hem in his _Germany_. From the Elbe they wandered to the
Danube, and there encountered the Gepidae, a branch of the Goths.
The Lombards subdued this tribe, after a contest of thirty years.

By this victory Alboin, the young Lombard King, rose to great power
and fame. His beauty and renown were sung by German peasants even
in the days of Charlemagne. His name "crossed the Alps and fell,
with a foreboding sound, upon the startled ears of the Italians,"
and toward Italy he turned for conquest. From Scythia and Germany
adventurous youth flocked to his standard. Many clans and various
religions were represented in his ranks, but these diversities were
overshadowed by a common devotion to the hero-leader.

In 568 the Lombards marched from Pannonia into Italy, conquered the
northern part, still called Lombardy, and founded the kingdom of
that name, which was afterward greatly extended, and existed until
overthrown by Charlemagne in 774.

Before the invading hosts of Alboin, wealthy inhabitants of the
larger cities of the province of Venetia fled to the islands of
Venice, where earlier fugitives had sought shelter from King Attila
and his Huns. A thriving maritime community had been established,
which about this time had developed into a semi-independent
protectorate of the Byzantine or Eastern Empire, attached to the
exarchate of Ravenna.

Afterward Venice underwent many political changes, among which one
of the most interesting to students of history is that of the
institution of the dogeship, as hereafter related. This step was
taken for more than one reason of internal organization and policy,
and it was also made urgent by the encroachments of the Lombards,
which had become a menace to Venetian territory and commerce.

The republic (Venetian) on her part contemplated with inquietude the
rise of one monarchy after another on the skirts of the Lagoon, for the
Venetians not unnaturally feared that as soon as these fresh usurpers
had established themselves, they might form the design of adding the
islands of the Adriatic to their dominion, and of acquiring possession
of the commercial advantages which belonged to the situation held by the
settlers. For the Lombards, though not ranking among maritime
communities, were not absolutely strangers to the laws of navigation, or
to the use of ships