It has been maintained by many historians that the great reform of
which the establishment of the exarch and the exarchate is the result
was the work of that very great reformer Justinian. It was worthy of
him; but the Italy he knew and saved was not in need of any change in
her administrative divisions which, as I have said, remained under
Narses almost the same as they had been in the last days of the
Western empire.[1]
[Footnote 1: For what follows cf. Diehl, _Etudes sur l'administration
Byzantine dans l'Exarchat de Ravenne_ (1888).]
The transformation out of which the exarchate arose was slow and
obscure, not the work of a great creative mind, but of necessity. It
was the result of many causes which it is not difficult to name; they
were the progress of the Lombard conquest, the condition imposed upon
the unconquered parts of Italy by that conquest, and especially the
new necessity for defence imposed on the imperial power.
It is obvious that the result of the first ten years of that conquest
was a complete destruction of the limits of the old Roman provinces of
Italy.
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