Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/203

NAPLES 191 the consul Publilius Philo marched against them, and, having taken his position between the old and the new city, laid regular siege to Palrepolis. By the aid of a strong Samnite garrison which they received, the Palrepolitans were long able to withstand the attacks of the consul ; but at length the city was betrayed into the hands of the Romans by two of her citizens. Neapolis possibly sur rendered to the consul without any resistance, as it was received on favourable terms, had its liberties secured by a treaty, and obtained the chief authority, which previously seems to have been enjoyed by the older city. From that time Palsepolis totally disappeared from history, and Neapolis became as an allied city ftzdcrata civitas a dependency of Rome, to whose alliance it re mained constantly faithful, even under most trying circumstances. In 280 B.C. Pyrrhus unsuccessfully attacked its walls ; and in the Second Punic War Hannibal was by their strength deterred from attempting to make himself master of the town. During the civil wars of Marius and Sulla, a body of partisans of the latter having entered it by treachery, 82 B.C., made a general massacre of the inhabitants ; but Neapolis soon recovered the blow, as it was again a flourishing city in the time of Cicero. It became a municipium after the passing of the lex Julia ; under the empire it is noticed as a colonia, but the time when it first obtained that rank is uncertain possibly under Claudius. Though a municipal town, Neapolis long retained its Greek culture and institutions ; and even at the time of Strabo had gymnasia and quinquennial games, and was divided into phratriss, after the Greek fashion. When the Romans became masters of the world, many of their upper classes, both before the close of the republic and under the empire, from a love of Greek manners and literature or from indolent and effeminate habits, resorted to Neapolis, either for education and the cultivation of gymnastic exercises or for the enjoyment of music and of a soft and luxurious climate. Hence we find Neapolis variously styled by Horace as "otiosa Neapolis," by Martial as "docta Parthenope," by Ovid as "inotia natam Parthenopen." It was the favourite residence of many of the emperors : Nero made his first appearance on the stage in one of its theatres ; Titus assumed the office of its archon ; and Hadrian became its demarch. It was chiefly at Neapolis that Virgil composed his Gcorgics ; and he was buried on the hill of Pausilypus, the modern Posillipo, in its neighbourhood. It was also the favourite residence of the poets Statins and Silius Italicus, the former of whom was a Neapolitan by birth. After the fall of the Roman empire, Neapolis suffered severely during the Gothic wars. Having espoused the Gothic cause in the year 536, it was taken, after a protracted siege, by Belisarius, who turned aside an aqueduct, marched by surprise into the city through its channel, and put many of the inhabitants to the sword. In 542 Totila besieged it and compelled it to surrender ; but, being soon after recovered by Narses, it remained long a dependency of the exarchate of Ravenna, under the immediate government of a duke, appointed by the Byzantine emperors. When the Lombards in vaded Italy, and pushed their conquests in the southern provinces, the limits of the Neapolitan duchy were considerably narrowed. In the beginning of the 8th century, at the time of the Iconoclastic controversy, the emperor Leo the Isaurian having forced compliance to his edict against the worshipping of images, the Neapolitans, encouraged by Pope Gregory III., threw off their allegiance to the Eastern emperors, and established a republican form of government tinder a duke of their own appointment. Under this regime Neapolis retained her independence for nearly four hundred years, though constantly struggling against the powerful Lombard dukes of Benevento, who twice unsuccessfully besieged it. In 1027, however, Pandulf IV., a Lombard prince of Capua, succeeded in making himself master of it ; but he was expelled in 1030 by Duke Sergius, chiefly through the aid of a few Norman adventurers. The Normans, in their turn, gradually superseded all powers, whether Greek, Lombard, or republican, which had previously divided the south of Italy, and furthermore checked the Saracens in the advances they were making through Apulia. For the consolidation of the Norman authority over Sicily and Naples, the reader is referred to the article NORMANS. It is sufficient here to state that the leaders of the house of Hauteville in 1053 did homage to the pope for all conquests they had made or might make both in the island and upon the mainland, and that in 1130 Count Roger of that family assumed the style of king. In this way the south of Italy, together with the adja cent island of Sicily, was converted into one political body, which, owing to the peculiar temper of its Norman rulers and their powerful organization, assumed a more feudal character than any other part of the peninsula. The " regno," as it was called by the Italians, constituted a state apart, differing in social institutions, foreign relations, and type of home government from the common wealths and tyrannies of upper Italy. It should furthermore be noticed that the indirect right acquired by the popes as lords paramount over this vast section of Italian territory gave occasion to all the most serious disturbances of Italy between the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 16th centuries, by the introduction of the house of Anjou into Naples and the disputed succession of Angevine and Aragonese princes. From the date at which the south of Italy and Sicily were subjugated by the Normans, the history of Naples ceases to be the history of a republic or a city, and merges itself, as the history of a kingdom, in that of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Naples henceforth formed the metropolis of the Italian portion of that kingdom, owing this pre-eminence to its advantageous position on the side of Italy towards Sicily, and to the favour of successive princes. Separated from Sicily between the years 1282 and 1442, reunited to Sicily between 1442 and 1458, again separated between 1458 and 1504, and finally reunited in the year 1504, the kingdom of Naples remained from that date forward, with short interruptions, under one crown, together with Sicily, until 1861. Then both Sicily and Naples were absorbed in the Italian kingdom through the cession by Garibaldi of his conquest to the popularly sanctioned sceptre of the house of Savoy. It is impossible to write the history of Naples in modern times apart from that of Sicily, or to separate it from that of the several dynasties which have held royal or vice-royal state in Naples as their capital. But an epitome of the main vicissitudes which it has undergone during the last seven centuries and a half may be supplied. The Norman dynasty controlled both Sicily and Naples until the year 1194, when their rights were transmitted, by failure of legitimate male issue, to Henry VI., emperor, and husband of Constance de Hauteville. The popes, in pursuance of their Guelf policy, persecuted the great imperial house of Hohenstaufen to extinction, subdued the Ghibelline party in southern Italy, and conferred the kingdom of the Two Sicilies upon Charles of Anjou after his victory at Grandella, in the year 1265. As a consequence of the Sicilian Vespers, Charles had to relinquish Sicily in 1282 ; but he continued to be king of Naples. It was then shown that, though the Normans had welded Sicily and the southern provinces of Italy into one substantial political whole, the island and the mainland had no strong bond of national cohe sion. The subsequent history of the sister kingdoms makes this even more apparent. Seven princes of the house of Anjou ruled Naples after the death of Charles until the year 1442. Meanwhile Sicily obeyed the house of Aragon, whose rights were derived from Constance, the daughter of Manfred, a bastard sou of the emperor Frederick II. In 1442 Alphonso V. of Aragon and Sicily, surnarned the Magnanimous, expelled Rene of Anjou from the kingdom of Naples, and reunited the Two Sicilies under his own rule. Upon his death in 1458, his brother John became king of Aragon and Sicily; while his natural son Ferdinand assumed the crown of Naples, which was bequeathed to him by Alphonso as being his own property by right of conquest. The bastard Aragonese dynasty thus founded continued to hold sway in Naples, separate from Sicily, through four successive princes, until their line ended by the expulsion of Frederick, Alphonso s grandson, in 1501. Betrayed by his cousin Ferdinand of Spain, this prince surrendered to a French army and died in captivity in France three years later. The French and Spaniards were at this epoch disput ing the possession of Italy. Charles VIII. of France had already, in 1494, reasserted the claims of the Angevine line, and had con quered the kingdom of Naples ; but he proved unable or unwilling to maintain his conquest more than a few months. His suc cessor Louis XII. covenanted in 1500 to partition Naples with Ferdinand the Catholic of Spain, who was already king of Sicily. Ferdinand, however, having no intention of fulfilling his engage ments with his French ally, succeeded in possessing himself of the whole kingdom of Naples, which he now reunited to that of Sicily, and governed together with Castile and Aragon. From 1504 until 1707 Naples and Sicily owed immediate obedience to viceroys of the kings of Spain, the only important episode in the history of the city throughout this period being the revolt of MASANIELLO (q.v. ) in 1647. After 1707, during the wars of the Spanish succes sion, the Austrians made themselves masters of both Sicily and Naples ; and, though Sicily was ceded by them in 1713 to the house of Savoy, and in 1718 conquered by Spain, they became again in 1720 possessors of both kingdoms. Naples was at this time of her history administered by Austrian, as previously by Spanish, viceroys. The war of the Polish succession gave monarchial independence once more to the Two Sicilies ; for in 1735 Don Carlos, a younger son of Philip V., of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain, after a successful campaign against the Austrians, was crowned sovereign of both kingdoms at Palermo. He founded the Bourbon line, which reigned in Sicily and Naples until the year 1861, interrupted only by the disturbances of the French Revolu tion and by a brief French occupation (1806-15), during which Joseph Bonaparte bore, the title of king of Naples for two years and Joachim Murat for seven years. Sicily throughout this period of French influence remained beneath the sway of her Bourbon princes. For the events which led to the expulsion of the Bourbons and the annexation of both Sicily and Naples to the crown of Italy, the reader is referred to the article ITALY ; see also MASANIELLO, NORMANS, SICILY.