machinery of primitive type, deficient in central force, and without any safeguards against the abuse of authority, without any definite theory of legislation and police.  The century and a half which intervened between the abrogation of monarchy in the person of a tribune, and its revival in the person of a doge (574-697), beheld the republic laboring under the feeble and enervating sway of rival aristocratic houses, on which the sole check was the urban body subsequently to emerge into importance and value as the militia of the six wards, and its commandant, the master of the soldiers.

But while the institution of the dogeship brought with it a certain measure of equilibrium and security, it left the political framework in almost every other respect untouched.  The work of reform and consolidation had merely commenced.  The first stone only had been laid of a great and enduring edifice.  The first permanent step had been taken toward the unification of a group of insular clanships into a homogeneous society, with a sense of common interests.

The late tribunitial ministry has transmitted to us as its monument little beyond the disclosure of a chronic disposition to tyranny and periodical fluctuations of preponderance.  The so-called chair of Attila at Torcello is supposed to have been the seat where the officer presiding over that district long held his court sub dio.

The doge Anafesto appears to have pacified, by his energy and tact, the intestine discord by which his country had suffered so much and so long, and the Equilese, especially—­who had risen in open revolt, and had refused to pay their proportion of tithes—­were persuaded, after some fierce struggles in the pineto or pine woods, which still covered much of the soil, to return to obedience.  The civil war which had lately broken out between Equilo and Heraclia was terminated by the influential mediation of one of the tribunes, and the Lombards now condescended to ratify a treaty assigning to the Venetians the whole of the territory lying between the greater and lesser Piave, empowering the republic to erect boundary lines, and prohibiting either of the contracting parties from building a stronghold within ten miles of those lines.  A settlement of confines between two such close neighbors was of the highest importance and utility.  But a still more momentous principle was here involved.

The republic had exercised a clear act of sovereign independence.  It had made its first Italian treaty.  This was a proud step and a quotable precedent.

FOOTNOTE: 

[68] Some modern writers question the etymology which in the name of the Langobardi finds a reference to the length of their beards.  Sheppard thinks that “long-spears,” rather than “long-beards” was the original signification.  Since, on the banks of the Elbe, Boerde or Bord still means “a fertile plain beside a river,” others derive their name from the district they inhabited.  Langobardi would thus signify “people of the long bord of the river.”