Note 877 — BOOK XII.

Written shortly after Sept. 1, 537. This is the celebrated letter to which Venetian historians point as evidence of the existence of their city (or at least of the group of settlements out of which their city sprang) in the Sixth Century. We may set side by side with it the words of the Anonymous Geographer of Ravenna (in the Seventh Century), 'In patria vero Venetiae sunt aliquantae insulae, quae hominibus habitantur.'

The address, Tribunis Maritimorum, looks as if there were something like a municipal government established in these islands. Tribunus was at this time generally, but not exclusively, a military title. Compare the Tribunus Fori Suarii and Tribunus Rerum Nitentium of the Notitia (Occidens iv. 10 and iv. 17). But there can be no doubt, from the tone of this letter, that the islanders were subjects of the Ostrogothic King.