with Frankish support from the 580s, until the Lombards recovered lost ground under their capable King Agilulf and a truce was agreed in 605 which marked out a lasting division between the new kingdom and the empire. In the north the Lombards controlled most of Piedmont, Lombardy, Emilia, Tuscany, and mainland Veneto, while the south was dominated by the semi-independent duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. All that remained to the empire were the areas of Rome and Ravenna with a fragile corridor in between and coastal enclaves around Venice, Genoa, and the southern ports. This gradual stabilization was not matched by internal peace or prosperity. The writings of Pope Gregory the Great paint a depressing picture of the destruction caused by the 'unspeakable' Lombards: 'the cities have been depopulated . . . churches burned down . . . the land lies empty and solitary.'
The reality was more varied than the outpourings of a Roman churchman would suggest. A distinction has to be drawn between the frontier areas, which became a desolate no man's land, the imperial territories, in which social and administrative adjustment caused more upheaval than direct Lombard attacks, and the Lombard heartland, where the rapid take-over by a new élite of warriors caused little disruption to the lives of ordinary Roman peasants and city-dwellers.
Byzantium's failure to re-establish its authority over Italy and the Balkans can be explained by the threat posed to its most populous and valuable provinces in the east from its revitalized rival Persia. The Emperor Maurice obtained a hard-won peace in 591, but after the usurpation of Phocas in 602 the Persians launched an offensive which resulted in the laying waste of Anatolia and the conquest of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. The gravity of the crisis was brought home to the Byzantines when the treasured relic of the True Cross was carried off to Ctesiphon in 614 and the Persians reached the Bosphorus in 626. The Persians might have realized the ambitions of Darius and Xerxes but for the resilience of the Byzantines and their emperor, Heraclius, who marshalled the resources of his battered empire to launch a counter-attack from the Caucasus area which brought the Persian Empire to its knees.
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