OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 195 only argument that could determine the belief of the Greeks ; and the ardour of the Latins was inuch inferior to their credu- lity : the Norman veterans wished to enjoy the harvest of their toils, and the unwarlike Italians trembled at the known and unknown dangers of a transmarine expedition. In his new levies, Robert exerted the influence of gifts and promises, the terrors of civil and ecclesiastical authority ; and some acts of violence might justify the repi-oach that age and infancy were pressed without distinction into the service of their unrelenting prince. After two years' incessant preparations, the land and naval forces were assembled at Otranto, at the heel or extreme promontory of Italy ; and Robert was accompanied by his wife, who fought by his side, his son Bohemond, and the representa- tive of the emperor Michael. Thirteen hundred knights ^^ of Norman race or discipline formed the sinews of the army, which might be swelled to thirty thousand ^'^ followei's of every denomination. The men, the horses, the arms, the engines, the wooden towers, covered with raw hides, were embarked on board one hundred and fifty vessels ; the transports had been built in the ports of Italy, and the galleys v/ere supplied by the alliance of the republic of Ragusa. At the mouth of the Adriatic gulf, the shores of Italy and siege of Epirus incline towards each other. The space between Brun- Ajy^^mi, dusium and Durazzo, the Roman passage, is no more than one ""* hundred miles ; ^'^ at the last station of Otranto, it is contracted to fifty ; ^^ and this narrow distance had suggested to Pyrrhus and Pompey the sublime or extravagant idea of a bridge. Before the general embarkation, the Norman duke dispatched Bohemond [May, ad. with fifteen galleys to seize or threaten the isle of Corfu, to
- " Ipse armatEe militia; non plusquam MCCC milites secum habuisse, ab eis qui
eidem negotio interfuerunt attestatur (Malaterra, 1. ill. c. 24, p. 583). These are the same whom the Apuhan (1. iv. p. 273) styles the equestris gens ducis, equites de gente ducis.
- i Ei? TpiaKovTa yiAia5a5, says Anna Comnena (Alexias, 1. i. p. 37 [c. 16]), and her
account tallies with the number and lading of the ships. Ivit in [le^. contra] Dyrrachium cum .xv millibus hominum, says the Chronicon Breve Normannicum (Muratori, .Scriptores, torn. v. p. 278). I have endeavoured to reconcile these reckonings. ^^The Itinerary of Jerusalem (p. 609, edit. Wesseling) gives a true and reason- able space of a thousand stadia, or one hundred miles, which is strangely doubled by Strabo (1. vi. p. 433 [3, § 8]) and Pliny (Hist. Natur. iii. 16). ^ Pliny (Hist. Nat. iii. 6, 16) allows quiiujjia^inta millia for this brevissimus cursus, and agrees with the real distance from Otranto to La Vallona, or Aulon (d'Anville, Analyse de la Carte des Cotes de la Grece, &c., p. 3-6). Hermolaus Rarharus, who substitutes cenhan (Harduin, Not. Ixvi. in Plin. 1. iii.), might have been corrected by every Venetian pilot who had sailed out of the gulf.
