aracens. [8] These corsairs had indeed been driven
by the Byzantine fleets from the fortresses and coasts of Italy; but a
sense of interest was more prevalent than superstition or resentment,
and the caliph of Egypt had transported forty thousand Moslems to the
aid of his Christian ally. The successors of Basil amused themselves
with the belief, that the conquest of Lombardy had been achieved, and
was still preserved by the justice of their laws, the virtues of their
ministers, and the gratitude of a people whom they had rescued from
anarchy and oppression. A series of rebellions might dart a ray of truth
into the palace of Constantinople; and the illusions of flattery were
dispelled by the easy and rapid success of the Norman adventurers.

[Footnote 5: See an excellent Dissertation de Republica Amalphitana,
in the Appendix (p. 1-42) of Henry Brencman's Historia Pandectarum,
(Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1722, in 4to.)]

[Footnote 6: Your master, says Nicephorus, has given aid and protection
prinminibus Capuano et Beneventano, servis meis, quos oppugnare
dispono.... Nova (potius nota) res est quod eorum patres et avi nostro
Imperio tributa dederunt, (Liutprand, in Legat. p. 484.) Salerno is not
mentioned, yet the prince changed his party about the same time, and
Camillo Pellegrino (Script. Rer. Ital. tom. ii. pars i. p. 285) has
nicely discerned this change in the style of the anonymous Chronicle.
On the rational ground of history and language, Liutprand (p. 480) had
asserted the Latin claim to Apulia and Calabria.]

[Footnote 7: See the Greek and Latin Glossaries of Ducange (catapanus,)
and his notes on the Alexias, (p. 275.) Against the contemporary notion,
which derives it from juxta omne, he treats it as a corruption of the
Latin capitaneus. Yet M. de St. Marc has accurately observed (Abrege
Chronologique, tom. ii. p. 924) that in this age the capitanei were not
captains, but only nobles of the first rank, the great valvassors of
Italy.]

[Footnote 8: (the Lombards), (Leon. Tactic. c. xv. p. 741.) The little
Chronicle of Beneventum (tom. ii. pars i. p. 280) gives a far different
character of the Greeks during the five years (A.D. 891-896) that Leo
was master of the city.]

The revolution of human affairs had produced in Apulia and Calabria a
melancholy contrast between the age of Pythagoras and the tenth century
of the Christian aera. At the former period, the coast of Great Greece
(as it was then styled) was planted wi