Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/200

 178 THE DECLINE AND FALL passage to the Italian continent ; their brethren of Aversa sympa- thized in their indignation, and the province of Apulia was in- Theircon- vadcd as the forfeit of the debt.-^ Above twenty years after the AjfiUia. A.D. first emigration, the Normans took the field with no more than seven hunch-ed horse and five hundi*ed foot ; and, after the recall of the Byzantine legions ^^ from the Sicilian war, their numbers are magnified to the amount of threescore thousand men. Their herald proposed the option of battle or retreat ; " Of battle," was the unanimous cry of the Normans ; and one of their stoutest warriors, with a stroke of his fist, felled to the ground the horse of the Greek messenger. He was dismissed with a fresh horse ; the insult was concealed from the Imperial troops ; but in two [A.D. 1041] successive battles ^^ they were more fatally instructed of the prowess of their adversaries. In the plains of Canna?, the Asia- [May 4] tics fled from the adventurers of France : the duke of Lombardy was made prisoner ; the Apulians acquiesced in a new dominion ; and the four places of Bari, Otranto, Brundusium, and Tarentum were alone saved in the shipwreck of the Grecian fortunes. From this aera we may date the establishment of the Norman power, which soon eclipsed the infant colony of Aversa. Twelve counts ^- were chosen by the popular suffrage ; and age, birth, ^ Jeffrey Malaterra, who relates the Sicilian war and the conquest of Apulia (1. i. c. 7, 8, 9, 19). The same events are described by Cedrenus (torn. ii. p. 741- 743, 755, 756) and Zonaras (torn. ii. p. 237, 238) ; and the Greeks are so hardened to disgrace that their narratives are impartial enough. •''•'Cedrenus specifies the rdyfia of the Obsequium (Phrygia) and the nepo<; of the Thracesians (Lydia; consult Constantine de Thematibus, i. 3, 4, with Delisle's map), and afterwards names the Pisidians and Lycaonians with the foederati. [The Normans under Rainulf were acting in common with, and at the instigation of, the Lombard Arduin. They seized Melfi while the Catepan Michael Doceanus was in Sicily seeking to retrieve the losses which the Greek cause had suffered since the recall of Maniaces. From Melfi they conquered Ascoli and other places, and Michael was forced to return to Italy. AU this happened in A.D. 1040. Heine- mann, op. cit. p. 84.] ^1 [(i) On the Olivento (a tributary of the Ofanto), March 17, (2) near Monte Maggiore, in the plain of Cannae, May 4, and (3) at Montepeloso, Sept. 3, 1041. See Heinemann, op. cit. p. 358-61.] 32 0mnesconveniunt ; et bis sex nobiliores, Quos genus et gravitas morum decorabat et tKtas, Elegere duces. Provectis ad comitatum His alii parent. Comitatus nomen honoris Quo donantur erat. Hi tolas undique terras Divisere sibi, ni sors inimica repugnet ; Singula proponunt loca quas contingere sorte Cuique duci debent, et quasque tributa locorum. And, after speaking of Melphi, William Appulus adds. Pro numero comitum bis sex statuere plateas, Atque domus comitum totidem fabricantur in urbe.