In the time of Anafesto, the larger islands of the _dogado_ formed the
seats of powerful factions; the disproportion in point of influence
between the Crown and the tribune of Malamocco or the tribune of Equilo
was but slightly marked; and the abolition of that magistracy was a much
more sweeping measure than the first makers of a doge would have dared
to propose.
The military complexion of the ducal authority was not confined to the
personal character of the supreme officer of state, for under him, not
as a novel element in the constitution, but as one which preexisted side
by side with the tribunitial system, served a _master of the soldiers_,
whom there is a fairly solid ground for regarding as second to the doge
or duke in precedence, and above the civil tribunes of the respective
townships.
To find in so small and imperfectly developed a state the two leading
functionaries or ingredients deriving their appellations from a command
and control over the rude feudal militia, might alone warrant the
conclusion that the most essential requirement of Venice, even when it
had so far modified the form of administration, was felt to be the
possession, under responsible direction, of a means of securing internal
order and withstanding external aggression, if it were not the case that
from the Gothic era onward we hear of _scholae militiae cum patronis_,
manifestly the schools of instruction for the body over which the
_magister militum_ presided.
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