Garigliano resembled an African town; and from it plundering parties went out in all directions, while an auxiliary colony, established at Narni, held the passes of the Apennines, to rob or put to ransom pilgrims on their way to Rome.
Nor did the swarthy adventurers always come as enemies; the republics of Naples and Gaeta favored and harbored them, while they were constantly called in as auxiliaries on one side or the other by the Longobard princes of south Italy in their incessant petty wars, generally to be betrayed by their allies, and fall a victim to the united arms of both parties on the conclusion of peace. Thus, Athanasius, Bishop of Naples, sent to Sicily in 881 for a strong body of Saracen soldiers, and encamped them on the western slopes of Vesuvius, under a leader named Sichaimo or Soheim. Their contract seems to have included full license of rapine in all the neighboring country, for they carried off to their camp all they could lay hands on, particularly arms, horses, and women. Their memory was long perpetuated in the popular distich,—
Quattro sono i luoghi della Saricina,
Portici, Cremano, la Torre, e Resina.
When, however, the pope, John the Eighth, fearing the incursions of such formidable neighbors into his own territory, remonstrated with the bishop, he treacherously consented to abandon them to their enemies; and attacked by the combined forces of Capua, Salerno, and other cities, they were driven, after a vigorous defence, into the mountains of Pæstum, where they remained unmolested. From those days until the present the followers of the prophet have had little cause to admire the superior good faith of Christians.
Fortunately for Italy, the scattered bands of freebooters to whom she was an easy prey, were as disunited as her own inhabitants. Acting under independent leaders, and acknowledging no central authority, their utmost aim in capturing a city was to have a convenient haven of refuge for their pirate squadrons, or base of operations for their predatory hordes—the highest object of their ambition rather store of rich booty to barter in the marts of Sicily, or gangs of captive Christians to sell in the ports of Africa, than extension of national territory or increase of national importance.
Only once in the history of Arab conquest did it seem possible that it might permanently extend its dominions beyond the Faro, when for the first and last time an African prince landed in Italy with the definite plan of subduing it to Islam, and bore the standard of the prophet across the Straits of Messina with the declared purpose of fighting his way to Mecca by way of Rome and Constantinople. There was no insuperable obstacle in his path, nor any force below the Alps capable of withstanding the fierce soldiers of the prophet, fired with a fresh inspiration of fanatic zeal, and led to victory by an able and ardent chief. The native population, debased by the crushing tyranny of the Roman empire, and ground into further disorganization by successive shocks of foreign invasion, was without national spirit as without social cohesion; their rulers, the Longobard counts and dukes, though perpetually at war amongst themselves, seemed incapable of facing an invading army; the nerveless grasp of the Empire of the East was fast slipping from its Italian provinces, and Byzantium itself was at that very moment seriously threatened by another Mussulman leader, as Leo, the renegade of Tripoli, had already collected in the ports of Egypt and Syria, the naval force with which, two years later, in 904, he took and burned Thessalonica. The moral force wielded by the papacy was powerless against an infidel tyrant, who would ask no investiture from the successor of St. Peter for the dominions won for him by the sword of Islam; the Western Empire, without naval forces, could ill contend with a power in command of the Mediterranean; and to complete the anarchy and prostration which prevailed from the Alps to the Gulf of Táranto, the Hungarians were at that moment descending like a swarm of locusts upon Lombardy. The event which to all outward seeming could alone save Christendom, was the one which actually occurred, — the death — miraculous according to Italian tradition, and which even a less believing generation
