hen the naval
station was established here the climate must have been much more
healthy; on account, probably, of the great pine-forest which stretched
along the shore, and of which there are still some small remains towards
the Belvedere. At that time the Natisone debouched close to the town,
and there was ample anchorage for ships. In the eleventh century the
great port and arsenal were at Morrano and S. Marco al Belvedere, which
were then still islands. The sea-mouth was between Grado and S. Pietro
d'Oro, where the pharos was.

The city was founded in 181 B.C., and its name is said to have
originated in the appearance of an eagle which was seen while the plan
was being laid out. It was the centre from which numerous roads
diverged. Here Vespasian was hailed emperor by his legion. In 238
Maximin and his son were killed beneath its walls. Alaric besieged it,
and Attila destroyed it in 452. Forty years later Theodoric took the
lordship of Italy from Odoacer on the banks of the Isonzo, and in 552
the citizens who had returned were again driven away to the deltas of
other rivers by Alboin, who was, it is said, called from Pannonia by
Narses to wreak his vengeance on the son of Justinian.

Christianity was planted in Aquileia in apostolic times. According to
tradition S. Mark was sent by S. Peter from Rome to the city, and there
wrote or translated his gospel into Greek. S. Hermagoras, who was
Aquileian by birth, followed him as overseer of the Church. He was
consecrated the first bishop of Italy in Rome, the diocese ranking next
to the Roman see as being the most ancient after that city. There is no
doubt possible as to the existence of Christianity here at the end of
the third century. There were churches in the time of Constantine, and a
baptistery as early as 270, in the days of Aurelian. In Constantinian
times it was a centre of Catholic life. SS. Jerome and Ambrose lived
within its walls, and towards the end of the fourth century the bishops
of Como, Venetia, Istria, Noricum, Pannonia, and even Augsburg, as some
say, were under Valerian the bishop. Till Carolingian times the
patriarchs were Italians, Greeks, or Friulians; but, with the
establishment of the Holy Roman Empire, the patriarchs of Aquileia
politically were attached to it, and were friends of the emperors, who
often stayed in the city on their journeys to and from Italy. All the
names are German from the end of the tenth century to the middle of the
thir