Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/A walk out of Ravenna
A WALK OUT OF RAVENNA.
It requires a good treat in prospect to take one for a hot walk in the dusty, dreary road towards Rimini. Yet it is something to go the same way the first Cæsar did with his one legion, when he had decided upon “crossing the Rubicon,” and to visit the spot where the second Cæsar formed his Portsmouth on the Adriatic, and where imperial fleets could ride two to three hundred strong over spots which are now covered by the pine and juniper, or offering a poor return to the agriculturist. But, for those who care more about seeing than imagining, the thrilling intimation in the Guide-book about a Basilica which forms a “finer specimen of Christian art than any which can be found even in Rome,” forms the true antidote to fatigue and heat in reaching it.
So we start from the Spada d’Oro, and on our way to the Porta Nuova look once again at the remains of the palace of Theodoric, at its old windows and the assumed sarcophagus in the wall, and moralise upon the fact that, like other non-historic buildings, it bears the announcement “apartments to let,” and looks as if they ought not to be expensive ones. We stand once more in the nave of the fine church the royal Goth built at the beginning of the sixth century, as a cathedral for his Arian bishops, and rejoice to find that there at least there is nothing “to let.” After thirteen centuries the twenty-two virgins still offer their vows to the Virgin, and the twenty-five saints theirs to the Saviour, in the fine mosaic which lines the walls of the Clerestory almost from end to end. Other sights then gladden the eye of the antiquarian; but our purpose is a walk, and we must not stop there any longer. The Greek cross by the roadside, outside the walls, reminds us that we are walking on a broad turnpike road, over the site of what was some three hundred years ago a fine Basilica, which had descended from the times when Cæsarea spread far and near, as a sort of Portsea, over lands which are now traversed only by the labourer and the harvestman.
A mile or so farther on we enter upon a flat, marshy region, from which everything like an eminence looks quite blue in the distance, and which has but a detached building or two where once, before the fierce Lombard came, was a flourishing community of inhabitants. Country people now stand about spearing fish in ditches, where “Jack ashore” once had his “fiddle and his glass,” or his other entertainment, in stately classic; the lizards look in vain for a sunny stone to scramble on out of all the edifices that used to cover the ground; the rats alone execute their advance and retreat in the banks where the Roman marines used to drill; and, where dainty figures used to glide in and out of the houses, the long snake wriggles in and out of the scanty road-grass, in and out of the poisonous-looking water. In this malarious tract, almost alone, but not yet quite forgotten, the noble old church of S. Apollinaris in Classe still rears its venerable form as proudly as when it was built and consecrated, much as it now is, in the early part of the sixth century. To be sure, a large part of its exterior quadraporticus is gone, and the round belfry, 120 feet high and 33 feet in diameter, is patched, cracked, and entirely hollow throughout; still the body of the building, made of the thin Roman tile, looks perfectly sound after more than 1300 years of service; and those who wish to know what the old architects could do with the round arch, and by their simple arrangement of details, may chance to come away with an alleviated mania for what is called Gothic. But we are speaking of the inside by anticipation, and have to apply first for admittance at the sort of farm-cottage by, from which we find ourselves conducted by a cicerone in the garb of a Franciscan friar, who lets us in by a side-door into the Basilica. He is aware that only a word or two of what he says is understood, still he goes on undismayed with his tale of what has been in, that ancient fane, compared with what now is. More intelligible by his gestures than by the utterance of his gentle plaintive voice, he directs our attention now to the scale and proportions of the whole building, now to the fine pillars of Greek marble, now to the mosaics of the tribune coeval with the church, but almost undimmed by the succession of ages since they were first admired, then to the portraits of the 125 bishops and archbishops of the see, and then again to the large and fine sarcophagi that inclose the bones of some of them, and are now silent witnesses of the affectionate munificence of times gone by. The floor, where the Emperor Otho passed his forty days of penance, is now dank and chilly even in the heats of summer; the walls have been denuded of their marbles, carried off by Sigismund Malatesta to Rimini; mustiness broods over the less conspicuous objects; and the sated thoughts contemplate at last a reappearance outside amongst the ditches and the rushes and the pools tenanted by native races, of which frogs and toads form the more or less elegant representatives. We incur a mild rebuke from our Capuchin for offering one of his order the coin he puts for us into the alms-box, and then the rusty iron gate creaks on its hinges as we pass through what was once the well-frequented chief entrance of the Basilica. Looking around us, we see the celebrated Pine Forest, once the great resource for Roman ship-builders, apparently so close that we are easily lured onwards to seek a lounge amidst its shade and sylvan beauties, before returning to the rough streets and dull circumstantials of the old city of the Gracchi. The road by which it is accessible proves to be much longer than we anticipated; the heat is dissolving and paralysing; the dust occasionally stifling; and the known insalubrity of the region suggests unwelcome experience of one of its fevers in an unacclimatized constitution. But our attention is attracted by a something novel and puzzling:—bundles of human clothing appear moving along mysteriously at a certain height from the ground, and the rank vegetation does not at first allow us to detect the machinery with which they are connected. First, two or three apparitions of this sort excite our curiosity, then the rising up of erect figures amongst the larger numbers of fifty to a hundred, which we gradually discover elsewhere, clearly proves to us that the bundles have real live flesh and blood inside them, and it remains to be ascertained what in the world people can be doing so carefully under the broiling sun in what appears so unlikely a place for anything to repay their trouble. We execute a skilful flank movement along one of the less precarious looking of the little dykes which we observe dividing the land into square inclosures, and so contrive gradually to approach a party we have selected for inspection. The mystery is solved by finding that we are forming our first acquaintance with the details of “rice” cultivation; and in the scene before us we have a representation, on European principles, of the outline of slave-labour, such as we imagine it to appear elsewhere. The most prominent figure is a tall, swarthy man, generally holding a sort of tall wooden prong, and his authority seems a little rigidly exerted over the batch of female “workers" under his direction. The fields are several inches under water, as they are allowed to be in Italy during the whole period of growth of the rice plant; and men may often in Lombardy be seen mowing it up to their knees in the genial fluid, which is said to support the weakness of the stalk. The poor women, whom we reach in our walk, look at a little distance like so many monstrous human Cochin-Chinas,—the result of being obliged to remain perpetually in a low stooping posture, without soaking or perhaps being interfered with by their drapery. The difficulty of keeping their drapery permanently out of the water is so great, that they are obliged constantly to get upon the dykes, and there repeat what is evidently a very skilful arrangement under the circumstances, but the nature of which we need not divulge until rices come to be extensively cultivated amongst ourselves. Hour after hour they move about on the slimy bottom of the flooded field, inhaling the marshy exhalations, baked in the noon-tide blaze, pulling up with aged or childish hands the obstructive weeds, or otherwise preparing in spring for the autumn crop of rice. Refreshed now and then with a draught of purer water than what surrounds them, old and young amongst them contrive, even in a posture not best adapted for vocalisation, to strike up a faint chorus, and suggest the idea of contentment with their lot, while it may chance to carry their thoughts for a while elsewhere, or lessen the sense of vertebral dislocation. On the whole, the sort of work is not probably so unhealthy as rice-cultivation in the swamps of America; but it is acknowledged to be dangerous in the Milanese district, and cannot well be less so at Ravenna. If it were ever so innocuous, it is difficult to suppose it over-pleasant to those who are employed in it.
As for the glades of the Pine Forest, to which we resort after our other wanderings, they have had great poets and writers to expatiate upon them, and we can only say that they are not likely to disappoint expectation. The trees are fine, the undergrowth not uncomfortably tangled, the sward is velvety, the acres of drying cones a novel item in commerce, and away from the marshy spots all combines to form an agreeable and sweet-scented retreat.