ight have been withdrawn into the earth
by the volcanic action which produced the cavity. Then
people would have said that Demeter had lost Persephone
and sought her vainly through all the cities of Sicily:
and if this happened in spring Persephone might well have
been thought to have been gathering flowers at the time
when Hades took her to himself. So easy and yet so
dangerous is it to rationalise a legend.

The capture of Palermo cost the Normans another eight years, part of
which was spent according to their national tactics in plundering
expeditions, part in the subjugation of Catania and other districts,
part in the blockade of the capital by sea and land. After the fall
of Palermo, it only remained for Roger to reduce isolated
cities--Taormina, Syracuse,[1] Girgenti, and Castro Giovanni--to his
sway. The last-named and strongest hold of the Saracens fell into
his hands by the treason of Ibn-Hamuud in 1087, and thus, after
thirty years' continual effort, the two brothers were at last able
to divide the island between them. The lion's share, as was due,
fell to Roger, who styled himself Great Count of Sicily and
Calabria. In 1098, Urban II., a politician of the school of Cluny,
who well understood the scope of Hildebrand's plan for subjecting
Europe to the Court of Rome, rewarded Roger for his zeal in the
service of the Church with the title of Hereditary Apostolical
Legate. The Great Count was now on a par with the most powerful
monarchs of Europe. In riches he exceeded all; so that he was able
to wed one daughter to the King of Hungary, another to Conrad, King
of Italy, a third to Raimond, Count of Provence and Toulouse,
dowering them all with imperial munificence.

[1] In this siege, as in that of the Athenians, and of the
Saracens 878 A.D., decisive engagements took place in the
great harbour.

Hale and vigorous, his life was prolonged through a green old age
until his seventieth year; when he died in 1101, he left two sons by
his third wife, Adelaide. Roger, the younger of the two, destined to
succeed his father, and (on the death of his cousin, William, Duke
of Apulia, in 1127) to unite South Italy and Sicily under one crown,
was only four years old at the death of the Great Count. Inheriting
all the valour and intellectual qualities of his family, he rose to
even higher honour than his predecessors. In 1130 he assumed the
style of King of Sicily, no doubt with the