THE ITALIAN LANDCAPE
The surrounding mountains and seas did not isolate the peninsula. Although the Alps seem quite formidable from the Italian side, large-scale movement across them has always been possible, and the inhabitants of the Po Valley have often had clos¬er cultural links and firmer and friendlier relations with groups across the northern mountains than they did with peoples to their south. From an early period, ships have traveled from Italy across the Mediterranean, moving goods, people, ideas, and institutions.
Much of this traffic was only local, but at times long-distance commerce developed and flourished. Before Rome succeeded in dominating the peninsula, seaborne connections flourished only fitfully along the Adriatic, al-though the mouth of the Po River on occasion received much trade. The penin-sula’s southern and western shores were more open. Good harbors could be found along the coasts of the Ionian and Tyrrhenian seas, and the richer and more exten-sive plains provided valuable hinterlands.
Italy occupies a strategic point in the Mediterranean world. The island of Sicily, off the southwest tip of the peninsula, divides the Mediterranean Sea in two, and maritime traffic between east and west necessarily passes by the island. Ships seeking to enter the Tyrrhenian Sea from the Ionian and Sicilian seas had to pass through the narrow Straits of Messina before they could proceed north along the Italian coast or west along the north shore of Sicily. This passage could be dan-gerous: Greek writers would place there the whirlpool Charybdis and the monster Scylla, who fed on ships’ crews. Other important routes passed to the south of the island, eventually funneling through the passage between western Sicily and Cape Bon in modern Tunisia, about 100 miles away (160 km). The island could also serve as a virtual bridge between Italy and North Africa, facilitating north-south traffic across the central Mediterranean. In later periods maritime powers often fought for control of the island, and the state that ultimately would dominate it could expand east and west with some ease.
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