The mercenaries united under the sceptre of Odoacer were not sufficiently strong to defend Italy against a new invasion of barbarians. The Ostrogoths, encouraged by the Grecian sovereign of new Rome, the emperor of the East, arrived in 489, under the command of Theodoric, from the countries north of the Euxine to the borders of Italy; they completed the conquest of it in four, and retained possession of the peninsula sixty-four years, under eight successive kings. These new barbarians, in their turn, demanded and obtained a portion of land and slaves; they multiplied, it is true, but became rapidly enervated in a delicious climate where they had suddenly passed from the severest privations to the enjoyment of every luxury. They were at last conquered and subdued in the year 553 by the Romans of Constantinople, whom they despised as the degenerate successors of the same nation which their ancestors had vanquished. The invasion of the Lombards in 568 soon followed the destruction of the monarchy of the Ostrogoths. Amongst the various hordes which issued from the north of Germany upon the southern regions, the Lombards were reputed the most courageous, the most cruel, and the proudest of their independence; but their number was inconsiderable, and they scarcely acknowledged any social tie sufficient to keep them united: accordingly, they never completed the conquest of Italy. From 568 to 774, twenty-one Lombard kings during 206 years succeeded each other without establishing their dominion either on the lagunes, at the extremity of the Adriatic Gulf, where such of the inhabitants of upper Italy as were personally the most exposed had taken refuge and founded the Venetian Republic; or on the shores of the Adriatic, now called Romagna, governed by a lieutenant of the emperor of Constantinople, under the title of exarch of the five cities of Pentapolis; or on Rome, defended only by the spiritual arms of the patriarch of the Western church; or on the southern coast, where the Greek municipalities of Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi governed themselves almost as independent republics. The Lombards, nevertheless, founded a kingdom in northern Italy, of which Pavia was the capital; and in southern Italy the duchy of Benevento, which still maintained its independence two centuries after the kingdom was subjugated. From the middle of the eighth century the Lombards, masters of a country where the great towns still contained much wealth, where the land had lost nothing of its fertility, where the example of the vanquished had taught the vanquishers the advantage of reviving some agricultural industry, excited the envy of their neighbours the Franks, who had conquered and oppressed the Gauls, who despised all occupation but war, and desired no wealth but what the sword could give. They by repeated invasions devastated Italy; and at length, in 774, completed the destruction of the Lombard monarchy.