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Serbia was tacitly given a free hand in her attempt to reach the sea in Northern Albania. The action of Austria-Hungary in vetoing her access to the Adriatic forced Serbia to turn her eyes from west to south and to seek her economic outlet to the sea down the valley of the Vardar to Salonica and the Aegean.

Favoured by Macedonia, which no longer found occasion to continue its old function of protecting Hellenic commerce from the corsairs of the Adriatic for the benefit of its foes, the rulers of Scodra had induced the Illyrian tribes nearly corresponding to the Dalmatians, Montenegrins, and northern Albanians of the present day to unite for joint piratical expeditions on a great scale.

It was not till the height of summer that the conflict began in Illyria. The admirals of Pompeius in the Adriatic, Marcus Octavius with the Greek, Lucius Scribonius Libo with the Illyrian division of the fleet, attacked the squadron of Dolabella, destroyed all his ships, and cut off Antonius on his island.

He proceeded up the Adriatic and when far off he saw the great imperial city, he first, according to Agnellus, lamented its fate, "for she shall be levelled with the ground which lifted her head to the clouds;" and then having landed and been greeted with due ceremony, set his camp on the banks of the Po a few hundred yards outside the city walls.

"Give me everything you have," he told the Admiralty when they asked him what ships he wanted; "I'll find some use for them." His crews were partly men of Slav and Italian stock from the Adriatic coast, including 600 from Venice; there is no reason for supposing them better than those of Persano.

But the first great work at which the two brothers in their youth worked in company the painting of the Hall of Council in the palace of the Doge, with a series of historical and legendary pictures of the Venetian wars with the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa , including the Doge Ziani's receiving from the Pope the gold ring with which the Doge espoused the Adriatic, in token of perpetual dominion over the sea was unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1577.

Now before we started down the Adriatic we had been warned that, because of President Wilson's attitude on the Fiume question, the feeling against Americans ran very high, and that from the Italians we must be prepared for coldness, if not for actual insults. Well, this luncheon at Sebenico was an example of the insults we received and the coldness with which we were treated.

Something, perhaps, though not enough, was done towards its suppression, so far as the direct power of the Romans extended, in the Adriatic and Tyrrhene seas. The expeditions directed against the Dalmatian and Ligurian coasts at this epoch aimed especially at the suppression of piracy in the two Italian seas; for the same reason the Balearic islands were occupied in 631.

So Basil rode southward, and happily was far away when Tibur opened its gates to the Goth. For more than half a year he and Venantius were busy in maintaining the Gothic rule throughout Lucania and Apulia, where certain Roman nobles endeavoured to raise an army of the peasantry in aid of the Greek invasion constantly expected upon the Adriatic shore.

But the German Army Bill of 1912 was followed by Russia's intervention in the Balkans to secure for Servia at least commercial access to the Adriatic.