What Every American Should Know About Europe

by Melissa Rossi

  At her height, the Roman Empire stretched from England to North Africa, Portugal to Yemen.

  Some historians sniff that the Romans weren’t as great as the Greeks, merely being history’s thieves—conquering ancient Greek colonies, kidnapping the culture, giving it a few twists (such as new names to Greek gods), and calling it their own. While they did indeed carry on with many Greek ideas, designs, and political practices, the Romans went further, both in the practices they introduced—building with arches and cement, for example—and in the territories they conquered. Greeks were shoreline developers who relied on their ships; Romans marched their armies inland.4

  Romans established Latin as a unifying language; introduced engineering marvels, including central heating and water-distributing aqueducts; and entrenched social practices from public baths to drunken orgies and tossing enemies to the lions. They advanced military organization, legal systems, urban planning, and government administration. Although early Romans were polytheists—worshipping Venus, Jupiter, Bacchus, and Mars—the late empire under Constantine I turned Christian, leading to another of Rome’s legacies: a Europe connected through Christianity. And the Romans brought real-life drama to a new height; it’s amazing they could get anything done with the soap operas they were living.

  JULIUS AND OTHER CAESARS

  Julius Caesar: (ca. 100–44 BC): The dictator launched the takeover of the Greek Empire, had a mad fling with Cleopatra, and was killed in Senate by his former pal Brutus.

  Augustus: (63 BC–AD 14): Named heir by Julius, Augustus permanently transformed the republic into a monarchy. A reformer who presided over a relatively peaceful era, he turned cranky in his final years—kicking out poet Ovid, for one.

  Tiberius: (42 BC–AD 37): Paranoid Tiberius had the powerful men around him knocked off, leaving only nephew Caligula as heir. Bad call: Caligula probably killed him.

  Caligula: (AD 12–41): Nuttier than the rest, torture and incest fan Caligula once sent his military to attack England, then changed his mind and sent them to pluck seashells on the French seashore instead.5 Loved his horsey so much he appointed him senator and legal adviser.

  Claudius: (10 BC–AD 54): Regarded as daft, the lame stutterer made it to emperor only because he was viewed as nonthreatening. Blew through wives, having his third killed after she had an affair. Promptly married his niece, who poisoned him.

  Nero: (AD 37–68): Mother-killer Nero was despised by his people, and his era was plagued with problems; Rome burned down under his rule—he was probably the arsonist.

  Hadrian: (AD 76–138): Expanded the empire to her farthest reaches.

  The Roman Empire split into western and eastern parts after Constantine I (AD 272–337) founded an eastern capital in today’s Istanbul in the year 295. He called it New Rome, but it was dubbed Constantinople and became the great center of the Byzantine Empire. Rome continued as a western power seat, and Constantine greatly affected that city too. After a vision of a cross in the sky with the words “in this sign you will conquer”—a sight that turned him into a Christian—he donated a palace to the bishop of Rome, who became increasingly powerful as the Catholic leader, better known today as the pope.

  The empire officially limped on until 476, but the fire was pretty much out by the third century when Vandals, Visigoths, and other ruffians began swooping in. For the next 1,400 years, the Italian peninsula was a geographical free-for-all. Sicily and Naples (together confusingly known as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies) were run first by Arabs, then by Spaniards; Rome and nearby lands were Papal States; the north was a medley of Austrian and German territories; even the French staked out land in Italy’s checkered history.

  The most powerful city-states were in the north, the mightiest and most advanced being Venice, land of courtesans, scholars, explorers, and scribes. Lying between West and East, the city of canals was a major trading center where Arabs sold spices hauled from the East; the architecture was a blend of Arabic and Roman; the aristocratic society was enlightened; and artisans excelled at lace-making and glass-blowing. Ruled by doges (dukes), Venice had remarkable naval prowess, and eventually controlled Crete and coastal territories along the Adriatic (including today’s Croatia, Slovenia, and Dalmatian Islands). The wealthiest Italian city-state and one of the most splendid European kingdoms, it was a hotbed for publishing, as well as for music.

  MARCO POLO (1254–1324)

  Venetian Marco Polo, son of an affluent merchant who traveled the Silk Road to the Far East, imprinted images of Asia on the medieval masses. After one journey, Marco’s father and uncle returned bearing a letter from Mongolian leader Kublai Khan, asking the pope to send 100 Christian educators to teach about Western life. Unable to fulfill that request, the Polos returned several years later hauling extravagant gifts and a letter from the pope, and escorting young Marco Polo. Trekking across today’s Persia, Afghanistan, Himalayas, and China, young Polo jotted notes about stones that burst into flames, pavilions that streamed with honey and wine, processions of hundreds of elephants, feasts for six thousand, money made of paper, and a sophisticated postal system. Seventeen years later, the Polos returned to Venice with their tales, which put them on the local lecture circuit. While fighting for Venice in a battle against Genoa, Marco was imprisoned for several months in 1298, during which he dictated his stories to his cellmate. Published as The Travels of Marco Polo, the book instantly elicited awe and disbelief. Skepticism about magic carpets and elephants being transported in the talons of giant birds ran so rampant that even his children thought he was joking. Called to his death bed in 1324, they begged him to admit his tales were all lies. His final words: “I have only told half of what I saw.” Modern historians greet his stories with suspicion, pointing out that despite his supposed travels to China, Marco forgot to mention tea, chopsticks, bound feet, or the Great Wall.

  By the fourteenth century, Florence rose to international stature, grew rich from the mercantile trade, and became a banking center, trading in the internationally accepted florin. A design competition held in 1402 for the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistry is viewed as the starting point of the Renaissance. For the next two centuries, the creative spark blazed across the peninsula (and Europe), although the flame burned nowhere brighter than in Firenze. Sinewy marble sculptures by Michelangelo, subtly powerful paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, the pointed writing of Dante, and the domed architecture of Brunelleschi were but a few remarkable achievements of the cultural movement that drew from classical Rome and Greece. Funded partly by the Church, the art of this golden era was also helped along by the Medicis, a family of bankers and de facto rulers of Florence. The Medicis ruled the Tuscan city into the eighteenth century and produced two popes (Leo X and Clement VII) and two queens of France (Catherine and Maria). The family that fed, financed, educated, and housed Michelangelo, Leonardo, Botticelli, and Donatello also enriched the city with churches, monasteries, libraries, and academies—all helping to make Florence the show stealer of the day.

  HISTORICAL THINKERS AND CREATORS

  Galileo (1564–1642): Dropped balls off leaning tower of Pisa to test theories of gravity; forced to recant his theory about heliocentricity.

  Brunelleschi (1377–1446): Capped Florence’s Duomo, taking inspiration from an egg that he smashed on the table to demonstrate how the dome would be done.

  Dante (1265–1321): Inspired by neighbors, friends, and popes, he caught the worst qualities of humanity and displayed them in descending levels in his Inferno.

  Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564): David, the Pietà, and the Sistine Chapel, with its famous finger-touching “Creation of Adam,” keep his name from fading; restorers do the same for his paints.

  Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519): Leonardo had creative attention deficit disorder, jumping from designing war machines (tanks, helicopters, submarines) to anatomical studies, from engineering and architecture to splendid paintings. Best known for The Last Supper and Mona Lisa’s coy smile, he tried o
ut new pigments—that’s why few of his works live on.

  Botticelli (1445–1510): Birth of Venus made fat beautiful; obese women have been describing themselves as Botticellian beauties ever since.

  Machiavelli (1469–1527): The Florentine diplomat dealt with some of the most conniving people of the day, including the murderous Borgias, and advised rulers about the subtleties of statecraft in The Prince. Fell victim to a power play: he was imprisoned, tortured, and exiled after being fingered as anti-Medici, which he probably wasn’t.

  Florence: Where the Renaissance lives on

  The Medicis’ power in the gossipy city, known for competing families and guilds, was not universally respected. In 1478, another powerful family—the Pazzi—with help from an archbishop and a nod from the pope, attacked the Medicis while they were in church, killing Giuliano, the clan’s coruler. Surviving the ordeal, Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449–1492) became known as the Savior of Florence. The corpses of the Pazzis and the archbishop were soon dangling from Palazzo Vecchio, as was the fashion of the day.

  Generous Lorenzo should never have opened his purse for radical priest Savonarola, who ran the Medicis out of town in 1494. The righteous holy man took over as the dictator of Florence, closing down wine taverns, dress shops, gambling houses, and bookstores. In 1497, he ordered all Florentine riches destroyed. Paintings of nudes, nonreligious books, splendid hats, ornate dresses, lusty poems, mirrors, and makeup were torched in the main square, vanishing in the Bonfire of the Vanities. Florentines quickly regretted that move and rose up against the zealous reformer. In 1497, Savonarola was excommunicated, and he was hanged the next year, his corpse burned in the same square where the city’s treasures had gone up in smoke.

  BIG MOUTH PATRIOT FILIPPO MAZZEI (1730–1816)

  Surgeon, diplomat, essayist, and winemaker Filippo Mazzei from Tuscany, upon invitation from the likes of Benjamin Franklin, arrived in Virginia (with tailor, cook, servants, farmworkers, and cuttings of vines) in 1773 to start the colonies’ first official vineyard. Thomas Jefferson urged Mazzei to take the plot alongside Monticello. Mazzei planted grapes and became a passionate pamphleteer and orator for the revolutionary cause, loaning sacks of money to Jefferson to aid the colonists; two centuries later, Mazzei (who also wrote a book in France about the American Revolution) was commemorated with a U.S. postal stamp. At the time, he caused numerous headaches. After a botched diplomatic venture in Paris (Ben Franklin was finally sent to seal the famous money-borrowing deal) and a stint as a thinker for the Polish king, Mazzei holed up in Tuscany (some say he was secretly shipping arms back to Virginia), plotting a return to his American vineyard. Receiving a feisty letter from Jefferson (in which the vice president lambasted George Washington and President John Adams), Mazzei trotted his translation to the newspaper in Florence. The letter was picked up by the Parisian press, and then London’s, the insult-peppered letter becoming spicier with each translation. The next year, 1797, when the “Mazzei Letter” was printed in the New York Minerva, it triggered an uproar—particularly as the newly passed Alien and Sedition Act outlawed criticism of government, and the vice president had heaped it on thick. Humiliated, Jefferson rented out Mazzei’s vineyard to Germans whose horses trampled the grapes, stamping out the wine-making experiment and Mazzei’s reason for returning. As for Mazzei’s loan to the cause, among Jefferson’s last words was a plea to repay the family Mazzei, finally accomplished quite a few decades later.6

  The crazy-quilt peninsula continued unraveling for centuries. With rulers from all across Europe, city-states were further divided by Guelph and Ghibelline factions; the former swore loyalty to the pope, the latter to the Holy Roman Emperor. Napoleon stitched the many pieces together in 1804, but that union was fleeting. However, peninsular unification appealed to some. Count Camillo Cavour, prime minister of Piedmont, hooked up with guerrilla fighter Giuseppe Garibaldi to kick out foreign leaders and rope together the assorted states as one country. Kicked off in 1859, the consolidation, (helped along by Garibaldi and his “Red Shirts”), was completed in 1871. Victor Emmanuel II, former king of Piedmont, became monarch of the new country—Italia—where only 3 percent spoke a common tongue.

  The Vatican was furious about losing its Papal States to the incoming monarchy and issued a bull (edict) demanding that Catholics not recognize the new government. Popes were so mortified about what might happen if they left the Vatican that not one ventured out for six decades, until Mussolini granted the Vatican independence in 1929, making it the world’s smallest independent state.7

  IL DUCE: BENITO MUSSOLINI (1883–1945)

  History portrays Mussolini as a fool, but the Nietzsche fan fancied himself an intellectual. As with Hitler, a frustrated painter, Mussolini was a creator—Il Duce was a novelist—and one can’t help wondering whether the world might be a less pained place if they’d both received (or deserved) a little more artistic respect. Mussolini’s novel The Cardinal’s Mistress was published in 1908, but was a bit thin on plot (a cardinal falls in love and wants out of the church, but the pope won’t let him go) and rather purple in style: “Like a boy he knelt at Claudia’s feet… ‘You will be the Madonna of the temple within me. I will be your slave. Strike me, despise me, beat me, open my veins with a subtle dagger, but grant me the revelation of yourself…’ “8 Dismayed by dismal sales, the Socialist jumped into politics, but broke with that party and started up a Fascist newspaper in 1914. Three years later he was drafted into WWI. At first aligned with Austria and Germany, Italy in typical style switched sides and went in with Britain and France. Mussolini didn’t see battle. Wounded in a drill, he returned home to perfect his writing and right-wing platform. Italy too was wounded. Financially handicapped from the beginning, Italy plowed into debt buying weapons for the Great War, and by 1918 owed about $4 billion. What’s more, the country didn’t get lands she’d been promised if she fought with the Allies.9 In 1921, Mussolini won a parliament seat during the anxious time when the country’s weak capitalist system looked likely to collapse. Mussolini stirred nationalist sentiment and boosted the sagging Italian ego. Not as captivating as Hitler, he was nevertheless rousing in his speeches and presented an alternative to the Communism that many feared. In 1922, he marched on Rome with his Fascist “blackshirts.” After he was made prime minister by weak-kneed King Victor Emmanuel III, he climbed up as leader of Italia, killing opponents, shutting out other parties, censoring the press, and creating the myth of Il Duce, a relentless workaholic with the ability to work magic for Italy on the international stage.

  So much for Mussolini’s magic; the dictator made trains run on time, but he made Italy’s name mud. Italy succeeded with her 1935 invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) after Mussolini ordered the army to use nerve gas on locals who were mostly fighting with spears, bringing the scorn of Europe upon Italia; he soon introduced work camps, torture, and death by impalement. Mussolini stripped Jews of civil rights and their jobs in 1938—before Hitler—and annexed Albania the next year. He signed up with Hitler in WWII, but Italian forces were so hideously disorganized that Nazis frequently had to bail them out.

  King Victor Emmanuel III (upon whom Mussolini had bestowed the titles of Emperor of Ethiopia and King of Albania) passively aided Mussolini during the first eleven years of his “reign.” But in July 1943, after the Allies took Sicily, Il Duce’s Fascist colleagues (including his foreign minister/son-in-law) worked with the timid king to eject Mussolini from office and into prison. Italy soon switched teams, signing an armistice and theoretically batting for the Allies. Hitler was livid, and the king and acting leader General Pietro Badoglio ran out, leaving the baffled military headless. Nazis stormed in, turning wine villas into fortresses as they battled incoming Allies; they lined roads with land mines and blew up bridges upon retreat. Although Mussolini didn’t stay behind bars for long—Nazi paratroopers launched a dramatic escape—he’d lost his popular appeal. Setting up in the north, Mussolini behaved as if he were still in power, but Hitler was call
ing the shots, including organizing deportations of Jews. While trying to sneak off to Switzerland in April 1945, Mussolini and his mistress were shot and killed by partisans near Lake Como. For days, Il Duce’s rotting corpse hung upside down in Milan, where the public defiled it, until American forces finally cut down the dead leader and buried him.

  Art lover Hitler spared Florence massive destruction, wanting to preserve her Renaissance glory. Nevertheless, he ordered bombing of all bridges spanning the Arno River, except for the Ponte Vecchio—the old covered bridge, which he demanded be saved, not suspecting that the communication wires for Florence’s resistance twisted underneath. After the war, bridges were rebuilt as they had been, using many of the same rocks, pulled out of the river.

  After twenty-four years of Fascism, Italy crawled into the postwar era as one of Europe’s most impoverished countries. In 1946, Italians voted to boot the king and become a republic. The new republic revived in the late 1950s and 1960s. Marshall Plan funds ignited an industrial boom in the north, where car manufacturers Fiat and Alfa Romeo revved up the economy; most funding for the south was sucked off by the Mafia, leaving the Mezzagiorno behind in the race. All across Italy, family-owned businesses emerged in the neighborhood borgos, and still today Italians are more likely to be self-employed or to work for a small company making clothes, leather goods, or furniture than to work for a large corporation or factory.