Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/230

 208 THE DECLINE AND FALL a boundless scope for the imagination of his future exploits : and the event sufficiently declares that the Norman greatness was founded on his life.^^^ Without the appearance of an enemy, a victorious army dispersed or retreated in disorder and conster- nation ; and Alexius, who had trembled for his empire, rejoiced in his deliverance. The galley which transported the remains of Guiscard was shipwrecked on the Italian shore ; but the duke's body was recovered from the sea, and deposited in the sepulchre of Venusia,ii"^ a place more illustrious for the birth of Horace ^^^ than for the burial of the Norman heroes. Roger, his second son and successor, immediately sunk to the humble station of a duke of Apulia : the esteem or partiality of his father left the valiant Bohemond to the inheritance of his sword. The national tranquillity was disturbed by his claims, till the first crusade against the infidels of the East opened a more splendid field of glory and conquest.^^^ Eeignand Of human life the most glorious or humble prospects are Roger, great alike and soon bounded by the sepulchre. The male line of Sicily. AD. Robert Guiscard was extinguished, both in Apulia and at 26 Antioch, in the second generation ; but his younger brother became the father of a line of kings ; and the son of the great count was endowed with the name, the conquests, and the spirit of the first Roger. i^*' The heir of that Norman adventurer was born in Sicily : and, at the age of only four years, he succeeded to the sovereignty of the island, a lot which reason might 112 The joyful Anna Comnena scatters some flowers over the grave of an enemy (Alexiad. 1. vi. p. 162-166 [c. 6, 7]), and his best praise is the esteem and envy of Wilham the Conqueror, the sovereign of his family. Graecia (says Malaterra) hostibus recedcntibus libera Iseta quievit : Apulia tota sive Calabria turbatur. 113 Urbs Venusina nitet tantis decorata sepulchris, is one of the last lines of the Apulian's poem (1. v. p. 278). WiUiam of Malmesbury (1. iii. p. 107) inserts an epitaph on Guiscard, which is not worth transcribing. 11-* Yet Horace had few obligations to Venusia : he was carried to Rome in his childhood (Serni. i. 6), and his repeated allusions to the doubtful limit of Apulia and Lucania (Carm. iii. 4 ; Serm. ii. i) are unworthy of his age and genius. 11-' See Giannone (torn. ii. p. 88-93) ^"^ the historians of the first crusade. ii" The reign of Roger, and the Norman kings of Sicily, fills four books of the Istoria Civile of Giannone (tom. ii. 1. xi.-xiv. p. 136-340), and is spread over the ' ninth and tenth volumes of the Italian Annals of Muratori. In the Bihliotheque Italique (tom. i. p. 175-222) I find an useful abstract of Capecelatro, a modern Neapolitan, who has composed, in two volumes, the history of his country from Roger I. to Fredtric II. inclusive. [The old collection of authorities for Sicilian history by Fazellus (1579) was reissued at Catania in 1749-52. The Neapolitan collection of G. Del Re in 2 vols, (see below, note 1 18) includes some Sicilians. Some chronicles written in the Sicilian tongue were collected by Vinccnzo de' Giovanni and published in 1865 (Cronache Siciliane dei secoli xiii.-xiv. c. xv. ).]