t of the
appalling Lombard flood; Italy remains to us because of it.

Now since Cisalpine Gaul thus secured Italy, the entry from the one to
the other, the road between them must always have been of an immense
importance. That entry and that road, whenever they were in dispute,
Ravenna commanded, and a good half of her importance lies in this.

I say whenever they were in dispute: in time of peace that road and
that entry were not in the keeping of Ravenna but of Rimini.

A study of the map will show us that though the Apennines shut off
Italy proper from Cisalpine Gaul along a line roughly from Genoa to
Rimini, actually that difficult and barren range just fails to reach
the Adriatic as it curves southward to divide the peninsula in its
entire length into two not unequal parts. This failure of the
mountains quite to reach the sea leaves at this corner a narrow strip
of lowland, of marshy plain in fact, between them. Therefore the
Romans, though they were compelled to cross the Apennines, for Rome
lay upon their western side, were able to do so where they chose and
not of necessity to make the difficult passage at a crucial point.

[Illustration: Sketch Map of Ravenna region]

The road they planned and laid out, the Flaminian Way, the great north
road of the Romans, was built by Caius Flaminius the Censor about 220
B.C.[1], that is to say, immediately after the first subjection of the
Gauls south of the Po which had been largely his achievement, and for
military and political business which that achievement entailed. This
road ran from Rome directly to Ariminum (Rimini) and it crossed the
Apennines near the modern Scheggia and by the great pass of the
Furlo.[2]

[Footnote 1: It is, of course, certain that a road was in existence
long before; but not as a constructed, permanent, and military Way.]

[Footnote 2: The Furlo was to be held in the time of Aurelius Victor,
if not of Vespasian, by the fortress of Petra Pertusa.]

The first act of the Romans after the defeat of Hannibal was the
re-establishment of their fortresses at Placentia, Cremona, and Mutina
(Modena), the second was the construction of a great highway which
connected Placentia through Mutina with the Via Flaminia at Rimini.
This was the work of the Consul Aemilius Lepidus in 187 B.C. and the
road still bears his name.

It is obvious then that the command of the way from Italy into
Cisalpine Gaul, or _vice versa_, lay in the hands of Rimini, and i