560 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 
Gradually this commerce grew, until in the eighth century we find the Venetians 
trading with Syria and Africa, Constantinople, and the ports of the Black Sea. 
Throughout the period of growth the policy of this trading republic, both by 
land and sea, is very significant. Venice early realised the force of Bacon’s maxim 
‘that he that commands the sea is at great liberty, and may take as much and as 
little of war as he will.’ Power at sea was necessary to provide security for her 
commerce. In early times she generally owned allegiance to the Eastern Roman 
Empire, a suzerainty which could do her little harm and could and did do her 
much good. To that allegiance she adhered until she was strong enough to 
turn against and: reap advantage from the overthrow of her suzerain. At an 
earlier date, before the close of the tenth century, she had conquered Dalmatia, 
and thereby destroyed the hordes of pirates who had found refuge in the 
innumerable harbours of that coast and constantly harassed the commerce ot 
the Adriatic. At every opportunity she secured establishments and acquired 
possessions in the Levant. 
On the land side, however, dominion would have added more to her risks 
than her advantages, and that dominion was not sought. For more than eight 
hundred years after the first flight to the islands of the lagoon, more than six 
hundred after the election of the first Doge (697), Venice possessed no territory 
on the mainland beyond a mere narrow ribbon on the edge of the lagoon. The 
nature of the situation made her indispensable to the trade of the land immediately 
behind. An incident belonging to the close of the ninth century illustrates 
the force of this observation. A keen dispute had arisen between the 
Patriarch of Aquileia and the Patriarch of Grado. Venice supported the 
Patriarch of Grado and war seemed to be threatened. But so neces- 
sary had the commerce of Venice become to the inhabitants of the territory 
acknowledging the authority of Aquileia that in order to bring about the sub- 
mission of the Patriarch of Aquileia it was enough to close or blockade the port 
of Pilo, on the mainland opposite the lidi. The subjects of Aquileia then forced 
the patriarch to sue for peace.1 On another occasion, in a dispute with the 
Bishops of Belluno and Treviso, the matter was again partly settled through the 
efficacy of the measures taken by the Doge Orseolo II., with the consent of 
the people, to stop commerce with the territory of the bishops, by which the 
inhabitants found themselves without supplies of salt, and without the means of 
exchanging their leather and meat for Venetian wares or selling the abundant 
timber of their forests for the building of Venetian ships.? In holding the out- 
lets for maritime commerce Venice felt herself to be in the possession of ‘the 
keys of trade,’ to use the expression employed by Sir William Petty in speaking 
of the analogous position of Holland in later times at the mouths of the Rhine, 
Meuse, and Scheldt. 
But while possession on the mainland was not necessary to Venice she always 
recognised and sought the advantage of good relations with the occupants of 
the plains behind her, whoever these occupants might be, and on every occasion 
endeavoured to turn to her own benefit the vicissitudes of those plains. In her 
early days she is found now in alliance with the Greeks, now with the Pope, 
now with the archbishops of Ravenna, and now with the Lombards, just as it 
happened to suit her interests, and in any case taking every opportunity of 
obtaining direct and indirect advantages from trade with the most profitable 
customers in the plains. When famine pursued the steps of the Lombard 
invaders of Italy in the sixth century ‘the Venetians in their pacific retreat,’ says 
Mutinelli,® ‘could send their ships to the ports of Apulia and elsewhere to obtain 
victuals and corn for the famished barbarians,’ and in consequence the Lombards 
took them under their protection and granted them security and favours through- 
out the Lombard kingdom. When Charlemagne, at the invitation of the Pope, 
invaded Italy to deliver the Church from its subjection to the Lombards 
1 Romanin, Storia documentata di Venezia, vol. i. pp. 197-8. 
2 Tbid., pp. 270-1. 
3 Del Commercio dei Veneziani, p. 12. 
