source
of their opulence and freedom. The government was popular, under the
administration of a duke and the supremacy of the Greek emperor. Fifty
thousand citizens were numbered in the walls of Amalphi; nor was any
city more abundantly provided with gold, silver, and the objects of
precious luxury. The mariners who swarmed in her port, excelled in the
theory and practice of navigation and astronomy: and the discovery of
the compass, which has opened the globe, is owing to their ingenuity or
good fortune. Their trade was extended to the coasts, or at least to
the commodities, of Africa, Arabia, and India: and their settlements
in Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, acquired the
privileges of independent colonies. [51] After three hundred years of
prosperity, Amalphi was oppressed by the arms of the Normans, and
sacked by the jealousy of Pisa; but the poverty of one thousand [5111]
fisherman is yet dignified by the remains of an arsenal, a cathedral,
and the palaces of royal merchants.

[Footnote 46: The conquests of Robert Guiscard and Roger I., the
exemption of Benevento and the xii provinces of the kingdom, are fairly
exposed by Giannone in the second volume of his Istoria Civile, l. ix.
x. xi and l. xvii. p. 460-470. This modern division was not established
before the time of Frederic II.]

[Footnote 47: Giannone, (tom. ii. p. 119-127,) Muratori, (Antiquitat.
Medii Aevi, tom. iii. dissert. xliv. p. 935, 936,) and Tiraboschi,
(Istoria della Letteratura Italiana,) have given an historical account
of these physicians; their medical knowledge and practice must be left
to our physicians.]

[Footnote 48: At the end of the Historia Pandectarum of Henry
Brenckmann, (Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1722, in 4to.,) the indefatigable
author has inserted two dissertations, de Republica Amalphitana, and
de Amalphi a Pisanis direpta, which are built on the testimonies of
one hundred and forty writers. Yet he has forgotten two most important
passages of the embassy of Liutprand, (A.D. 939,) which compare the
trade and navigation of Amalphi with that of Venice.]

[Footnote 49: Urbs Latii non est hac delitiosior urbe,

Frugibus, arboribus, vinoque redundat; et unde

Non tibi poma, nuces, non pulchra palatia desunt,

Non species muliebris abest probitasque virorum.

--Gulielmus Appulus, l. iii. p. 367]

[Footnote 50: Muratori carries their antiquity above the year (1066)
of the death of Edward th