(3) Italy was less fortunate than Gaul; in the fifth
century she was ravaged more persistently, since Rome and Ravenna were the most
tempting prizes that the West could offer to conquerors seeking a settlement or
to mere marauders; and for yet another two centuries her soil was in dispute
between the Eastern Empire and the Teutons.
The strategic importance of the
peninsula, the magic of the name of Rome, the more recent tradition that
Ravenna was the natural headquarters of imperial bureaucracy in the West, were
three cogent reasons why the statesmen of Constantinople should insist that
Italy must be recovered whatever outlying provinces of the West were abandoned.
For sixty years after the deposition of Romulus Augustulus (476) Italy was
entirely ruled by barbarians; then for more than two hundred years there was an
Imperial Italy or a Papal Italy continually at feud with an Ostrogothic or a Lombard
Italy. It would have been better for the Italians if either the Ostrogoths or
the Lombards had triumphed decisively and at an early date.
