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The Lombard codes are silent with regard to these indicators; but Savigny, in his argument to prove their existence, claims that mention is made of them in two decisions of Liutprand of the years 715 and 716, and brings as additional evidence a placitum of 751 in which Lupo, duke of Spoleto, gives judgment "una cum judicibus nostris ... vel aliis pluribus astantibus," etc.
When the pope saw Liutprand march southward with the exarch he must have known that the whole of the future depended upon the outcome of this act. Liutprand presently encamped with his army in the plain of Nero between the Vatican and Monte Mario.
Gregory was succeeded by Pope Zacharias, who in the year of his election met Liutprand at Narni and obtained from him the restoration of the four frontier towns he had taken two years before. But though Rome was thus secured Ravenna was in worse danger than ever, for Liutprand now renewed his attack upon it and it was only the intervention of the pope in person at Pavia that saved the city.
On the first edicts of the emperor, they declared themselves the champions of the holy images: Liutprand invaded the province of Romagna, which had already assumed that distinctive appellation; the Catholics of the Exarchate yielded without reluctance to his civil and military power; and a foreign enemy was introduced for the first time into the impregnable fortress of Ravenna.
In his transactions of business, Liutprand, bishop of Cremona, asserted the free spirit of a Frank and the dignity of his master Otho. Yet his sincerity cannot disguise the abasement of his first audience. When he approached the throne, the birds of the golden tree began to warble their notes, which were accompanied by the roarings of the two lions of gold.
King Liutprand ordaine however, that if a daughter alone survived, the feud was to be brought to an end and an agreement effected. Some of the nations seem to have provided that children must not be disinherited except for very strong reasons; for example, the law of the Visigoths forbids more than one third of their estate being alienated by mother or father, grandmother or grandfather.
The same spirit of civic independence which caused the development of Ancient Greece by preventing the universal rule of one power, caused the Italians, under different conditions, to pit one master against another to attain the same end. Even Liutprand, the old historian of the tenth century, recognized this.
So Gibbon, following Agnellus whose account is obscure and perhaps altogether untrustworthy. What is certain is that Liutprand was advancing against the empire in war; that he took Bologna and without difficulty made himself master of the whole of the Pentapolis. Yet the emperor took no heed. The eunuch Eutychius was appointed as exarch.
There the pope met him and, even as Leo the Great had done upon the banks of the Mincio, and as Gregory the Great had done upon the steps of S. Peter's, overawed the barbarian. Liutprand laid his crown and his sword at the pope's feet and begged, not only for his own forgiveness, but for that of the exarch his ally.
Ample proof of this is to be found throughout the law codes, but we need not pause to cite such confirmation, if we remember the natural evolution of the office of dux from his position in the original Lombard military system. As a good example of this military leadership we may refer to the provisions of the twenty-ninth law in the sixth book of the laws of Liutprand.
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