the Goths and Ravenna

Somehow I made it this far in life, even as a two-time visitor to Ravenna (Italy), without realizing that ancient Ravenna had very much the same look as present-day Venice. That certainly explains much of its defensive appeal.

In any case, the following Gibbon passage is about as hilariously devastating a critique as one could ever make of a government. The reference is to the Gothic general Alaric lurking around northern Italy looking for a third chance to pillage Rome, while the ultra-weak Emperor Honorius sits in Ravenna doing nothing much to stop him. And by the way, these are the opening words of Chapter XXXI, which somehow makes them all the more devastating:

“The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may often assume the appearance, and produce the effects, of a treasonable correspondence with the public enemy. If Alaric himself had been introduced into the council of Ravenna, he would probably have advised the same measures which were actually pursued by the ministers of Honorius.”

The dwindling status of Rome can be seen in the fact that only three times in the preceding century (before 400 A.D.) did an Emperor bother to visit the original capital of the Empire. We find Emperors not only in Constantinople, but also Ravenna, Milan, Trier, sometimes Paris, and other places. But rarely in Rome anymore.