With a strong fleet the Doge set sail, and visited the coast cities of Istria and Dalmatia one by one. They hailed him as a liberator, for they were especially exposed to the attacks of the corsairs, and in return for the protection of the Republic they placed their liberty in Pietro Orseolo’s hands. He wisely received them as federal allies rather than as subjects of Venice, though they, in their haste to be protected, would not have refused to submit themselves to him as conquered cities. He received them indeed under the shadow of the standard of Saint Mark, but he left to each one full and unhampered liberty to govern itself as it should see fit, requiring only a small yearly tribute in acknowledgment of what was to be a feudal supremacy. The town of Arbo was to pay ten pounds of silk, for instance, while Pola paid two thousand pounds’ weight of olive-oil yearly to feed the lamps of Saint Mark’s church, and so on, through a long list; and so, by token of a few skins of oil, of a handful of silk, Venice first got supremacy over the eastern Adriatic cities, with all the vast advantage to her commerce that lay in owning harbours and warehouses all along the coast almost as far as Greece. From that time Trieste, Capo d’ Istria, Rovigno, and all the sea-coast cities of Istria became Venetian, and Zara, long an ally, and Salone, and Spalatro and Ragusa; and the islands too, Coronota, Brazza, and many others, down to the islets of Corsola and Lazina, which stood firm for the pirates, guarding the approach to Narenta, their chief city. But there, as all the chronicles agree, the Doge put forth his strength, and he took those places in hard-fought battle and smote them, and utterly wasted them with fire and the sword, so that from that day their strength was gone, and the Adriatic was for many centuries freed from the terror of their deeds.
Then, turning homeward, Pietro Orseolo visited the vast provinces he had annexed to Venice, and because he had destroyed the corsairs the people everywhere received him with great joy, and acclaimed him Duke of Dalmatia by common consent; and the Doges who came after him bore the well-earned title during many hundreds of years.
[Sidenote: _998 A. D. Rom. i. 284. Zanetti._]