Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/403

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 381 habitants of Venice were considered by themselves, by strangers, and by their sovereigns, as an inalienable portion of the Greek empire ; *^ in the ninth and tenth centuries, the proofs of their subjection are numerous and unquestionable; and the vain titles, the servile honours, of the Byzantine court, so ambitiously solic- ited by their dukes, would have degraded the magistrates of a free people. But the bands of this dependence, which was never absolute or rigid, were imperceptibly relaxed by the ambition of Venice and the weakness of Constantinople. Obedience was softened into respect, privilege ripened into prerogative, and the freedom of domestic government was fortified by the independ- ence of foreign dominion. The maritime cities of Istria and Dalmatia bowed to the sovereigns of the Adriatic ; and, when they armed against the Normans in the cause of Alexius, the emperor applied, not to the duty of his subjects, but to the grati- tude and generosity of his faithful allies. The sea Avas their patrimony;** the western pai-ts of the Mediterranean, from Tus- ^ When the son of Charlemagne asserted his right of sovereignty, he was answered by the loyal Venetians, on linei? 6ovA.oi eiKouev elrat. rov 'PojiJ.ai<ov /3a<7-iAfiu;(ConStantin. Porphyrogenit. de Administrat. Imperii, pars ii. c. 28, p. 85) ; and the report of the ixth establishes the fact of the xth century, which is confirmed by the embassy of Liutprand of Cremona. The annual tribute, which the emperor allows them to pay to the king of Italy, alleviates, by doubling, their servitude ; but the hateful word ^oOAoi must be translated, as in the charter of 827 (Laugier, Hist, de Venise, torn. i. p. 67, &c. ), by the softer appellation oi siMiti, oxfideles. [The relation of Venice to the Empire has been most recently investigated by E. Lentz. He es- tablishes the actual, not merely formal, dependence of Venice on Constantinople up to about the years 836-40 (Das Verhaltniss Venedigs zu Byzanz ; Th. i., Venedig als byzantinische Provinz, 1891). About that time the weakness of the Eastern Empire enabled Venice gradually to work her way to a position of independence. By military expeditions, undertaken on her own account, against the Slavonic pirates of the Adriatic and the Saracens who carried their depredations to Dalmatia and the northern part of the Eastern Riviera, and by entering into independent com- pacts with the neighbouring cities of Italy, Venice changed her condition from that of a province to that of a responsible power, and, when the Eastern Empire regained strength under Basil, it was impracticable to recall her to her former subordinate position, and the Emperors were perforce content with a nominal subjection. The man whose policy achieved this result was the Doge Peter Tradonicus. (Lentz, Der allmahliche L'ebergang Venedigs von faktischer zu nomineller Abhangigkeit von Byzanz, in Byz. Zeitsch. iii. p. 64 jyy. 1894.) The earliest independent treaty made by Venice was the Pactum Lotharii of 840 : a treaty not with the Emperor Loihar, but with a number of Italian cities under the auspices of Lothar (see A. Fanta, Die Vertrage der Kaiser mit Venedig bis zum Jahre, 983 : in Suppl. I. to the Mittheilungen des Inst, fiir osterr. Geschichtsforschung, 1881 ; and for the text Romanin, Storia documentata di Venezia, i. 356). For the later relations of Venice with the Eastern Empire, especially in the 12th century, see, C. Neumann in Byz. Zeitsch. i. p. 366 sqq. ; and for the development of Venetian commerce, and the bearings thereon of the Golden Bulls granted by the Emperors, Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au moyen age, 1885.] From Anderson's History of Commerce, I understand that the Venetians did not
 * See the xxvth and xxxth dissertations of the Antiquitates Medii /Evi of Muratori.