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As soon as the fugitives had given up all hope of returning to the mainland, they began that tremendous struggle with nature which built up the Venice we still see, and which, in some degree, will end only when it shall have finally disappeared again in the course of ages. The beginners displayed an almost incredible activity, which their descendants sustained without a break for centuries.

They strengthened the muddy islands with dykes and rows of driven piles; they dug canals and lined them first with timber and then with stone; they straightened the course of the currents, lest these should wash away the least fragment of land, where there was so little; they worked like beavers to win a few poor yards of earth from the restless flood.

The different tribes led strangely independent existences, though living so near together in the islands they had seized. Each one endeavoured to model the new home as much as possible upon the old, celebrating the same feasts in honour of the same saints, upon altars that enshrined the same long-treasured relics, and clinging with the affection and tenacity of unwilling exiles to the traditions and customs of the fatherland.

Rom. i. 73.

Though living almost within a stone’s throw the one from the other, the people of Aquileia, of Altinum and of Padua held at first hardly any communication, and had little in common; but they all clung to the patriarchal life, as is easily proved by very ancient documents. It is quite certain that each group had a chief, chosen to govern the little colony on account of his superior experience, riches, and authority. He was the guardian of the old home traditions, and strove to preserve them ever young, and to him appeal was made in all questions of justice and equity.

It is most important to remember that all these early settlers were descended from people who had been subject for centuries to Roman influence, as well as to

Rom. i. 95.

Rom. i. 60.

Roman government; and it was only natural that they should long afterwards show traces of such early national training, if I may use the expression. Their society almost instinctively sifted itself into castes: there were nobles—that is, the rich; there were the burghers, and there were the ‘little people,’ as they were called—‘minori.’ It was the duty of the nobles to provide all the rest with the means of living, as well as to govern and protect them. Custom required that every rich man should entertain under his protection a certain number of families of lower rank, who were called the ‘convicini,’ that is, ‘fellow-neighbours,’ a usage which recalled the Roman system of patron and client. The father of the family, as in Rome, had almost unlimited power over his children. All meetings of importance were presided over by the clergy.

Rom. i. 76.

Chron. Altin.

It was, in fact, an assembly of the clergy and of fathers of families which, in each group of emigrants, had given the leader of the expedition the Roman title of Tribune; and after a leader’s death his successor was elected in the same way, very generally from amongst his direct descendants. If this occurred during three or four successive generations, his family became naturally invested with a real hereditary authority. The relation between the head of the family and the ‘fellow-neighbours’ consisted of generosity on the one hand and of gratitude on the other, a species of exchange of sentiments not likely to produce undue tension. But where the head of the colony was concerned, an ambitious tribune, who showed signs of trying to turn himself into an autocrat, was held in check by the necessity of being re-elected to his office every year. For in each island, on the feast of its particular patron saint, the people met together, either in the church or on the shore, to choose the chief for the next twelve months, and they often elected the same tribune again and again; but if he had done the slightest thing to displease them, they had it in their power to choose a better man in his place.

During his term of office the tribune took for himself tithes on game that was killed, fish that was caught, and crops that were harvested.

Properly speaking, there were neither magistrates nor tribunals at that time, for the tribune himself judged all causes in public, most often in the church. A few fragments of written law existed, no doubt, but they were wholly inadequate; and though it was attempted to supply their deficiencies by adding some articles from the Lombard code, the real law was tradition. Such was the good faith of that little golden age, that the sworn evidence of two respectable persons was enough to convict any misdoer without any further form of trial, and condign punishment followed directly upon conviction.

According to the accounts they have left of themselves, these primitive Venetians were a simple and devout people, who divided their time between honest labour, the singing of psalms and devout hymns, and the narration to each other of beatific visions of Apostles and Virgin Martyrs, who appeared for the purpose of ordering themselves churches. The churches were undoubtedly built in great numbers, largely out of the better fragments which could still be gathered amidst the ruins of the old forsaken cities on the mainland. The nobles of Padua, who were probably the best of the colonists, brought enough old material to build themselves the whole town of Heraclea, on the island of that name; but even there the best and most artistic pieces of stone and marble were used in the construction of the churches and monasteries.

The people worked in the fields, cultivated the vine, bred cattle, and dealt in salt, which latter was one of their chief resources. They were not yet rich, but they were already economical, and their gains more than sufficed for their needs, so that the slow accumulation of wealth began at a very early period.

Rom. i. 67.

The ancient Venetian type, described in Roman times, continued to dominate even beyond the fourteenth century. The men were large, fair-haired, and strong; the women were rather inclined to be stout, and it was noticed that their hair turned grey comparatively early.

Vecellio.

Both sexes dressed with great simplicity, and for a long time clung to the old Roman fashions. They had always shown a remarkable liking for blue clothes; during many centuries the inhabitants of Venetia had been known as the ‘Blues,’ and long after the division of the Empire one faction in the games of the circus went by that name.

Dalmedico.

Their speech was still Latin at that early time, but soon afterwards the influence of the Greeks and Lombards began to make itself felt in their language, as well as in their dress and ornaments, and even in their architecture.

Mut. Costumi.

They lived in a certain abundance, and ate much meat, after the manner of all young nations. One may dig almost anywhere and come upon layers of the bones of wild boar and other game, as well as of cattle and sheep. Among fish they are known to have thought the turbot the best, and they preferred wild ducks to all other birds. The vine throve also, and produced good wines which soon gained a reputation on the mainland.

At first the emigrants needed no occupations beyond husbandry, fishing, and the preparation of salt; but as the population increased and prices rose accordingly, since saving had begun, the need of a wider field of activity was felt, and the Venetians rapidly developed the seafaring instincts of all healthy and active island peoples. Two hundred years had not elapsed since the raid of the Huns before the small archipelago at the head of the Adriatic was in possession of the finest fleet of vessels that Italy could yet boast.

Rom. i. 68.

Such a golden age as the chroniclers describe could not last long. In every newly-peopled country the rule is good faith, mutual help and charity between man and man, so long as there is a common adversary to be overcome, whether in the shape of natural difficulties, as was the case in the Venetian islands, or of wild beasts, or of human enemies, as in North America. So long as the settlers in the archipelago had to fight against the elements to win a stable foundation for their towns against the changeful, hungry currents; so long as they had to work hard to break and plough the land, to plant the vine, to build habitations for themselves and temples for their protecting saints, just so long did they abstain from coveting their neighbours’ goods. There was even a sort of rough-and-ready federation between the islands for the joint protection of their commerce and their ships, and now and then, in exceptional circumstances, the tribunes of the different isles had met together in debate for the common welfare. Their improvised parliament even received a name; it was called the Maritime University.

But as the general wealth increased, and the energetic struggle with nature settled into a steady and not excessive effort, the people of each island very naturally began to think less about themselves and more about their neighbours. Leisure bred vanity, vanity bred envy, and envy brought forth violence of all sorts.

The evil began at the top of the communities and spread downwards. The families of the tribunes became jealous one of another, and tried to outdo each other in wealth and display and power; and the poorer sort of the people took sides with their leaders and vied with each other, island with island, so that before the end of the seventh century much blood had dyed the lagoons.

Naturally enough, such internal discord laid the communities open to attacks from without; and the Slav pirates came sailing in their swift vessels from the Dalmatian coast, and gathered rich booty in the archipelago. In the face of a common danger home quarrels were once more forgotten, and the people of the islands met to consider the general safety.

697-717 A.D.

It was soon decided that internal peace could only be maintained by electing a single leader over all, a Dux, a Duke, a Doge, and the first choice fell on Paulus Lucas Anafestus, of Heraclea. Each island was to preserve its own tribune, its own laws, and its own judges, if it had any, and the Doge was to meddle with nothing that did not concern the common welfare of the whole federation. Moreover, no measure proposed by him was to become law until the people had voted upon it in general assembly called the Arengo.

Such was the remedy proposed, and in it lay the germ of the future form of government. But at first it produced a result the contrary of what was expected. The families of the different tribunes had envied and hated one another; they united to envy and hate the family of which the head was in power as Doge.

Rom. i. 107.

A violent dispute between the partisans of Anafestus and those of the tribune of Equilio brought about the first conflict. Equilio was in part overgrown with pine-trees, and the angry adversaries met in the dusky grove and fought to the death; and it is recorded that the small canal, which drained the land under the trees, ran red that day, wherefore it was afterwards called ‘Archimicidium,’ which I take to mean ‘the beginning of killing’; but it is now the Canal Orfano, in which criminals were drowned during many centuries.

That day was indeed the beginning of murder between the people of Equilio and those of Heraclea, and their hatred for each other was handed down afterwards from generation to generation, to our own times, so that even when the two islands were both included in the city of Venice, and both governed by the same municipal laws, the people still formed two hostile factions, of which more will be said hereafter.

737-742 A.D.

After having elected three doges, the people concluded from the result that they had been mistaken in choosing such a form of government, and by common agreement the power was placed in the hands of a military head, who was called the Chief of Militia; but as this experiment proved a failure after a trial of five years, the federation went back to the election of a Doge.

During all this period, and up to the ninth century, the islands were nominally under the protection of the Eastern Empire, if not under its domination; but a little study of the subject shows that the actors more than once changed parts, and that the protected were as often as not besought to become the protectors. For instance, the Exarch Paul, the viceroy of the Emperor, could never have re-entered his city of Ravenna, after the Lombards had taken it, unless the Venetians had helped him; and when the Doge Orso received of the Emperor the title of ‘Hypatos,’ it must have been given to him rather as the acknowledgment of a debt of gratitude to an ally than as a recompense granted to a faithful subject.

In such a difference there is something more than a shade that distinguishes two similar formalities; and historians have interpreted the Emperor’s brief, and other acts of the Court of Constantinople, according to their varying pleasure. Yet the truth is clear enough. The new-born Republic possessed a real independence, based on the good relations she maintained with her neighbours in general. She was satisfied with her power of governing herself, and was not inclined to quarrel with the Court of Constantinople, or with her nearer neighbours on the peninsula, about such trifles as words and forms. Her early policy was rather to escape notice than to boast of her liberty; yet it cannot be denied that during the seventh and eighth centuries the Greek influence predominated, both in the spirit of the laws and in the commercial activity of the Republic.

Meanwhile the more discontented citizens, and notably the more powerful families, which were jealous of each other, did their best to stir up faction and to bring about a revolutionary change which would have been ruinous. In the hope of internal quiet, the capital was transferred from Heraclea to Malamocco, of which the inhabitants were considered the most peaceful and law-abiding in all the lagoons; but the remedy was not a serious one, and the doges were successively murdered, or exiled, or forced to abdicate.

The Republic was on the point of perishing in these inglorious struggles when an unforeseen danger from abroad saved it from ruin by forcing all the Venetians to forget their differences and unite against a common enemy.

The year 810 marks the beginning of a new era.

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