The earliest relations between Genoa and Byzantium are to be found in the treaty between the two in 1155; but it was not till a century later that the Ligurian Republic seriously entered into the field of Eastern politics. After the establishment of the Latin states in Greece, the Genoese, excluded from all share of the spoil, endeavoured to embarrass their more fortunate Venetian rivals by secretly urging on their countryman, the pirate Vetrano, against Corfù, and by instigating the bold Ligurian, Enrico Pescatore, against Crete—enterprises, however, which had no permanent effect. But the famous treaty of Nymphæum, concluded between the Emperor Michael VIII and the Republic of Genoa in 1261, first gave the latter a _locus standi_ in the Levant. Never did a Latin Community make a better bargain with a Greek ruler, for all the advantages were on the side of Genoa. The Emperor gave her establishments and the right to keep consuls at Anæa, in Chios, and in Lesbos, both of which important islands had been assigned to the Latin Empire by the deed of partition, but had been recaptured by Michael’s predecessor Vatatzes in 1225[450]. He also granted her the city of Smyrna, promised free trade to Genoese merchants in all the ports of his dominions, and pledged himself to exclude the enemies of the Ligurian Commonwealth, in other words, the Venetians, from the Black Sea and all his harbours. All that he asked in return for these magnificent concessions was an undertaking that Genoa would arm a squadron of fifty ships at his expense, if he asked for it. It was expressly stipulated that this armament should not be employed against Prince William of Achaia. Genoa performed her part of the bargain by sending a small fleet to aid the Emperor in the recovery of Constantinople from the Latins; but it arrived too late to be of any use. Still, Michael VIII took the will for the deed; he needed Genoese aid for his war against Venice; so he sent an embassy to ask for more galleys. The Genoese, heedless of papal thunders against this “unholy alliance,” responded by raising a loan for the affairs of the Levant[451]; and it was their fleet, allied with the Greeks, which sustained the defeat off the islet of Spetsopoulo, or Sette Pozzi, as the Italians called it[452], at the mouth of the Gulf of Nauplia in 1263. But the Emperor soon found that his new allies were a source of danger rather than of strength; he banished the Genoese of Constantinople to Eregli on the Sea of Marmara, and made his peace with their Venetian rivals. In vain Genoa sent Benedetto Zaccaria to induce him to revoke his decree of expulsion; some years seem to have elapsed before he allowed the Genoese to return to Galata, and it was not till 1275 that the formal ratification of the treaty of Nymphæum marked his complete return to his old policy[453], and that Manuele and Benedetto Zaccaria became the recipients of his bounty.