FIRST EPOCH OF VENETIAN HISTORY 429

With such simple policy, bringing every inch of their ground into fruitful husbandry (their wine, fruit, and oil remaining long through the after-state of Venice chief articles of gift and tribute to their bishops and princes), with active fishing and yet more active continuance of what commerce had existed with the East while their cities on the mainland stood, they rapidly formed a naval power for the protection of the Adriatic, first against the Istrian pirates, but soon [became] the acknowledged naval power in the seas of Italy, and the support along the eastern coast of the Greek Empire against the Goths. In 539, while Belisarius was besieged in Rome, they defeated the Gothic fleet before Rimini; and in 551 brought Justinian’s troops to Ravenna, and so, in truth, were the founders of the Exarchate.

Entirely useful and honourable in all their aims and conduct; merchants in precious things; true husbandmen by land and sea, fearless soldiers against wrong; faithful maintainers of the Trojan, Roman, and now Byzantine dominion of their fathers,-the blue line of Antenor’s land¹ redeemed by them, to the feet of the Euganean hills in peace; and their black ships borne fondly by the old Neptunian foam, between Tenedos and Ida.

5. For two hundred and seventy-six years, while Attila and the Visigoth and the Lombard raged in consuming fire, here the fixed Christian force of soul abode in benediction and unboastful brotherhood, beginners of all things which we most now praise, when they best deserved praising.

Brotherhood; yet which could not be perfect as their power increased under so divided rule. The wonder is only how so long the groups of detached islands could gather their undisputing fleets into one without jealousy or treachery. But the need of more strict unity was at last felt, chiefly in consequence of the more and more redoubtable attacks of the Istrian pirates on the increasingly wealthy islanders, and of the steady hostility of the Lombards which necessitated a more perfect system of military fortification. It is easy to understand how the accusations of too slowly rendered succour, or supported enterprise, would gradually undermine the relations of the island chiefs, and in 697 the Patriarch of Grado, inheritor of all the sacred authority of Aquileia, summoned them to assembly; and, as true shepherd and bishop, counselled them to choose a single leader, and form themselves under him into one state. the Latin name for a leader, Dux, was then the common one for the head of military power in all the chief cities of Italy, under remains of Roman discipline. It became naturally, therefore, the title of the chief chosen in this assembly-Paul Luke Anafesto of Heraclea. And thus the reigns of the Dukes of Venetia are begun.

6. [Second Minor Epoch.] The Dukedom in Malamocco. I write “the Dukes of Venetia,” of all Antenor’s country, not yet of any city of Venice; question being hitherto, and for a hundred years yet to come, wholly undetermined which should be the capital city. Grado was the metropolitan, as the seat of the Bishop; Malamocco the most important in position, as commanding the main channel from the open sea; while yet, in appeasing

¹ [According to the legend, Antenor, a prince of Troy, led a colony, after the destruction of his country, into Italy near the mouth of the Po, where, expelling the Euganei from their possessions, he settled in them and founded Padua (see Livy, i. 1).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]