Another cause tended to, and even justified, the revolution which was going to take place in Italy against the authority of the Greek Emperors; this was, the almost absolute state of abandonment in which, for nearly two centuries, they left the provinces they possessed in this country. They kept no garrison in Rome, and this city, continually menaced by the Lombards, solicited more than once, through the organ of its dukes or its pontiffs, but in vain, the protection of the Exarch and the power of the Emperor. The Byzantine historians of this period scarcely ever speak of Italy: one of them, Theophylactus Simosatta, wrote the history of the empire from the year 582 to 802, without once naming Italy, Rome, or the Lombards. Deserted by their master, the Romans of necessity attached themselves to their pontiffs, who were generally Romans, and meriting such attachment. Fathers and defenders of the people, mediators between the great, and heads of the religion of the empire, the popes united in themselves the various sources of authority and influence which are conferred by riches, benefactions, virtue, and the high priesthood. They reconciled, or set at variance around them, the princes of the earth; and that temporal power, which as yet they possessed not, they could at pleasure strengthen or weaken in the hands of others. Things being so disposed, it was inevitable but that occasions must have occurred, favorable to the ambition of the Roman Pontiffs; or, rather, they had now need only of a more active ambition. While Zachary continued to pay homage to the sovereignty of the emperors, Liutprand made himself master of the exarchate, and his successor, Rachis, immediately after stipulated with the Romans for a peace of twenty years. Under the same pope, Pepin dethroned in France the Merovingian dynasty, submitted to the Holy See a famous case of conscience, and obtained from it a reply, which, absolving in the eyes of the people his audacious enterprise, placed in his hands a sceptre which he alone could wield. A short time after this wise reply,³⁷ Astolphus, the successor of Rachis, broke the truce of twenty years, conquered Istria, repossessed himself of Ravenna, which the Greek officers had re-entered, and drove them from it for ever. Eutychius, the last of the exarchs, took flight and retired to Naples; and every thing announced that the power of the emperors was about to be extinguished in Middle as it had been in Upper Italy.