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La Campagna Romana antica, medioevale e moderna Professor Giuseppe Tomassetti. La Campagna Romana antica, medioevale e moderna. Vol. I.—La Campagna Romana in genere. 8vo. Pp. 354; 8 plates and 101 gures in the text. Rome: Loescher and Co., 1910. 24 lire (or 60 lire for the three volumes, which will form the complete work). Vol. II.—Le Vie Appia, Ardeatina ed Aurelia. Plates and gures in the text. 1911. 30 lire separately.

Thomas Ashby

The Classical Review / Volume 26 / Issue 01 / February 1912, pp 20 - 22 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00199299, Published online: 27 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00199299

How to cite this article: Thomas Ashby (1912). The Classical Review, 26, pp 20-22 doi:10.1017/ S0009840X00199299

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Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 150.216.68.200 on 27 Jun 2015 20 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW I LA CAMPAGNA ROMANA ANTICA, MEDIOEVALE E MODERNA. PROFESSOR GIUSEPPE TOMASSETTI. Aurelia, appeared before the author's La Campagna Rotnana antica, medioe- death; while the third, containing the vale e moderna. Vol. I.—La Cam- description of the other roads, was in pagna Roman a in genere. 8vo. preparation, and will be completed by Pp. 354; 8 plates and IOI figures in his son, Signor Francesco Tomassetti. the text. Rome : Loescher and Co., In the first volume, the section dealing 1910. 24 lire (or 60 lire for the three with the classical period is certainly the volumes, which will form the com- weakest, and not so good as we might plete work). Vol. II.—Le Vie Appia, have expected. To justify this criticism, Ardeatina ed Aurelia. Plates and a few points of detail may be mentioned. figures in the text. 1911. 30 lire The name Campagna itself is wrongly separately. derived from campus (p. 5), whereas the truth is as follows: In A.D. 292, when THE late Professor Tomassetti (for his the land tax was introduced into Italy, death occurred early in the present the first region of Augustus, which year) had long, and rightly, been re- included both Latium and Campania, garded as the best authority on the acquired the name of provincia Cam- Roman Campagna during the Middle pania, with the result that the name Ages; and his claim rested upon a Latium eventually disappeared, and the previous work on this subject, begun in name Campania, even in the time of 1879, of which the last instalment Diocletian, extended as far as Veii and appeared in 1907.1 In this work the the Via Aurelia. text dealt with the medieval period, Into the difficult questions as to the information relating to classical times origins of the various tribes which appear being relegated to the footnotes: but in the earliest legendary history of Rome although both contained much valuable and the Campagna, Professor Tomas- and hitherto unpublished information, setti does not enter deeply: and this is the fruit of the author's long and not the place to attempt to deal with patient researches, both in the archives them. But a more serious omission is of Rome and in the Campagna itself, the failure to take due account of the the information was difficult of access ; lists of the Alban confederacy and of the division of the subject-matter was the Latin league which we find in made according to roads, but there classical writers (Plin. N.H. iii. 5. 69; were no introductions, no indices, no Dion. Hal. v. 61). In both cases we clear divisions into chapters, no illus- find thirty towns mentioned, and our trations, no maps. The author himself author, who only mentions the latter, was fully conscious of these defects treats it, and perhaps rightly, as a in his first work, and, immediately ritual number, just as the cities of upon its conclusion set himself to Etruria were twelve (p. 38). The towns prepare a second, of a more general of the former body are, it is true, character, and not limited to the clas- mostly unknown to us: but the latter sical period. Of this, the first volume list is considered by Mommsen to date dealt with the Campagna as a whole, from 370 B.C. or thereabouts, and to from the historical standpoint, forming mark the closing of the confederacy, and the introduction to the other two, in the consequent fixing of the boundaries which the Campagna was to be treated of Latium. In the Augustan division topographically, each road being taken of Italy, Latium novum or adiectum was separately. Of these two, the second added, including the territory of the volume, containing the description of Volscians and Hernicans. To this our the Via Appia, Via Ardeatina, and Via author does not even allude.

1 Nor is it historically correct to La Campagna Remana del medio evo, in attribute all the various fora, or market- the Archivio del la Societa Romana di Storia Patria, vols. ii.-xxx. As the monographs on places on the high roads, to the in- each road or group of roads were completed, dividual communities (p. 39), inasmuch they were also published separately. as most of those which are actually called THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 21 Forum bear the name of their con- the Antonine Itinerary is merely an structors—Forum Clodii, Cornelii, etc.— unskilful excerpt from a map actually and were built on the roads, either at existing not later than the reign of the time of their construction or later, Caracalla, and that the Ravenna as post-stations serving towns which itinerary and the Tabula Peutingerana lay high up, away from the road. Taking are indirectly derived from the same the individual instances, we have no original (Jahreshefte des oesterr. arch. Inst. evidence for three Aricia's and three v. (1902), 33 sqq.). Labici's, but only for two of each, the Many of the illustrations, too, while old town on the hill-top and the post- interesting in themselves, need to be station by the road, as is the case with brought into a somewhat more definite Lanuvium and Alba, with which the relation with the text. post-stations of Sublanubio and Bovillae In the section dealing with the Middle correspond. Ages, on the other hand, Professor Again, it is most probably the case Tomassetti enters upon a period of that a plan of the environs of Rome which far less is known, and where, existed in a public place in Roman indeed, he himself has been our chief times {ibid.), but the forma agrorum to guide and authority. He reminds us which our author refers is not to be of the interesting fact that the tem- regarded, as would seem from his text, poral power of the Papacy originated as the earliest plan of the Campagna of from the donation by Constantine to which we have any record, inasmuch as various churches which he built in Rome, it was a map of certain lands in Cam- of many estates in the Roman Campagna pania which were resumed by the State which had belonged to the Imperial from the hands of private owners, about patrimony; though the formation of 165 B.C. (Jordan, Forma Urbis, p. 10, the suburban episcopal sees, which began not much later, was another The locality called ijVia Portuensis, down the rest of the Empire; so that we than with the Massa Festi or Fistis on find centres of population (domuscultae) the Via Labicana (p. 48). of some importance established in the There are really hardly any of the Campagna, which were succeeded by main roads in the neighbourhood of smaller nuclei. We cannot follow our Rome which are less than 14 feet wide ; author further; but certainly this por- so that the excess over the 8 feet tion of the book is of very great value, mentioned in the Digest as the width inasmuch as it is by far the best attempt of military roads, prescribed by the which has hitherto been made to give a Twelve Tables, need not have been connected account of the history of the attributed especially to the Via Appia Campagna in general from the classical period onwards. (P- 53)- That the statio peregrinorum et fru- We may notice, in passing, that < mentariorum at the third mile of the Via absenteeism has been as great an evii Appia was a post of gendarmerie for up to recent times as it was at the close guarding the road is impossible (p. 57). of the Republic. This was not at all the function of these In the valuable ' chronologico-bib- troops, which were employed for the liographical' section, we may notice conveyance of dispatches, etc.; the that the description of the works of phraseology itself, too, shows that the Piranesi is not clear and accurate author is not aware that the two terms (p. 226). He left, not drawings, but are identical. engravings, the plates of which are Nor does our author allude in his still preserved, to the total number of account of the itineraries (p. 59) to 1,180. The work, bearing the date 1756, Rubitschek's very plausible theory, that in 4 vols., referred to in the text, is the 22 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW the Antichita Romane, a small section of It is interesting to note that the Via the whole. Appia, while important throughout the Nor is the account of the drawings Middle Ages for its religious memories, of Labruzzi in my possession correct had entirely ceased to be a through (p. 229). As I clearly stated in my route to Naples, owing to the disrepair account of them in the Melanges de into which the section through the VEcole Frangaise de Rome, (1903), the Pomptine Marshes had fallen; and total number is 226, and 48 of these travellers, if they did not prefer the have been engraved, but another set of inland route by the Via Labicana, had 188 identical drawings now belongs to to follow the old Volscian road at the the Biblioteca Sarti, the property of the foot of the hills (p. 12). The great castle Commune of Rome. The 47 draw- of the Caetani at the tomb of Caecilia ings referred to are those made by Metella, built right across the road, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, on the Via enabled them to levy toll on passers-by, Latina, between Rome and Capua. and led no doubt to the abandonment The second volume deals with the of the road (p. 66), and to the com- Via Appia, the Via Ardeatina, and the paratively good preservation of the Via Aurelia. The first of these, the tombs and other buildings along its most famous of Roman roads, has not course—which, however, extend con- even yet been worthily described ; and siderably beyond the limits of the land the task of dealing with the enormous expropriated on each side of the road mass of discoveries which have been by Pius IX (p. 77). made in the cemeteries and groups of Our author justly remarks that the tombs of its first few miles1 is indeed formation of the so-called Passeggiata a difficult one—almost impossible to Archeologica, already much discussed attempt with any hope of success, until in the Press, led to not unreasonable the indices to volume vi. of the Corpus hopes of extensive and important ex- Inscriptionum Latinarum shall have ap- cavations along the first portion of the peared. Professor Tomassetti, in whose road, immediately outside the Porta original work the section dealing with Capena—hopes which do not seem des- this road was one of the weakest on tined to present realisation (pp. 13 sqq.). the archaeological side, does not aim at On the other hand, the excavations absolute completeness, but deals with made by the Lugari family at the fourth the more interesting and important mile of the road (p. 85) have not so far objects that meet us along this portion been adequately described. We may of the road : so that it will be better to note in this connexion, that the illus- examine his work in points of detail. tration on p. 82 (Fig. 21) does not re- Thus it seems a correct deduction that the present the so-called tomb of S. Urbano, Via Appia must have existed, as a track but a smaller brick tomb a little further at any rate, before it was converted by along the road. Appius Claudius into a military high- Space will not permit of a detailed way, and that it was probably known analysis of the rest of the description of in this early period as Via Albana, just the Via Appia, nor of the accounts as the Via Praenestina was originally given of the other two roads, but the Via Gabina, the Via Nomentana, enough has been said to show that, the Via Ficulensis, etc. (p. 8). On the while the present work cannot be re- other hand, his dating (ibid.) of the garded as final—and indeed finality, in inscription C.I.L. vi. 1270 with regard dealing with so complex a subject as to the regulation of the Clivus Martis the topography and archaeology of the as ' only shortly after' the time of Roman Campagna, is not to be hoped Appius is impossible: it can hardly be for—it is a most valuable contribution earlier than the period of Sulla. to our knowledge of it from the pen of one of those who knew it best, and 1 In the Vigna Moroni alone, on the right whose death will be sincerely regretted within the walls, not less than 100 columbaria by all who knew him. have, at one time and another, been discovered (P- 32)- THOMAS ASHBY..