Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Cisalpine Gaul
The Romans didn't consider wild Cisalpine Gaul (meaning Gaul on the near side of the
Alps) part of Italy at all and stayed well away until the Gauls swept south through Etruria
and sacked Rome in 387 BC. Then they sided with the Carthaginians in the Punic Wars
(264-146 BC) so Rome marched north subduing Mediolanum (Milan) in 221 BC and es-
tablishing Roman garrisons at Piacenza, Como and Cremona. The Romanisation of the re-
gion was accomplished through a combination of military and political inducement: ad-
versaries were disarmed by the grant of citizenship (which brought with it social, legal and
economic privileges), while Roman culture wowed the masses with its impressive civic
buildings, literature and philosophy.
Julius Caesar was made consul of northern Italy in 59 BC and found it a fruitful recruit-
ment ground. He took his legions into neighbouring Gaul (modern France) on a campaign
of conquests that would last until 51 BC. They provided him with a strong enough power
base to cross the Rubicon and embark on the Italian civil war (49-46 BC) that would lead
him to absolute power in 45 BC. None of this would have been possible without the loyalty
of Cisalpine Gaul.
Mediolanum was by then a prosperous city astride key routes. The city supplied arms for
the Empire's insatiable war machine, traded wool, hides and metal, and boasted a theatre,
university, forum, mint and many fine temples and palaces, remnants of which survive in
the Basilica di San Lorenzo and the palace ruins in Via Brisa. The lakes became a favoured
holiday destination for the Roman elite; it was to a villa in Sirmione that poet Catullus re-
treated when 1st-century-BC 'It girl' Clodia Metelli broke his heart. As the Empire
crumbled in the 4th century, Mediolanum, with its strategic position by the Rhine frontier,
became home to the imperial court.
Roman Italia was a land of city-states that largely ran themselves. Yet the empire engendered loyalty and
pros-perity through free trade and a common currency, the provision of justice, and a broadminded atti-
tude about race and class that modern Europe is having trouble emulating today.
