Byzantine degeneracy had not failed to cast its blight over this, one of the fairest possessions of the emperors of the East. After the reign of Justinian, no attempt was made by the exhausted state, scarcely able to defend its capital, to send colonists to the island. The debased populace, the refuse of a score of nations, ignorant of the very name of patriotism, destitute of every principle of honor or virtue, sank each day still lower in the scale of humanity. The condition of Italy was even worse. The Lombards had conquered all of that peninsula except the Exarchate of Ravenna. To their dominion had succeeded the contentions of a multitude of insignificant principalities, inflamed with mutual and irreconcilable hostility, united in nothing except jealousy of the papal power. The incredible perfidy and fraud which afterwards became the peculiar attributes of the Italian political system--whose maxims, elaborated by Machiavelli, have excited the wonder and contempt of succeeding ages--had then their origin. The entire country was the scene of perpetual discord, treachery, and intrigue. In the latter the Pope, urged by necessity and inclination alike, bore no insignificant share. The prevalence of such conditions came within a hair’s-breadth of changing, perhaps forever, the political complexion of Europe and the sphere of Christian influence. The feuds of petty rulers were aggravated rather than reconciled in the presence of the common danger. The general anarchy was eminently favorable to foreign conquest. The Lombard princes solicited the aid of the Saracens. The latter profited by every occasion of dissension and enmity. They enlisted with equal facility and disloyalty under the banners of every faction. Twice they ravaged the environs of Rome. At different times they were in the pay of the Holy See. A series of fortunate accidents alone prevented the enthronement of an Arab emir in the Vatican and the transformation of St. Peter’s into a Mohammedan mosque.