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Rh between the authority of the Imperial Exarch at Ravenna and that of the Lombard king. In the South the Lombards formed the great Duchy of Beneventum, which left to the empire only the extreme South, one or two cities, and Sicily. Nor was this merely a matter of political allegiance. The Lombards were a numerous race, which profoundly affected the descent (by blood) of Italians all over the country. Their kingdom and Duchies were not merely so much territory inhabited by Romans, but subject to Lombard authority; these lands were peopled by Lombards; though, of course, Romans remained in them as well.

The Romans seem to have hated the Lombards even more than they had hated the Goths. When Charles the Great was going to marry the daughter of the last Lombard King Desiderius, Pope Stephen III (768-772) cannot understand that a Frankish gentleman should think of taking a wife from the "perfidious, unspeakable, most stinking nation of the Lombards," who first introduced leprosy to the world. For all that, the Lombards soon became completely latinized, as the Goths had never been. Against the Lombards the Frankish Kings came to Italy. They fought and defeated them, and so, in the North, opened a new chapter of Italian history, in which Italy is severed finally from the old Empire at Constantinople, the Papal States are founded, and the new Western Empire begins.

But this did not affect the South. After the destruction of the Lombard kingdom, the Lombard Duchy of Beneventum continues. When Charles the Great defeated King Desiderius, Duke Arichis II of Beneventum remained to represent the power of his nation in the South. He made a nominal submission to Charles, but remained really independent. In 774 he took the title Prince. So Arichis II reigned over all Southern Italy, except the cities by the coast, which remained faithful to the Emperor at Constantinople. After Arichis II the Principality of Beneventum broke up into three Lombard states — Beneventum, Salernum, and Capua. To the North