Journey to the Past and/or the Future

…But the lesson of southern Italy is that what goes up may come down. The disintegration of the Roman Empire resulted in the end of urban civilization in the South. Populations mysteriously disappeared, although archaeologists and historians most suspect plague and environmental collapse as the root causes.

In any case, the Mediterranean economy — based on trade — fell apart. Instead of a commercial highway for grains, olive oil, wine and manufactured goods, the Mediterranean became an invasion route.


Nature abhors a vacuum, and for more than a thousand years the depopulated, but still agriculturally productive south attracted successive invaders: Byzantines, Lombards, Saracens, Franks, Normans, Hohenstaufens (with a role for Richard the Lion-Hearted thrown in), Pisans, Genoese, Swabians, Angevins (both French and Hungarian), Ottoman Turks, Aragonese, Bourbons, French (Napoleon), and, as some southerners will still tell you, the Northern Italians who threw out the Bourbons and “united” Italy by annexing the South.

From the guidebook, it seems like every city was sacked at least once. Wars cost money then as now. The various invaders had one thing in common — they taxed the locals to pay for the privilege of being conquered and then defended from the next conqueror.

The Lookout