Naples: The History and Legacy of the Prominent Italian City-State from Antiquity to Today
By Charles River Editors
The Gothic Battle of Mons Lactarius on Vesuvius by Alexander Zick
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Introduction
A medieval depiction of French troops in Naples in 1495
The history of Naples is long and tortured, or at least for centuries that was how its history has been told. [1] Inhabited almost continuously from the Neolithic era to the present, Naples was founded by the Greeks and conquered by the Romans. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Naples passed between various foreign rulers for its entire history prior to Italian unification. Starting in 1040, when the Norman French invaders conquered Campania, Naples was ruled in a dizzying succession by Germans, then French, then Spanish, then Austrians, then Spanish, then French, and then Spanish. [2]
Although it is in many ways a microcosm of European history with a revolving door of conquerors, historians like to stress the unique status of Naples thanks to these diverse influences and unique geography. Set on a bay that provided a natural harbor, Naples is home to Mount Vesuvius, the only active volcano on the European mainland. [3] When Vesuvius erupts, the Neapolitans pay the price, and it has earned its reputation as the most dangerous volcano in the world. However, the threat posed by Vesuvius is tempered by a great benefit: Naples is blessed with extremely fertile soil. [4]
The natural harbor of Naples and its position on the southwest coast of Italy helps explain its history of multiple rulers, insofar as it made Naples a central locus of trade between Italy, Greece, Byzantium, North Africa, Spain, Holland, Flanders, and Germany. Due to its strategic importance, Naples reached high levels of prosperity, and for the same reason, it also suffered as various foreign powers vied for control of the city and the surrounding area. [5]
All the while, the sheer beauty of the bay of Naples, with Vesuvius looming in the distance, has made Naples a place of endless fascination. It boasts imposing castles and fortresses, as well as twisty, turning medieval streets that are home to some of Italy’s poorest and most maligned residents. Across the bay are the islands of Capri and Ischia, which only add to the allure of the city. Furthermore, its cuisine – particularly its pizza (which was invented in Naples) [6] and its richly sweet desserts – rates amongst the most appreciated in all of Italy, no doubt thanks to the fertility of the soil that favors agricultural production.
Nonetheless, Naples does not enjoy an excellent reputation, within the context of Italy or of Europe. High rates of petty crime, a decaying urban fabric and the infamous presence of the mafia (known in Naples as the Camorra) [7] all combine to ensure fewer tourists venture to explore Naples, and many Italians (civilians and politicians alike) consider it the ultimate “problem city.” [8] Nonetheless, it bears keeping in mind the words of one of Naples’ foremost historians, John Marino, who noted, “Naples, like each of Italy’s cities, [is] unique, but far less different than is generally believed.” [9]
Today, historians have a different view of the twists and turns of the history of Naples, from the Greek founding and the Roman conquest, to the centuries under foreign rule and, finally, to its unification with Italy and present day challenges. Although Naples was constantly changing, many scholars now challenge the notion of Neapolitan tumult, arguing that it overshadows a more complex picture of a city that, in fact, enjoyed periods of stability and productivity. [10]
Naples: The History and Legacy of the Prominent Italian City-State from Antiquity to Today dives into the city's origin story, how it became one of the most important places in Europe, and its winding history. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Naples like never before.
Naples: The History and Legacy of the Prominent Italian City-State from Antiquity to Today
About Charles River Editors
Introduction
Neapolis
The Romans
Naples during the Middle Ages
Naples in the Early Modern Era
The Enlightenment
Unification
Online Resources
Bibliography
Free Books by Charles River Editors
Discounted Books by Charles River Editors
Neapolis
The city of Naples faces south onto the Bay and spans a distance of three miles, along the arc of the east coast of Italy, about two thirds of the way down the “shin” of the boot. Much like the city of Genoa to the northwest, Naples appears to rise above its harbor as if it were the seats to a watery amphitheater, with the Lower City (constructed on reclaimed land) serving as the stage. [11] While on the south it is enclosed by the waters of the Bay, to the north and to the west, the city is enclosed by a semicircle of hills, and to the east, swamps. This geography informed how the city was founded, providing certain natural limitations to the possible expansion by original Greek colonists.
A constant center of cultural contact since the 7th century BCE, the city had Greek, Roman, Gothic, Byzantine, Norman, Angevin, Aragonese, Spanish and Bourbon occupiers, but there have also been other foreign peoples in the city from the beginning.
Numerous myths surround the foundation of Naples, which is considered to be the most ancient of all the Italian metropolises. According to one, the volcanoes of southern Italy - including Vesuvius - were produced by Demeter to produce sources of light to help her daughter Persephone when she was kidnapped by Hades and brought to the underworld. The luscious spring that greets the area every year was explained as a divine celebration for the annual return of Persephone, who had been conceded a part time reprieve from her underworld home. [12]
In Book XII of Homer’s Odyssey, the story of the sirens seeks to explain the founding of Naples itself. When Odysseus managed to withstand their seduction and sailed past their shores undeterred, the Siren Parthenope despairingly threw herself into the bay and drowned. When her body washed up on the shore, the earliest Greek colonists discovered her corpse, arranged for a burial, and named their new city in her honor. [13]
An ancient depiction of Parthenope in the Odyssey
Beyond these myths, archeological evidence suggests that although Naples was formally founded in the 6th century BCE, it is possible to date earlier settlements to the ninth century BCE. The original Greek colonists first settled on Ischia in the Bay of Naples before reaching the mainland at Cumae, a promontory overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. [14] As with all their colonies, the Greeks placed a heavy emphasis on trade and shipping, which included building a walled cliff-top fortress from which they could safely arrange trade deals (probably for precious metals) with the Etruscan and Samnite peoples living in central Italy at the time. [15] Merchants in Campania also made their fortunes thanks to the plentiful crops of wine, olives, tomatoes, lemons and grain. [16]
In the earliest years of their settlement, the Cumaens (as the first Greeks of Naples were known) engaged in a number of military struggles against the Etruscans, briefly losing to them in 524 BCE and then regaining control in 474 BCE. This decisive victory cleared the way for the Cumaens to begin to develop their empire further inland. [17] This is when they esta
blished Neapolis (Greek for “New City”). [18]
Alexander van Loom’s pictures of ruins of Greek temples in the area
Thanks to the enterprising nature of the Greeks, Neapolis quickly became a flourishing civilization, and by the middle of the 5th century BCE, additional colonists arrived from Greece, making the population balloon to around 30,000 inhabitants. During the Golden Age of Athens, Neapolis benefitted from the advances of philosophy, theater, art, and literature. In many ways, this Neapolitan outpost was a godsend for the Greeks, as their culture was able to take root there and blossom after Athens started to decline in its power. In the 4th century BCE, when Syracuse, a Greek outpost in Sicily, started showing signs of economic decline, Naples became the most important Greek port in the central Mediterranean. Today, the city of Naples displays very little of its original Greek architecture, but just slightly to the south of the city, visitors can see an example of how their acropolis may have looked, as it contains one of the most complete ruins of a Greek temple in the whole Mediterranean. [19]
A picture of the area taken from the acropolis
In addition to their enterprising nature, the Greek colonists benefitted from their striking unity. They shared a single religion and they were effectively apolitical, using administrators to take care of the various areas of the city. The Greeks in Naples advocated learning and celebrated Epicureanism, the belief in a happy life. [20]
The Romans
All the thriving cultural production came to an end when the Romans began their incursions into the region of Campania in the 4th century BCE. As Rome slowly started to absorb southern Italy into its empire, the locals began to get nervous, compelling them to declare war against the Romans in 328 BCE and availing themselves of support from the nearby Samnite tribes.
The war was resolved with a treaty that made Neapolis a federated city under Roman control. This would allow Romans to have control of the port and, with it, power over commerce and economic matters. In exchange, Neapolis would receive a certain political independence and cultural protection. [21] The Romans made Neapolis a focal point of the empire, finding it to be a place of great happiness and of productivity, such that the Romans commonly referred to it as Campania felix (“happy Campania”). [22]
Despite the heavy Roman influence, the Neapolitans managed to maintain a strong attachment to their Greek identity and culture, and this sustained attachment to the east also allowed Naples to develop an early Christian community, the evidence of which is still present today in one of Italy’s most religiously devout cities. [23]
At the same time, the Romans also benefitted greatly from this cultural exchange. They were attracted to Greek culture, and after conquering most of Greece during the 2nd century BCE, the Greeks strongly influenced the Roman way of life. They enjoyed participating in Greek customs, including athletic competitions, theatrical performances, and excessive celebratory eating and drinking that often devolved into gluttony. [24] The Greeks and Romans also shared a number of fascinations; for example, they both considered the nearby volcano, Vesuvius, to be sacred because of the evidence of its vast fertility. [25] Vesuvius was often described in the literature of the classical period with reverence. [26]
During the Roman era, Neapolis became a crucial piece of their Mediterranean dominion, particularly after the fall of Carthage in the wake of the Punic Wars (264 BCE-146 BCE). [27] Market towns such as Pompeii, Capua, and Herculaneum developed into thriving commercial centers, and thanks to their control of the Bay of Naples, the Romans were able to navigate without hindrance between Asia Minor, Greece, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain. Naples was also a valuable maritime port also insofar as it allowed for the importation of slaves, which greatly increased the economic growth of the region. [28]
However, during Rome’s civil wars, Neapolis backed the losing party on two separate occasions, and as punishment, there were executions amongst the city’s upper and entrepreneurial classes. The economy of Neapolis also began to stagnate as the northern port town of Puteoli (today Pozzuoli) began to rise. Soon, Neapolis transformed into more of a resort town, rather than a commercial center, but even this proved rather advantageous in the end, as Neapolis began to benefit from the leisure travel of wealthy Romans on vacation and developed a healthy service industry that began to restore lost prosperity to the city. [29]
All of the improvements and casual joys came to a screeching halt in the late 1st century CE. Before 62 CE, the region’s inhabitants had seemingly no reason to fear its imposing neighbor. Since the time of the first Oscan settlements over 1,000 years in the past, there had been no negative impact from Vesuvius, and there was no cause for alarm since there had been no visible danger throughout both living and recorded memory. In 62 CE, however, the tectonic plate beneath Africa had been grinding against the one under Eurasia in a slow motion crash sequence millions of years in the making. Landscape features long familiar along the Italian coastline had been formed in the distant past by these pressures, including such volcanic formations as Etna, Vulcanello, Vulcano, Ischia and Stromboli. The same stresses that had formed Mount Vesuvius were building to a slow crescendo, and in 62 CE they caused violent earthquake with an epicenter near Neapolis.
The Roman writer and philosopher Seneca wrote about the earthquake in detail in his famous Quaestiones Naturales , and the sense of fear and confusion is plainly evident:
“Pompeii, the famous city in Campania, has been laid low by an earthquake which also disturbed all the adjacent districts. The city is in a pleasant bay, some distance from the open sea, and bounded by the shores of Surrentum and Stabiae on one side and of Herculaneum on the other; the shores meet there.
“In fact, it occurred in days of winter, a season which our ancestors used to claim was free from such disaster. This earthquake was on the Nones of February, in the consulship of Regulus and Verginius. It caused great destruction in Campania, which had never been safe from this danger but had never been damaged, and time and again had got off with a fright. Also, part of the town of Herculaneum is in ruins, and even the structures which are left standing are shaky. The colony of Nuceria escaped destruction but still has much to complain about. Naples also lost many private dwellings but no public buildings, and was only mildly grazed by the great disaster; but some villas collapsed, others here and there shook without damage. To these calamities others were added: they say that a flock of hundreds of sheep was killed, statues were cracked, and some people were so shocked that they wandered about as if deprived of their wits. The thread of my proposed work, and the concurrence of the disaster at this time, requires that we discuss the causes of these earthquakes.
“It is necessary to find solace for distressed people and to remove their great fear. Yet can anything seem adequately safe to anyone if the world itself is shaken, and its most solid parts collapse? Where will our fears finally be at rest if the one thing which is immovable in the universe and fixed, so as to support everything that leans upon it, starts to waver; if the earth loses the characteristic it has: stability? What hiding-place will creatures find, where will they flee in their anxiety, if fear arises from below and is drawn from the depths of the earth? There is panic on the part of all when buildings creak and give signs of falling. Then everybody hurls himself headlong outside, abandons his household possessions, and trusts to his luck in the outdoors. What hiding-place do we look to, what help, if the earth itself is causing the ruin, if what protects us, upholds us, on which cities are built, which some speak of as a kind of foundation of the universe, separates and reels?” [30]
An ancient bust of Seneca
About 6,000 feet above the area, the crest of Mount Vesuvius looked down seemingly impassively, with nobody connecting the earthquake to it. Vesuvius had been such an innocuous feature of the landscape that it was effectively invisible, and it remained silent throughout the quake and during the years that followed, with its slopes vegetated in a verdant green for all to see. Unbeknownst to those who had no grasp of
modern science, the same forces that had caused the earthquake were slowly building again before the dust had even settled.
The earthquake caused such extensive damage across the entirety of Pompeii that Emperor Nero reportedly considered abandoning the area, but it was not so easy to abandon. After all, it still had so many benefits, from its agricultural richness to its prime trading position, all of which had lured people to settle there in the first place. Furthermore, nobody had any reason to suspect that the earthquake would be repeated, or that a natural disaster of another kind was on the horizon. Thus, instead of abandoning Campania, the very opposite occurred – a horde of builders, carpenters, and masons descended on the scene, repairing things if possible and rebuilding what could not be made whole.
In early August of the year 79 CE, further tremors were felt in the countryside surrounding Pompeii, and springs and wells suddenly dried up overnight just prior to a moderate tremor on the 20th of August. Animals across the area either became increasingly excited or extremely quiet. Some people who had suffered during the quake of 62 CE noted these signs of impending danger and left, fearing what was to come, [31] but others paid no attention to these seemingly minor occurrences.
Shortly after noon, on August 24, the day was hot and the people were on edge, as there had been more ground tremors than usual around the Bay of Naples. Ironically, the day before, the city of Neapolis had just celebrated the annual Roman festival of Volcanalia, a day of ritual sacrifice and athletic celebration meant to allay fires, earthquakes, and volcanoes after the long summer heat. [32] Since the volcano had lain dormant for centuries and the people did not know how to interpret those tremors, they were caught unawares when steam started spewing from the crater of Vesuvius. By the middle of the day, dust and ash - which was propelled with such force that it reached all the way to the shores of North Africa [33] - was starting to form a massive cloud above the volcano, and it began to cause major destruction in nearby Pompeii.
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