The Venetians continued to extend and confirm their commerce with those
helpless and hungry warriors, and were ready also to open a lucrative
trade with the Longobards when they descended into Italy about the year
570. They had, in fact, abetted the Longobards in their war with the Greek
Emperor Justinian, (who had opposed their incursion,) and in return the
barbarians gave them the right to hold great free marts or fairs on the
shores of the lagoons, whither the people resorted from every part of the
Longobard kingdom to buy the salt of the lagoons, grain from Istria and
Dalmatia, and slaves from every country.

The slave-trade, indeed, formed then one of the most lucrative branches of
Venetian commerce, as now it forms the greatest stain upon the annals of
that commerce. The islanders, however, were not alone guilty of this
infamous trade in men; other Italian states made profit of it, and it may
be said to have been all but universal. But the Venetians were the most
deeply involved in it, they pursued it the most unscrupulously, and they
relinquished it the last. The pope forbade and execrated their commerce,
and they sailed from the papal ports with cargoes of slaves for the
infidels in Africa. In spite of the prohibitions of their own government,
they bought Christians of kidnappers throughout Europe, and purchased the
captives of the pirates on the seas, to sell them again to the Saracens.
Nay, being an ingenious people, they turned their honest penny over and
over again: they sold the Christians to the Saracens, and then for certain
sums ransomed them and restored them to their countries; they sold
Saracens to the Christians, and plundered the infidels in similar
transactions of ransom and restoration. It is not easy to fix the dates of
the rise or fall of this slave-trade; but slavery continued in Venice as
late as the fifteenth century, and in earlier ages was so common that
every prosperous person had two or three slaves. [Footnote: Mutinelli,
_Del Costume Veneziano_. The present sketch of the history of