In like manner the islands, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, were detached from the Lombard Kingdom; and the maritime cities of Southern Italy, Bari, Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta asserted independence under the shadow of the Greek ascendency.

What the Lombards achieved in their conquest, and what they failed to accomplish, decided the future of Italy.

They broke the country up into unequal blocks; for while the inland regions of the north obeyed Pavia, while the great duchies of Spoleto in the center and of Benevento in the south owned the nominal sway of Alboin's successors,[2] Venice and the Riviera, Pisa and the maritime republics of Apulia and Calabria, Ravenna and the islands, repelled their sovereignty.

Rome remained inviolable beneath the aegis of her ancient prestige, and the decadent Empire of the East was too inert to check the freedom of the towns which recognized its titular supremacy.
[1] When I apply the term Roman here and elsewhere to the inhabitants of the Italian towns, I wish to indicate the indigenous Italic populations molded by Roman rule into homogeneity.

The resurgence of this population and its reattainment of intellectual consciousness by the recovery of past traditions and the rejection of foreign influence constitutes the history of Italy upon the close of the Dark Ages.
[2] It will be remembered by students of early Italian history that Benevento and Spoleto joined the Church in her war upon the Lombard kingdom.