270 ST. MARK’S REST

blinded, he, as far as I read: but permitted, I trust peaceably, to become a monk; Venice owing to him much that has been the delight of her own and other people’s eyes, ever since. Respecting the occasion of his dethronement, a story remains, however, very notably in connection with this manner of punishment.

Venice, throughout this first period in close alliance with the Greeks, sent her Doge, in the year 1082, with a “valid fleet, terrible in its most ordered disposition,”¹ to defend the Emperor Alexis against the Normans, led by the greatest of all Western captains, Guiscard.²

The Doge defeated him in naval battle once; and, on the third day after, once again, and so conclusively, that, thinking the debate ended, he sent his lightest ships home, and anchored on the Albanian coast with the rest, as having done his work.

80. But Guiscard, otherwise minded on that matter, with the remains of his fleet,-and his Norman temper at hottest-attacked him for the third time.³ The Greek allied ships fled. The Venetian ones, partly disabled, had no advantage in their seamanship:* question only remained, after the battle, how the Venetians should bear themselves as prisoners. Guiscard put out the eyes of some; then, with such penalty impending over the rest, demanded that they should make peace with the Normans, and fight for the Greek Emperor no more.

But the Venetians answered, “Know thou, Duke Robert, that although also we should see our wives and children slain, we will not deny our covenants with the autocrat Alexis; neither will we cease to help him, and to fight for him with our whole hearts.”

The Norman chief sent them home unransomed.

* Their crews had eaten all their stores, and their ships were flying light, and would not steer well.

¹ [Anna Comnena, Alexiad, lib. iv. p. 85, quoted in Romanin, vol. i. p. 323 n.]

² [See below, § 85, p. 274.]

³ [Ruskin in this account follows Romanin, vol. i. pp. 323-324: see below, p. 272 n.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]