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In the footsteps of the last Roman emperor

Ravenna grew out of the Adriatic marshes, as Venice one day would, built on pilings and tufts of land. It eventually became a major port, and a base for the Roman Empire’s fleet. Julius Caesar gathered his forces at Ravenna as he prepared to cross the Rubicon. Because the city — surrounded by swamps — was so easy to defend, the capital of the Western Empire was moved there from Rome by the emperor Honorius early in the fifth century.

Ravenna was thus the scene of the Roman Empire’s final act, or at least its final act in the West. The man regarded as the last in the long imperial line, Romulus Augustus, spent the few months of his reign, in A.D. 475-476, in Ravenna. He was, in fact, not a man but a boy of thirteen or fourteen. Because he was so young, people gave the name Augustus a diminutive twist — Augustutus, the emperor was called: “little Augustus.” And because he was a usurper, installed by his father, a general named Orestes, people gave the name Romulus a pejorative cast — Momyllus, they said: “little disgrace.” There was time enough in his reign to mint money — barely — but his name was so long it was hard to fit it onto coins. (Zeno, the emperor of the East at the time, did not have this problem.) But then Orestes fell afoul of barbarian mercenaries in his army and was killed. Romulus lost his throne, and a barbarian named Odoacer made himself king of Italy.

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Ruth Boreham outlines the history of the famous publishing dynasty whose archive has been preserved for the nation and is now accessible to all at the National Library of Scotland.

IN MARCH 2006 THE JOHN MURRAY ARCHIVE moved from Albemarle Street, London, to its new, permanent home in the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Change of ownership was made possible by a major grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, a large contribution by the Scottish Executive and a sustained and ongoing fundraising campaign. It is the most significant archive to become publicly available in the last 100 years. Since the 1760s seven generations of the Murray family have maintained an archive of 150,000 items, including business papers, correspondence and original manuscripts. The archive at present available at the National Library of Scotland covers the years 1768 to the 1920s. Its richness derives from the range of individuals represented, including great thinkers and writers who shaped the nineteenth century in literature, travel and exploration, science, engineering and technology, politics and religion.

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If you stand high on presidio hill, San Diego, looking out over the Pacific, you are on the very spot where California began. Now your eyes will take in the urban sprawl of America’s seventh largest city — but in 1769, when the Franciscan missionary Father Junípero Serra and Spanish soldiers under the command of Gaspar de Portolá stepped ashore, there was nothing but barren scrub to be seen.

Spain had claimed this land when it was first spotted by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542, then in 1602 explorer Sebastian Vizcaíno (who in fact named San Diego, as was the custom, after the saint whose feast day fell closest to the sighting) sailed to the northern coasts and earmarked for Spain what was to be Monterey Bay. It was not until 1768 however, when the Russians under Catherine the Great, began to show an intrusive interest, that rapid plans were made to establish a string of missions up the Californian coast. In this way the land would be secured and the inhabitants would be converted to Catholicism and made useful citizens of Spain.

Missions had already been established for Spain in Baja California and Mexico (then known as New Spain) by the Jesuits, but in 1767 King Carlos III banished this Order from his empire, irritated by the Jesuit tendency to answer to a power beyond that of kings. They were replaced by the more amenable Franciscans and in 1769 four expeditions, two overland and two by sea, were despatched from Mexico to Alta California to initiate the establishment of the missions. In fact twenty-one missions situated at roughly a day’s ride on horseback from each other and forming El Camino Real, named in honour of King Carlos, together with four presidios or forts, were built over the next fifty-four years.

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