The life of the pope was attempted by the imperial officials and the exarch appears to have been privy to the plot.  The Romans rose and prevented the murder by slaying two of the conspirators, and when the exarch attempted to arrest the pope the very Lombards “flocked from all quarters” to defend him.  In Ravenna itself there was revolution; Paulus the exarch was slain it seems in 727, and Ravenna apparently swore allegiance to the Holy See.  Leo sent a fleet and an army to chastise her; “after suffering,” says Gibbon, “from the wind and wave much loss and delay, the Greeks made their descent in the neighbourhood of Ravenna; they threatened to depopulate the guilty capital and to imitate, perhaps to surpass, the example of Justinian II. who had chastised a former rebellion by the choice and execution of fifty of the principal inhabitants.  The women and clergy in sackcloth and ashes lay prostrate in prayer; the men were in arms for the defence of their country; the common danger had united the factions, and the event of a battle was preferred to the slow miseries of a siege.  In a hard-fought day, as the two armies alternately yielded and advanced, a phantom was seen, a voice was heard, and Ravenna was victorious by the assurance of victory.  The strangers retreated to their ships, but the populous sea-coast poured forth a multitude of boats; the waters of the Po were so deeply infected with blood that during six years the public prejudice abstained from the fish of the river; and the institution of an annual feast perpetuated the worship of images and the abhorrence of the Greek tyrant.”

So Gibbon, following Agnellus whose account is obscure and perhaps altogether untrustworthy.  What is certain is that Liutprand was advancing against the empire in war; that he took Bologna and without difficulty made himself master of the whole of the Pentapolis.

Yet the emperor took no heed.  The eunuch Eutychius was appointed as exarch.  He appeared in Naples and sent orders to Rome to have the pope murdered; but again the Roman people saved their champion and swore to him a new allegiance.  Then Eutychius turned to the Lombards.

He attempted to bribe both Liutprand and the dukes.  At first he was unsuccessful, but presently they began to listen to him.  Liutprand certainly hoped to make himself king of Italy, and it may be that it was this which Eutychius offered him under the emperor.  Moreover, he was jealous, and not without cause, of the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento, who had rallied to the pope, and was anxious to have them under his feet.  This, too, he may have hoped to attain as King of Italy and the emperor’s representative in Italy.