e he was accessible and courteous
to his fellow soldiers, and while he indulged the prejudices of his new
subjects, he affected in his dress and manners to maintain the ancient
fashion of his country. He grasped with a rapacious, that he might
distribute with a liberal hand; his primitive indigence had taught the
habits of frugality; the gain of a merchant was not below his attention;
and his prisoners were tortured with slow and unfeeling cruelty to force a
discovery of their secret treasure. According to the Greeks, he departed
from Normandy with only five followers on horse-back, and thirty on foot;
yet even this allowance appears too bountiful;--the sixth son of Tancred of
Hauteville passed the Alps as a pilgrim, and his first military band was
levied among the adventurers of Italy."

Gaining over the Pope Nicholas II. to his interests, the new Count was
able to exact an oath of fealty in 1060 from the Italian barons, hitherto
his equals, to recognise him as "Duke of Apulia, Calabria, and here-after
of Sicily, by the grace of God and of St Peter," although it took many
years of hard fighting before these lands, thus proudly claimed, could be
subdued. Beginning with the conquest of the Duchy of Benevento, Guiscard
at once laid siege to Salerno, taking it after an obstinate resistance
lasting over eight months, during which he was himself severely wounded by
a splinter from one of his own engines of war. The city captured with such
difficulty now became the victor's favourite residence and the recipient
of his bounty and enlightened rule, so that Salerno quickly rose to the
rank of one of the most illustrious towns in Europe, supplanting even its
magnificent neighbour Amalfi in popular esteem.

"Urbs Latii non est hac delitiosior urbe,
Frugibus arboribus vino redundat; et unde
Non tibi poma nuces, non pulchra palatia desunt,
Non species muliebris abest probitasque virorum."

("All Latium shows no more delightful place,
Whose sunny slopes the vine and almond grace;
'Midst fruitful groves her palaces uprear,
Her men are virtuous, and her women fair.")

It was under the Guiscard's auspices that the famous school of Medicine
that had long been seated at Salerno rose to its highest point of
excellence. "Paris for learning, Bologna for law, Orleans for poetry, and
Salerno for Medicine";--such was the verdict of the age. With the somewhat
grudging consent of the clergy, the hygienic skill of the dreaded A