generally have suffered much during the struggle for 



supremacy between Carthage and Rome, in fact in the 



last period of the Roman republic when the Maltese 



Islands were governed as a semi-autonomous municipality, 



the opulence of the Islands which then as now depended 



mainly on agriculture, was such as to induce Verres to 



commit those notorious acts of rapacity for which he 



was brought to task by Cicero in the Roman Senate. 



With the partition of the Roman Empire the Maltese 



Islands passed under the sovereignty of the Eastern 



Emperors, but even then it could not be said that our 



agriculture was neglected and that poverty had followed 



in the wake of this neglect With the advent of the 



Arabs in AD. 870 the Greek garrison was captured 



and the soldiers sold as slaves to the Maltese for a 



good round sum in gold. The Arabs were keen 



cultivators of fruit trees, and to them is probably due 



the introduction of the Bitter or Seville Orange, the 



Common Orange and the Lemon. The Arabs were 



also good administrators, but it appears that in the 



eleventh century an antagonism had sprung between 



the Arabs and the Maltese population which culminated 



in the eventual overthrow of the rule of the Arabs 



in 1090. This was effected under the auspices of the 



famous Count Roger who had already cleared the 



Arabs out of Sicily, and henceforth the Maltese Islands 



formed part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In 



the long period which followed between 1090 and 1530 



when the Islands passed to the Order of St. John 



as a fief of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the 



Maltese Islands were exposed to occasional invasions of 



Arabs from the mainland of Africa, and still more to 



frequent visits of pirates from the semi-independent 



Islamitic states of that region. These incursions brought 



about a great deal of harm, the cultivation of lands 



along the easily accessible coast line was abandoned, and 



the impoverished and dwindling population concentrated 



