The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon [1906]
[Footnote 88: The royalty of Robert, either promised or bestowed by the pope, (Anna, l. i. p. 32,) is sufficiently confirmed by the Apulian, (l. iv. p. 270.)
Romani regni sibi promisisse coronam Papa ferebatur.
Nor can I understand why Gretser, and the other papal advocates, should be displeased with this new instance of apostolic jurisdiction.]
[Footnote 89: See Homer, Iliad, B. (I hate this pedantic mode of quotation by letters of the Greek alphabet) 87, &c. His bees are the image of a disorderly crowd: their discipline and public works seem to be the ideas of a later age, (Virgil. Aeneid. l. i.)]
[Footnote 90: Gulielm. Appulus, l. v. p. 276.) The admirable port of Brundusium was double; the outward harbor was a gulf covered by an island, and narrowing by degrees, till it communicated by a small gullet with the inner harbor, which embraced the city on both sides. Caesar and nature have labored for its ruin; and against such agents what are the feeble efforts of the Neapolitan government? (Swinburne's Travels in the Two Sicilies, vol. i. p. 384 - 390.]
[Footnote 91: William of Apulia (l. v. p. 276) describes the victory of the Normans, and forgets the two previous defeats, which are diligently recorded by Anna Comnena, (l. vi. p. 159, 160, 161.) In her turn, she invents or magnifies a fourth action, to give the Venetians revenge and rewards. Their own feelings were far different, since they deposed their doge, propter excidium stoli, (Dandulus in Chron in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. xii. p. 249.)]
[Footnote 92: The most authentic writers, William of Apulia. (l. v. 277,) Jeffrey Malaterra, (l. iii. c. 41, p. 589,) and Romuald of Salerno, (Chron. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. vii.,) are ignorant of this crime, so apparent to our countrymen William of Malmsbury (l. iii. p. 107) and Roger de Hoveden, (p. 710, in Script. post Bedam) and the latter can tell, how the just Alexius married, crowned, and burnt alive, his female accomplice. The English historian is indeed so blind, that he ranks Robert Guiscard, or Wiscard, among the knights of Henry I, who ascended the throne fifteen years after the duke of Apulia's death.]
[Footnote 93: The joyful Anna Comnena scatters some flowers over the grave of an enemy, (Alexiad, l. v. p. 162 - 166;) and his best praise is the esteem and envy of William the Conqueror, the sovereign of his family Graecia (says Malaterra) hostibus recedentibus libera laeta quievit: Apulia tota sive Calabria turbatur.]
[Footnote 94: Urbs Venusina nitet tantis decorata sepulchris, is one of the last lines of the Apulian's poems, (l. v. p. 278.) William of Malmsbury (l. iii. p. 107) inserts an epitaph on Guiscard, which is not worth transcribing.]
[Footnote 95: Yet Horace had few obligations to Venusia; he was carried to Rome in his childhood, (Serm. i. 6;) and his repeated allusions to the doubtful limit of Apulia and Lucania (Carm. iii. 4, Serm. ii. I) are unworthy of his age and genius.]
[Footnote 96: See Giannone (tom. ii. p. 88 - 93) and the historians of the fire crusade.]
Of human life, the most glorious or humble prospects are alike and soon bounded by the sepulchre. The male line of Robert Guiscard was extinguished, both in Apulia and at Antioch, in the second generation; but his younger brother became the father of a line of kings; and the son of the great count was endowed with the name, the conquests, and the spirit, of the first Roger. ^97 The heir of that Norman adventurer was born in Sicily; and, at the age of only four years, he succeeded to the sovereignty of the island, a lot which reason might envy, could she indulge for a moment the visionary, though virtuous wish of dominion. Had Roger been content with his fruitful patrimony, a happy and grateful people might have blessed their benefactor; and if a wise administration could have restored the prosperous times of the Greek colonies, ^98 the opulence