Behind the long line of lofty well-built houses facing the Bay, the streets are gloomy, narrow and crooked, a labyrinth of dark mysterious lanes that contain no palaces or churches of note, and but few artistic “bits” to catch the eye and delight the soul of a painter. As in the case of Amalfi, the Cathedral of San Matteo at Salerno is almost the sole monument left standing of a past that is peculiarly rich in historical associations. Ever since the accession of the Angevin kings Salerno has remained a quiet provincial town, neither rich nor poor, but stagnant and without commerce. Into its harbour, which Norman and Suabian princes attempted to improve, the sand has long since silted, and Naples for many centuries past has been able to regard with serene contempt the city that it was once intended to make her commercial rival: “Se Salerno avesse un porto, Napoli sarebbe morto.” Well, Naples owns an excellent harbour, and has in consequence grown into one of the largest sea-ports on the shores of the Mediterranean, whilst little Salerno can only afford anchorage for fishing boats. The chief interest of the place centres in its close connection with the great Norman house of Hauteville, and especially with Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia and Calabria, who after a fierce struggle managed to capture this city from the Lombard princes. Sprung from a hardy race of _valvassors_ or _bannerets_ in Normandy, Duke Robert was one of the twelve sons of Tancred of Hauteville in the bishopric of Coutances. Joining his elder half-brother William Bras-de-Fer in Italy, Robert at once began to make a remarkable display of soldierly and statesman-like qualities. An adventurer pure and simple in an alien land, this sharp-witted Norman in course of time obtained the nick-name of Guiscard, or the Wiseacre, and on the death of his elder brother he was nominated Count of Apulia by acclamation of the Norman followers, to the exclusion of his helpless young nephews. Robert Guiscard’s appearance and character have been sketched for us with loving care by one of the most famous of the world’s historians, who was fully able to appreciate the mingled force and cunning, the _suaviter in modo_ and the _fortiter in re_, of this leader of a handful of Normans in a hostile and distant country. Let Gibbon’s stately prose therefore present to us a word-painting of the Great Adventurer himself:—