... the practice of seeking, on the banks of the Tyber, their kings, their laws, and the oracles of their fate. The Frankswere perplexed between the name and substance of their government. All the powers of ... invested with the prerogatives of a temporal prince; the choice of magistrates, the exercise of justice, the imposition of taxes, and the wealth of the palace of Ravenna. In the dissolution of the Lombard ... religion of his father and grandfather; but his wife, the fair andambitious Irene, had imbibed the zeal of the Athenians, the heirs of the Idolatry, rather than the philosophy, of their ancestors....