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Venetian traders, who could realise as much as 1000 per cent on the purchase price of each slave. Whereas the changes to citizenship laws during the plague saw the Republic jettisoning long-held ideals in the name of pragmatism, the opportunistic acceleration of their participation in the slave trade represented a colder element in the Republics character – the willingness to jettison morality for the sake of profit.
    In Venice, slaves had originally been sold at what is still known as Riva degli Schiavoni (literally ‘landing stage of the Slavs’, the word ‘slave’ being derived from the Slav name). Once purchased, slaves were deemed to be the property of their owners, and were listed on tax returns as chattels along with domestic animals and furniture. Despite such callous disregard for human dignity, slaves were for the most part treated with a degree of humanity by their Italian masters. Many slaves from Venice were exported to cities such as Florence and Rome, where they entered households and undertook domestic duties like any other servant. As such, they would often dine at the family table and suffered no more or less than the usual affection or maltreatment meted out to the vulnerable country girls who made up the lower retinue of servants. When the banker Cosimo de’ Medici was working in Rome he impregnated his slave girl, whereupon she was sent home to the family mansion to give birth, and her son was treated in much the same way as any other illegitimate offspring of a well-to-do family in Italy; he was educated and then sent to a nearby city to take up a position that had been secured for him in the Church. Such consideration was certainly not the norm, but it was not exceptional. Slaves who had served a family loyally over the years would sometimes be set free in their master’s will, just as Marco Polo had done with the Tartar slave he brought back with him from the East. On the other hand, the Venetian authorities did on occasion purchase slaves to make up numbers in the galleys, though this was only as a last resort. Youths from artisan families traditionally volunteered for a term in the galleys, where (if they were lucky) they could become rich through a share in the spoils of war. Themen who manned the oars were also expected to fight in naval engagements, which made the authorities wary of seconding to the galleys slaves whose patriotism was liable to be suspect.
    After a post-plague truce lasting barely two years, Venice soon found its galleys becoming involved in an increasing number of naval skirmishes with its Genoese counterparts. By 1352 the situation had escalated to outright war. Leading adversaries in this lengthy war would emerge from two distinguished families – the Pisani of Venice and the celebrated Doria of Genoa (who had already provided Lamba Doria, the victor of Curzola).
    The kingdom of Aragon in south-east Spain, wishing to drive the Genoese from the western Mediterranean, chose to ally itself with Venice, and in February 1352 Nicolò Pisani led their combined fleets north up the Aegean Sea to confront the Genoese fleet in the Bosphorus under the command of Paganino Doria. Here Pisani was provided with further Greek naval assistance by the Byzantine emperor John VI Cantacuzenus, who felt threatened by the fortified Genoese colony just north of Constantinople on the other side of the Golden Horn, the narrow stretch of water leading off the Bosphorus. Making full use of his home-port advantage, Doria withdrew his fleet into a line across the narrow mouth of the Golden Horn, thus ensuring that he could not be outflanked and attacked from the rear, breaking his line. By now a winter storm was raging, and the wind and waves rendered Doria’s position all but impregnable. But to Pisani’s dismay the Aragonese admiral Ponzio di Santa Paola then proceeded to launch his ships into a frontal attack on the Genoese, which soon resulted in catastrophic losses. Pisani realised that he