clouds;" and then having landed and been greeted with due
ceremony, set his camp on the banks of the Po a few hundred yards
outside the city walls. There he invited all the chief men of the
Ravennati to a banquet in the open air. As two by two they entered his
tent to be presented to their host they were bound and gagged and put
aboard ship. Thus all the nobles and Felix the archbishop were taken
and the soldiers of Theodore entered Ravenna and burned their houses
to the ground.

Theodore took his captives to Constantinople where they were all slain
save Felix, who, however, was blinded. Later he returned to Ravenna,
was reconciled with the Holy See, and died archbishop in 725.

It would appear that all this happened when Theophylact (702-709) was
exarch, though Theodore the patrician may have superseded him for a
moment on his arrival. The exarch in 710 was Joannes Rizocopus, and in
that year pope Constantine visited Constantinople with the future pope
Gregory II. in his train. They met in Rome, the pope about to set
sail, the exarch on his way to Ravenna, where he was apparently
assassinated in a popular tumult, "the just reward of his wickedness."
The people of Ravenna then elected a certain Giorgius as their
captain, and all the neighbouring cities, Cervia, Forli, Forlimpopoli,
and others, placed themselves under his government and turned upon the
imperial troops. We know very little of this revolution, what directly
was the cause of it, or how it was suppressed; but it is clear that
the exarchate, if it did not actually perish, was from this time forth
for all intents and purposes dead. Three more exarchs were to reign in
Ravenna, but not to govern. In 713, Scholasticus was appointed and
remained till 726. He was followed by Paulus (726-727) who attempted
to arrest Leo III., was prevented by the joint action of the Romans
and the Lombards, and met his death at the hands of the people of
Ravenna; and by Eutychius (727-752) who it seems saw the fall of
Ravenna before the assault of the Lombard Aistulf. He was the last
representative of the Byzantine empire to govern in Ravenna or in
Italy.

But the fall of the imperial power in Italy was not the work of the
Romans or of the Lombards. It fell because it had ceased to be
Catholic.

We have seen the invasions of the Visigoths and the Huns fade away
into nothing; we have seen the greater attempt of the Ostrogoths to
found a kingdom in Italy brought to nought. One an