prisonersof Procopius, whom he had exhorted to constancy with his last breath, were then despatched, their remains thrown in a pile on those of the martyred bishop, and the whole set fire to, "that men might know," as Ibrahim said, "the fate in store for those who dared to resist him."
Sicily being now at his mercy, he crossed to the mainland, where Abdallah's victories had already broken the power of Byzantium, and, marching unopposed through Calabria, reached Cosenza, which he prepared to besiege in due form. In addition to the Byzantine theme of Longobardia, corresponding to the Calabrias and Basilicata, south Italy was then divided into six hostile states: the Longobard principalities of Benevento, Capua, and Salerno, the republics of Naples, Amalfi, and Gaeta. All were equally terrified at the approach of the formidable Brachimo, and the neighboring towns despatched envoys to his camp to make their submission and beg for terms of peace. He sent them back with the haughty answer, "that Italy was his own, and he would deal with the inhabitants according to his pleasure; that the Greek and Frankish petty tyrants might equally despair of resisting his power; that the city of the old man Peter might first expect his onset, and that then would comb the hour of Constantinople."
On receipt of this menace the cities began to provision and fortify in haste, while the inhabitants of the rural districts flocked into them for refuge. The magnates of Naples, sitting in council under the presidency of Stephen, the bishop, and Gregory, the consul, decided to raze to the ground the Lucullan castle on Cape Misenum; "the villa first built by Marius, then bought and beautified by Lucullus; the scene of domestic crime and unblushing depravity in the hands of the earlier Cæsars, and of the inglorious exile of the last of their line (Augustulus lived there as the pensioner of Odoacer, a.d. 479); transformed in 496 into a monastery and monument to San Severino; and in 846 into a fortress occupied by the Mussulmans of Sicily; its walls were a chronological table of the revolutions of Italian society during nine centuries."[1]
For five days the Neapolitans labored at the destruction of this monument of antiquity, and brought thence the relics of the saint in solemn procession to Naples, where they were deposited in the monastery which still bears his name. The hymns were chanted in Greek and Latin, both languages being then spoken indifferently by the people. The universal panic culminated when a portentous rain of stars towards the end of October seemed a menace from the sky of some dire calamity; but the omen was viewed differently, and was interpreted to herald the overthrow of the invader, as soon as it was reported that San Severino appearing in a vision to a child had bidden him reassure the Neapolitans with the promise of his advocacy in heaven. The Arab chroniclers record that that year (902 a.d.) was called the Year of the Stars, and add that it had thus received three names, since Ibrahim had entitled it the Year of Justice, and others the Year of Tyranny. The faithful followers of the prophet had, however, no reason to look with apprehension on the blazing meteors, since the Koran teaches that they are nothing but curious demons hurled down by the angels for listening too closely at the gates of Heaven.
Yet simultanously with that portent in the skies, Azrael, the smiter of the strong, had entered the Mussulman camp; the siege of Cosenza languished, for the tyrant whose fierce purpose and adamantine will alone welded together the discordant elements of his unwieldy host, was stricken with mortal disease, and the fermenting hates and jealousies of his followers were only waiting for his last breath to break into open dissension. The actual manner of his death is variously told by Italian legend, some versions ascribing it to an apparition of St. Peter, some to the prayers of Sant' Elia, and others to the direct vengeance of Heaven itself in the shape of a thunderbolt.
His worthless grandson, Ziadet-Allah, had no control over the mutinous host, whom he led back to Sicily without delay, transporting thither also the remains of the deceased tyrant. Authorities are divided as to their final resting-place, and none knows to-day which continent is polluted by their touch. His tyranny of twenty-seven years had been followed by but seven months of penance, when his death, at fifty-three years of age, so unexpectedly cut short the career of conquest on which, to all human forecast, he seemed but entering; liberating Italy from the greatest danger to which she has been exposed during our era, and averting from her forever the threatened ruin of permanent African dominion.
It is indeed true that for yet a century
- ↑ Amari. Storia dei Musulmani in Sicilia, vol. ii., p. 90.
