laws
that were henceforth destined to regulate the whole commercial system of
the western world. No marvel then that the poet William of Apulia should
praise in unmeasured terms the glories of the new-sprung city, whose trade
extended to the shores of India and whose merchants possessed independent
settlements in every great city of the Levant.

"Nulla magis civitas argento, vestibus, auro
Partibus innumeris; hac plurimus urbe moratur
Nauta marit coelique vias aperiri peritus.
Huc et Alexandri diversa feruntur ab urbe
Regia et Antiochi. Zeus haec freta plurima transit
His Arabes, Indi, Siculi nascuntur et Afri.
Haec genus est totum prope nobilitata per orbem,
Et mercanda ferens, et amans mercata referre."

("No city richer in its store of gold,
Of precious stones and silks doth Europe hold;
Her skilful mariners o'er treacherous seas
With aid of compass sail where'er they please.
From Egypt and from Antioch they land,
Their precious cargoes on th' Italian strand.
Scathless Amalfi's navies penetrate
The distant ports of every Paynim state.
Match me throughout the circuit of this earth
Another race so full of zeal and worth.")

A small state on a barren shore, yet the holder of the balance between
East and West by means of its wide-spread commerce, such was Amalfi during
the tenth and eleventh centuries. In some respects this Republic of the
Middle Ages appears as the prototype of the Venice of the Renaissance, for
there is not a little in common between the city that was built upon the
marshy islets of the Adriatic lagoons, and the city that was erected at
the base of the treacherous cliffs of the Tyrrhene Sea. Solely by means of
commerce both foundations rose from nothingness to splendour and power:
both held the gorgeous East in fee; and both fell lamentably from their
high estate. The chief point of difference in this comparison of their
careers is obvious; Amalfi collapsed suddenly and utterly, whilst the
Queen of the Adriatic has sunk gradually to decay until she has become the
interesting monument of a vanished magnificence which we admire to-day.

It was the rising naval power of Pisa that finally crushed the greatness
of Amalfi, although the Republic had already entered into its days of
decline when Robert Guiscard at the time of the First Crusade had
temporarily annexed its dominions to his new principality. Some thirty
years later King Roger of Naples forcibly seized t