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freely offering their beautiful bodies, really seemed to have in their veins the blood of this enchantress who had changed the friends of Odysseus into beasts. This notorious band of harlots involved the Papacy too, in its cbronique scandalettse. The three graces were Theodora the elder, who called herself Synatrix and was by her first marriage the wife of Count Theophylact and by her second marriage the spouse of the Margrave Adalbert of Tuscany; and her daughters Theodora the younger, and Marozia (Maruccia, little Maria) . The political idea that dominated this house was the idea of Rome, of national independence after a long period of subservience to strangers. It was modern Italy's first effort to recover the ancient power and glory of Rome. In order to carry out the plan they needed to domi- nate the Roman See; and so, the nobles who had joined forces with them took possession of it as the most powerful instrument for realizing their national purpose.
The Tuscan faction raised one of its members to the Papal throne when Sergius III (904-911) was elected. His contemporaries praised him as an energetic man who had rebuilt the Lateran Basilica after its collapse and who had restored the bonds of union with the Greek Church. But Bishop Luitprand of Cremona, whose chronicle gar- nered every suspicion, professed to know that the Pope had an affair with Marozia, the newly-wedded wife of the Lombard ruler Margrave Alberich of Spoleto. After Sergius came John X, a relative of Theo- dora, who in a spirit of service to the national ideal of Theophylact organized a union of Italian princes. With their help as well as with the aid of Byzantium, he won in 915 the brilliant victory of Garigliano over the menacing Saracens. But his resistance to the growing power of the nobles and his attempt to foster the German kingdom had a tragic outcome. After the murder (924) of Beranger, who had helped to win the victory over the sons of the desert, the Tuscan party felt that the way was clear for its absolute dominion. They gave the most curt possible reply to the Pope's suggestion that Hugh of Provence, the successor of Beranger as King of Italy, be crowned Emperor so that he might protect the Roman See. Marozia and her second husband, Vido of Tuscany, Hugh's step-brother, had the Pope strangled in prison. In 931, after Vido too had died, Marozia placed one of her two sons (whose father had been Alberich, if not Sergius
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