But the Lombards allied themselves with the Avars. ♦The Gepidæ overthrown by the Lombards and Avars. 566. | The Lombards pass into Italy. 567.♦ In partnership with their barbarian allies, they overthrew the kingdom of the Gepidæ, and they themselves passed into Italy. Thus the growth of Teutonic powers in those regions was stopped. A new and far more dangerous enemy was brought into the neighbourhood of the Empire, and the way was opened for the Slavonic races to play in some degree the same part in the East which the Teutons played in the West. But while the East lost this chance of renovation, for such it would have been, the Lombard settlement in Italy was the beginning of a new Teutonic power in that country. ♦Character of the Lombard kingdom.♦ But it was not a power which could possibly grow up into a national Teutonic kingdom of all Italy, as the dominion of the East-Goths might well have done. ♦Incomplete conquest of Italy.♦ The Lombard conquest of Italy was at no time a complete conquest; part of the land was won by the Lombards; part was kept by the Emperors; and the Imperial and Lombard possessions intersected one another in a way which hindered the growth of any kind of national unity under either power. ♦Lombard duchies.♦ The new settlers founded the great Lombard kingdom in the North of Italy, which has kept the Lombard name to this day, and the smaller Lombard states of _Spoleto_ and _Beneventum_. But a large part of Italy still remained to the Empire. ♦Imperial possessions in Italy.♦ Ravenna, the dwelling-place of the Exarchs, Rome itself, Naples, and the island city of Venice were all centres of districts which still acknowledged the Imperial rule. The Emperors also kept the extreme southern points of both the peninsulas of Southern Italy, and, for the present, the three great islands. The Lombard Kings were constantly threatening Rome and Ravenna. ♦Ravenna taken by the Lombards. c. 753.♦ Rome never fell into their hands, but in the middle of the eighth century Ravenna was taken, and with it the district specially known as the _Exarchate_ was annexed to the Lombard dominion. But this greatest extent of the Lombard power caused its overthrow: for it led to a chain of events which, as we shall presently see, ended in transferring not only the Lombard kingdom, but the Imperial crown of the West to the hands of the Franks. § 3. _Rise of the Saracens._