Pisa, which now lies at the mouth of the Arno like a forsaken mermaid on the shore, is said to have been a free commune before the year 900. She traded east and west; she waged wars with the Saracens, drove them from Sardinia, captured the Balearic Islands (1114), and carried the war into Africa. Rich with booty and commercial gains, she erected (according to a traveller's estimate) ten thousand towers within the city walls, completed her dome-crowned, many-columned, queenly cathedral, and built the attendant baptistery, within whose marble walls musical notes rise and fall, circle and swell, as if angels were singing in mid-air. She received many privileges from the Emperors; her maritime usages were to be respected; she was to enact her own laws, and to judge her citizens. No Imperial Marquess was to enter Tuscany until he had received approval from twelve men of Pisa, to be elected at a public meeting, called together by the city's bells (1085). She spread her power in the Levant. Jaffa, Acre, Tripoli, Antioch were in great part under her dominion, and her factories were scattered along the coasts of Syria and Asia Minor. Further to the north, mounting hillward from her curving bay, lay Genoa the Proud, who for a time was Pisa's ally against the Saracens, and then became her rival and enemy. Genoa, too, was devoted to commerce and established settlements in Constantinople, in the Crimea, in Cyprus and Syria, in Majorca and Tunis. She, too, had obtained from the Empire a charter of municipal privileges and was a republic, free in all but name. Venice, their greater sister, first rivalled and then surpassed both Pisa and Genoa. She traces her origin to the men who fled from the mainland in fear of Attila and sought refuge on the marshy islands of the coast (452). In later days others fled before the Lombards, and joined the descendants of the earlier refugees. Here, under the nominal government of the Eastern Empire, the Venetians gradually developed strength and independence, and took into their own hands the election of their Doge (697). The city of the _Rivo Alto_, the Venice of to-day, was begun about 800. Thirty years later the body of St. Mark the Evangelist was brought from Alexandria, and the foundations of St. Mark's basilica were laid over his bones. Politically Venice maintained her allegiance, shifting and time-serving though it was, true to Constantinople, not from sentiment, but because Constantinople was the first city in the world, the centre of art, of luxury, of commerce. Indeed, Venice was like a daughter or younger sister to Constantinople; all her old monuments, her mosaics, her sculpture, her marble columns, show her Byzantine inclinations. She took an active part in the Crusades, furnished transports and supplies, and mixed religion, war, and commerce in one profitable whole.