But all this time the Mediterranean trade had been developing, and collaterally there was developed a Mercantile Marine. As the years sped by, there came greater demands for the merchant ship. Thus in the epistles of Cassiodorus, who was prætorian prefect under Theodoric (A.D. 495-526), there is a dispatch to the tribunes of the “maritimi,” or men of the seaboard, bidding them provide for the transport of wine from Istria to Ravenna; and there is a reference to the frequent voyages over the “immense spaces of the sea.”[1] By the eighth century Venice was becoming a great trading port, and its merchants were realising what the sea meant to them in regard to wealth. Indeed, they even went so far as to sell Christian men as slaves to the Saracens in Africa, thus incurring the Pope’s censure. To Constantinople Venetian merchant ships sailed with goods or passengers, as, for instance, in the year 968, carrying Bishop Luitprand thither. In fact, by the year 1000 the city of Venice was pre-eminent in commerce, and its princes were merchants. Overseas trading was at last recognised as a means to wealth, and so, inevitably, by about 1171 the Venetian Navy becomes organised. That was bound to come as soon as the Mercantile Marine became important; but it was arranged rather on the lines of our Naval Reserve. For all ordinary occasions it consisted of volunteers, for whose service there was payment, and these citizens were also entitled to prize money. Indeed, throughout nautical history the navies of the world have always been based on the Merchant Service. In these early days of Venice, while Dalmatia, Istria and other communities supplied the men, Venice provided the ships and rigging, the rest of the inventory and the crew being forthcoming from the dependencies. Finally, in the time of emergency hired seamen were obtained from foreign countries with whom the Venetian commercial ships had traded.