It is a good and fair land, that bred the most savage beast in the worst conditions: the man.
I am not willing to tame my co-landers: their energy, vitality and skills are, to my opinion, ill-directed by the abuse and the arrogance of those who only leave them one way of leaving: ill-doing.
I am not beginning yet victimist another rant, on the contrary! Campania needs not that, it probably needs some help to stand, but no victimism: it has got everything that's needed to make rich and happy its people, it even has got too much!
It was always like that. It is true that (material and human) garbage today render cugly the landscape to the visitor's and the foreigner's eye, but this is its recent appearence, very much hurting and that will cost years to cleanse, but the effort will feel lighter and more acceptable if we give a look not to the devastated territory of today, but to what Nature provided.
Let us then try and understand how much this territory was incomparably rich in its natural state and let history tell that. Today I am copying an excerpt from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, “Roman Antiquities” XV, 3: it was such a beautiful land that people lost their head for it.
When Quintus Servilius (for the third time) and Gaius Marcius Rutilus were consuls, Rome was involved in grave and unexpected dangers, from which, had they not been dispelled by some divine providence, one of two evils would have befallen her — either to have got a shameful name for murdering her hosts or to have stained her hands with civil bloodshed. How she incurred these dangers I shall attempt to recount succinctly after first recalling a few of the events which preceded.
In the previous year Rome, after undertaking the Samnite war in behalf of all Campania and conquering her opponents in three battles, had wished to bring all her forces home, feeling that no further danger remained for the cities there. But when the Campanians besought the Romans not to desert them and leave them bereft of allies, declaring that the Samnites would attack them if they had no assistance from outside, it was decreed that the consul Marcus Valerius, who had freed their cities from war, should leave as large an army in those cities as they wished to support.
Having been given this authority, the consul placed in the justice all who wished to draw rations and be paid for garrison duty; the greater part of these consisted of homeless men burdened with debt, who were glad to escape poverty and the obscure life at home.
The Campanians, taking these men into their homes, welcomed them with lavish tables and entertained them with all the other marks of hospitality. For the manner of life of the Campanians is extravagant and luxurious enough now, and was then, and will be for all time to come, since they dwell in a plain that is rich in both crops and flocks and is most salubrious for men who till the soil.
At first, accordingly, the garrison gladly accepted the hospitality of these people; then, as their souls grew corrupted by the surfeit of good things, they gradually gave way to base considerations, and remarked when meeting that they would be playing the part of witless men if they left such great good fortune behind and returned to their life at Rome, where the land was wretched and there were numerous war taxes, where there was no respite from wars and evils, and the rewards for the hardships suffered by all in common were at the disposition of a few.
Those who had but an insecure livelihood and lacked daily subsistence, and even more those who were unable to discharge their debts to their creditors and declared that their necessity was a sufficient counsellor to advise them of their interests regardless of the honourable course, said that even if all the laws and magistrates should threaten them with the direst penalties, they would no longer relinquish to the Campanians their present good fortune; and finally they came to such a state of madness that they dared to talk in this fashion:
«What terrible crime, indeed, shall we be committing if we expel the Campanians and occupy their cities? For these men themselves did not acquire the land in a just manner what they occupied it aforetime, but after enjoying the hospitality of the Tyrrhenians who inhabited it, they slew all the men and took over their wives, their homes, their cities, and their land that was so well worth fighting for; so that with justice they will suffer whatever they may suffer, having themselves begun the lawless treatment of others.
«What, then, will there be to prevent our enjoying these blessings for all time to come? At any rate, the Samnites, the Sidicini, the Ausonians and all the neighbouring peoples, far from marching against us to avenge the Campanians, will believe that it is enough for them if we allow each of them to retain their own possessions.
«And the Romans perhaps will accept our action as truly an answer to prayer, ambitious as they are to rule all Italy by their own colonies; but if they pretend to be aggrieved and adjudge us enemies, they will not do us as much harm as they will suffer harm at our hands. For we will ravage their territory as much as we please, turn loose the prisoners on the country estates, free the slaves, and take our stand with their bitterest enemies, the Volscians, Tyrrhenians and Samnites, as well as with the Latins who are still wavering in their loyalty. To men driven by stern necessity and running the supreme race for their lives nothing is either impossible or able to withstand them.»
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