The Venetians, in constructing by degrees, and even somewhat at random, a constitutional fabric, very naturally followed the precedents and models which they found in the regions which bordered on them, and from which their forefathers had emigrated.  The Lombard system, which was of far longer duration than its predecessors on the same soil, borrowed as much as possible from that which the invaders saw in use and favor among the conquered; and the earliest institutions of the only community not subjugated by their arms were counterparts either of the Lombard, the Roman, or the Greek customary law.  The doge, in some respects, enjoyed an authority similar to that which the Romans had vested in their ancient kings; but, while he was clothed with full ecclesiastical jurisdiction, he did not personally discharge the sacerdotal functions or assume a sacerdotal title.  The Latins had had their magistri populi; and in the Middle Ages they recognized at Naples and at Amalfi a master of the soldiers; at Lucca, Verona, and elsewhere, a captain of the people.  But all these magistrates were in possession of the supreme power, were kings in everything save the name; and the interesting suggestion presents itself that in the case of Venice the master of the soldiers had been part of the tribunitial organization, if not of the consular one, and that one of the tribunes officiated by rotation, bearing to the republic the same sort of relationship as the bretwalda bore to the other Anglo-Saxon reguli.  There can be no doubt that Venice kept in view the prototypes transmitted by Rome, and learned at last to draw a comparison between the two empires; and down to the fifteenth century the odor of the Conscript Fathers lingered in the Venetian fancy.

Subsequently to the entrance of the dux, duke, or doge on the scene, and the shrinkage of the tribunitial power to more departmental or municipal proportions, the master of the soldiers, whatever he may have been before, became a subordinate element in the administration.  His duties must have certainly embraced the management of the militia and the maintenance of the doge’s peace within the always widening pale of the ducal abode.  He was next in rank to the crown or throne.

Thus we perceive that, after a series of trials, the Venetians eventually reverted to the form of government which appeared to be most agreeable, on the whole, to their conditions and genius.

The consular triumviri, not perhaps quite independent of external influences, were originally adopted as a temporary expedient.  The tribunes, who next succeeded, had a duration of two hundred and fifty years.  Their common fasti are scanty and obscure; and we gain only occasional glimpses of a barbarous federal administration, which barely sufficed to fulfil the most elementary wants of a rising society of traders.  They were alike, more or less, a