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previous: Book VII Chapter 2, cont. (II: Friuli) This webpage reproduces a chapter of Italy and Her Invaders by Thomas Hodgkin 2nd edition Oxford University Press London 1896 The text, and illustrations except as noted, are in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Book VII Chapter 2, cont. (IV: Spoleto)

Book VII (continued)

Vol. VI
p62 Chapter II (continued)

The Four Great Duchies

p63 III. Duchy of Benevento

Situation of Benevento Benevento stands in an amphitheatre of hills over­looking the two rivers Calore and Sabato, which meet near its western extremity, and flowing on together for •about thirty miles, pour their waters into the channel which bears the name of the Voltorno,​1 and so pass out by Capua to the sea.

Early history of the city. The city of Beneventum, as we have already seen,​2 laid claim to a high antiquity, professing to have been founded by Diomed, and to show the tusks of the monstrous boar, which in the days of his grandfather ravaged the territory of Calydon. Leaving these mythical glories on one side, we remark only that it was a city of the Samnites possibly at one time inhabited by the Etruscans of Campania, and that about the time of the Third Samnite War (B.C. 298‑290) it passed under the dominion of Rome. In its  p64 neighbourhood (B.C. 275) Manius Curius won that decisive victory over Pyrrhus, which settled the question whether the Roman or the Greek was to be master in the Italian peninsula. Seven years after this (B.C. 268) the Romans, true to their constant policy of pinning down newly conquered territories by the establishment of miniature Roman republics among them, sent a colony to the city by the Calore; and on this occasion that city, which had previously been called Maleventum, had that name of evil omen, which it had accidentally received, changed into the more auspicious Beneventum, by which it has thenceforth been known in history.​3 Situation on the Via Appia. The chief importance of Beneventum arose from its being situated on the great Via Appia, which led from Rome through Capua to Tarentum and Brundisium. Many a schoolboy has read the passage in the Iter Brundusinum in which Horace describes the officious zeal of the innkeeper at Beneventum, who, while blowing up his fire to roast a few lean thrushes for his illustrious guests, narrowly escaped burning down his own house.​4 Some portion of  p65 the bridge by which the Appian Way crossed the river Sabato is still standing, and is known by the somewhat mysterious name of Il Ponte Lebbroso.5

Via Trajana. But a century after Horace's Brundisian journey the greatest of the Roman Emperors stamped his name on Beneventum by a noble work of public utility, and by a stately monument. The old road to Brundisium, over which Horace travelled, had apparently been a mere mule-track where it crossed the Apennines,​6 the road which was passable by wheeled carriages making a bend to the south, and circling round by Tarentum. In order to avoid this deviation, and to save a day in the throughout journey from Rome to the east, the Emperor made the new and splendid road across the mountains which thenceforward bore the name of Via Trajana.

 p66  The Arch of Trajan. To commemorate this great engineering work there was erected on the north side of the city in the year 114, a triumphal arch dedicated to 'Nerva Trajanus Optimus Augustus, Germanicus et Dacicus' by the Senate and people of Rome.​7 This noble work, which has hardly yet received from archaeologists the attention which it deserves,​8 though it has suffered much at the hands of sportive barbarians, still casts a light upon the reign of the best of Roman Emperors, only less bright than that thrown by the celebrated column at Rome. It is like the same Emperor's Arch at Ancona, but not despoiled of its bas‑reliefs; like the Arch of Constantine, but with its best works of art restored to their rightful owner; like the Arch of Titus save for the incidental interest which the latter derives from the fact that it records the calamity of the chosen people. Here, notwithstanding the irritating amputations effected by the mischievous hands of boys of many generations, we can still discover the representation of the chief scenes in the life of Trajan, his adoption by Nerva, his triumphal entry into Rome, his victory over the Dacian chief Decebalus. Here we can see him achieving some of his great peaceful triumphs, giving the 'congiarium'  p67 to the citizens of Rome, founding an asylum for orphans, and hailed by the Senate's enthusiastic acclamations as Optimus Princeps. And lastly, here we see the Roman sculptor's conception of an Imperial apotheosis: Trajan's sister Marciana welcomed into the assembly of the Immortals by Capitolian Jupiter, while Minerva and Ceres, Bacchus and Mercury, look on approvingly.

Strategical importance of Benevento. It was not only the Via Appia and the Via Trajana that entered the gates of Beneventum. A branch of the other great southern road, the Via Latina, led off to it from the neighbourhood of Teanum, and another road skirting the northern side of Mons Tifernus connected it with Aesernia and the north-east end of Latium. The more we study the Roman itineraries the more we are impressed with the importance of Beneventum as a military position for the Lombards commanding the southern portion of Italy, watching as from a hostile outpost the movements of the duke of Neapolis, blocking the great highroad between Rome and Constantinople, and cutting off the Romans on the Adriatic from the Romans on the Tyrrhene Sea. Yet though doubtless strategic considerations weighed heaviest in the scale when the Lombard chiefs were choosing their southern capital, the character of the climate had also probably something to do with their selection. Children of the north, and denizens of the forest and the moorland, the Lombards (or at any rate some of the Lombards) shrank at first from fixing their homes in the sultry alluvial plains. The cooler air of the uplands, the near neighbourhood of the great Apennine chain, even the boisterous wind which blustered round the walls  p68 of Beneventum were all additional recommendations in the eyes of the first generation of invaders who had crossed the Alps with Alboin.

'The Samnite duchy.' The duchy of Benevento is often spoken of by Paulus as the duchy of the Samnites.​9 At first the use of so archaic a term of geography shrieks us as a piece of mere pedantry, and only provokes a smile; but when we look a little more closely into the matter our objection to it almost disappears. The attitude of the old Samnite mountaineers to the lowlanders of Campania, Greek, Etruscan, Oscan, or Roman, seems reproduced in the attitude of the Lombards of Benevento to the Imperialist duke of Neapolis, and the citizens of Salernum and Paestum. The pass of the Caudine Forks, the scene of Rome's greatest humiliation (whether it be placed at S. Agata dei Goti or at Arpaia), was within •fifteen miles of Benevento. Though wars, proscriptions and the horrors of the Roman latifundia may have well nigh exterminated all the population in whose veins ran a drop of the old Samnite blood, the faithful memory of the mountaineer may have retained some trace of those great wars, which once made each pass of the Apennines memorable; and even as the Vandals of Carthage avenged the wrongs of their long vanished Punic predecessors, so possibly some faint tradition of the ungenerous treatment  p69 of that noble Samnite general C. Pontius of Telesia by his Roman conquerors may have reached the ears of Arichis or Grimwald, and nerved them to more bitter battle against the Roman dwellers in the plain below.

Glance at the later history of Benevento. I have briefly touched on the history of Beneventum before it became the seat of a Lombard duchy. The chief architectural monuments of Lombard domination belong to the reign of Arichis II, and are therefore outside the limits of this volume. But having followed the fortunes of the city so far, I may here record the fact that the Lombard duchy of Benevento lasted as an independent state till the latter part of the eleventh century, when the Norman conquest of Southern Italy, contemporaneous with the Norman conquest of England, extinguished its existence along with that of its old Greek or Imperial foes. The city of Benevento itself, in the troubles connected with the Norman invasion, became a part of the Papal territory (1053), and so remained down to our own times, though entirely surrounded by the dominions of the Neapolitan kings, and •seventy miles distant from the frontier of the States of the Church. In the plain below the city walls, on the banks of the river Calore, was fought in 1266 that fatal battle in which Manfred, the last of the Hohenstauffen princes, was defeated by Charles of Anjou, the first, but by no means the last, of the French lords of Southern Italy. From various causes Benevento lost much of the importance which had belonged to it at the beginning of the Middle Ages. During the Saracen invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries the old Roman roads fell into decay, and the great Via Appia and Via Trajana no longer brought traders to its gates. When Naples ceased to be under  p70 a Byzantine ruler, it naturally took the place of Benevento as capital of Southern Italy. Later on the position of the city as a mere enclave of the Popes, surrounded by the territory of sometimes unfriendly princes, was doubtless unfavourable to its commercial growth. Thus it has come to pass that Benevento now possesses only a little over 20,000 inhabitants, and has played no important part in the later history of Italy. In fact the historian of the nineteenth century will perhaps find his chief reason for remembering it in the fact that in the short-lived Empire of Napoleon it gave the title of Prince to that strange and shifty intriguer, the Sisyphus of modern politics, Bishop or Citizen Talleyrand. It now, however, of course, forms part of the kingdom of Italy, and is capital of a province. With good roads, and becoming again by the construction of two or three converging railroads, somewhat of a focus of communication for Southern Italy, it is likely to be an important agricultural centre, and may perhaps regain by trade some of the importance which it lost by politics and war.

But we have wandered thirteen centuries away from our proper subject. We must return to the middle of the sixth century. The still existing city walls, to a large extent of Roman workman­ship, the eight gates by which they are pierced, the arch immediately outside them, the remains of the baths and amphitheatre, the ruins of a vast warehouse outside the city, all help us to imagine its appearance as it lay in desolate grandeur for some twenty years or more after Totila had thrown down its walls, and before the "unspeakable Lombard" came marching along the Appian Way to ravage and to rule.

 p71  Foundation of the Duchy of Benevento. Duke Zotto, 571 (?)‑591. It was probably about the year 571, three years after Alboin's first entrance into Italy, that a Lombard chief named Zotto entered the city — an easy prey by reason of its ruined walls — and established himself there as its duke.​10 From this centre, in the course of his twenty years' reign, he extended his dominions far and wide over Southern Italy. Naples, which was no doubt the chief object of his desire, he never succeeded in capturing, though he besieged it in 581.​11 But Aquinum, •more than sixty miles north-west of Benevento (that little Volscian town which was one day to become famous as the birthplace of a great theologian and philosopher), was laid waste about the year 577 by the swords of barbarians,​12 who were probably the soldiers of Zotto. And towards the end of Zotto's reign, about the year 590, the little town of Atina,  p72 somewhat north of Aquinum, and not far from Arpinum (the birthplace of Marius and Cicero), was entered by the ruthless Lombards, and its bishop, Felix, after an episcopate of thirty years, 'died as a martyr under the hands of the Beneventan duke, the city and the great church being also destroyed'​13 at the same time.

Destruction of the monastery on Monte Cassino. It was apparently about the same time, or perhaps a year earlier (589), that the great convent, which the saintly Benedict had reared sixty years before on Monte Cassino, was stormed in the night by Zotto's savage followers. They laid hands on everything valuable that they could find in that abode of willing poverty, probably not much besides the vessels of divine service, and perhaps some ornaments of the founder's tomb. Not one of the monks, however, was taken, and thus was fulfilled the prophecy of their father Benedict, who long before, predicting the coming calamity, had said, 'With difficulty have I obtained of the Lord that from this place the persons alone should be granted me.'​14 The fugitive monks escaped to Rome, carrying with them the original manuscript of the Benedictine Rule and some other writings; the regulation weight for the bread, and measure for the wine, and such scanty bed furniture as they could save from the general ruin.15  p73 It was under the fourth successor of St. Benedict that this ruin of the great convent took place,​16 and notwithstanding all the softened conditions of life in Italy during the generations that were to follow, it was 130 years before the Coenobium of Monte Cassino rose again from its ruins.

Death of Duke Zotto, 591. In the year 591 Duke Zotto died, having pushed the terror of his ravages, as we can see from the early letters of Pope Gregory, far into Apulia, Lucania and Calabria.​17 In all this career of conquest he had been apparently acting on his own responsibility, with very little regard to the central power, such as it was, in Northern Italy: and indeed, during half of his reign there 'had been no king over Israel,' only that loose confederacy of dukes of which he must have been nearly, if not quite, the most powerful member. But either Zotto left none of his own family to succeed him, or the obvious danger to the Lombard state, involved in the independence of Benevento, stirred up the new king, Agilulf, to a vigorous assertion of the right which was undoubtedly his in theory, to nominate Zotto's successor. His choice fell on Arichis,​18 who was a kinsman of Gisulf, duke of Friuli, and who had, according to Paulus, acted for some time as instructor of his younger sons in all manly exercises.19

 p74  Arichis, duke of Benevento, 591‑641. The reign of Arichis I lasted fifty years, from 591 to 641, and was an important period in the history of the  p75 new duchy. I have called it a reign advisedly, for whatever may have been the theory of his relation to the Lombard king ruling at Pavia, it is clear that in practice Arichis acted as an independent sovereign. We have seen him, in a previous chapter, making war on his own account with Naples and Rome: nay more, we have seen that King Agilulf himself could not conclude a peace with the Empire till Arichis was graciously pleased to come in and give his assent to the treaty. It is suggested​20 that if Agilulf, on Zotto's death, had taken proper measures for ensuring the dependence of the duchy of Benevento on the central monarchy, he might still have accomplished that result: but whether this be so or no, it is clear that the long and successful reign of a great warrior like Arichis, a reign, too, which coincided with many weak and short reigns of his nominal superiors at Pavia, established the virtual independence of the southern duchy. There was apparently no royal domain reserved in all that long reach of territory; there were no officers acting in the king's name, or appointed by him; and when at last the reign of Arichis came to an end his successor was chosen without even a pretence of consulting the Lombard sovereign.

Geographical extent of the Duchy. It was during this reign that the duchy of Benevento received that geographical extension which, in the main, it kept for centuries. Roughly speaking, it included the old Italian provinces of Samnium, Apulia, Campania, Lucania, and Bruttii, except such parts of the coast — and they were considerable, and included all  p76 the best harbours — as were still held by the Empire. The capital and heart of the duchy were in the province of Samnium, and 'the people of the Samnites' is, as we have seen, the phrase generally used by the Paulus when he is speaking of the Lombards of Benevento. It is certainly with a strange feeling of the return of some great historic cycle that we find Rome engaged in a breathless struggle for her very existence with Carthage in the fifth century after Christ, and with 'the Samnites' in the sixth.

The limits of the Samnite duchy cannot now be very exactly defined. On the north-west the frontier must have run for some distance side by side with that of the Ducatus Romae along the river Liris, and under the Volscian hills. In the Sabine territory and Picenum, the Fucine lake and the river Pescara​21 probably formed the boundary with the other great Lombard duchy of Central Italy, that of Spoleto. The easternmost peninsula (sometimes called the heel of Italy), which lies between the gulf of Taranto and the Adriatic, and which includes Taranto itself, Otranto and Brindisi, was still held by the Empire at the death of Arichis. So did the extreme south, the toe of Italy, forming a large part of the ancient province of Bruttii. Consentiae (Cosenza)​22 seems here to have been close to the border line between the Imperial and the Lombard dominions. Rossano was still Imperial, and a line  p77 drawn across the peninsula from that city to Amantia formed the frontier between 'Romania and Varbaricum.' The patient monks of Cassiodorus therefore, in their convent at Squillace, could study theology and grammar, and transcribe the treatises of their founder, undisturbed under the aegis of the Empire. Further north all the lovely bay of Naples, with its fine harbours and flourishing cities, owned the sway of the Roman Augustus. It was not till towards the end of the reign of Arichis (probably about 640) that the city of Salerno passed, apparently by peaceful means, into the keeping of the Lombards.23

Relations of the Dukes of Benevento with the Popes. The few facts which illustrate the internal history of the duchy, and especially those which throw any light on the condition of the conquered Roman inhabitants, will come under our notice in later chapters. It will be enough to say here that all the symptoms would seem to show that the oppression was harder, the robbery of cities and churches more ruthless, the general relation of the two nations more unnatural, in the duchy of Benevento (and probably in that of Spoleto also) than in the northern kingdom. No Theudelinda was at work here to help forward the blessed work of amalgamation between the races. It is true that in the spring of 599 we find Pope Gregory writing to Arichis, and asking for help in the felling of timber in the forests of Bruttii for the repairs of the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul.​24 As before  p78 said, we must not conclude that because the Pope in this letter addresses 'Arogis' as his son, he had joined the Catholic Church. It is true that Gregory would hardly have used this mode of address to a notorious idolater, perhaps hardly to a bitter Arian persecutor; but these Lombard conquerors were not as a rule sufficiently interested in theology to be persecutors. They were simply rough, sensual, boorish children of the forest, men who, if there were any object to be gained, would address the great bishop of Rome as 'Father,' and would be glad to be addressed by him as 'Glorious Son,' but would not surrender an ounce of church plate, nor recall a single bishop from the exile into which their suspicions had driven him, for all the loving exhortations of the Holy Father.

Religious condition of Benevento. Thus it came to pass that all through the long reign of Arichis, the Catholics of his duchy were in a lamentable state of spiritual destitution. The unusually large number of episcopal cities which were once to be found in Southern Italy seem to have remained widowed of their bishops, and the convents, like Monte Cassino itself, lay, probably for the greater part of the seventh century, in ruins. Even Benevento, the capital of the duchy, had perhaps no resident bishop till shortly before St. Barbatus came to it (in 663) to restore the ruins of many generations. The life of this saint (from which some quotations will be made in a note to a later chapter) draws a lamentable picture of the foolish and degrading superstitions by which the people of Benevento, though calling themselves baptized Christians, were still held in bondage. Salerno seems to be the only city in this region (except those that remained in the possession of the Empire)  p79 which can show an absolutely unbroken line of bishops during all this troubled time; and this exceptional prosperity is probably accounted for by the fact of its peaceful surrender to the conquerors.25

Radwald and Grimwald arrive at Benevento. Arichis had probably been reigning some twenty or five-and‑twenty years when (as was told in the last section) his young kinsmen, Radwald and Grimwald, having left Friuli in disdain, landed from their little bark,​26 and made their way to the court of Benevento. They were received by Arichis with the utmost cordiality, and brought up as his own sons. He had indeed one son of his own named Aio, but over him there hung a mystery which clouded the last years of the life of Arichis. Aio, son of Arichis, at Ravenna, 636. When the great King Rothari took his seat on the Lombard throne, Arichis ordered his son to repair to Pavia, probably with a message of dutiful submission from one who, though in fact king of all Southern Italy, yet owned the king of the Lombards as his lord.​27 On his way, the young prince tarried at Ravenna. Whether he ever completed his journey to Pavia we are not informed, but when he returned to Benevento all men noted a strange alteration in his behaviour. Dark rumours were spread abroad that by  p80 the malice of the Romans some maddening potion had been brewed for him at Ravenna. Perhaps we may conjecture that the maddening potion was only that Circean cup of enchantment which the dissolute cities of the Romans have so often held out to the easily-tempted sons of the Teutons; but, whatever the cause, Aio from that time forth was never again in full mental health.

Aio succeeds his father, 641. Seeing this fatal change, Arichis, when he felt his last hour approaching, commended Radwald and Grimwald to the Lombards as his own sons, and advised that one of them rather than Aio should be his successor. The advice, however, was disregarded, and on the death of Arichis, the brain-sick Aio became 'leader of the Samnites.' Neither chief nor people seem to have taken any heed of the right which the king of the Lombards must have in theory possessed to name the new duke of Benevento.

Sclavonian invasion, 642. We are told that Radwald and Grimwald, not murmuring at their exclusion from the throne, to which the will of Arichis had seemed to open the way, obeyed Aio in all things as their elder brother and lord. His reign, however, was not to be of long duration. A year and five months after his accession, a cloud of Sclavonian invaders descended on Apulia. They came by way of the sea, with a multitude of ships, and landed at Sipontum; a city which has now disappeared from the face of the earth, but which stood under the peninsular mount of Garganus, near to the spot where, six centuries later, the last of the Hohenstauffens built out of its ruins his capital of Manfredonia. Here the Sclavonians pitched their camp, which they found with pits dug all round it, and covered probably with  p81 brushwood. Thither came Aio with an army, but unaccompanied by his two friends. Death of Aio. Riding rashly forward, he fell into one of the hidden pits, and was killed, with many of his followers, by the on‑rushing Sclavonians. The news was bright to Radwald, who, in order to avenge his patron's death, dealt wilily. He had not forgotten the Sclavonic speech which he had learned long ago in the mountains of Friuli, and, approaching the camp of the invaders, he spoke to them friendly words in their own tongue. Having thus lulled their suspicions to sleep, and made them less eager for battle, he fell upon them at unawares, and wrought great slaughter in their ranks. Thus was Aio's death avenged, and the remnant of the Sclavonians returned in haste to their own land. Radwald, duke, 642‑647. Radwald, who now became without dispute duke of Benevento, reigned for five years only, Grimwald, duke, 647‑662. and at his death was succeeded by his brother Grimwald. The only event which is recorded of the latter's reign as mere duke of Benevento is that 'the Greeks' (as the Romans of the East are now beginning to be called) came to plunder the sanctuary of the Archangel Michael on Mount Garganus; a deed which recalls the ignoble raid upon Apulia made by the ships of Anastasius in the days of Theodoric the Ostrogoth.​28 Grimwald, however, fell upon the sacrilegious invaders with his army, and destroyed them with a great destruction.

At this point we rejoin for a time the main stream of Lombard history: for Grimwald, who is certainly its greatest name in the seventh century, became, as we shall see, in the latter years of his life, king of all the Lombards. Thus the history of the lad who so  p82 marvellously escaped from his Avar captors binds together the two duchies of Friuli and Benevento, and the kingdom of Pavia. The eventful story of that last stage of the life of Grimwald must be reserved for a future chapter.

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The Author's Notes:

1 My reason for using this expression is that it seems to me that both from the length of its course, and the volume of its waters, Calore has more right to the name of the united river than Voltorno.

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2 Vol. IV p75.º

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3 As was stated in vol. IV p75,º Procopius without hesitation ascribes the original name Maleventum to the fierce winds to which, from its elevated situation, it was exposed. And certainly to me, when passing the night there, and hearing the wind, which seemed dashing with all its fury and with stormy tears against the wonders of my inn, the derivation seemed probable enough. It seems, however, to be now pretty well settled that the original Oscan name Malies was Grecised into Malioenton or Maleventum as Acragas was changed into Agrigentum, and that ventus, wind, does not really enter into its composition.

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4

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5 The Leprous Bridge. At the eastern end of this bridge are some massive stones, evidently of Roman workman­ship. Many of them are pierced with 'luis-holes,' and it is suggested that from these the epithet leprous may have been derived. In the eleventh century a great part of the bridge was destroyed by a certain Rector, who, obtaining a concession from Prince Landulf VI, dammed up the stream, and erected a mill instead of the bridge.

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6 The authority for this statement is Strabo, VI.3.5: Δύο εἰσὶν ὁδοὶ, μία μὲν ἡμιονικὴ διὰ Πευκετίων καὶ Δαυνιτῶν καὶ Σαννιτῶν μέχρι Βενεουέντου· ἐφ’ ᾖ ὁδῷ Ἐγνατία πόλις εἶτα Κελία . . . καὶ Κανύσιον καὶ Κερδονία, ἡ δὲ διὰ Τάραντος μικρὸν ἐν ἀριστερᾷ· ὅσον δὲ μιᾶς ἡμέρας περίοδον κυκλεύσαντι ἡ Ἀππία λεγομένη ἁμαξήλατος μᾶλλον. It is incidentally confirmed by Horace's lines in the Iter Brundusinum: —

The emphatic mention of rhedis shows that the part of the journey immediately preceding had been performed on the backs of horses or mules.

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7 The inscription gives the date 'Tribunicia Potestate XVIII. Imperator VII, Cos VI.' These dates correspond with the year mentioned above (A.D. 114), the year in which Trajan set out on his expedition to the East. This fact, and the absence of 'Parthicus' from the Emperor's titles, prove, I think, that Cav. Meomartini is right in refusing to find any reference in the sculptures on the Arch to the subjugation of Armenia, or other events of the Parthian War.

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8 I must except the very painstaking work Monsignor Rossi (Naples, 1816), and the yet more elaborate and trustworthy work of Cav. Meomartini, to which I have already referred.

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9 'Defuncto Arichis . . . Aio, ejus filius Samnitumº ductor effectus est' (H. L. IV.44). 'Aput Beneventum . . . mortuo Raduald duce . . . Grimuald ejus germanus dux effectus est gubernavitque ducatum Samnitiumº populos rexit' (H. L. VI.2). 'Defuncto itaque Gisulfo Beneventano duce, Samnitumº populum Romuald, ejus filius, regendum suscepit' (H. L. VI.39).

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10 The date of the foundation of the duchy of Benevento has been the subject of much discussion, but, upon the whole, the notice in Paulus (H. L. III.33), 'Fuit autem primus Langobardorum dux in Benevento nomine Zotto, qui in eâ (sic) principatus est per curricula viginti annorum,' which gives us 571 for the beginning of Zotto's reign (it ended in 591), seems to agree sufficiently well with the course of the Lombard invasion. The year 569, for which Di Meo contends, seems decidedly too early. (See Ferdinand Hirsch, Das Herzogthum Benevent, p3).

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11 So says a fragment, not perhaps of very high authority, quoted by Troya (IV.1.30), 'Eo jubente ego Petrus Notarius S. Ecclesiae Neapolitanae, emendavi sub die Iduum Decembrium Imperatore Domino nostro Tiberio Constantino Agusto (sic) anno septimo post consulatum ejus Agusti (sic) anno tertio Indictione quintadecimâ obsidentibus Langobardis Neapolitanam civitatem . . . codicem.' These dates are equivalent to December 13, 581.

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12 'Quo (Iovino) adhuc superstite, ita cuncti inhabitatores civitatis illius et barbarorum gladiis et pestilentiae immanitate vastati sunt, ut post mortem illius nec quis episcopus fieret, nec quibus fieret inveniri potuisset' (Greg. Dialog. III.8).

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13 Chronicon Atinense in Anecdota Ughelliana, quoted by Hirsch (p5).

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14 'Qui universa diripientes, nec unum ex monachis tenere potuerunt, ut prophetia venerabilis Benedicti patris quam longe ante praeviderat impleretur quâ dixit, "Vix apud Deum optinere potui, ut ex hoc loco mihi animae cederentur." ' Perhaps an allusion to Gen. xiv.21.

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15 Paulus (H. L. IV.17) assigns the destruction of Monte Cassino with a vague 'circa haec tempora' to the year 601. But it is generally agreed that this is a mistake, and that the event occurred at least eleven years earlier. (See Hirsch, p4, and Jacobi, Die Quellen des Lombardengeschichte des Paulus Diaconus, p26).

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16 The succession, as given by Paulus, was Benedict, Constantine, Simplicius, Vitalis, Bonitus (under whom the destruction took place).

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17 Canosa in Apulia, Tauri in Calabria, Velia, Buxentum and Blanda in Calabria were all more or less deserted by the citizens or the clergy (Greg. Ep. I.44, 53, 41; II.16, 17, 43).

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18 Called Arogis by Pope Gregory.

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19 'Mortuo igitur Zottone Beneventanorum duce Arigis in loco ipsius a rege Agilulfo missus successit, qui ortus in Forojulii fuerat et Gisulfi Forojulani ducis filios educarat eidemque Gisulfo consanguineus erat' (Paulus, H. L. IV.18). This statement, coupled with the already entangled family history of Gisulf of Friuli, has caused no little perplexity to the commentators. Arichis, as we shall see, died in the year 541, at an advanced age, and can hardly have been much more than thirty at his accession to the duchy of Benevento. But how could Grimwald, son of Gisulf, be one of his pupils before 591, — that Grimwald who was still a little boy who had not learned to ride at the time of the Avar invasion, which is generally dated about 610? As Lupi remarks, it was not the business of Lombard chiefs to tend babes in the nursery, and not even the earliest date that can possibly be assigned to the Avar invasion (say even 603), would allow Grimwald to be more than a baby when Arichis was in the palace of Forojulii. It is clear, therefore, that we must abandon the idea of Grimwald at any rate having been trained by Arichis. Even as to his elder brothers Taso and Cacco the matter is difficult enough, for the eldest of these was young enough to be adopted as 'filius per arma' by the Exarch after his father's death (say about 612). How can his birth, therefore, be placed earlier than about 585, six years before Arichis becomes duke of Benevento? Crivellucci, whose analysis of the Forojulian pedigree is otherwise most satisfactory, seems to me only to cut the knot — and not in a satisfactory manner — by bringing the Avar invasion forward to 603. So difficult is the problem that one is inclined, with Di Meo and Hirsch, to cut the knot in another fashion by saying that Paulus is altogether wrong, and that Arichis had nothing to do with the education of the sons of any duke of Friuli. Only as we have seen reason to think that there is a missing link in the Forojulian pedigree, and that Paulus himself may have made some confusion between Gisulf I and Gisulf II, I would suggest that it may have been the children of an earlier generation whom Arichis instructed. Gisulf I may have had sons, none of whom succeeded him in the duchy, or (which is, I suspect, the true solution) it was really Duke Grasulf I whose sons Arichis trained up; that is to say, Gisulf II and Grasulf II. On this hypothesis, when Arichis in middle life received the two young princes Radwald and Grimwald at his court, it was not his old pupils themselves, but the sons of one of them, that he welcomed to Benevento.

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20 By Hirsch, p18.

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21 Hirsch (p9, quoting Erchempert in Monumenta Sanctorum, III p243) says that Chieti belonged at this time to the duchy of Benevento, and was not detached therefrom and joined to that of Spoleto till the time of Charles the Great. I presume that the river Sangro would then become the boundary of the two duchies.

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22 There is some doubt about Cosenza. Hirsch (p9 n. 5) makes it Lombard; Diehl (p77) Imperial.

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23 See Hirsch, p8. The surrender of Salerno must have taken place after 625, for a letter is addressed by Pope Honorius (who ruled from 625 to 638) to Anatolius, Magister Militum at that place. The city was not destroyed, and kept its bishop, Gaudiosus. All this looks like a peaceful surrender.

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24 See vol. V p428.

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25 In this paragraph I follow Hirsch, who seems to have enquired carefully into the ecclesiastical history of the duchy. A certain Barbarus, bishop of that city, is addressed by Pope Gregory (Epp. IV.41 and XIII.13), but the tone of both letters, and the commissions entrusted to him, seem clearly to indicate (as Hirsch points out) that he was then living in Sicily, an exile from his see. The chief sees which can be shown to have been still existing in the first half of the seventh century are Paestum, Buxentum, Blanda, Capua, Siponto, and perhaps Lesina (Hirsch, p16, n. 2).

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26 Navicula.

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27 We can only speak conjecturally as to the degree of submission to Rothari which Aio's mission may have expressed.

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28 See vol. III p442.

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