THE NAME
147
the Patrician, Grand Drungary of the Imperial Byzantine fleet, sent by the Emperor Basil I. to pursue the Saracens into Italy and break their power, which he did before Bari. Constantine goes on to explain that Ragusa was not called Ragusa in the “ Roman tongue ”, meaning Imperial Greek, but Aat), Lau, the rock, as the new city was built on a rocky edge (ek rov Kprjp,vov); by the usual metathesis between X and p the Lausaioi, or rock people, became Rausaioi, hence Ragusans. The newcomers at once began to build walls; the earliest were of rubble and wooden beams, for wood was abundant then on the slopes of Monte Sergio, and gave its Croat name of Dubrovnik, the “woody place”, to Ragusa. The Ragusans indeed always made much of their walls, both for protection for themselves and also as offering a safe asylum to the neighbouring populations when under the frequent menace of raids, and thus helping to foster and augment the population of their city. The city walls are, to this day, one of the most striking features of Ragusa. As a matter of fact, the original town was built of wood and was burned down in 1292.
Then followed a period of mixed Byzantine-Venetian domination or suzerainty, when the Doge,