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Rh different course of historical development from the days of the Lombards to those of Garibaldi. Nature had thrust it into the central place in the Mediterranean world, to which the gulfs and bays of its long coast-line opened the rich hinterland of Campania and Apulia and the natural highways beyond. Here had sprung up those cities of Magna Græcia which were the cradle of Italian civilization; here the Romans had their chief harbors at Pozzuoli and Brindisi and their great naval base at Cape Miseno; here the ports of Gaeta, Naples, Amalfi, and Bari kept intercourse with the East open during the Middle Ages. And if the genius of Hamilcar and Hannibal had once sought to tear the south and its islands from Italy to unite them with a Carthaginian empire, their close relations with Africa had again been asserted by the raids and conquests of the Saracens, while their connection with the East made them the last stronghold of Byzantine power beyond the Adriatic. In the long run, however, it has been pointed out that, if the culture of this region came from the south, its masters have come from the north; and its new masters of the eleventh century were to unify and consolidate it at the very time when the rest of the peninsula was breaking up into warring communes and principalities. In the year 1000 the unity of the south was largely formal. The Eastern Empire still claimed authority, but the northern region was entirely independent under