The first document showing the emancipation of the islands from continental Venetia is the letter written by Cassiodorus to the tribune of the maritime places, in the year 538, in which he asks him to provide a transport to Ravenna for the wines and oils belonging to the Istrians. But if this letter shows that the inhabitants of the islands at the time of the Gothic rule had begun to elect their own magistrates instead of receiving them from the mother-country, it does not prove that the islands thenceforward had full political power, as Graswinkel of antiquity and Crivello of modern times would have us to believe. Because in this case the letter would not have been written in the name of the prefect of the place as well as in the name of the king, as it was customary with foreigners; neither would Cassiodorus have dared to use to the Venetian tribune the same language as he used in his letters to the _provinciali_ of Istria, to the _consulare_ of Liguria, and to the _possessori_ of Syracuse, who were never thought to be independent magistrates. Moreover, Balbo notes that the vicinity of the lagunes to Ravenna, the capital and seat of the Gothic kings of Italy, renders every other supposition absurd. Hence Romanin shows that this dependence of the islands on the Gothic dominion was more nominal than real. It is indisputable that it was changed into a sort of protectorate before it became a real republic, the rule of the east Goths being of too short duration to permit the confirmation of their own power, and moreover the nominal amnesty of the islands to the kingdom sufficiently satisfied the ambition of the Gothic kings and relieved them of undertaking their conquest. When Italy passed into the hands of the Greeks through the victories of Belisarius, the Venetian islands followed the fate of the mother-country; and it relapsed subsequently into the power of the Greeks after the short restoration of the Gothic rule. Moreover, the Greek sovereignty of the islands seemed to have become a mere military occupation; at least it appears so in the second half of the sixth century, when the migrations were made definitive to confirm the Lombard power in Italy.