sts. The western frontier
is more difficult to determine with exactitude; it may be said to have
run between Modena and Bologna. On the south the Marecchia divided the
exarchate from the duchy of Pentapolis whose capital was Rimini. The
Pentapolis consisted of Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia, and Ancona
upon the sea and of the five inland cities of Urbino, Fossombrone,
Jesi, Cagli, and Gubbio; while the great towns of the exarchate were
set along the Via Aemilia and were Bologna, Imola (Forum Cornelii),
Faenza, Forli, Forlimpopoli, and Cesena.

Such then, before the year 590, was the new imperial administration in
the Italy formed by the Lombard invasion.

[Illustration: SKETCH MAP]

In the year after the recapture of Classis from the Lombards, that is
to say, in 589, the exarch Smaragdus was recalled. He had apparently
become insane and had been guilty of extraordinary violence towards
the patriarch of Aquileia and three other bishops whom he dragged to
Ravenna. His successor was Romanus who held office till 597. In the
same year, 589, Authari was married at Pavia to Theodelinda, who was
to be so potent an instrument in the conversion of the Lombards and
therefore in the salvation of Italy. And in the following year, 590,
pope Pelagius II. died, and Gregory the Great was chosen to succeed
him.

With the advent of the new exarch a brighter prospect seemed for a
moment to open for Italy. In the first year of Romanus's appointment
the imperialists regained the greater part of the cities of the plain;
they re-occupied Modena, Reggio, Parma, Piacenza, Altinum, and Mantua.
But the strength of the Latin position in Italy lay, and continued to
lie, in the two great imperial cities, Ravenna and Rome. Little by
little this position had crystallised and now a new state appeared, a
state which in one way or another was to endure till our day and which
our fathers knew as the States of the Church. With the two cities of
Ravenna and Rome as _nuclei_, this state formed itself in the very
heart of Italy along the Via Flaminia which connected them. It cut,
and effectually, the Lombard kingdom in two, and isolated the duchies
of Spoleto and Benevento from the real Lombard power in Cisalpine
Gaul, with its great capital at Pavia; and indestructible as it was,
it absolutely insured the final success of the Catholic Faith, the
Latin nationality, and the imperial power, the three necessities for
the resurrection of Europe.

This ach