Campanians

“ A league had indeed been made with both those nations, but the Campanians had made theirs more binding and worth of regard, by a surrender of all that they had. The Romans accordingly took up the war against the Samnites as if on their own behalf.
The region of Campania is the finest of all countries, not only in Italy, but in the whole world. Nothing can be softer than its air; indeed it produces flowers twice a year. Nothing can be more fertile than its soil ”

“ Although our present circumstances forbid us to speak proudly about ourselves, still we Campanians are second to no people, save yourselves, in the size of our city and the fertility of our soil, and we shall bring, I consider, no small accession to your prosperity by entering into your friendship. ”

“ Aye, and it will be much more the case with them, than with the old genuine Campanians, because they were born and trained up in a fortune which was theirs of old, but were deprived by a too great abundance of everything; but these men, being transferred from the most extreme indigence to a corresponding affluence, will be affected, not only by the extent of their riches, but also by the strangeness of them. ”

“ There was no doubt that as far as the Campanians were concerned they owed their defeats more to their want of hardihood and the weakening effects of excessive luxury than to the strength of their enemies. ”

“ The Campanians, therefore, when asked by the Sidicinians to arm in their behalf, must have measured their strength by wealth and not by soldiers; for after declaring in their favour and suffering two defeats, to save themselves they were obliged to become tributary to Rome. ”

“ Without waiting even to choose the sites for their camps, the two armies piled their baggage, fought and finished the war, for the Latins were so utterly worsted that when the consul with his victorious army was preparing to ravage their territory, they made a complete surrender and the Campanians followed their example. Latium and Capua were deprived of their territory. The Latin territory, including that of Privernum, together with the Falernian, which had belonged to the Campanians as far as the Volturnus, was distributed amongst the Roman plebs. ”

“ The Ligurians, being mountaineers, are a hardy and rustic tribe. The land itself taught them to be so by producing nothing which was not extracted from it by skilful cultivation, and by great labor. The Campanians were always proud from the excellence of their soil, and the magnitude of their crops, and the healthiness, and position, and beauty of their city. From that abundance, and from this affluence in all things, in the first place, originated those qualities—arrogance, which demanded of our ancestors that one of the consuls should be chosen from Capua ”

“ But in mine opinion, the most fertile soile dooth bring foorth the proudest nature, as we may see by the Campanians, who (as Cicero also saith) had "Penes eos ipsum domicilium superbiæ." But nether of these opinions do iustlie take hold of vs, yet hath it pleased the writers to saie their pleasures of vs. And for that we dwell northward, we are commonlie taken by the forren historiographers, to be men of great strength and little policie, much courage and small shift, bicause of the weake abode of the sunne with vs, whereby our braines are not made hot and warmed, as Pachymerus noteth lib. ”

“ Undoubtedly, in fashionable Campania, it must have been so common as to form a familiar feature in the landscape. But it perished with the remainder of that luxurious civilisation. In a convent garden at Naples—so a traveller tells us—there remains one enormous specimen, of an antiquity which can only be conjectured: the grandchild, it may be, of some forlorn ornament of a ruined villa, which had seen the Goths march into Italy. We have heard of no others of the genuine race. ”

“ II. Campania in the modern sense includes a considerably larger area than the ancient name, inasmuch as to the compartimento of Campania belong the five provinces of Caserta, Benevento, Naples, Avellino and Salerno.
It is bounded on the north by the provinces of Rome, Aquila (Abruzzi) and Campobasso (Molise) , on the north-east by that of Foggia (Apulia) , on the east by that of Potenza (Basilicata) and on the south and west by the Tyrrhenian Sea. The area is 6289 sq. m. ”

“ For this is what I say,—if the Campanian land be divided, the common people are driven out of and banished from the lands, not settled and established in them. For the whole of the Campanian district is cultivated and occupied by the common people, and by a most virtuous and moderate common people. And that race of men of most virtuous habits, that race of excellent farmers and excellent soldiers, is wholly driven out by this tribune who is so devoted to the people. ”

“ The people look full of life, gay, independent, even lawless.
Thus we reached Naples and its charming bay, over which Vesuvius seems to rule like a gloomy despot with judgment and death upon his lips. The city however looks gay, far more so than Rome. The houses shine out white, amongst the verdant gardens, beside the bright blue sea, towards which the coast of Naples extends itself like an opened embrace, the rocky arms of which are richly adorned with towns, country-houses, and pleasure grounds!—splendid bracelets! ”

“ Everything that industrious Campania, or opulent Bruttii, or cattle-breeding Calabria [571] , or strong Apulia produces, is there to be found exposed for sale, on such reasonable terms that no buyer goes away dissatisfied. It is a charming sight to see the broad plains filled with suddenly-reared houses formed of leafy branches intertwined: all the beauty of the most leisurely-built city, and yet not a wall to be seen. There stand ready boys and girls, with the attractions which belong to their respective sexes and ages, whom not captivity but freedom sets a price upon. ”

“ CAMPAGNA, OR CAMPANIA. "'The name of Campania,' says Pelligrini, 'which was first applied to the territory of Capua alone, extended itself by successive re-arrangements of the Italian provinces over a great part of Central Italy, and then gradually shrank back again into its birth-place, and at last became restricted to the limits of one city only, Naples, and that one of the least importance in Italy. ”

“ The hardy warriors from the mountains took over not merely the wealth of the Etruscans, but many of their customs; the haughtiness and luxury of the men of Capua was proverbial at Rome. This town became the ally of Rome in 338 B.C. (Livy viii. 14) and received the civitas sine suffragio, the highest status that could be granted to a community which did not speak Latin. By the end of the 4th century Campania was completely Roman politically. Certain towns with their territories (Neapolis, Nola, Abella, Nuceria) were nominally independent in alliance with Rome. ”

“ But it is not on the fertility of the soil, it is not on the mildness of the atmosphere, that the prosperity of nations chiefly depends. Slavery and superstition can make Campania a land of beggars, and can change the plain of Enna into a desert. ”

“ I saw Naples from the Castle of Saint Elmo—setting aside the sea and Mount Vesuvius, those unequalled features in that radiant picture—the view of the city of Naples is not so fine as the view of Rome: it is, comparatively, deficient in sentiment, in interest, and in dignity. Naples wears on her brow the voluptuous beauty of a syren—Rome sits desolate on her seven-hilled throne, "the Niobe of Nations." ”

“ The revolution was soon complete, and Naples, the metropolis of many fertile provinces, the queen of many noble cities, the resort of princes, of cavaliers, and of heroes;—Naples, inhabited by more than six hundred thousand souls, abounding in all kinds of resources, glorying in its strength, and proud of its wealth—saw itself forced in one short day to yield to a man esteemed one of its meanest sons, such obedience as in all its history it had never before shown to the mightiest of its legitimate sovereigns. ”

“ In Roman days, just as in our own, men looked up from Naples long before the grapes changed colour or the figs turned black, pining for the sweet breezes of Monte Sant'Angelo, and the whispering woods of Monte Coppola, where the shadows lie for half the day, and the only sounds are made by the busy hacking of the woodcutters. There is no caprice of fashion in this straining to the hills, but a natural impulse as strong as that which stops a hot and weary man beside a roadside well. Every generation of Neapolitans has come hither in the summer; everyone will do so to the end of time. ”

“ Naples seems to live only in the present, without a thought either of the past or of the future. A friend who came here a day or two before us, expressed the contrast between the two cities by saying energetically, "Naples is life: Rome is death!" Indeed, we have here a spectacle of extraordinary animation. I have seen somewhere a series of pictures of "Street Scenes in Naples," and surely no city in Europe offers a greater variety of figures and costumes, as rich and poor, princes and beggars, soldiers and priests, jostle each other in the noisy, laughing crowd. ”

“ The country between Capua and Naples displays a varied scene of lavish fertility, and with great propriety might be named Campania Felix, if the richest and most generous soil, with the mildest and most agreeable climate, were sufficient to render the inhabitants of a country happy. ”

“ The semi-culture that had been called into existence there by the Campanian Greeks, the barbaric luxury of life in Capua and the other Campanian cities, the political impotence to which the hegemony of Rome condemned them, while yet its rule was not so stern as wholly to withdraw from them the right of self-disposal—all tended to drive the youth of Campania in troops to the standards of the recruiting officers. ”

“ Here is neither the dignity of Rome nor the gracious charm of Tuscany, but another world, a life more hot and passionate, more noisy and more sensuous, a character strangely blended out of the blood of many nations—Greek, Saracen, Norman, Spaniard—each of which contributed some burning drop to the quick glow of the Campanian nature, making it both fierce and languid, keen and subtle beyond measure when its interests are engaged, capable of labour, but not loving it, easily depressed, and when thwarted turning swiftly to the thought of blood. ”

“ Capua and Campania possessed the immediate territory of Naples : the rest of the kingdom was inhabited by many warlike nations, the Marsi, the Samnites, the Apulians, and the Lucanians ; and the seacoasts had been covered by the flourishing colonies of the Greeks. We may remark, that when Augustus divided Italy into eleven regions, the little province of Istria was annexed to that seat of Roman sovereignty [77] .
The Danube and Ollyrian frontier.The European provinces of Rome were protected by the course of the Rhine and the Danube. ”

“ CAMPANIA, a territorial division of Italy. The modern district (II. below) is of much greater extent than that known by the name in ancient times.
I. Campani was the name used by the Romans to denote the inhabitants first of the town of Capua and the district subject to it, and then after its destruction in the Hannibalic war (211 B.C.) , to describe the inhabitants of the Campanian plain generally. ”

“ Lower down in the vast prospect is the chain of Campanian mountains, which seem so lofty when one cannot look beyond them; and at their feet lies Naples, that queenly city with the long sweep of coast from Posilipo to Miseno, where the flames rose from the pyre of the Trojan trumpeter. Further off again is craggy Ischia, while blue and infinitely vague upon the skyline one can see the mountains behind Gæta. ”

“ CALES (mod. Calvi) , an ancient city of Campania, belonging Originally to the Aurunci, on the Via Latina, 8 m. N.N.W. of Casilinum. It was taken by the Romans in 335 B.C., and, a colony with Latin rights of 2500 citizens having been established there, it was for a long time the centre of the Roman dominion in Campania, and the seat of the quaestor for southern Italy even down to the days of Tacitus. [1] It was an important base in the war against Hannibal, and at last refused further contributions for the war. Before 184 more settlers were sent there. ”

“ How much our Italy of Rome and Naples owes to the Apennines! How gratefully should lovers of romance and history regard that mighty chain that runs, an inland sea of crag and peak, forest and ravine, between shore and shore! Physically and morally, it is the backbone of the country, the fortress of tradition, the nurse of what our modern cant calls “plain living and high thinking.” ”

“ The recollection of the mob through which one struggled to the quay, the noise, the extortion, and the smells had faded away into the limbo of bad dreams, and I was free to go whither I would in the small portion of the day remaining and taste whichever sight of Naples pleased me first. There is nothing more bewildering to a stranger than to be turned loose in a great city with which he is imperfectly acquainted. I looked east towards the Carmine; but the handsome campanile lay far from the centre of the city. ”

“ On returning from Vesuvius or Pompeii, you enter Naples through its most animated, its most Neapolitan quarter — through that quarter in which Modern life most closely resembles the Ancient; and in which, when, on a fair-day, the thoroughfare swarms alike with Indolence and Trade, you are impressed at once with the recollection of that restless, lively race from which the population of Naples derives its origin ”

“ Naples itself, hidden from our view, lies between those distant heights and the base of Vesuvius.
But meanwhile the sun has set behind Misenum; its last rays are lighting up the cloud of smoke above Vesuvius and the summit of Monte Sant' Angelo. The brilliancy of coloring has faded; the weary eye finds rest in the soft afterglow. ”