Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/225

574] confirm nor contradict its details. The duke Cleph of the family of Beleos was now made king by the Lombards at Pavia, but was murdered after one and a half years' reign (574). Lombard bands spread further in middle and southern Italy, but so small was the need of a single leader that they chose no more kings, but every one of the dukes, 35 in number, reigned independently in his own district.

These dukes, called duces by our authorities, but whose Lombard titles we do not know, are not to be confounded with the duces in the Tacitean sense. We must picture them as leaders of a military division chosen by the king from among the nobles. Their position changed naturally, when the Lombard people was no longer on march, but the same clans were garrisoned permanently in the same town, as the saga of Gisulf's appointment in Friuli exemplifies, and occupied permanently the same district, living on its produce. These districts generally coincided with the Roman division in civitates, and a walled town formed the centre. Probably these towns were at first used as victualling stations, managed in a more or less regular manner, sometimes perhaps by imposing payment of a third on the peasants of the district. But this could only be considered a transition state, preparing the way for definite settlement. The fierce Lombards had not come as federates or friends like the Goths, but as enemies, and treated the Romans jure belli.

The Roman freeman — the curialis who owned a moderate property in the town or the great landowner in the country — had fled, or had been killed or enslaved, and only the great mass of working people, the coloni, and the agricultural slaves, had been left on the soil, though many had perished during the terrors of war. When the Lombards began to settle, they divided the land, with all its bondmen, as far as it had not been entirely devastated, between the free Lombards, who thereby took the place of the Roman landlords. The coloni were considered as aldiones, as half-freemen, and paid tribute and did socage service for the Lombards as they had done for the Romans before. Of course the possessions of the Catholic Church, which was the Church of the Roman State, fell under the same lot of division. The dukes claimed for themselves all the public land with its traditional duties as well, but every free Lombard warrior was entitled to part of the booty, and therefore became also a landowner. In this way the local division in all those parts which had not been totally devastated, and which were ploughed again after a time, suffered no change. The culture was much the same, with the one difference that the Lombards, having brought great herds of cattle, especially swine, from Pannonia, attached more importance within the manor to stock-management and cattle-breeding than the Romans had done. The towns and municipal settlements were likewise unchanged, because the Lombards, who had known stone buildings only upon Roman soil, accommodated themselves to the conditions of a