Theodoric died in 526 A.D. The year after his death, a great emperor, Justinian, came to the throne at Constantinople. Justinian had no intention of abandoning to the Ostrogothic Germans the rich provinces of Sicily and Italy. Although the Ostrogoths made a stubborn resistance to his armies, in the end they were so completely overcome that they agreed to withdraw from the Italian peninsula. The feeble remnant of their nation filed sadly through the passes of the Alps and, mingling with other barbarian tribes, disappeared from history.
103. THE LOMBARDS IN ITALY, 568-774 A.D.
INVASION OF ITALY BY THE LOMBARDS
The destruction of the Ostrogothic kingdom did not free Italy of the Germans. Soon after Justinian's death the country was again overrun, this time by the Lombards. The name of these invaders (in Latin, Langobardi) may have been derived from the long beards that gave them such a ferocious aspect. The Lombards were the last of the Germanic peoples to quit their northern wilderness and seek new homes in sunny Italy. They seized the territory north of the river Po—a region ever since known as Lombardy— and established their capital at Pavia. The Lombards afterwards made many settlements in central and southern Italy, but never succeeded in subduing the entire peninsula.
[Illustration: Map, EUROPE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY]
LOMBARD RULE IN ITALY
The rule of the Lombards at first bore hardly on Italy, which they treated as a conquered land. In character they seem to been far less attractive than their predecessors the Visigoths and Ostrogoths. Many of them were still heathen when they entered Italy and others were converts to the Arian [3] form of Christianity. In course of time, however, the Lombards accepted Roman Catholicism and adopted the customs of their subjects. They even forgot their Germanic language and learned to speak Latin. The Lombard kingdom lasted over two centuries, until it was overthrown by the Franks. [4]
RESULTS OF THE LOMBARD INVASION
The failure of the Lombards to conquer all Italy had important results in later history. Sicily and the extreme southern part of the Italian peninsula, besides large districts containing the cities of Naples, Rome, Genoa, Venice, and Ravenna, continued to belong to the Roman Empire in the East. The rulers at Constantinople could not exercise effective control over their Italian possessions, now that these were separated from one another by the Lombard territories. The consequence was that Italy broke up into a number of small and practically independent states, which never combined into one kingdom until our own time. The ideal of a united Italy waited thirteen hundred years for its realization. [5]