This opportunity was not long in coming. Towards the end of the thirteenth century a violent war broke out between Venice and her Genoese rivals, supported by the Byzantine Emperor. While the Genoese tried to undermine Venetian power in Crete, Venice let loose a new swarm of privateers on the islands of the Ægean, which Licario had recovered for the Byzantines. Then for the first time we meet with the word _armatoloí_, so famous in the later history of Greece, applied originally to the outfitters, or _armatores_, of privateers. The dispossessed Venetian lords were thus enabled to reconquer many of the possessions which they had then lost; Amorgos, the birthplace of Simonides, was restored to the Ghisi, Santorin and Therasia to the Barozzi, but only on condition that they recognised the suzerainty of the Republic. This arrangement was contested by the Duke of the Archipelago, on the ground that those islands had originally been sub-fiefs of his ancestors’ dominions. Guglielmo Sanudo, the purchaser of the ass, had now succeeded to the Duchy, and, as might have been inferred from that story, was not likely to be over-scrupulous in his methods. As one of the Barozzi declined to do him homage, he had him arrested by corsairs on the high seas, and threw him into the ducal dungeon at Naxos. This was more than Venice could stand, for this scion of the Barozzi had been Venetian governor of Candia. An ultimatum was therefore despatched to the Duke, bidding him send his captive to Eubœa within eight days, under pain of being treated as a pirate. This message had the desired effect. Guglielmo let his prisoner go, and it was seen that the name of Venice was more powerful than before in the Archipelago. But neither Venice nor the Duke could prevent the increasing desolation of the islands. The Catalans had now appeared in the Levant; in 1303 they ravaged Keos; after their establishment in the Duchy of Athens they organised a raid on Melos, from which, like the Athenians of old, they carried off numbers of the inhabitants as slaves. A Spaniard from Coruña, Januli da Corogna, occupied Siphnos, and two of the leading families in Santorin to-day are of Catalan origin. A member of one of them, Dr De Cigalla, or Dekigallas, as he is called in Greek, is a voluminous author, and a great authority on the eruptions of that volcanic island. Turkish squadrons completed the work of destruction; we hear of a new exodus from Amorgos in consequence of their depredations, but this time the frightened islanders preferred to seek refuge under the Venetian banner in Crete rather than in Naxos. The latter island was, indeed, no longer so secure as it had been. True, Duke Guglielmo had welcomed the establishment of the warlike knights of St John at Rhodes, and had helped them to conquer that stronghold, in the hope that they would be able to ward off the Turks from his dominions. Venice, too, had come to see that her wisest policy was to strengthen the