Gaining over the Pope Nicholas II. to his interests, the new Count was able to exact an oath of fealty in 1060 from the Italian barons, hitherto his equals, to recognise him as “Duke of Apulia, Calabria, and here-after of Sicily, by the grace of God and of St Peter,” although it took many years of hard fighting before these lands, thus proudly claimed, could be subdued. Beginning with the conquest of the Duchy of Benevento, Guiscard at once laid siege to Salerno, taking it after an obstinate resistance lasting over eight months, during which he was himself severely wounded by a splinter from one of his own engines of war. The city captured with such difficulty now became the victor’s favourite residence and the recipient of his bounty and enlightened rule, so that Salerno quickly rose to the rank of one of the most illustrious towns in Europe, supplanting even its magnificent neighbour Amalfi in popular esteem. “Urbs Latii non est hâc delitiosior urbe, Frugibus arboribus vino redundat; et unde Non tibi poma nuces, non pulchra palatia desunt, Non species muliebris abest probitasque virorum.” (“All Latium shows no more delightful place, Whose sunny slopes the vine and almond grace; ’Midst fruitful groves her palaces uprear, Her men are virtuous, and her women fair.”) It was under the Guiscard’s auspices that the famous school of Medicine that had long been seated at Salerno rose to its highest point of excellence. “Paris for learning, Bologna for law, Orleans for poetry, and Salerno for Medicine”;—such was the verdict of the age. With the somewhat grudging consent of the clergy, the hygienic skill of the dreaded Arabs was in this city permitted to temper the crass ignorance of medieval Italy, and at Salerno alone were the works of the infidel Avicenna and of the pagans Galen and Hippocrates openly studied. The result was that the fame of the doctors of this _Fons Medicinae_ spread over all Western Europe, so that distinguished patients either came hither to be treated in person or else sent emissaries to explain their symptoms and to obtain advice. Nor were the professors of the healing art at Salerno tied down by a strict adherence to drugs and boluses, for they fully realised that the height of all human ambition, the _mens sana in corpore sano_, is in any case more easily to be obtained by self-control than by all the ingredients of the pharmacopoeia. They were warm believers apparently in the doctrine of moderation in all things, which after all is one of the most valuable prescriptions of modern hygiene: “Curas tolle graves, irasci crede profanum, Parce mero, coenato parum, non sit tibi vanum, Surgere post epulas, somnum fuge meridianum.” (“Throw off dull care; thine angry moods restrain; Eschew the wine-cup; lightly eat, nor vain Deem our advice to make Enough thy feast. Take exercise, and shun the noon-day rest.”)