The Story of Verona
9781465652652
100 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
VERONA is no exception to those great cities of Italy whose origin is wrapt in a background of uncertainty and mystery. A few scattered huts on the hillside, now known as the “Colle di San Pietro,” were probably the beginnings of the town which was soon to spring up on both sides of the Adige—that mighty river that formed then as now such an important feature all round the country through which it flows, and whose waters have carried as great an amount of woe in their train as ever they have of weal. These faint beginnings of a mighty town bore probably some resemblance to the hamlets we now see in Umbria or Tuscany, dotted as they are on the slopes up which they seem to crawl with difficulty, and marking the sites where bastions, castles and strongholds were to stand in after times. For Verona was above all else a fortress. Her existence, as soon as she had assumed the proportions of a town, was essentially a military one, and the character stamped on her in those early days remains untouched to the present hour. It may be said of this beautiful city as of Zion of old: “Walk about Verona, and go round about her, and tell the towers thereof. Mark well her bulwarks. Set up her houses that ye may tell them that come after.” This injunction to chronicle the story of the older city applies equally to the one on the banks of the Adige, and sharpens the desire to do so as faithfully and lovingly as may be. The position of Verona, its vast military construction, its fortress guarded by three lines of separate forts, its arsenal and barracks, have made it, if not the first, at least one of the first military towns of Italy, and cause an ever-growing longing to investigate as to its origin and that of the people who founded it. That longing however has to be repressed, for all is dark and vague with regard to the early days of Verona. Her historians indeed claim for her an ancestry of fabulous antiquity: some asserting that she existed before Troy came into celebrity; others declaring that she was founded soon after the flood. Veronese writers lose themselves equally in discussions as to the race from whom sprang the inhabitants of their city and province. They devote pages to the subject and consider in turn the probability as to whether Etruscans, Rhetians, Euganeans, Celts, Cimbrians or Gauls were the founders. No satisfactory conclusion is reached. The mystery remains unsolved; and time and thought are alike wasted in attempting to lift a veil which has been inexorably drawn by the Past, and which she defies us to remove. There can be no doubt whatever that Verona dates from very early times, even if it is beyond the knowledge of man to assert when that date exactly was. It may be assumed however that the Etruscans had a part in her foundation, and when we bear in mind that this implies a period embracing the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., the age of the city is carried back indeed to a remote epoch. The supposition most generally accepted among Veronese writers is that their town came into being about the fourth century before the Christian era, and proofs of this are forthcoming to this day in the discoveries made in and around Verona of remains of arms, utensils, vessels, tombs, and so forth, which bear witness to the different peoples who, at one time or another, were living or ruling there, and to the period of their rule. By this means, too, evidence can be found of the dominion of the Barbarians, Gauls, and Cimbrians; and indeed to remoter times still when the age of bronze, and also the neolithic age and the prehistoric age are reached in turn.
