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The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon [1894]

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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 ^* 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 the Confessor, the rex Anglorum to whom they are addressed. Nor is this date affected by the opinion, or rather mistake, of Pasquier (Recherches de la France, l. vii. c. 2) and Ducange, (Glossar. Latin.) The practice of rhyming, as early as the viith century, was borrowed from the languages of the North and East, (Muratori, Antiquitat. tom. iii. dissert. xl. p. 686 - 708.)]

[Footnote 51: The description of Amalphi, by William the Apulian, (l. iii. p. 267,) contains much truth and some poetry, and the third line may be applied to the sailor's compass: -

Nulla magis locuples argento, vestibus, auro

Partibus innumeris: hac plurimus urbe moratur

Nauta maris Caelique vias aperire peritus.

Huc et Alexandri diversa feruntur ab urbe

Regis, et Antiochi. Gens haec freta plurima transit.

His Arabes, Indi, Siculi nascuntur et Afri.

Haec gens est totum proore nobilitata per orbem,

Et mercando forens, et amans mercata referre.]

[Footnote *: Amalfi had only one thousand inhabitants at the commencement of the 18th century, when it was visited by Brenckmann, (Brenckmann de Rep. Amalph. Diss. i. c. 23.) At present it has six or eight thousand Hist. des Rep. tom. i. p. 304. - G.]

Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.

Part III.

Roger, the twelfth and last of the sons of Tancred, had been long detained in Normandy by his own and his father' age. He accepted the welcome summons; hastened to the Apulian camp; and deserved at first the esteem, and afterwards the envy, of his elder brother. Their valor and ambition were equal; but the youth, the beauty, the elegant manners, of Roger engaged the disinterested love of the soldiers and people.

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