The exarchate was organised into a group of duchies (
Rome,
Venetia,
Calabria,
Naples,
Perugia,
Pentapolis,
Lucania, etc.) that were mainly the coastal cities in the Italian peninsula since the Lombards held the advantage in the hinterland. The civil and military head of these imperial possessions, the exarch himself, was the representative at Ravenna of the emperor in
Constantinople. The surrounding territory reached from the River Po, which served as the boundary with
Venice in the north, to the
Pentapolis at
Rimini in the south, the border of the "five cities" in the
Marches along the
Adriatic coast, and reached even cities not on the coast, such as
Forlì. All this territory, which lay on the eastern flank of the
Apennines, was under the exarch's direct administration and formed the Exarchate in the strictest sense. Surrounding territories were governed by
dukes and ("masters of the soldiers") more or less subject to his authority. From the perspective of Constantinople, the Exarchate consisted of the province of Italy. The Exarchate of Ravenna was not the sole Byzantine province in Italy. Byzantine
Sicily formed a separate government, and
Corsica and
Sardinia, while they remained Byzantine, belonged to the
Exarchate of Africa. The Lombards had their capital at
Pavia and controlled the great valley of the
Po. The Lombard wedge in Italy spread to the south, and established duchies at
Spoleto and
Beneventum; they controlled the interior, while Byzantine governors more or less controlled the coasts.
Piedmont,
Lombardy, the interior mainland of
Venetia,
Tuscany and the interior of
Campania belonged to the Lombards, and bit by bit the Imperial representative in Italy lost all genuine power, though in name he controlled areas like Liguria (completely lost in 640 to the Lombards), or Naples and
Calabria (being overrun by the Lombard duchy of Benevento). In Rome, the pope was the real master. At the end, 740, the Exarchate consisted of
Istria, Venetia,
Ferrara, Ravenna (the exarchate in the limited sense), with the
Pentapolis, and
Perugia. These fragments of the province of Italy, as it was when reconquered for
Justinian, were almost all lost, either to the Lombards, who finally conquered Ravenna itself in 751, or by the revolt of the pope, who finally separated from the Empire on the issue of the
iconoclastic reforms. The relationship between the
Pope in
Rome and the Exarch in Ravenna was a dynamic that could hurt or help the empire. The Papacy could be a vehicle for local discontent. The old Roman senatorial aristocracy resented being governed by an Exarch who was considered by many a meddlesome foreigner. Thus the exarch faced threats from outside as well as from within, hampering much real progress and development. In its internal history, the exarchate was subject to the splintering influences that were leading to the subdivision of
sovereignty and the establishment of
feudalism throughout Europe. Step by step, and in spite of the efforts of the emperors at Constantinople, the great imperial officials became local landowners, the lesser owners of land were increasingly kinsmen or at least associates of these officials, and new allegiances intruded on the sphere of imperial administration. Meanwhile, the necessity for providing for the defence of the imperial territories against the Lombards led to the formation of local militias, who at first were attached to the imperial regiments, but gradually became independent, as they were recruited entirely locally. These armed men formed the , who were the forerunners of the free armed burghers of the Italian cities of the
Middle Ages. Other cities of the exarchate were organized on the same model. ==End of the Exarchate==