Decline of Warlike Spirit How much the military discipline and the martial spirit of the burgesses suffered from this conversion of war into a traffic in plunder, may be traced in the campaigns against Perseus; and the spread of cowardice was manifested in a way almost scandalous during the insignificant Istrian war (in 576).

Naevius described the first, and Fabius the second, war with Carthage from their own knowledge; Ennius devoted at least thirteen out of the eighteen books of his Annals to the epoch from Pyrrhus down to the Istrian war;(62)

On the great canal, which has a winding course between the two principal parts of the city, are situated the most magnificent of the great houses, or palaces as they are termed; some of them of a beautiful style of architecture, with fronts of Istrian marble, and containing valuable collections of pictures.

Under Theodoric, Pola doubtless shared that general prosperity of the Istrian land on which Cassiodorus grows eloquent when writing to its inhabitants.

Like the other Istrian and Dalmatian towns, modern revolutions have handed it over from Venice to Austria, from Austria to France, from France to Austria again.

In an essay on the subject written by Mr. T.G. Jackson, A.R.A., they are said to be the work of one Bartolommeo, an Istrian artist, and to date from 1486.