Three times at least in the ten years of his pontificate, Zacharias repeated, with Lombard kings, the action of his great predecessor, Leo, with Attila. Liutprand, after thirty years of reign, was consolidating his kingdom by the reduction of the two Lombard dukedoms, Spoleto and Benevento. Bent upon gaining Rome, when he had subdued Spoleto, free from the check of Charles Martell, secure of the East by the contested succession to Leo of his son, Kopronymus, Liutprand was at Terni. Thither Pope Zacharias resolved to go in person, accompanied by a train of clergy. Liutprand received the Pope with great honour, and the result of a long interview was that he agreed to restore to the Pope four cities of the Roman duchy which he had taken. He likewise gave back the patrimony of Sabina, which he had seized thirty years before, and made peace with the Roman duchy for twenty years. The Pope returned as it were in triumph to Rome, was received with exultation, and ordered a procession of thanksgiving from the Church of St. Mary of the Martyrs, that is, the Pantheon, to St. Peter’s. This was in his first year, 742. But the next year, 743, Liutprand broke out against the exarchate: and Eutychius, the exarch, with the archbishop of Ravenna, and the other cities of Emilia and the Pentapolis, had no better resource than to beseech the Pope to succour them. The Pope, accepting the request, sent two legates to the king with gifts, beseeching him to cease hostility with the Ravennese. But they accomplished nothing. Then the Pope left Rome to the government of the Duke Stephen, and, with his train of clergy, went in person to Ravenna. The archbishop met him fifty miles from the city. The people welcomed him with cries, “to the shepherd who left his own sheep to deliver us who were about to perish”. But the Pope insisted upon going on to Pavia itself, in spite of the objections of king Liutprand to receive him. Disregarding every risk, he reached the Po on the 28th June, where he met the Lombard nobles sent to attend him; and, on the 20th, he celebrated Mass on the feast of the chief Apostle in the church of St. Peter, called the Golden Ceiling, wherein was the shrine of St. Augustine: whose body Liutprand himself had brought from Sardinia. King Liutprand then received the Pope with great honour in his palace. The Pope pressed him not to attack the province of Ravenna, but to restore its cities. The king, after great resistance, consented to leave the province of Ravenna as it was before. The king then accompanied the Pope to the river, and sent his chief captains with him on his return, who restored the territories of Ravenna, and the castle of Cesena.