Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/189

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 169 " Your armies were indeed as numerous as a cloud of summer locusts, who darken the day, flap their wings, and, after a short flight, tumble weary and breathless to the ground. Like them, ye sunk after a feeble effort ; ye were vanquished by your own cowardice ; and withdrew from the scene of action to injure and despoil our Christian subjects of the Sclavonian coast. We were few in number, and why were we few ? Because, after a tedious expectation of your arrival, I had dismissed my host, and re- tained only a chosen band of warriors to continue the blockade of the city. If they indulged their hospitable feasts in the face of danger and death, did these feasts abate the vigour of their enterprise } Is it by your fasting that the walls of Bari have been overturned .'' Did not these valiant Franks, diminished as they were by languor and fatigue, intercept and vanquish the three most powerful emirs of the Saracens r and did not their defeat precipitate the fall of the city ? Bari is now fallen ; Tarentum trembles ; Calabria will be delivered ; and, if we command the sea, the island of Sicily may be rescued from the hands of the infidels. My brother (a name most ofl^ensive to the vanity of the Greek), accelerate your naval succours, respect your allies, and distrust your flatterers." '' These lofty hopes were soon extinguished by the death of New province •^ ■'■ ~ •/ Qf ^jjg Greeks Lewis, and the decay of the Carlovinffian house: and, whoever in itaiy. a.d. ' J O ' ' Ron 890 might deserve the honour, the Greek emperors, Basil and his son Leo, secured the advantage, of the reduction of Bari. The rBari won by the Greeks Italians of Apulia and Calabria were persuaded or compelled to ad. 876] acknowledge their supremacy, and an ideal line from mount Garganus to the bay of Salerno leaves the far greater part of the kingdom of Naples under the dominion of the eastern empire. Beyond that line, the dukes or republics of Amalphi " and Naples, who had never forfeited their voluntary allegiance, rejoiced in the neighbourhood of their lawful sovereign; and Amalphi was enriched bj- supplying Europe with the produce and manufactures of Asia. But the Lombard princes of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua " were reluctantly torn from the communion of the Latin ■''The original epistle of the emperor Lewis II. to the emperor Basil, a curious record of the age, was first published by Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 871, Xo. 51-71) from the Vatican Ms. of Erchempert, or rather of the anonymous historian of Salerno. [Printed also in Duchesne, Hist. Fr. scr. iii. p. 555.] 42) of Henry Brenckmann's Historia Pandectarum (Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1722, in 4to). [Materials for the history of Naples are collected in Capasso's Monumenta ad Neap. due. histor. pertinentia, vol. i. 1881 ; vol. ii. i, 1885, 2, 1892.] " Your master, says Nicephorus, has given aid and protection principibus
 * See an excellent dissertation de Republica Amalphitana in the Appendi.x (p. i-