Roman rule of the great Gothic king. His
palace, his churches, and the mausoleums in which his daughter
Amalasuntha laid the hero's bones, have survived the sieges of
Belisarius and Astolphus, the conquest of Pepin, the bloody quarrels
of Iconoclasts with the children of the Roman Church, the mediæval
wars of Italy, the victory of Gaston de Foix, and still stand gorgeous
with marbles and mosaics in spite of time and the decay of all around