OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 191 was oppressed by the arms of the Normans, and sacked by the jealousy of Pisa ; but the poverty of one thousand fishermen is yet dignified by the remains of an arsenal, a cathedral, and the palaces of royal merchants. Roger, the twelfth and last of the sons of Tanered, had been conquest of lonff detained in Normandy by his own and his father's age. count Roger. ^ D 1060-1090 He accepted the welcome summons ; hastened to the Apulian ' camp ; and deserved at first the esteem, and afterwards the envy, of his elder brother. Their valour and ambition were equal ; but the youth, the beauty, the elegant manners, of Roger engaged the disinterested love of his soldiers and people. So scanty was his allowance, for himself and forty followers, that he descended from conquest to robbery, and from robbery to domestic theft ; and so loose were the notions of property that, by his own historian, at his special command, he is accused of stealing horses from a stable at Melphi.^ His spirit emerged from poverty and disgrace ; from these base practices he rose to the merit and glory of a holy war ; and the invasion of Sicily was seconded by the zeal and policy of his brother Guiscard. After the retreat of the Greeks, the idolaters, a most audacious reproach of the Catholics, had retrieved their losses and possessions ; but the deliverance of the island, so vainly undertaken by the forces of the Eastern empire, was achieved by a small and private band of adventurers.' ' In the first attempt Roger braved, in an open boat, the real and fabulous dangers of Scylla and Charyb- [a.d. loeo] dis ; landed with only sixty soldiers on a hostile shore ; drove the Saracens to the gates of Messina ; and safely returned with the spoils of the adjacent country. In the fortress of Trani, his [Troina] active and patient courage were equally conspicuous. In his old age he related with pleasure, that, by the distress of the [a.d. io62]
- " Latrocinio armigerorum suorum in multis sustentabatur, quod quidem ad ejus
ignominiam non dicimus : sed ipso ita praecipiente adhuc Niliora et reprehensibiliora dicturi [leg. de ipso scripturi] sumus ut pluribus patescat quam labonose et cum quanta augustia a profunda paupertate ad summum culmen divitiarum vel honoris attigerit. Such is the preface of Malaterra (1. i. c. 25) to the horse-stealing. From the moment (1. i. c. 19) that he has mentioned his patron Roger, the elder brother sinks into the second character. Something similar in Velleius Paterculus may be observed of Augustus and Tiberius. '" Duo sibi proficua deputans, animae scilicet et corporis, si terram idolis deditam ad cultum divinum revocaret (Galfrid Malaterra, 1. ii. c. i). The conquest of Sicily is related in the three last books, and he himself has given an accurate summary of the chapters (p. 544-546). [The Brevis historia liberationis Messanae, printed in Muratori, Scr. rer. It. 6, p. 614 sqq., which ascribes the capture of Messina to this first descent of Roger, has been shown by Amari to be a concoction of the i8th century (Stor. dei Musulmani di Sicilia, iii. 56). Messina was taken in the following year— 1061, May.]
