On the coast of the most southern part of Samnium, AMALFI arose as a flourishing republic at an early period of the middle ages, during the time of the Lombards. The local belief is, that Amalfi was a Roman colony of the imperial period. For reasons which we can easily imagine, the opinion became established, that Constantine had led a Roman colony to Constantinople; and at Amalfi a tradition sprang up, that a fleet with Roman colonists, destined for Byzantium, was wrecked on that coast, or compelled by adverse winds to land, and that the colonists then established themselves there. This whole story is neither more nor less credible than so many others about colonies which were said to have been founded by the heroes returning from Troy. Amalfi is never before mentioned, and became important at the time when the Lombards conquered the interior of the country, and pushed the inhabitants towards the coast; the people naturally called themselves Romans as opposed to Lombards and barbarians. The town, like Naples, was under the direct protection of Constantinople, and was altogether non-barbarian; it belonged to the class of free cities, which had preserved a free Roman municipal constitution, and was very different from the free cities which arose under German laws. APULIA. The name Apulia, no doubt, signifies the country of the _Apuli_. _Apulus_ is of the same formation as _Romulus_, the same as _Romanus_, just as _Graeculus_ is the same as _Graecus_, etc. Accordingly, _Apulus_, _Apus_, and _Apicus_, and with a change of vowel, _Opicus_, are identical. The Oscan language has the letter _p_ where the Latin has _qu_ (pronounced as _k_), and just as in the Greek dialects π and κ are interchangeable. _Apulus_, therefore, is in no way different from _Aequi_, _Aequuli_, _Aequani_. If we attentively trace the dialects, there is scarcely any nation which admits such great changes in them as the Oscan. It is a very correct and ancient law of logic, “principia praeter necessitatem non esse multiplicanda,” and in the history of ancient nations, too, it ought not to be lost sight of. It certainly is true, that sometimes we recognise the existence of many quite different nations living close to one another—in the Caucasus and in America, there are districts of not many square miles, in which great numbers of languages are spoken, that do not bear the slightest resemblance to one another; and in like manner essentially different nations dwell side by side in a portion of Africa—but we, nevertheless, cannot adopt such lists of nations as are given by the ancients, for they are not rationally arranged, and are often without any meaning at all. The ancients had no interest in forming accurate notions on such points; when they dwelt upon inquiries of this kind, matters became almost worse: they then wrote thoughtlessly, putting down things as essentially different, which seemed to present ever so