CALIPHS OP SPAIN. 



hammedans and Christians, some obscure oracles 

 which predicted their alternate defeats. In their 

 various encounters with the Arabs, the princes, both 

 of Asia and Europe, too often felt that these bar- 

 barians had nothing barbarous in their discipline. 

 If their ships, engines, and fortifications, were of 

 a less skilful construction, they had the vanity to 

 think it was a defect of nature rather than any fault 

 of their own j for they readily acknowledged, that the 

 same God who had given a tongue to the Arabians 

 had more nicely fashioned the hands of the Chinese 

 and the heads of the Greeks. 



Since the reduction of Sicily by the Moslems, the 

 Greeks had been anxious to regain that valuable 

 possession. The southern provinces, which now com- 

 pose the kingdom of Naples, were in the ninth cen- 

 tury divided into the rival principalities of Bene- 

 vento, Salerno, and Capua, whose mutual jealousies 

 had invited the Arabs to the ruin of their common 

 inheritance. Their shores were visited almost annu- 

 ally by the squadrons which issued from the harbour 

 of Palermo ; while a colony of Saracens had fixed 

 themselves at Bari, which commands the entrance 

 to the Adriatic Gulf. The depredations of these 

 adventurers called down the vengeance of the Greeks 

 and Franks, whose combined strength was necessary 

 to root out this nest of pirates. The fortress was 

 invested by sea and land; and, after a defence of four 

 years, the Arabs submitted to the clemency of Louis, 

 grandson of Charlemagne, who commanded in per- 

 son the operations of the siege. But they still con- 

 tinued to infest the country, pillaging the monasteries 

 and profaning the churches. In the work of de^ 

 vastation they were joined by a new enemy from 



