Lombardy, and the city, _as such_, had no independent existence or
independent relations with the state. And secondly, it cannot but be
manifest that the position that the city did occupy as actual, if not
necessarily as legal, centre from which issued all the administrative
functions of the district, the residence of the chief authority and
the seat of his courts, would have a marked tendency to increase
slowly, perhaps imperceptibly at first, the importance of its position
at once in the _civitas_ and in the state, and at the same time to
improve the character of its inhabitants and in time increase their
wealth. That this ultimately came about the development of the later
independent communal life is a proof, and the tardy steps by which
this was attained but serve to show the difficulties consequent on so
slight and so feeble a beginning.

The obscurity which promptly descends on the brain of the intelligent
reader who endeavors to gain a clear idea of the state of society or
of the administration of government in these early ages of Italian
history, makes the careful student very skeptical of any precise
presentation he may find of them, and causes him to be particularly
cautious and proportionately diffident in making, himself, any very
definite statements concerning them. If he be a wise man and wish to
make his investigation of some use to others, he frequently says "it
seems probable," and he particularly avoids mentioning dates which are
fixed and immovable. If this may be said of all matters not belonging
simply to the narrative portions of history at this period,
particularly true is it of the different functions attributed to
various officers of local government, whose very titles we sometimes
have to infer from their duties, and whose duties we often have to
infer from their titles.