d civilisation
in Italy, have broken the continuity of Europe, have obliterated all
our traditions, and altogether undone the great work of Justinian. It
is possible, but it is highly improbable; that it was impossible we
owe to Ravenna.

Ravenna was impregnable and her seaward gate was always open. During
all the years of the Lombard domination she was the citadel of the
empire in Italy, the seat of the prefect and the exarch, the imperial
representatives.

It must be grasped that even after the fall of Ticinum in 572, as the
Byzantine historian tells us, perhaps no one, and certainly no one in
Ravenna, regarded the invasion as anything but a passing evil like all
the other barbarian incursions. No one believed Italy to be
irrevocably lost; on the contrary, everyone was assured that the lost
provinces could soon be delivered again.

This may explain, though perhaps it cannot excuse, the passive
attitude of Longinus, the successor of Narses, who in Ravenna
represented the emperor in Italy, perhaps till the year 584. We know
nothing of any attempts he may have made to stem the barbarian flood,
and indeed the only incident in his career with which we are
acquainted is romantic rather than military or political. For when
Rosamond, the queen of the Lombards, murdered her husband Alboin in
his palace at Verona, because he had forced her to pledge him in a
goblet fashioned from the skull of her father, she fled away with her
stepdaughter Albswinda, the great Lombard spoil, and her two
accomplices, Helmichis her lover and Peredeus the chamberlain, and
came to seek shelter in Ravenna. It seems she had written to Longinus
and he, perhaps, hoping for some political advantage, and certainly
full of the tales of her beauty, sent a ship up the Po to bring her to
him with her two companions. When he saw her he found that rumour had
not lied, and longing for her, suggested that she should kill
Helmichis and marry himself. Whether from fear or ambition she did
this thing, and slew her lover with a cup of poison as he came from
the bath. But he, even as he drank understanding all, suddenly forced
the same cup upon her, and standing over her with a naked sword forced
her to drink; so that they both lay dead upon the pavement.

Albswinda and the Lombard treasure, the spoil of the cities of Italy,
were sent with Peredeus to Constantinople. And it may be that it was
in them Longinus hoped to find his political advantage; in this,
howe