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54 of these was a fourth, the Duchy of Spoletum. At Capua a great Lombard prince, Duke Pandulf Iron-Head, was invested by the Western Emperor Otto I (936-973) in 966, as Duke of Capua and Spoletum. He imposed his own son on the Duchy of Beneventum, became Lord of Caieta (Gaeta) and Prince of Salernum, and so again formed a great Lombard state in the South. But after his death (981) this also broke up; Caieta, Salernum, and Beneventum became independent under other Lombard princes; Pandulf's descendants kept only Capua.

From the eighth century to the coming of the Normans in the eleventh, the Lombards are a great factor in Southern Italy. They formed a powerful aristocracy and spread, beyond the borders of their states, all over the South. But had completely lost all trace of their Teutonic descent, except in their laws and customs. They were Latin Catholics, and spoke, or at any rate wrote, always Latin. Their laws and system of administration had a profound effect even on the cities which remained Imperial. Under the Lombard dukes were lesser lords, the Gastalds, whom the Romans call counts. The Lombard laws were perhaps their chief contribution to Italy. One hears a good deal of these laws, the "consuetudines gentis nostræ Langobardorum." They are followed in many cases by the Greek cities. Bari, Amalfi, and Caieta, for instance, even when Caieta was Imperial, are ruled by the Lombard law. Also the Lombards introduce for the first time a considerable Latin element in the South of Italy. So many of the Greek cities begin to write Latin, as they follow Lombard law, and call in the help of the Lombard Gastalds in times of disturbance. Yet they still date their documents by the reign of the Emperor at Constantinople, and recognize him as their sovereign. In one word, the Lombards are the first whom we can already call Italians, as opposed to Greeks, in the South.

But the Empire, already so despoiled in Lower Italy by the Lombards, was destined to suffer equally disastrous losses from another, a still stranger and fiercer foe.

In the seventh century the Saracens had conquered Egypt and then all North Africa. Sicily is temptingly near the African coast. Already in 652 Saracens from Syria had landed at Syracuse and had devastated the city. In 669 another band again made a sudden descent and plundered Syracuse. In 704 descents from the African coast began. In that year the Emir Mūsā (Moses) ibn Nusair made a raid on Sicily; in 705