Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/45

 OF THE KOMAN EMPIRE 23 Duriiiff a period of two hundred years, Italy was un-Theexareha»« equally divided between the kingdom of the Lombards and j the exarchate of Ravenna. The offices and professions, which the jealousy of Constantine had separated, were united by the I indulgence of Justinian ; and eighteen successive exarchs were j invested, in the decline of the empire, with the full remains of I civil, of military, and even of ecclesiastical power. Their im- I mediate jurisdiction, which was afterwards consecrated as the I patrimony of St. Peter, extended over the modern llomagna, the marshes or valleys of Ferrara and Commaciiio,^- five mari- time cities from Rimini to Ancona, and a second, inland Penta- polis,^^ between the Adriatic coast and the hills of the Apen- nine. Three subordinate provinces, of Rome, of Venice, and of Naples, which were divided by hostile lands from the palace of Ravenna, acknowledged, both in peace and war, the supremacy of the exarch. The duchy of Rome appears to have included the Tuscan, Sabine, and Latian conquests, of the first four hun- dred years of the city, and the limits may be distinctly traced along the coast, from Civita Vecchia to Terracina, and with the course of the Tiber from Ameria and Narni to the port of Ostia. The numerous islands from Grado to Cliiozza composed the infant dominion of Venice ; but the more accessible towns on the continent were overthrown by the Lombards, who beheld with impotent fury a new capital rising from the waves. The power of the dukes of Naples was circumscribed by the bay and the adjacent isles, by the hostile territory of Capua, and by the Roman colony of Amalphi,^' whose industrious citizens, by the invention of the mariner's compass, have unveiled the face of the globe. The three islands of Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, still adhered to the empire ; and the acquisition of the farther Calabria removed the land-mark of Autharis from the shore of Rhegium to the isthmus of Consentia. In Sardinia, the savage mountaineers preserved the liberty and religion of their an- cestors ; but the husbandmen of Sicily were chained to their rich and cultivated soil. Rome was oppressed by the iron ■''^The papal advocates, Zacagni and Fontanini, might justly claim the valley or morass of Commachio as a part of the exarchate. But the ambition of including Modena, Reggie, Parma, and, Placentia, has darkened a geographical question somewhat doubtful and obscure. Even Muratori, as the servant of the house of Este, is not free from partiality and prejudice. ■'•*[Aesis, Forum Sempronii, Urbinum, Callis, Eugubium.] ^••See Brencmann, Dissert. Ima de Republicfl Amalphitan^, p. 1-42, ad calceni Hist, Pandect. Florent. [1722].