In taking up the history of Italy we shall, for convenience, go back to the year 476, when the last legitimate emperor of old Rome in the West was overthrown, and briefly recapitulate the story of events during the period of invasion that immediately followed. It will be recalled that we have already covered the period from 476 to 1024 in much detail in our study of the Western Empire, in Volume VII. It will be unnecessary, therefore, to treat this epoch here in anything but the barest outline; and even this will involve unavoidable repetitions. Since the later emperors of the Holy Roman Empire continued for some centuries to invade Italy periodically, and to claim control over its affairs, it will be almost impossible to avoid repetition here also; but inasmuch as such monarchs as Conrad II, Henry IV, and Frederick II are necessarily given full treatment in the volumes devoted to Germany, we shall deal somewhat briefly with their Italian incursions in the present connection. A similar duplication of matter will necessarily be involved in dealing with the mediæval popes, whose history has already been chronicled in the previous volume. The story of temporal affairs in Italy lacks unity from the beginning of the period under consideration till well towards the close of the nineteenth century. For the most part, except during the relatively brief periods when a strong emperor claimed dominion over all Italy, the territory of the Italian peninsula was divided into numerous petty kingdoms, no one of which attained supremacy over the others. First one and then another became prominent, but often contemporaneous events of local importance, having but slight world-historical importance, confuse the picture, and make the presentation of the history of Italy extremely difficult. We must necessarily overlook a large number of such petty details, endeavouring to select such events as have real importance, and to weld them into a continuous narrative. But at best the story of Italian history lacks dramatic unity; the scene shifts from one principality to another too frequently to make possible a really harmonious presentation. We have really to do with a collection of cities rather than with a nation. It is the old story of Greece over again; only here there are more cities competing for supremacy, with no one at any time quite so near success as Athens and Sparta respectively were at successive periods. Yet Milan, Venice, and Florence at times approached the goal if they did not quite attain it.[a]