As we entered the harbour of Gravosa we passed on our left an enticing watery gorge, which I am doubtful whether to call sea or river. This is known as the Valle d’Ombla; and as it presents one of the most extraordinary natural phenomena in the whole of Dalmatia, and is withal a most favourite pleasaunce of Ragusan citizens, I did not omit to pay my devoirs to it during my stay in the city of the Argosies.

For two miles and a half after leaving the harbour of Gravosa our boat (for it is best approached by water) sailed up a broad and winding channel of the most exquisite crystalline blue, reflecting on either side rocky heights, and lower slopes covered with cypresses and olives, and here and there dotted with white villas and cottages. About two miles and a half from the point where this inlet debouches into the harbour of Gravosa, the channel suddenly narrowed, and the boat had to be propelled up the river proper, which is rapid and of considerable volume. Its whole course was not more than a mile.

A little way beyond a church called Rosgiatto, rose before us a precipitous limestone mountain, whose ridge forms the boundary of the Herzegovina, and beyond which we heard distinctly the noise of an engagement then going on between the insurgents and the Turks. At the foot of this mountain the river Ombla springs from the bowels of the earth, with sufficient energy to work a mill at its very source, and in such volume that we may safely echo the words of the Ragusan poet, Elio Cervino:—

At the mill, which has several large water-wheels, we landed, and from beneath the shadow of a fig-tree, then laden with golden fruit, surveyed this stupendous spring.

The source itself is nearly forty yards in breadth, squaring off against a wall of naked limestone rock which rises above it nearly perpendicularly, some fifteen hundred feet. So untroubled is the pool, so still is all around, that you can hardly realise that a river is welling up from far below. Here and there, however, the glassy surface seems to swell and heave, and in places the waters take a mysterious intensity of sapphire that speaks of unfathomable depths. For centuries indeed the sources remained unfathomed, and it needed a line eighteen hundred feet long before the bottom was reached at last![320] The mystery of the Ombla’s origin has been solved by observing the sympathy in ebb and flow which it shows with an inland river, the Trebinjštica, on which lies the old Herzegovinian city of Trebinje. This river is absorbed by Mother Earth in two several places, and one of its swallow-holes is distant about seven miles, as the crow flies, from the source of the Ombla. Thus the river must pass right under a mountain chain, and accomplish many miles of underground meanderings before it again emerges.

The Ombla appears to have been known to the ancients as the Arion, and Virgil might well have given it a preference of immortality over the Timavus, whose springs are too scattered and of too small a volume to impress the spectator. Doubtless Arion had his nymphs, and certainly in mediæval times they seem to have found their successor, even as the mossy cell of nymph Egeria became the heritage of Santa Rosalia. Just above the source, amidst a shady grove of fig-trees, I came upon the ruins of a chapel with some fair fifteenth-century mouldings, and, carved over a doorway, an angel and St. Mary with the inscription AVE GRACIA PLENA, which would indicate the Christian Nymph of the Source to have been no other than Our Lady.

But let us leave this pleasant resort, and resume our way to Ragusa herself.

As we mounted upwards over the neck of land which separates the modern port of Ragusa from the ancient city, a magnificent view of the land-locked harbour of Ragusa, and the shipping anchored on its tranquil waters, opened out behind us. The stern rocky heights which keep watch and ward over this fiord of Southern sea, and shield it from the fierce blasts of Bora and Scirocco, soften down perforce as they approach that wondrous ultramarine margin. This old historic shore—it too has ‘espoused the everlasting sea,’ and clothes itself in raiment worthy of the consort that slumbers in its ample bosom! Luxuriant vines, pale olive woods, and thickets of stately cypresses overspread the lower slopes; and this Southern vegetation, with its alternating gloom and pallor, embosoms the red-tiled roofs and white walls, of the pretty little villas, perfumed by gardens where roses and verbenas mingle with the citron and myrtle of a more tropical flora. Here and there was a less pleasing spectacle—a foretaste of that melancholy flavour which will assert itself in the Ragusa of to-day. Once or twice we came upon the deserted shell of what had been the country seat of one of the merchant princes of the palmier days of the republic, standing with ruinous walls and charred rafters just as it was left seventy years ago, when the barbarous Black Mountaineers and Russians sacked the suburbs of Ragusa.

The road by which we ascended was lined with laburnums and acacias. We passed two exquisite rocky coves, revealing glimpses of blue sea far below us, and now began to descend towards the city itself. We marvelled to see amongst the rocks and gardens by the roadside, thickets of rosy oleander, the spiry flowers of aloes, and here and there a palm-tree flourishing in the open air. Then we passed an open public garden with a brilliant array of flowers; and just outside the Porta Pille, the land-gate of Ragusa, we discovered, in a pleasant grove of plane-trees, a small hotel, the Albergo al Boschetto, where we settle down once more into civilized life, in a room overlooking a beautiful gully of sea.

But how tenfold delightful are all these varying beauties of sea and land to pilgrims like ourselves, fresh from the terrible limestone wilderness of the interior! What balm in this tropical luxuriance of flowers and foliage to eyes dazed with the pitiless glare of naked rocks! What peace in the rhythmic murmur of the waves and ‘the unnumbered smile’ of the ocean below us! And hardly less refreshing is it to the spirits of those—who, like Childe Harold, have penetrated

—to find ourselves once more among associations as great as any that ennoble the haunts of man.

Here, at last, after painfully exploring some of the turbid streams and runnels of the mediæval civilisation of Bosnia, we take our seat beside the fountain-head of Illyrian culture. This is the city which claims as her proudest title that she has been ‘the Athens of Illyria.’ This is the sweet interpreter between the wisdom of the ancients and the rude Sclavonic mind, who acclimatized on Dalmatian soil the flowers of Greek and Italian genius. This is the nursing mother of those enterprising merchants who in the Middle Ages laid bare the mineral wealth of the Bosnian mountains, and infused the spirit of commerce into their inmost recesses. This is ‘the Palmyra between great empires,’ the City of Refuge which received, within walls that never betrayed a fugitive, the hunted remnants of Christian chivalry who, when Bosnia was trodden down beneath the hoofs of the Infidel, preferred exile to renegation.

For her allotted part of interpreter between Italian and Sclave, Ragusa was fitted by her very origin.[321] Her citizens can trace their lineal descent from the inhabitants of the Greco-Roman Republic of Epidaurus. When the Sclavonic barbarians, descending from the mountains of the interior, destroyed the ancient city of Epidaurus, the Roman survivors emigrated in a body to the present site of Ragusa, then a peninsular rock. Ragusa thus stands to Epidaurus in the same filial relation in which Venice stands to Aquileja and Patavium, and Spalato to Salona.

The site of the ancient Epidaurus, to exploring of which I devoted a day of my sojourn here, lies on the south-eastern horn of the bay on which Ragusa herself is situated. The site is covered by a small modern town called, by a strange transference of names, Ragusa Vecchia; for the same pride of origin which induced the citizens of mediæval Ragusa to style their city ‘Epidaura,’ led them further to speak of their ancient Epidauritan seats as ‘Old Ragusa.’

I took my place in the capacious trabaccolo which fulfils the function of ferry-boat between New and Old Ragusa, and a friendly Maestro filling our lateen sail as we glided beyond the shelter of the Isle of Lacroma and the haven of the Argosies, we had soon accomplished our eight miles’ voyage, and were entering the harbour of Ragusa Vecchia. This little town, in which most of the relics of the ancient Epidaurus are discovered, lies on a small two-humped peninsula, and is so nearly an island that at one point the two seas are separated only by a neck of land some dozen yards broad, and raised not more than a foot or two above sea level. This answers very well to the accounts of ancient Epidaurus which have come down to us; for we read that the original city was on an island till it was joined to the mainland by an earthquake; and Procopius, writing in the sixth century, tells us that Epidaurus had two harbours. Everywhere around one seems to trace the volcanic activity which, to the Greco-Roman city as well as to her offspring Ragusa, was ever the most terrible foe. The rocks that start up from the sea at the nose of the present peninsula are but so many fragments from the wreck of the old Epidauran site. Indeed, it is evident that Epidaurus covered a much larger area than the site of Ragusa Vecchia can supply; besides the remains on the peninsula, many, and amongst them the tomb of a P. Cornelius Dolabella, have come to light on the plain to the east about the modern village of Obod, which, I take it, preserves, in a Sclavonic disguise, the first two syllables of Epidaurus. In the adjoining bay of St. Ivan the walls of the Roman houses are, I was assured, distinctly visible beneath the surface of the sea, which proves that here a great subsidence of land has taken place within historic times.

At Ragusa Vecchia I found an intelligent peasant, who took me round to show me all the old stones that were known of in the place; and as others of the Ragusa Vecchian inhabitants showed a good-natured readiness to aid my search, and nobody minded my entering their abode, I had soon seen quite a museum of Roman antiquities scattered among old walls and cottage yards, and was so far successful as to come upon some inscriptions that have not been hitherto described,[322] and at least one piece of sculpture on which the antiquary’s eye had never gazed. There were two antique bas-reliefs walled into the houses of the quay—a Cupid, and a female figure, by a chariot, perhaps intended for Amphitritè, but very badly executed. On a column in another part of the town was a comic head of good workmanship; and walled into a cottage yard a very fine effigy of a Roman Signifer, holding an ensign, and coifed in a lion-skin cap, like many standard-bearers on Trajan’s Column, which this figure much recalled. Our soldier was shod in curious sandals, and wore at his side a short sword with a curved handle, much resembling a modern Dalmatian knife.

On the peninsula I also saw nine more or less perfect Roman inscriptions, one of considerable interest, as it bore witness to the existence here of an Ordo decurionatus or municipal senate. Other inscriptions were to be seen on the mainland towards the village of Sveti Ivan, and the owner of some oliveyards here showed me some mortuary inscriptions engraved on the huge scattered blocks with which the heights, which here rise above the sea, are everywhere strewn. How terrible is the nakedness of this land, where monuments stand ready for the graver!

Overlooking the bay of St. Ivan, and the peninsula of Ragusa Vecchia, rises a rocky hill known as the Colle San Giorgio, up which I ascended to investigate a monument which had accidentally been found there, not long since, by a party of sailors belonging to the Greek communion. The way in which in which it was discovered is interesting, as it was due to the not altogether chance coincidence of two superstitions. Just below the hill to the east is a Greek church, duly oriented; and the sailors, standing against the wall at the west end, were gazing idly at the hill in front, when a curious rock facing due east caught their eye; and climbing up to examine it more closely, they found that an ancient bas-relief was sculptured on it, which they presently laid completely bare by pulling away some rocks which had fallen against it. Nobody could give me a clearer account of the design than that it represented a man and a bull; but on arriving at the spot, I found that it was, as I expected, a Mithraic monument of a not unfrequent kind. The carving on the slab, which was much mutilated and of very inferior art, represented Mithra, in flowing mantle and tunic, sacrificing a bull, on which he was kneeling in the usual attitude. To the left and right of this central subject was an attendant—he to the left holding out one arm, apparently to hold the bull’s horn. Below this device the slab seemed hollowed out, and though the rocks in front were too large to remove without artificial aid, it seemed quite possible that there might be a Mithraic cavern underneath.

From this hill were pointed out to me the traces of the ancient aqueduct of Epidaurus, which ran right across the plain to the limestone mountain beyond. Here out of the rock gushes a glacier-cool underground stream, one of the effluents, it is supposed, of the Trebinjštica, which the aqueduct once conveyed to the Greco-Roman city. The plain through which it ran is still known as Canali from this Roman work, and this whole district was known to its early Sclavonic conquerors as the Župa Canawlovska. Some remains of this work are to be seen where it abuts on the rocky peninsula of Ragusa Vecchia, but there is nothing here to remind one of the soaring arches of Salona.

The point where the aqueduct abuts on the rock of Ragusa Vecchia is, however, remarkable for other reasons. It is just about here that quantities of antique gems have been discovered, and one would suppose that this was the lapidaries’ quarter of ancient Epidaurus. I have looked through a great number of these, and have been so fortunate as to obtain many, some here and some at Ragusa. It is remarkable that the habit of wearing engraved gems has survived among the peasants who occupy the modern site of Epidaurus. The Ragusa-Vecchians and Canalese take the ancient intaglios that they from time to time pick up, and exchange them with the jewellers of Ragusa for new gems of coarse Italian fabric! The engraved stones found here are mostly carnelian, agate, sard, bloodstone, onyx, and a few carbuncles. They are of various qualities and dates; some, as can be told not only from their execution, but from the Greek letters which appear on them, dating back to the Hellenic period of Epidaurus; but most are Roman, and of inferior workmanship.

Nor, as I have already pointed out, does Epidaurus stand alone in this fecundity of gems. The same phenomenon, to a greater or less extent, characterises the remains of all the Roman sites in Illyria with which I am acquainted. The sites of the ancient Narona, Salona, and Ænona are equally prolific. From Salona there is a fine selection in the museum at Spalato, and the Direttore, Signor Glavinich, showed me one there which he believes to represent an early king of Illyria.

Yet, as stones adapted for these ornamental purposes are not to be found on the Dalmatian shores, it seems difficult to account for their abundance on the Roman sites of the coast-land. Whence were they derived?

The clue towards solving the mystery is, I think, to be found in the abundance, in the interior of Bosnia and the Herzegovina, of just the same stones engraved as Turkish amulets and talismans, to which attention has been called already. In parts of the Herzegovina these stones are accounted so cheap that they are worn for merely ornamental purposes. Some of the rayah women, who had taken refuge in Ragusa from Nevešinje and the neighbouring districts of the Herzegovina, wore broad belts studded like ephods with suchlike stones. These were mostly, like the antique gems of Epidaurus, carnelian and agate, but I also noticed a few amethysts and one or two roots-of-emerald; they were rudely cut, and none, as far as I saw, engraved. On enquiring whence they came, the women told me that they picked them up in their own country, especially in a valley near Nevešinje. Here, it seems to me, is the true clue to the origin of the Roman intaglios. The raw material must have been gathered in these inland valleys, and thence carried to Narona, Epidaurus, and the other great coast cities, there to be engraved with the elegant designs of classical mythology. That there was a regular manufacture of such bijouterie in the Roman cities of Dalmatia seems to be proved not only by the great abundance of these gems on their sites, but also by the fact that a very large proportion of these had evidently never been set in rings and other articles of jewellery, which would certainly be their ultimate destination. In those found near the head of the aqueduct in Ragusa Vecchia, we have doubtless the stock-in-trade of some lapidary, probably lost during one of the earthquakes from which the ancient city suffered; and Signor Glavinich told me that he was convinced that Salona had been the seat of a regular manufacture of Roman gems.[323] Doubtless, were there sufficient evidence forthcoming, it would be found that Roman Dalmatia was the seat of an export trade in such articles with other provinces of the empire.

Some of the gems which I obtained from the site of Epidaurus bore allusion to the Mithraic cult, the existence of which is witnessed to by the monument on the Colle S. Giorgio. Two gems, one a bloodstone representing Æsculapius with his serpent-staff; and another, a carnelian, on which the same god of medicine stands side by side with his companion Salus, were especially interesting as bearing allusion to another Epidauritan cult of which we have historic evidence.

The Illyrian Epidaurus laid equal claim with her two Peloponnesian namesakes to be the chosen seat of the god of healing, from whom the inhabitants of this part are even said to have called themselves Asklepitani. The temple of Æsculapius at the Saronic Epidaurus was indeed of more world-wide celebrity among the ancients, and it was from this that the cult was grafted on to Rome itself; but perhaps if we knew more, it would be found that this Illyrian city could boast a greater antiquity for her worship. Here, at least, this form of serpent-worship seems to fit on to another, the Phœnician origin of which is beyond question, and which is intimately connected with the earliest historic traditions of this coast.

This district has been identified with that of the Encheleans, the Illyrian people with whom Cadmus and his wife took refuge according to the legend. Near here, according to ancient geographers, rose the rocks of Cadmus and Harmonia, where was the sacred cavern in which they were metamorphosed into dragons. Cadmus—whose very name is equivalent to ‘the East’—was recognised by the Greeks themselves as of Phœnician origin, and the whole myth is generally accepted as bearing reference to the civilising influence of Phœnician colonies on the Hellenic border.

It certainly seems more than a coincidence that the mythic account of Cadmus should connect him with this part of Illyricum, where we know not only from historical sources, but from actual remains, that Phœnician settlements existed in very early times. One account of the origin of the neighbouring city of Narona or Narbona makes it a Phœnician colony; the island of Meleda, whose ancient name is identical with that of the Phœnician Malta, the island of Lagosta, and others contain Phœnician inscriptions. What more natural than that the serpent-worship of these coasts should have been derived from the votaries of Esmun?

At the present day the Canalese peasants who inhabit the district about the site of ancient Epidaurus differ so essentially in face and form from the surrounding Sclavonic races whose language they speak, and are so Oriental in their appearance, that Appendini, the historian of Ragusa, has recorded an opinion that they are nothing else than descendants of the old Phœnician colonists of this coast. He would be indeed a bold man who should accept this theory without reserve, but I can bear the most emphatic testimony to the existence of a strikingly Oriental type in this neighbourhood. In Ragusa Vecchia itself the countenances struck me as of ordinary Serbian or Italian types. But in the market-place of Ragusa I noticed three peasant women whose faces bespoke, as plainly as faces can speak, an entirely different origin. On enquiring whence they came I found them to be natives of the Golfo di Breno, a cove about three miles distant from the site of Epidaurus. The faces were strikingly alike. They were long and narrow, the nose thin and long, very finely chiselled, and inclined to be aquiline, their eyes black, and their tresses to match. The big gold beads of her necklace, and the brilliant red and orange kerchief that coifs her head, are the same as those worn by her Serbo-Italian neighbours; but, assuredly, the face of the girl I sketched is that of a Syrian rather than a Serbian beauty!

But to return to Cadmus. The modern Ragusa-Vecchians and Canalese cling with obstinacy to the tradition that a capacious cavern which opens beyond the Pianusa Canalitana, on the limestone steep of Mt. Sniesnica, is the very subterranean shrine where Cadmus and Harmonia were metamorphosed into serpents, and where afterwards Æsculapius kept his. It is still known as the Grotta d’Escolapio. Being four hours distant from Ragusa Vecchia, I had not opportunity to visit it; but Appendini, who explored it, has left a curious account of the cavern, which is very beautiful. Most interesting is the way in which Sclavonic mythology has appropriated the haunts of classical legend. The Vila herself, under a thin Italian disguise, has taken up her abode in the cavern of Cadmus and Æsculapius, and a religious awe falls on the Canalese peasant as he points out the Vasca della Ninfa. This is a natural vase formed by the stalagmite, looking into which, Appendini descried beneath the water three coins—offerings, doubtless, made to the goddess of the grot by her peasant votaries; but when this impious mortal would have put forth his hand and taken them up, his terrified guide restrained him—he knew that the cavern would close its jaws on whoever should attempt to carry off the Vila’s treasure.

I heard of another cave also associated with Æsculapius in the peninsula of Ragusa Vecchia itself, and as there is a strange fascination about caverns, with or without legendary associations, I hastened to explore it. A corps of observation was soon organised among the natives, so that, guided by a party armed with candles and torches, I presently found myself at the opening of the cavern. To arrive at the actual entrance you have to drop a few feet into a crevice of the rocks, which are overgrown with a profusion of beautiful true maidenhair fern.[324] We then penetrated through a narrow mouth, and the light of the torches revealed a spacious rock chamber with a rapidly descending floor. The descent was now rather risky; the men had to feel carefully every step, as the slightest slip sets in motion a miniature avalanche, and pebbles set rolling bound down to an unfathomed pool below, in which several people have been drowned. We were not able to reach the water, but it is quite possible that there exist other once accessible pools, the avenues to which have been blocked up with breccia. If so, this may well have been the cavern from which, in the fourth century, the Epidauritans (whose aqueduct we may suppose had already been cut off by earthquakes or barbarian foes) were wont to obtain their supply of fresh water. In that case I had been exploring the haunts of another most terrific serpent—this time of Christian mythology.

About the year of grace 365—St. Jerome be my witness!—Epidaurus and its inhabitants were in a very bad way.

Now hard-by Epidaurus was a certain cave called Scipum, in which they of that city were wont to draw water. And in this cave a grievous dragon[325] called Boas had taken his abode, and wrought much slaughter both of men and cattle. And it came to pass that St. Hilarion entered the city, and when he saw that they of that place quaked and feared, for the dragon was of huge and monstrous size, he bade them be of good heart, for that he would slay the fiend. Now Epidaurus was yet pagan. Therefore St. Hilarion gat him to the mouth of the cavern, and having made the sign of the holy cross, he cried with a loud voice and saith unto the monster, ‘Come forth.’ But when the dragon Boas heard the voice of the holy man, then quailed his heart within him, and he came forth. Then saith St. Hilarion unto the dragon, ‘Follow me.’ And the dragon followed him, and he went on foot till he came to a place called ‘the mills,’ which is distant from the city three miles and fifty paces. And when they were come there, St Hilarion saith unto them of Epidaurus that went with him, ‘Make now a pyre that we may consume the monster and his works.’ And the pyre being now made, St. Hilarion saith unto the dragon Boas, ‘Get thee on to the pyre.’ And the dragon gat him on to the pyre. Then was fire set to the pyre that the dragon was utterly consumed. But they of Epidaurus, when they saw what salvation was wrought for them by the holy man, rejoiced in spirit. And at that spot which is called ‘the mills’ they built a temple to the honour and praise of St. Hilarion. And once in every year, at a set season, there went thither much people from Epidaurus, and offered worship unto St. Hilarion, singing pagan hymns, and before sundown returned to their own city.

So much for the true and faithful legend of St. Hilarion; and if anyone doubts its veracity, let him know that the mills are to be seen unto this day, and that the village hard-by them, S. Ilarione, preserves the name[326] of the saintly dragon-slayer, who, I may add, is still held in great veneration by the Ragusan church. But how interesting is this personified triumph of Christianity over the Cadmean and Æsculapian serpent-worship of earlier Epidaurus!—how suggestive is this annexation of local mythology by the new religion!

It may be believed that after this miracle the faith grew in Epidaurus, especially when, twenty years afterwards, St. Hilarion followed up his first success by once more appearing as saviour of the city. In the year 385, we are told there was a grievous earthquake, and the waves were piled up like mountains, and threatened to engulf Epidaurus. But the saint graved three crosses in the sand of the seashore, and the ocean, which hearkened not to Cnut, obeyed Hilarion. Christian bishops of Epidaurus are mentioned in the sixth and seventh centuries, and we hear of one nine years before the final overthrow and transplantation of the city. I did not notice any Christian monuments on the site of Epidaurus of Roman date; but I was pleased to find in a cottage of Ragusa Vecchia, built into the interior wall of an upper room, a very beautiful monument of mediæval Christian art, which I have here attempted to represent. It was known to the cottagers as the ‘Bambino,’ and represents the Mother and Child; but the influence of classical art is strongly marked, and though the tenderness of the whole design is Italian, the head of the Virgin might have been mistaken for a heathen goddess.

As early as A.D. 550 the Sclaves had begun to annoy Epidauras, but it was not till the year 656 that the city finally yielded, it is said to a combined attack, on land by the heathen Narentines and Terbunians, and from the sea by Saracen corsairs from Africa. Then it was that the survivors of the Roman population fled to the rocky site on the other horn of the gulf on which Ragusa stands. Every morning the same migration from Old to New Ragusa takes place on a smaller scale. A bevy of bright Canalese market-women, in their clean white crenellated caps, and their more sombre husbands—who, with their black turbans, jackets, and trouser-leggings, look like Turks in mourning—embark before dawn in the broad trabaccolo, that they may sell their fruit and vegetables in the Ragusan market. In their company I will return to Ragusa and her history.

The rock on which the refugees from Epidaurus laid the foundations of what is now Ragusa, is said originally to have been an island, though it is now only a peninsula. Ragusa herself owes her name, according to Constantine Porphyrogenitus,[327] to the Greek word Λαῦ, signifying ‘rock,’ and the fact that the rock on which the original city was built was known long afterwards as ‘Lavve’ is rather favourable to the Byzantine etymology. Thus, both her name and origin are representative of the rôle which the city was to play throughout her earlier history, and to which she owes so much of her greatness. Like ancient Rome, Ragusa began life as an asylum. She was at first a rock of refuge for the survivors from the wrecks of Roman coast-cities of Dalmatia. The fugitives from Epidaurus obtained citizen recruits from those inhabitants of Salona who, when their city was destroyed, did not trust to the walls of Diocletian’s palace for security, or could not find room there. Later on, when the Roman cities that occupied the sites of the present towns of Rizano, Cattaro, Budua, and other places on the Bocche di Cattaro and the Albanian coast, were ravaged by the Saracen corsairs, a new influx of Roman refugees set in to Ragusa.

Ragusa was thus originally Roman. Her necessities led her to ally with the Eastern Empire against the Saracen corsairs, and, however little real authority the Byzantine Emperors possessed within her walls, Constantine Porphyrogenitus places Rausium among the imperial cities on the Dalmatian coast. But this Roman coast-city, with her inheritance of ancient civilisation, was already consummating that alliance with the ruder energies of the Sclavonic mainland, to which her future eminence was so largely due.

The barren mountain which frowns so abruptly over Ragusa on the land-side, was once covered with an immemorial pinewood,[328] which stretched over a large part of what is now included in the mediæval walls of Ragusa. It was in this wood that a Sclavonic colony settled, outside the Roman rock stronghold, and as in process of time the two populations blended, Dubrava—which signifies ‘the wood,’ and had been the name given by the Sclaves to their colony outside the walls—was attached to the whole city, so that Ragusa is still known to the Sclavonic world as Dubrovnik—the forest town.

For long the new rock asylum is engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the Saracen corsairs, who desolated the Dalmatian and Albanian coasts. Generally, still Roman Ragusa turns to the Byzantine Empire as her natural protector; but for a moment we see dimly reflected in her saga the influence of the revived Empire of the West; and one may, perhaps, be allowed to see in it a witness to the authority which for a while the great Carl succeeded in extending over the Illyrian Sclaves. We were surprised to find in the more classic court of the Palazzo Rettorale here, a colossal statue such as one meets with often enough beneath the quaint gables of a North-German Rathhaus. It was, in fact, a Ragusan Rolandsäule. According to the Ragusan annalists, Orlando, or Rolando, the sister’s son of Carl the Great, and a brave Paladin, had heard in Bretagne, where he was governor, that Saracen corsairs were ravaging the Roman towns of the Adriatic. Orlando at once set out for Ragusa, embarked on board a Ragusan galley, won a sea-victory over the Saracen pirates off the island of Lacroma opposite, took their Emir Spucento captive, and cut off his head in Ragusa. Thereupon the grateful Ragusans set up then and there a marble statue of Orlando, which remains unto this day.[329]

Another time the treacherous Venetians prepare to surprise Ragusa under the pretence of provisioning their ships. But St. Blasius, of Armenia, appears to a priest in a dream and warns him of the danger to the city. The priest gave the alarm, the walls were manned in time, and Ragusa showed her gratitude to her preserver by choosing him as her patron saint. A church was reared to St. Blasius, his effigy was placed on the great seal, the banners, and coins of the Republic, and his miraculous interposition was commemorated every year at the feast of the Purification.

This is not the place to trace out all the ‘dim complicacities’ of Ragusa’s earlier history. Ragusa was by birthright a City of Refuge, and her rise was mainly due to the wise and heroic policy of defending at any cost her rights of hospitality. Whether it be the children of the rightful king of Serbia, or the widowed queen of Dalmatia, or the Bosnians who had fled from the wrath of their Ban, all alike obtain shelter from their pursuers within these hospitable walls. Again and again Ragusa consented to see her territory ravaged and her walls beleaguered for the protection which her Senate accorded to the unfortunate. When Bodin, the Grand Župan of Serbia, Rascia, and Bosnia, then at the height of his power, demanded the extradition of the sons of the Serbian prince whose dominion he had usurped,[330] and threatened in case of refusal ‘to fly his eagle to the destruction of Ragusa,’ the Senate nobly replied ‘that it was the custom of their city to refuse asylum to no man, but to protect everyone who fled to them in misfortune.’ On this occasion Ragusa underwent a seven years’ siege.

Even those who had been the bitterest enemies to the Republic were glad in less prosperous days to throw themselves on a hospitality that never failed. Bogoslave, the king of Dalmatia, had besieged Ragusa with 10,000 men for sheltering the widowed queen, Margarita; but when, on his death, his widowed queen and son were driven forth from their country, Ragusa did not hesitate to give them shelter, too. Stephen Némanja, the Grand Župan of Serbia and Rascia, who had twice laid siege to Ragusa, once with an army of 20,000 horse and 30,000 foot, seeing himself likely to be worsted in his struggle with the Byzantine Emperor, sent to ask the senate of Ragusa if he, too, should be allowed to claim their right of asylum, and obtained permission to retire here with his family if defeated; and that, though his adversary was allied to the republic.

A city strong enough and generous enough to shelter the unfortunate on either side could not fail to find many well-wishers among the neighbouring peoples and princes; and though Ragusa suffered much in defence of her privilege of asylum, she won more. Silvester, a king of Dalmatia, who had found shelter within her walls, on recovering power, testified his gratitude by presenting Ragusa with the islands of Calamotta, Mezzo, and Giupan. Stephen, a former king, in return for hospitality conferred on him as a voluntary guest, made over to the Republic the neighbouring coast-lands from the Val-di-noce to Epidaurus. The good relations which she cultivated with the Bosnians, and the gratitude of the Némanjas, enabled Ragusa to lay the foundations of her commercial eminence in the heart of Illyria; and in 1169 two Ragusan merchants built a factory on the site of what has since become the capital of Bosnia.

But Ragusa obtained one reward for hospitality to a royal stranger which must claim an especial interest from Englishmen. Richard Cœur-de-Lion, during his ill-fated voyage from the Holy Land, overtaken by a storm in the Adriatic, vowed that he would build a church at the spot where he should reach land in safety. He landed on the small rocky island of Lacroma, which lies opposite the old port of Ragusa. But he was conducted to the neighbouring city of Ragusa with great pomp by the Senate, and entertained with such profuse hospitality and magnificent shows, that he yielded to the prayers of the Ragusans, and obtained a dispensation from the Pope, to build the promised church in Ragusa itself, though it appears that his Holiness made him build a small church on Lacroma as well. The church which was now built with English money (though Richard had to borrow for the purpose), was the old cathedral of Ragusa. For beauty it was unrivalled in Illyria,[331] but unfortunately no trace of it now remains, as it was entirely destroyed by the earthquake of 1667.

The year 1203 marks a new epoch in the history of Ragusa. In this year the Rector of the Republic, Damiano Juda, endeavoured to prolong his government beyond the year for which he had been elected. By the help of the popular party he succeeded in retaining the supreme authority for two years, and became so obnoxious to the nobles, that considering the suzerainty of a foreign state to be preferable to the tyranny of a fellow-citizen, they held a secret conclave in which it was decided to invoke the aid of Venice. The Venetians, whose power from the recent conquest of Constantinople was then at its zenith, accepted the overtures of the Ragusan nobles. Damiano was decoyed on board a Venetian ship, where, on finding himself a prisoner, he committed suicide; and Lorenzo Quirini, the nominee of Venice, was introduced as Count of the Republic. But Ragusa never sank like Zara or Spalato, and the other Dalmatian cities, under Venetian domination. Quirini had only been received on condition that Ragusa should preserve her ancient liberties. When the Ragusans began to perceive an intention on the part of the Venetian Count to violate this agreement they turned him out; and though they once more received a nominee of Venice in 1232, the relation of the Ragusans to Venice was rather that of a free ally than that of a dependent. It was indeed stipulated that the Doge and a majority of the Venetian Senate should nominate the Count of Ragusa, that her archbishop should be born on Venetian territory, and that her citizens should swear fealty to the Doge; but Ragusa retained the right of conducting her own affairs by means of her Senate, of which the Count was only president; she was still governed by her own laws; her own flag floated from her walls, and she struck her own coins with the effigy of St. Blasius. The treaty stipulates that both states are to have the same friends and foes; but towards Venetian expeditions beyond the Adriatic, Ragusa was only to contribute one thirtieth. So free indeed was Ragusa, that in fact she never accepted Venetian archbishops; and in 1346 the Venetian Conte was forced to look on and see the republic transfer its suzerainty to the new Serbian empire of Czar Dūshan.

Thus it was that Ragusa, though for a while under Venetian overlordship, never, like the other Dalmatian cities, saw her native institutions swept away by Venice. At the present day, at Cattaro or Spalato, along the Dalmatian coast-land on each side of Ragusa, you hear the Venetian dialect; at Ragusa the language is pure Tuscan. St. Blasius, and not the lion of St. Mark, adorns the mediæval walls and gates of Ragusa. On the other hand, in costume, manners, and the form of government, the Venetian influence here has been very perceptible.

It is about the time of the Venetian suzerainty that the government becomes finally fixed.

Ragusa had doubtless originally inherited her aristocratic-republican institutions[332] from the municipales of ancient Epidaurus. Her Senate, which we hear of in very early days, is doubtless, like the Senates of Arles, Nismes, Vienne, and the other great cities of Languedoc and Provence, but a continuation of the Roman Curia, of whose existence in Epidaurus we have both historic and epigraphic proof. Her patricians could no doubt trace back their ancestry to the late Roman Honorati; they were twitted, indeed, with tracing it back to Jupiter!

From the time of the Venetian suzerainty onwards, the government is vested in three councils, and the city divided into three orders: the Nobili or Patrizj, the Cittadini, divided into the two Confraternite of S. Antonio and S. Lazzaro; lastly the Artigiani, who appear to have stood to the Cittadini much as our craft-guilds to the merchant-guilds. The government was entirely aristocratic; the Cittadini could indeed fill some public offices,[333] but the appointments were reserved for the Senate.

The body in which the sovereignty ultimately rested was the Gran Consiglio,[334] including all the members of the nobility who had reached the legal age of eighteen, and whose names were registered in the Specchio di Maggior Consiglio, a Ragusan Libro d’Oro. This body elected, every month, the Rector of the Republic, and, annually, all the great magistrates, imposed the customs and ordinary taxes, confirmed or abolished laws, and possessed the power of pardoning and passing sentence of death.

The more ordinary functions of government were in the hands of two smaller bodies. The Senate, or Consiglio de’ Pregati, composed of forty-five members, drew up the laws and imposed extraordinary and indirect taxes, appointed ambassadors and consuls, decided on peace or war, treated of important state affairs, and acted as a court of appeal. The Senate met four times a week, and on occasions of emergency. The members were elected for life from its body by the Gran Consiglio, but were confirmed in their office every year by this greater council, and sometimes a Senator was suspended by it from his functions.

Lastly, the Minor Consiglio, consisting of seven senators and the Rettore of the Republic, acted as the executive of the greater council, exercised judicial authority on greater cases, received ambassadors, and treated with foreign Powers.[335] The Rettore of the Republic, who presided over this body, held office only a month, during which time he was bound to reside perpetually in the Palazzo Rettorale, only leaving it on public occasions.[336] He was clad in a long red robe, with a black stole over his shoulders as a sign of supreme authority, kept the keys of the city, the archives of the Republic, and convoked the Gran Consiglio and Senate. As a further constitutional precaution, thoroughly Venetian, three magistrates, called Provveditori della Repubblica, were chosen, who were superior to all but the Senate and Greater Council, and who possessed the right of suspending laws and decrees, and their execution till the Senate had re-examined them.[337]

Truly, from a constitutional point of view, Ragusa deserved her title of Piccola Venezia! But the aristocratic government at Ragusa worked with even greater smoothness than at Venice. Though the rule of the Ragusan patricians had endured for nigh seven centuries before the time of Damiano Juda, and was prolonged for over five centuries after his date, it was only broken by this solitary revolution.[338] Take into consideration the small size of the city, and the stability of the Ragusan constitution becomes the more remarkable. Here there was no room for feudal lords living on their own domains, amidst their own retainers, protected and secluded by moats and castle walls. The nobles of Ragusa elbowed their fellow-citizens in the same narrow streets; and these fellow-citizens, far from being ignorant serfs, were often their equals in education and their superiors in wealth. Yet the Cittadini and Artigiani of Ragusa were content to leave the reins of government in the hands of an aristocratic caste, and that caste was so exclusive that during eight hundred years there is no single instance recorded of a mésalliance with the bourgeoisie.

The secret lies in the sober genius of both the nobles and people of Ragusa, and in that elevated conception of patriotism which linked it with their religion. A judicial gravity presides over the whole constitutional history of Ragusa. The governing classes looked on their authority, not as a mere prize of birth, but as a sacred trust. The prayer for the magistrates of the Republic, which opens the Ragusan Libro d’Oro, breathes that exalted spirit which animated all classes of Ragusan citizens from first to last. ‘O Lord, Father Almighty, who hast chosen this Commonwealth to Thy service, choose, we beseech Thee, our governors according to Thy will and our necessity; that so, fearing Thee and keeping Thy holy commandments, they may cherish and direct us in true charity. Amen.’[339]

Turn where we will among the pages of Ragusan history, we find ourselves amongst a grave and sober people—a people who are never carried away with success, and who support adversity with calm endurance. The heroes of Ragusa are of the majestic Roman type, and her greatest is a second Regulus. Her peculiar genius reflects itself in her arts and sciences, which are severe and practical. Her Senate forbids the erection of a theatre. The fine arts here fall into the background, and mathematics, mechanics, and astronomy take the lead. Ragusan nobles are mathematicians, and her poets are also merchants; the masterpieces of her muse are stately epics. Her sympathies are with the dignified spirit of the East, and the noblest homage of her bards is rendered to a Turkish Grand Signior. But Ragusa nowhere displayed the severe gravity of her manners more conspicuously than in the education of her children. Palladius,[340] writing in the middle of the fifteenth century, says of the Ragusans: ‘To make manifest how great is the severity and diligence of the Ragusans in the bringing up of their children, one thing I will not pass over, that they suffer no exercises to exist in the city, but literary. And if jousters or acrobats approach they are forthwith cast out, lest the youth (which they would keep open for letters or for merchanding) be corrupted by such low exhibitions.’ Truly, in mediæval Ragusa, Jack must have been a dull boy!

The same sober and religious spirit asserts itself in the laws, and the philanthropic and industrial institutions of mediæval Ragusa. Few indeed were the towns which could boast of a City Police and Sanitary Board in the middle ages! There was a ‘Curates’ Augmentation Fund’ here in the fourteenth century;[341] this city lays claim to having possessed the first foundling hospital[342] and the first loan-bank in the civilised world, and the annual revenues of the pious institutions of Ragusa amounted to 800,000 ducats. If we except the early English legislation which put a stop to the human exports of Bristol, Ragusa was the first state to pass laws abolishing the slave trade. In the year 1416 the great council of Ragusa, hearing that several Ragusan merchants residing on the Narenta were in the habit of selling those under them as slaves, passed a law—by a majority of seventy-five in a house of seventy-eight—that anyone who henceforth sold a slave should be liable to a fine and six months’ imprisonment: ‘Considering such traffic to be base, wicked, and abominable, and contrary to all humanity, and to redound to the no small disgrace of our city—namely, that the human form, made after the image and similitude of our Creator, should be turned to mercenary profit, and sold as if it were brute beast.[343] During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, large sums were left by philanthropic citizens of Ragusa to be spent in purchasing the freedom of slaves.

Perhaps the stability of the Ragusan government is due as much to her peculiar situation as to the sobriety of her citizens. Ragusa is well described by mediæval writers as a ‘Palmyra between great empires.’ She had to preserve her independence in turn from Byzantine Cæsars, the pirate state of the Narentines, the queen of the Adriatic, the Serbian Czar, the kings of Hungary, and finally from the Turks and Spaniards. She had to be perpetually on her guard against the ambitious designs of the most powerful states of the mediæval world. When her neighbours quarrelled, she was continually placed in the most difficult position, and the ramifications of her trade put her at the mercy of the most remote assailant. Thus it was that in her government foreign affairs were of supreme importance; there was constant necessity for secret discussion, prompt decision, and the wisdom of a hereditary caste of statesmen. A state whose empire is mercantile must be mighty indeed to afford the luxury of popular government. Ragusa was too small, too closely bordered by powerful empires; and the sterling sense of her citizens acquiesced in the necessity of an aristocratic constitution.

Nothing, indeed, is more wonderful in the history of the Republic than the tact with which these hereditary diplomatists conducted foreign affairs. In an earlier stage of her history, and a ruder state of society, we have seen the obstinacy with which the Senate clung to the Ragusan rights of asylum. In a later and more diplomatic age the City of Refuge becomes the champion of the rights of neutrals. We are lost in wonder at the skill with which the Republic preserves its neutrality between Venice and the Greeks, Venice and the Narentines, Venice and the Hungarians; between the Serbian Czar and Byzantine Cæsar, between the Turks and the Hungarians, the Turks and the Venetians, the Turks and the fleets of Charles V. It appears to have been a secret of Ragusan policy to yield a certain suzerainty to that Power which was strong on the mainland. While Venice is omnipotent in Dalmatia, Ragusa recognizes the overlordship of the Doge; Czar Dūshan stretches the Serbian empire to the sea, and Ragusa transfers to him her homage. The Serbian empire breaks up; the Hungarian flag floats on the walls of the Dalmatian cities in place of the lion of St. Mark; and from 1358 to 1483 Ragusa accepts the suzerainty of the kings of Hungary. But with admirable perception the statesmen of Ragusa turn towards the rising sun; and already, in 1370, when the rest of Eastern Europe was hardly conscious of the existence of its future conquerors, the Ragusans sent an embassy to Broussa, in Asia Minor, to the successor of Orchan,[344] Emir of the Turks, in which, in return for a yearly payment of 500 sequins, they obtained a firman of trade privileges, still preserved in the archives of Ragusa, and laid the foundations of a friendship which afterwards saved the small Republic when the empire of Byzantium, the despotates of Serbia and Albania, and the kingdoms of Hungary and Bosnia, were swept away. The treaty was renewed with Bajazet, and on his final conquest of the Herzegovina in 1483, Ragusa, true to her policy, transfers her suzerainty to the Porte.

It was the vast commerce of Ragusa with the interior of the Balkan peninsula which made her government so sedulous in securing friendly relations with the dominant power of the mainland. The citizens were repaid tenfold for their deference to the ruling caste by the benefits which their trade reaped from the keen foresight and the marvellous powers of negotiation displayed by their government. The friendship of Serbian, Bosnian, Hungarian, and later on of Turkish potentates, enabled them to plant their factories throughout the Sclavonic lands that lie between the Adriatic and the Black Sea. At the time of the Turkish conquests the Ragusans possessed mercantile colonies at the Serai in Bosnia, Novipazar in Rascia, Novibrdo and Belgrade in Serbia, at Bucharest and Tirgovisce in Wallachia, at Widdin, Rustchuk, Silistria, and Sophia in Bulgaria, and in the original capital of Turkey-in-Europe, Adrianople. To these colonies the Turks conceded a special jurisdiction, and even the right to build cathedral churches. Ragusan caravans passed without let or hindrance throughout all these lands; and the Pope himself granted the Ragusans permission to trade with the infidels. An astounding monument of the industry of these colonists is found in a treaty between George Branković, despot of Serbia, and the Republic, by which the Ragusan government leased the working of the three gold mines of Novibrdo, Janovo, and Kratovo, for a yearly rent of 300,000 ducats—an enormous sum for those days.

Besides this trade with the Sclavonic interior, Ragusa conducted a maritime traffic with the Levant, and as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century had concluded treaties of commerce with the sultans of Egypt, Syria, Iconia, and Bythinia. Ragusan factories existed in the great Italian cities of the Romagna, the Marches, and Abbruzzo, and throughout Sicily and Naples, and much of the transit trade between those countries and the Levantine ports was conducted in Ragusan bottoms. Of these commercial colonies in Italy, the most important was that which gave the name Strada de’ Ragusei to a street of Florence, and the Messinese, established at Syracuse, which gave the name of Ragusa to a castle that rose above the ruins of Camarina. Her merchants penetrated not only to France and Spain, but even to our shores, whence they transported English wares, especially cloths and woollens, to the south and east.[345] Ragusan merchants were settled in England in the sixteenth century, and later on Cromwell granted the Ragusans trade privileges in English ports. The mighty merchantmen of Ragusa ‘with portly sail, like signiors and rich burghers of the flood,’[346] have added a word to the English language. Our ‘argosy,’[347] once written ‘Ragosie,’ meant originally nothing but a Ragusan carrack. Nor was it only in the peaceful paths of commerce that our forefathers made acquaintance with the stately vessels of Ragusa. As the price of many trade privileges, the Republic was forced to recruit the navies of Spain with her ships and take part in her enterprises. The loftiest carracks in the Spanish Armada sailed forth from the old harbour of Ragusa, and in 1596 twelve Ragusan three-masters fought the English in the Indian Ocean.

By the end of the fifteenth century the commercial bloom of Ragusa had reached its prime, and the city must have been amongst the most flourishing in Europe. As early as 1450 the merchant navy of Ragusa consisted of 300 vessels. ‘There is no part of Europe,’ says the contemporary Palladius, ‘so hidden or so hostile to strangers that you will not find there merchants of Ragusa.’ And this commercial prosperity abroad was supplemented by manufacturing enterprise at home.

In 1490 a Florentine weaver was called in to instruct the Ragusans in cloth-weaving. Mills were built, a Neapolitan constructed a conduit to aid the dyeing, machinery was set in motion by water-power, and in five years a new manufacture was in full operation. A few years later[348] the silk manufacture was introduced by an enterprising citizen of Ragusa from Tuscany. Besides these and such minor industries as supplied the neighbouring Turkish provinces with wax, hides, salt, and sandals, there was the cannon foundry, the powder mill, the docks, the coral fishery, the glass manufactory, and the production of that filagree work of gold and silver, in which the Ragusans excelled, to divide the energies of the citizens. At the end of the fifteenth century the population of Ragusa is reckoned at 40,000, the treasury of the Republic is said to have contained a reserve of seven million sequins, and the merchants of a single quarter of the city, called Prieko, were possessed of capital amounting to two hundred million ducats.

At this time an additional lustre is shed over the ancient City of Refuge by the nobility of those who sought refuge within her walls. After the fall of Constantinople and the overthrow of the Sclavonic kingdoms of the interior, Ragusa was thronged with fugitive princes of Eastern Europe. Scions of the imperial houses of Byzantium, the families of Lascaris and Cantacuzene, the Comneni and Palæologi, the wife of the Despot of Serbia, the widowed Queen of Bosnia, with a host of lesser rank, sought and found a haven in these hospitable streets; and the name of Stephen, duke of St. Sava, is still to be seen inscribed on the roll of Ragusan nobility in the Specchio del Maggior Consiglio.

But the greatest glory of Ragusa lies neither in her wealth nor her princely hospitality, but rather in the civilizing influence which she exercised over the most barbarous European member of our Aryan family. It is the literature of Ragusa that lives still in the minds of men in days when her commerce has deserted her, and her own nobility has been extinguished with her liberty.

We have seen Ragusa by her very birth partly Roman and partly Sclave. Bit by bit the ‘city of the rock’ becomes fused with the forest-town outside. In her vast and varied intercourse with the Sclavonic interior Roman Ragusa becomes Serbian Dubrovnik. From the beginning of the fourteenth century the Serbian language, so vigorously proscribed by earlier laws, may be considered the mother-tongue of Ragusa. In 1472 the Sclavonic language became so dominant that even the Senate had to pass a law enforcing Italian as the language of their deliberations. Thus Ragusa became a Sclavonic city at the very moment when her extended connection with the rest of Europe, and especially with Italy, brought her into the full current of the Western Renascence. She had become Sclavonic, but she never lost the Italian side to her character. Her wealthy citizens, though they spoke the Serbian dialect of Dubrovnik in their family circles, sent their children to the Florentine schools, and, just as educated Irishmen and Welshmen often speak the best English, so, to this acquired knowledge of Italian, is largely due that purity of accent which has preserved the Italian of Ragusa from the Venetian and Dalmatian barbarisms of the other cities of this coast, and which makes it still the lingua Toscana in bocca Ragusea.

Ragusa was thus fitted by her very composition to be the interpreter between the Italian and Sclavonic minds, and to give birth to that literature which has won for her the title of ‘the Sclavonic Athens.’ The magistrates of the Republic, true to the same wise policy which had founded her schools, invited hither the most learned men of Italy, and towards the end of the fifteenth century many were enticed to Ragusa as professors, chancellors, and secretaries. Nascimbeno di Nascimbeni, the celebrated philologist, was invited here as rector of the school, and Demetrius Chalcochondylas deserted Florence herself to accept the chair of Greek at Ragusa. For Ragusan culture was something more than a mere reflection of the Italian Renascence, and the exiled scholars of Byzantium flocked hither as to a city which had held literary communion with their own, centuries before the days of its captivity, and whose inhabitants were in some sort their fellow-citizens. As early as the year 1170 the Ragusans had been admitted citizens of Constantinople by Manuel Comnenus, and the Imperial Chamber had undertaken to defray the expense of educating a certain number of Ragusan youths in Greek learning. By the beginning of the fourteenth century Ragusa herself had become a school of Greek for the Serbian mainland. Sclavonic Kings and Czars sent hither the young barons of their realms to be instructed in learning and manners; and the Serbian Czar, Stephen Dūshan, presented the city with a precious collection of codices, Greek and Latin, discovered in the Illyrian interior.[349] Thus the citizens of Ragusa were in every way well fitted to play a leading part in the revival of letters in Western Europe; it is said that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there was not one of her families but could boast its man of letters; her scholars toiled eagerly at the new learning, and emended the texts of Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, and other classical authors. It is extremely significant of the position held by Ragusa in the world of letters at the end of the fifteenth century, that Aldus Manutius sent his son Paolo here for his classical schooling.

But this erudition was but the prelude to an outburst of original genius such as has been paralleled by few cities of the globe. Perhaps, indeed, no other people had brought before them so vividly every stirring aspect of the most romantic age that the world has seen. The Ragusans had sat at the feet of Byzantine masters in days when learning was their insolent monopoly; they had already been familiarised in the schools of Florence with the masterpieces of Italian genius; they had caught from Virgil and Ovid an inspiration of antiquity; and the dramas of Sophocles had been translated by a fellow-citizen into their Serbian mother-tongue. To these creations of exotic fancy they added, what they had never lost, a heritage of Serbian poetry, enshrining a mythology that had felt in some mysterious way the spell of Arabian genii—a mythology still so real that, to the last days of the Commonwealth, effigies of fantastic Serbian deities, and amongst them the ‘flowery-kirtled’ Vila, were borne in procession at Ragusan carnivals.[350] The merchant-citizens of the Republic had already enlarged their sympathies with the acquaintance of every European people. They had now seen the boundaries of the Old World broken through, and sailed forth to explore the New. They had rounded the Cape in the wake of the Portuguese; their argosies had touched at the port of Goa, and trafficked in the Persian Gulf. They had sailed with the Spaniards to Peru and Mexico; they had marvelled with the followers of Cortes at the temple-pyramids of the Aztecs, and plucked roses in the gardens of Yucay. Nearer home, their imagination had been kindled by the overthrow of an empire which Julius had founded. They were surveying from their very walls the tragedy of nations, and their streets were thronged with discrowned sovereigns. The most beautiful creations of the Hellenic muse had sprung Aphroditè-like from the spray of the self-same sea that sparkled in the havens of Ragusa.

Living in this poetic world, one can hardly wonder that Ragusa caught the inspiration of her surroundings; that she ‘awoke to ecstasy the living lyre,’ in the tones of her mother-tongue; that, surveying the catastrophe of the Serbian race, she created a Serbian drama. From the commencement of the last quarter of the fifteenth century onwards, Ragusa produces a long succession of poets and dramatists,[351] who are great and valuable almost in proportion as they are unknown to the West. For their pre-eminent value lies in their having composed in a Sclavonic tongue. Amongst the most celebrated works of Ragusan poets may be mentioned the ‘Dervishiade’ of Stephen Gozze, a comic epos; the ‘Jegyupka’ or gipsy-woman, a satiric poem by Andreas Giubronović; and the lyrics of Dominico Zlatarić, also known as a painter, and as translator of Tasso and of some plays of Sophocles. Nor was Ragusa wanting in poetesses to rival her poets; the epigrams of Floria Zuzzeri, who wrote in Italian as well as Sclavonic, are still of renown. But the most celebrated names in the long annals of Ragusan literature are those of Junius Palmotta and Giovanni Gondola.[352] It is a high merit of Palmotta’s dramas that the subjects are taken from the history of Southern-Sclaves.[353] The master-work of Gondola is the ‘Osmanide,’ an epic poem recording the prowess of Sultan Osman against the Poles. This is a strange witness to the Turkish sympathies of the Republic, and the noblest monument of Ragusan genius. The poems of Gondola are still, among all South-Sclavonic peoples, ‘familiar in their mouths as household words;’ and though Ragusa has lost her wealth and liberty, her most golden memories live still in the bard—