AMALFI. GAETA. NAPLES. PISA. 449 



minded mercantile policy they kept many of their discoveries 

 profoundly secret, all knowledge of them perished with their 

 ruin. In ancient times, when the defeat of a people too often 

 led to its complete destruction, or at least to the extinction of its 

 peculiar civilisation, and the difficulties of intercourse rendered 

 the diffusion of knowledge extremely difficult and slow, it not 

 unfrequently happened that useful discoveries were erased from 

 the memory of mankind, a danger which, thanks to the print- 

 ing-press and the steam-engine, is now no longer to be feared. 



Thus a darkening or eclipse of intellectual life took place to 

 a vast extent when the western Eoman Empire succumbed to 

 the barbarians of the North, and the bands which for centuries 

 had united the cities of the east and west were violently sun- 

 dered. Under that fatal blight Civilisation vanished from the 

 ]ands which had so long been her chosen seat, only to dawn 

 again after a long and obscure night. Commercial intercourse 

 ceased between the sea-ports of the Mediterranean, all commu- 

 nication with distant countries was cut off, and the boundaries 

 of the known earth became more and more narrow, as the 

 ignorance of a barbarous age increased. 



It is not before the beginning of the ninth century that we 

 perceive the first glimpses of a better day in the rising fortunes 

 of some Italian sea-ports, where favourable circumstances had 

 given birth to liberal institutions. As early as the year 840 

 Amalfi possessed a considerable number of trading-vessels, and 

 carried on a lucrative commerce with the Levant. The maritime 

 code of this little republic regulated the commercial transactions 

 of all the Mediterranean sea-ports ; as in a later century the 

 law-book of Wisby served as a guide to the merchants of the 

 Baltic. A few years after its submission in 1131 to the arms 

 of King Eoger of Sicily, Amalfi was plundered by the Pisanese 

 and almost entirely destroyed. The neglected harbour was 

 gradually choked with sand, and the little town, which now 

 numbers no more than 3000 inhabitants, has nothing to console 

 it for its actual poverty but the remembrance of a glorious 

 past. Along with Amalfi, G-aeta, Naples, and Pisa, rose to con- 

 siderable eminence in commerce, though far from equalling the 

 power and splendour of Genoa and Venice, the great republics 

 of northern Italy. 



As far back as the beginning of the sixth century, the city of 



