At the end of the third century, when Ancient Rome reached its peak, Emperor Diocletian divided the Empire into two territories: the western half, with Rome as its capital, and the eastern half, with Constantinople. From that moment forward, the Western Empire was under the constant threat of Barbarian invasions by the likes of Attila the Hun and others, until it was finally sacked and conquered in 476 by the Visigoths.  While this moment generally constitutes the "Fall of Rome," the Eastern Empire did not give way until the Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453.

Rome's decline brought both Italy and all of Europe into the Middle Ages, during which the once great empire was controlled by the Franks and Lombards, Charlemagne and the Normans, and the Muslim Saracens, the imprints of whom are still very much alive throughout Italy in castles, churches, and other architectural remains. During the Early Middle Ages, the Catholic Church rose to prominence by being one of the few stable institutions and sources of learning on the Italian peninsula, which gave it the imperative of acting as a power in the absence of any real government. It is to this that we owe much of Italy's thriving religious spirit and fascinating church history captured in both its large-scale cathedrals and small cloisters. The Church eventually sought to create its own state, a remnant of which still exists in Vatican City. Through swift and clever political maneuvers and an alliance with the Franks, by the mid-eighth century, the Papal States were created.

Under the Pope's safeguarding and increased Mediterranean trade routes, the city-states of Italy expanded greatly, most notably those of Tuscany, and became very wealthy and powerful. Consequently, by the 14^th century the likes of Florence and Siena had the necessary resources to devote to the arts, which fostered an ideal environment in which the Renaissance could be born.

The Italian Renaissance was primarily an intellectual, not a social movement. In the mid-14^th century, despite the out pour of intellectual and artistic energy, much of medieval life persisted throughout the Renaissance. The period's initial form took place in Tuscany, but by the 15^thcentury the movement had expanded throughout the country, predominantly in Venice and Rome. While it is not necessarily true that all of Italy was equally affected by the Renaissance, there is no doubt that its infectious energy spurred all of Italy to make its own special contribution, which is put beautifully on display throughout the country in its many extravagant churches and museums.

By the 16^th century a radical religious fervor took over Italy and squashed the momentum of the Renaissance. By the Early Modern era, control of Italy was again passed between foreign rulers, this time the Spanish and the Austrians. Also, with the disintegration of Italy's millennia-old trade roots, the peninsula fell into depression. In the early 19^thcentury, Italy became a part of the Napoleonic Empire. After Napoleon's defeat, Italy largely fell back into the hands of the Spanish and Austrians. But it was at this point a great wave of Italian nationalism took over and demanded the unification of the country so that Italians could once again control their own destiny without foreign intervention. In 1861, with the help of Garibaldi's valiant soldiers and the armies of the Kingdom of Sardegna lead by King Victor Emanuel, Italy was unified under a single crown.

While Italy's national infancy was a difficult one, marked by a struggle to unite its citizens under a unified culture, the constant duress of international war and political violence, and widespread poverty, today Italy has emerged as one of the world's great powers and an influential member of the European Union. And yet, despite its thriving modernity, Italy maintains and celebrates its glorious heritage, and offers it to the world to embrace it as Italians do everyday.

Literature:

Scholars of Italian literature have often said that without le tre corone (the term for Italy's three majestic literary gurus Dante, Petrarch, and Bocaccio), the likes of William Shakespeare and John Milton would have had nothing to plagiarize!  Joking apart, this does touch, however maladroitly, on Italy's key role in enacting crucial changes in just about every way we approach literature today. With very few modest exceptions, the rules and conventions of Ancient Greek and Roman literature were rigidly practiced until the dawn of the Renaissance. While the works of Homer are still esteemed today, throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages his epic poems, particularly the Iliad, were the undisputed champions of literature.  Homer's writing was not only the inspiration for other works of high literature, but also the very example to which all others were compared. What would lay the foundation for the literary revolution of the Renaissance would be the medieval troubadour poetry of France and Provence, which would inspire the great Italian poets of the Florentine and Sicilian schools. However, until the ways in which people considered literature were changed, all literature that deviated from the customs established by Homer was seen as lowbrow and frivolous.

This was the case until the great Florentine poet Dante Alighieri aimed, not out of irreverence but from a spirit of ingenuity, to produce the best work of literature ever - something even better than the works of his heroes Homer and Virgil - that would change the rules of the game forever. With hitherto unprecedented boldness, Dante wrote the epic poem The Divine Comedy, a work that perfectly achieved everything accomplished in the Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid, only with some major innovations along the way. As Homer and Virgil wrote the histories of the beginning of the Greek and Roman civilization, so Dante wrote Italy's Christian history, but did so using not only the vulgar Florentine dialect, but also a mixture of highly provocative literary styles that were, until incorporated into The Divine Comedy, seen of an inferior, tawdry status.

Dante had essentially opened a floodgate that led to averitable outpour of intellectual and creative energy devoted to poetry and prose, making the Renaissance a golden age for Italian literature. Thereafter, the works of Dante, Petrarch's sonnets, and Boccaccio's captivating prose greatly influenced literary minds inside and outside of Italy, motivating them to produce their masterpieces that today form the canon of Western literature.