the Adige to the Arsa. After
the Greeks lost Ravenna to the Lombards the station of the fleet was
moved to Zara. Shortly before, in 743, the exarchate included the
Dalmatian islands, and also the cities of Zara, Trau, Spalato, and
Ragusa. The Slavs occupied Dalmatia in 640-642. Paulus Diaconus says
that they crossed to Siponto in 649 and sacked several places near. The
annals of Bari (926) speak of the siege and capture of Siponto by a Slav
king, Michael, possibly the husband of Queen Helena, who is named on his
wife's sarcophagus found on the island in the Jader, near Salona, as
described in the chapter on Spalato. In the ninth century the Narentans
helped in driving the Saracens from Monte Gargano.

The bishop of Torcello had possessions in Cittanova and Muggia, which
were confirmed to him in 1177 by Frederick Barbarossa. The see of Grado
had rights and possessions on the islands, and in Istria, at Trieste,
Capodistria, Pirano, Cittanova, Parenzo, Pola, and Castel S. Giorgio,
but the actual power was in the hands of the patriarch of Aquileia, who
several times settled matters with his adversaries by giving them things
which really belonged to Grado. With the increase of the Venetian power
to the point at which the coast-towns were practically forced to yield
themselves to her supremacy, Istria and Dalmatia became pawns in the
political game which was played in Italy, and the reciprocal influences
of the two shores became principally artistic and individual, rather
than corporate or national.

Artists of both shores worked indiscriminately on either side of the
Adriatic, as may be divined from the similarity of style in many of the
buildings and in much of the decorative work, even without the
documentary evidence which is often available. It is to be expected that
between the early basilicas of Ravenna and of Pola there should be a
great resemblance; but at Parenzo, also, there is a likeness to both
those places, and it seems probable that the same school of artists
worked upon the mosaics there and at S. Maria in Cosmedin, Ravenna. The
decoration in _opus sectile_ also has resemblances, but these seem more
probably due to direct Byzantine influence, since, both at S. Sophia,
Constantinople, and S. Demetrius, Salonica, the same form of decoration
occurs; and it is pretty well established that there was a regular
export trade in carved capitals and columns from Constantinople, the
same patterns occurring in many place