AuthariAuthari (c. 550 – 5 September 590) was king of the Lombards from 584 to his death. He was considered as the first Lombard king to have adopted some level of Romanitas (Roman-ness) and introduced policies that led to drastic changes, particularly in the treatment of the Romans and greater tolerance for the Christian faith. Authari was the son of Cleph, King of the Lombards, and duke of an unknown city.
ClephCleph (also Clef, Clepho, or Kleph) was king of the Lombards from 572 to 574. He succeeded Alboin, to whom he was not related by blood. He was a violent and terrifying figure to the Romans and Byzantines struggling to maintain control of the Italian Peninsula. He extended Lombard dominion over all of Northern Italy, finishing the conquest of Tuscany and bringing Lombard authority to the gates of Ravenna. He was assassinated after an 18-month reign by a young guard, a slave whom he had mistreated.
Duchy of SpoletoThe Duchy of Spoleto (Ducato di Spoleto, Ducatus Spolitanorum) was a Lombard territory founded about 570 in central Italy by the Lombard dux Faroald. Its capital was the city of Spoleto. The Lombards invaded northern Italy in 568 and began their conquest of the peninsula eventually establishing the Kingdom of the Lombards. Following the conquest of the north, the Lombards moved into central and southern Italy capturing the important hub of Spoleto in 570.
Alboin'Alboin' (530s – 28 June 572) was king of the Lombards from about 560 until 572. During his reign the Lombards ended their migrations by settling in Italy, the northern part of which Alboin conquered between 569 and 572. He had a lasting effect on Italy and the Pannonian Basin; in the former his invasion marked the beginning of centuries of Lombard rule, and in the latter his defeat of the Gepids and his departure from Pannonia ended the dominance there of the Germanic peoples.
PaviaPavia (UKˈpɑːviə, USpəˈviːə, paˈviːa, paˈʋiːa; Ticinum; Medieval Latin: Papia) is a town and comune of south-western Lombardy, in Northern Italy, south of Milan on the lower Ticino river near its confluence with the Po. It has a population of c. 73,086. The city was the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom from 540 to 553, of the Kingdom of the Lombards from 572 to 774, of the Kingdom of Italy from 774 to 1024 and seat of the Visconti court from 1365 to 1413.
LombardsThe Lombards (ˈlɒmbərdz,_-bɑːrdz,_ˈlʌm-) or Longobards (Longobardi) were a Germanic people who conquered most of the Italian Peninsula between 568 and 774. The medieval Lombard historian Paul the Deacon wrote in the History of the Lombards (written between 787 and 796) that the Lombards descended from a small tribe called the Winnili, who dwelt in northern Germany before migrating to seek new lands. Earlier Roman-era historians wrote of the Lombards in the first century AD as being one of the Suebian peoples, also from what is now northern Germany, near the Elbe river.
