While the Venetians disputed with the Lombards, the Frank and the German emperors, the little land on which stood their houses, they had also to dispute the sea that bathed them, with the Slavonians, who had established themselves for the purpose of piracy on the eastern side of the Adriatic.[b] It was hardly five hundred years since the fugitives from Padua and Aquileia had sought refuge in the lagunes. Content with having found safety there and freedom to enlarge their town and extend their commerce, they had hitherto only made just wars, having only taken to arms to repulse pirates, help oppressed neighbours, or to defend their liberty against Pepin and the Hungarians. Although many victories had given them a just appreciation of their strength, they had no aggression to reproach themselves with, unless perhaps that against the Saracens, but this war was undertaken at the solicitation of the Italian people, and on the request of the Eastern emperor. Moreover, in generally received ideas of this epoch, the Saracens, in their quality as infidels, were beyond the pale of common rights. The republic had never made incursions on the continent, for it would not be just to lay to its account the short expeditions of the two doges, who had no other object than their own interests. [Illustration: A DOGE OF VENICE] This union of exiles and fishers had become a rich, powerful, warlike, yet at the same time a peaceful nation. The fruit of this moderation had been if not an existence exempt from trouble, at least a medium to the creation of an independent state, freeing itself little by little from the influence of the two empires between which it found itself--a state, moreover, which treated with its neighbours, counted many illustrious families, whose princes married kings’ daughters, yet in its entity did not extend beyond the lagunes and several points of the neighbouring coast. A new scene was to open up. Commerce, that profession in which fortunes are continually being tried, is not a school of moderation. Successes inspire greediness and jealousy, and these latter the spirit of domination. Maritime commerce wanted ports where her ships could be gathered, authority where she bought, privileges where she sold, safety for navigation, and, above all, no rivals. This ambitious spirit is really the same as that of conquest. Venice will show us an example of it. No choice of the Venetians was more justified by its great and lasting results than that of Doge Pietro Orseolo II in 991. He was the son of him who had abdicated the dogate fifteen years before. As in the life of all great men there is something of the marvellous, it was spread abroad that his father had announced that his son would be the glory of his country, and the holiness of Orseolo I gave to these paternal hopes all the authority of a prophecy.