The service and

lans in the Greek empire,

admiral of the Mediterranean. He sailed from Messina to Constantinople, with eighteen galleys, four great ships, and eight thousand adventurers; and his previous treaty was faithfully accomplished by Andronicus the elder, who accepted with joy and terror this formidable succour. A palace was allotted for his reception, and a niece of the emperor was given in marriage to the valiant stranger, who was immediately created great duke or admiral of Romania. After a decent repose, he transported his troops over the Propontis, and boldly led them against the Turks: in two bloody battles thirty thousand of the Moslems were slain: he raised the siege of Philadelphia, and deserved the name of the deliverer of Asia. But after a short season of pros

an enemy whom he hated and esteemed: and per- | Roger was successively a templar, an apostate, a haps he might be content with the popular judg-pirate, and at length the richest and most powerful ment, that had they not been matched with each other, Constantinople and Italy must speedily have obeyed the same master. From this disastrous moment, the life of Charles was a series of misfortunes; his capital was insulted, his son was made prisoner, and he sunk into the grave without recovering the isle of Sicily, which, after a war of twenty years, was finally severed from the throne of Naples, and transferred, as an independent kingdom, to a younger branch of the house of Arragon." I shall not, I trust, be accused of war of the Cata- superstition: but I must remark, that, even in this world, the natural order of A. D. 1303-1307. events will sometimes afford the strong appearances of moral retribution. The first Palæologus had saved his empire by involving the king-perity, the cloud of slavery and ruin again burst on doms of the west in rebellion and blood; and from these seeds of discord uprose a generation of iron men, who assaulted and endangered the empire of his son. In modern times, our debts and taxes are the secret poison, which still corrodes the bosom of peace: but in the weak and disorderly government of the middle ages, it was agitated by the present evil of the disbanded armies. Too idle to work, too proud to beg, the mercenaries were accustomed to a life of rapine: they could rob with more dignity and effect under a banner and a chief; and the sovereign, to whom their service was useless, and their presence importunate, endeavoured to discharge the torrent on some neighbouring countries. After the peace of Sicily, many thousands of Genoese, Catalans,* &c. who had fought, by sea and land, under the standard of Anjou or Arragon, were blended into one nation by the resemblance of their manners and interest. They heard that the Greek provinces of Asia were invaded by the Turks: they resolved to share the harvest of pay and plunder; and Frederic king of Sicily most liberally contributed the means of their departure. In a warfare of twenty years, a ship, or a camp, was become their country; arms were their sole profession and property; valour was the only virtue which they knew; their women had imbibed the fearless temper of their lovers and husbands: it was reported, that, with a stroke of their broad-sword, the Catalans would cleave a horseman and a horse; and the report itself was a powerful weapon. Roger de Flor was the most popular of their chiefs; and his personal merit overshadowed the dignity of his prouder rivals of Arragon. The offspring of a marriage between a German gentleman of the court of Frederic the second and the damsel of Brindisi,

2 See the Chronicle of Villani, the eleventh volume of the Annali d'Italia of Muratori, and the twentieth and twenty-first books of the Istoria Civile of Giannone.

In this motley multitude, the Catalans and Spaniards, the bravest of the soldiery, were styled, by themselves and the Greeks, Amoga. rares. Moncada derives their origin from the Goths, and Pachymer (1. xi. c. 22.) from the Arabs; and in spite of national and religious pride, I am afraid the latter is in the right.

that unhappy province. The inhabitants escaped (says a Greek historian) from the smoke into the flames; and the hostility of the Turks was less pernicious than the friendship of the Catalans. The lives and fortunes which they had rescued, they considered as their own: the willing or reluctant maid was saved from the race of circumcision for the embraces of a christian soldier: the exaction of fines and supplies was enforced by licentious rapine and arbitrary executions; and, on the resistance of Magnesia, the great duke besieged a city of the Roman empire. These disorders he excused by the wrongs and passions of a victorious army; nor would his own authority or person have been safe, had he dared to punish his faithful followers, who were defrauded of the just and covenanted price of their services. The threats and complaints of Andronicus disclosed the nakedness of the empire. His golden bull had invited no more than five hundred horse and a thousand foot soldiers; yet the crowds of volunteers, who migrated to the east, had been enlisted and fed by his spontaneous bounty. While his bravest allies were content with three byzants or pieces of gold, for their monthly pay, an ounce, or even two ounces, of gold were assigned to the Catalans, whose annual pension would thus amount to near a hundred pounds sterling: one of their chiefs had modestly rated at three hundred thousand crowns the valour of his future merits; and above a million had been issued from the treasury for the maintenance of these costly mercenaries. A cruel tax had been imposed on the corn of the husbandman: one third was retrenched from the salaries of the public officers; and the standard of the coin was so shamefully debased, that of the four and twenty parts only five were of pure gold.c

b Some idea may be formed of the population of these cities, from the 36,000 inhabitants of Tralles, which, in the preceding reign, was rebuilt by the emperor, and ruined by the Turks. (Pachymer, I. vi. c. 20, 21.)

I have collected these pecuniary circumstances from Pachymer, (1. xi. c. 21. 1. xii. c. 4, 5. 8. 14. 19.) who describes the progressive degradation of the gold coin. Even in the prosperous times of John Ducas Vataces, the byzants were composed in equal proportions of the pure and the baser metal. The poverty of Michael Palæologus compelled him to strike a new coin, with nine parts, or carats, of gold, and fifteen of copper alloy. After his death, the standard rose to ten carats, till in the public distress it was reduced to the moiety. The prince

At the summons of the emperor, Roger evacuated a | devastations on either side of the Hellespont over province which no longer supplied the materials of the confines of Europe and Asia. To prevent their rapine: but he refused to disperse his troops; and approach, the greatest part of the Byzantine terriwhile his style was respectful, his conduct was tory was laid waste by the Greeks themselves: the independent and hostile. He protested, that if the peasants and their cattle retired into the city; and emperor should march against him, he would ad- myriads of sheep and oxen, for which neither place vance forty paces to kiss the ground before him, but nor food could be procured, were unprofitably in rising from this prostrate attitude Roger had a slaughtered on the same day. Four times the emlife and sword at the service of his friends. The peror Andronicus sued for peace, and four times he great duke of Romania condescended to accept the was inflexibly repulsed, till the want of provisions, title and ornaments of Cæsar; but he rejected the and the discord of the chiefs, compelled the Catalans new proposal of the government of Asia with a to evacuate the banks of the Hellespont and the neighsubsidy of corn and money, on condition that he bourhood of the capital. After their separation from should reduce his troops to the harmless number of the Turks, the remains of the great company pursued three thousand men. Assassination is the last their march through Macedonia and Thessaly, to resource of cowards. The Cæsar was tempted to seek a new establishment in the heart of Greece. visit the royal residence of Adrianople: in the apartment, and before the eyes, of the empress, he was stabbed by the Alani guards; and, though the deed was imputed to their private revenge, his countrymen, who dwelt at Constantinople in the security of peace, were involved in the same proscription by the prince or people. The loss of their leader intimidated the crowd of adventurers, who hoisted the sails of flight, and were soon scattered round the coasts of the Mediterranean. But a veteran band of fifteen hundred Catalans or French, stood firm in the strong fortress of Gallipoli on the Hellespont, displayed the banners of Arragon, and offered to revenge and justify their chief by an equal combat of ten or a hundred warriors. Instead of accepting this bold defiance, the emperor Michael, the son and colleague of Andronicus, resolved to oppress them with the weight of multitudes: every nerve was strained to form an army of thirteen thousand horse and thirty thousand foot; and the Propontis was covered with the ships of the Greeks and Genoese. In two battles by sea and land, these mighty forces were encountered and overthrown by the despair and discipline of the Catalans; the young emperor fled to the palace; and an insufficient guard of light horse was left for the protection of the open country. Victory renewed the hopes and numbers of the adventurers: every nation was blended under the name and standard of the great company; and three thousand Turkish proselytes deserted from the imperial service to join this military association. In the possession of Gallipoli, the Catalans intercepted the trade of Constantinople and the Black sea, while they spread their

was relieved for a moment, while credit and commerce were for ever blasted. In France, the gold coin is of twenty-two carats, (one twelfth alloy,) and the standard of England and Holland is still higher.

d The Catalan war is most copiously related by Pachymer, in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth books, till he breaks off in the year 1308. Nicephorus Gregoras (1. vii. 3-6.) is more concise and complete. Ducange, who adopts these adventurers as French, has hunted their footsteps with his usual diligence. (Hist. de C. P. l. vi. c. 22—46.) He quotes an Arragonese history, which I have read with pleasure, and which the Spaniards extol as a model of style and composition. (Expedicion de los Catalanes y Arragoneses contra Turcos y Griegos: Barcelona, 1623, in quarto: Madrid, 1777, in octavo.) Don Francisco de Moncada, Conde de Osona, may imitate Cæsar or Sallust; he may transcribe the Greek or Italian contemporaries; but he never quotes his authorities, and I cannot discern any national records of the exploits of his countrymen.

e See the laborious history of Ducange, whose accurate table of the French dynasties recapitulates the thirty-five passages in which he mentions the dukes of Athens.

After some ages of oblivion, Greece Revolutions of was awakened to new misfortunes by Athens, A. D. 1204-1456. the arms of the Latins. In the two hundred and fifty years between the first and the last conquest of Constantinople, that venerable land was disputed by a multitude of petty tyrants; without the comforts of freedom and genius, her ancient cities were again plunged in foreign and intestine war; and, if servitude be preferable to anarchy, they might repose with joy under the Turkish yoke. I shall not pursue the obscure and various dynasties, that rose and fell on the continent or in the isles; but our silence on the fate of ATHENS would argue a strange ingratitude to the first and purest school of liberal science and amusement. In the partition of the empire, the principality of Athens and Thebes was assigned to Otho de la Roche, a noble warrior of Burgundy, with the title of great duke, which the Latins understood in their own sense, and the Greeks more foolishly derived from the age of Constantine. Otho followed the standard of the marquis of Montferrat; the ample state which he acquired by a miracle of conduct or fortune, was peaceably inherited by his son and two grandsons, till the family, though not the nation, was changed, by the marriage of an heiress into the elder branch of the house of Brienne. The son of that marriage, Walter de Brienne, succeeded to the duchy of Athens; and, with the aid of some Catalan mercenaries, whom he invested with fiefs, reduced above thirty castles of the vassal or neighbouring lords. But when he was informed of the approach and ambition of the great company, he collected a force of seven hundred knights, six thousand four hundred horse, and eight thousand

f

f He is twice mentioned by Villehardouin with honour; (No. 151. 235.) and under the first passage, Ducange observes all that can be known of his person and family.

From these Latin princes of the fourteenth century, Boceaee, Chaucer, and Shakspeare, have borrowed their Theseus duke of Athens. A ignorant age transfers its own language and manners to the most distast

times.

h The same Constantine gave to Sicily a king, to Russia the mag dapifer of the empire, to Thebes the primicerius; and these absurd fables are properly lashed by Ducange, (ad Nicephor. Greg. l. vii. c.5.) By the Latins, the lord of Thebes was styled, by corruption, the Megas Kurios, or Grand Sire!

i Quodam miraculo, says Alberic. He was probably received by Michael Choniates, the archbishop who had defended Athens against the tyrant Leo Sigurus. (Nicetas in Baldwino.) Michael was the br ther of the historian Nicetas; and his encomium of Athens is still extant in MS. in the Bodleian library. (Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. vi. p. 405.)

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middle of the last century, the Athenians chose for their protector the kislar aga, or chief black eunuch of the seraglio. This Ethiopian slave, who possesses the sultan's ear, condescends to accept the tribute of thirty thousand crowns: his lieutenant, the waywode, whom he annually confirms, may reserve for his own about five or six thousand more; and such is the policy of the citizens, that they seldom fail to remove and punish an oppressive governor. Their private differences are decided by the archbishop, one of the richest prelates of the Greek church, since he possesses a revenue of one thousand pounds sterling; and by a tribunal of the eight geronti or elders, chosen in the eight quarters of the city: the noble families cannot trace their pedigree above three hundred years; but their principal members are distinguished by a grave demeanour, a fur cap, and the lofty appellation of archon. By some, who delight in the contrast, the modern language of Athens is represented as the most corrupt and barbarous of the seventy dialects of the vulgar Greek: m this picture is too darkly coloured; but it would not be easy, in the country of Plato and Demosthenes, to find a reader, or a copy, of their works. The Athenians walk with supine indifference among the glorious ruins of antiquity; and such is the debasement of their character, that they are incapable of admiring the genius of their predecessors."

foot, and boldly met them on the banks of the river | servitude and aggravates their shame. About the Cephisus in Boeotia. The Catalans amounted to no more than three thousand five hundred horse, and four thousand foot; but the deficiency of numbers was compensated by stratagem and order. They formed round their camp an artificial inundation; the duke and his knights advanced without fear or precaution on the verdant meadow; their horses plunged into the bog; and he was cut in pieces, with the greatest part of the French cavalry. His family and nation were expelled; and his son Walter de Brienne, the titular duke of Athens, the tyrant of Florence, and the constable of France, lost his life in the field of Poitiers. Attica and Boeotia were the rewards of the victorious Catalans; they married the widows and daughters of the slain; and during fourteen years, the great company was the terror of the Grecian states. Their factions drove them to acknowledge the sovereignty of the house of Arragon; and during the remainder of the fourteenth century, Athens, as a government or an appanage, was successively bestowed by the kings of Sicily. After the French and Catalans, the third dynasty was that of the Accaioli, a family, plebeian at Florence, potent at Naples, and sovereign in Greece. Athens, which they embellished with new buildings, became the capital of a state, that extended over Thebes, Argos, Corinth, Delphi, and a part of Thessaly; and their reign was finally determined by Mahomet the second, who strangled the last duke, and educated his sons in the discipline and religion of the seraglio.

Present state of
Athens.

CHAP. LXIII.

Superstition of

the times, A. D. 1282 -1320.

Athens, though no more than the Civil wars, and ruin of the Greek empire.-Reigns shadow of her former self, still contains about eight or ten thousand inhabitants: of these, of Andronicus, the elder and younger, and John three-fourths are Greeks in religion and language; Palæologus.-Regency, revolt, reign, and abdicaand the Turks, who compose the remainder, have tion of John Cantacuzene.-Establishment of a Gerelaxed, in their intercourse with the citizens, somenoese colony at Pera or Galata.-Their wars with what of the pride and gravity of their national chathe empire and city of Constantinople. racter. The olive-tree, the gift of Minerva, flourishes THE long reign of Andronicus the in Attica; nor has the honey of mount Hymettus elder is chiefly memorable by the dis- Andronicus and lost any part of its exquisite flavour: but the lan- putes of the Greek church, the invasion guid trade is monopolized by strangers; and the of the Catalans, and the rise of the agriculture of a barren land is abandoned to the Ottoman power. He is celebrated as the most learnvagrant Wallachians. The Athenians are still dis-ed and virtuous prince of the age; but such virtue tinguished by the subtilty and acuteness of their understandings: but these qualities, unless ennobled by freedom, and enlightened by study, will degenerate into a low and selfish cunning: and it is a proverbial saying of the country, "From the Jews of Thessalonica, the Turks of Negropont, and the Greeks of Athens, good Lord deliver us!" This artful people has eluded the tyranny of the Turkish bashaws, by an expedient which alleviates their

The modern account of Athens, and the Athenians, is extracted from Spon, (Voyage en Grece, tom. ii. p. 79-199.) and Wheeler, (Tra vels into Greece, p. 337-414.) Stuart, Antiquities of Athens, passim,) and Chandler, (Travels into Greece, p. 23–172.) The first of these tra vellers visited Greece in the year 1676, the last 1765; and ninety years had not produced much difference in the tranquil scene.

The ancients, or at least the Athenians, believed that all the bees in the world had been propagated from mount Hymettus. They taught, that health might be preserved, and life prolonged, by the external use of oil, and the internal use of honey. (Geoponica, l. xv. c. 7. p. 1089— 1094. edit. Niclas.)

and such learning contributed neither to the perfection of the individual, nor to the happiness of society. A slave of the most abject superstition, he was surrounded on all sides by visible and invisible enemies; nor were the flames of hell less dreadful to his fancy, than those of a Catalan or Turkish war. Under the reign of the Palæologi, the choice of the patriarch was the most important business of the state; the heads of the Greek church

If this transaction be one of the most curious and important of a reign of fifty years, I cannot at least accuse the brevity of my materials, since I reduce into some few pages the enormous folios of Pachymer, Cantacuzene, and Nicephorus Gregoras, who have composed the prolix and languid story of the times. The name and situation of the emperor John Cantacuzene might inspire the most lively curiosity. His memorials of forty years extend from the revolt of the younger Andronicus to his own abdication of the empire; and it is observed, that, like Moses and Cæsar, he was the principal actor in the scenes which he describes. But in this eloquent work we should vainly seek the sincerity of a hero or a penitent. Retired in a cloister from the vices and passions of the world, he presents not a confession, but an apology, of the life of an ambitious statesman. Instead of unfolding the true counsels and characters of men, he displays the smooth and specious surface of events, highly varnished with his own praises and those of his friends. Their motives are always pure; their ends always legitimate: they conspire and rebel without any views of interest; and the violence which they inflict or suffer is celebrated as the spontaneous effect of reason and virtue.

were ambitious and fanatic monks; and their vices | secretly replaced with the decoration of a satirical or virtues, their learning or ignorance, were equally | picture. The emperor was painted with a bridle in mischievous or contemptible. By his intemperate his mouth, and Athanasius leading the tractable discipline, the patriarch Athanasius excited the beast to the feet of Christ. The authors of the libel hatred of the clergy and people; he was heard to were detected and punished; but as their lives had declare, that the sinner should swallow the last been spared, the christian priest in sullen indignadregs of the cup of penance; and the foolish tale tion retired to his cell; and the eyes of Andronicus, was propagated of his punishing a sacrilegious ass which had been opened for a moment, were again that had tasted the lettuce of a convent garden. closed by his successor. Driven from the throne by the universal clamour, Athanasius composed, before his retreat, two papers of a very opposite cast. His public testament was in the tone of charity and resignation; the private codicil breathed the direst anathemas against the authors of his disgrace, whom he excluded for ever from the communion of the holy Trinity, the angels, and the saints. This last paper he enclosed in an earthen pot, which was placed, by his order, on the top of one of the pillars in the dome of St. Sophia, in the distant hope of discovery and revenge. At the end of four years, some youths, climbing by a ladder in search of pigeons' nests, detected the fatal secret; and, as Andronicus felt himself touched and bound by the excommunication, he trembled on the brink of the abyss which had been so treacherously dug under his feet. A synod of bishops was instantly convened to debate this important question: the rashness of these clandestine anathemas was generally condemned; but as the knot could be untied only by the same hand, and that hand was now deprived of the crosier, it appeared that this posthumous decree was irrevocable by any earthly power. Some faint testimonies of repentance and pardon were extorted from the author of the mischief; but the conscience of the emperor was still wounded, and he desired, with no less ardour than Athanasius himself, the restoration of a patriarch, by whom alone he could be healed. At the dead of night, a monk rudely knocked at the door of the royal bed-eighteen to his premature death, that prince was acchamber, announcing a revelation of plague and famine, of inundations and earthquakes. Andronicus started from his bed, and spent the night in prayer, till he felt, or thought that he felt, a slight motion of the earth. The emperor on foot led the bishops and monks to the cell of Athanasius, and, after a proper resistance, the saint, from whom this message had been sent, consented to absolve the prince, and govern the church of Constantinople. Untamed by disgrace, and hardened by solitude, the shepherd was again odious to the flock, and his enemies contrived a singular, and, as it proved, a successful, mode of revenge. In the night they stole away the foot-stool or foot-cloth of his throne, which they

b For the anathema in the pigeon's nest, see Pachymer, (l. ix. c. 24.) who relates the general history of Athanasius, (1. viii. c. 13-16. 20-24. 1. x. c. 27-29. 31–36. 1. xi. c. 1—3. 5, 6. l. xiii. c. 8. 10. 23. 35.) and is followed by Nicephorus Gregoras, (1. vi. c. 5. 7. 1. vii. c. 1. 9.) who includes the second retreat of this second Chrysostom.

C

Pachymer, in seven books, 377 folio pages, describes the first twentysix years of Andronicus the Elder; and marks the date of his compo. sition by the current news or lie of the day. (A. D. 1308.) Either death or disgust prevented him from resuming the pen.

d After an interval of twelve years, from the conclusion of Pachymer, Cantacuzenus takes up the pen; and his first book (c. 1-59. p. 9-150.) relates the civil war, and the eight last years of the elder Andronicus.

After the example of the first of the First disputes be Palæologi, the elder Andronicus asso- tween the elder and younger An ciated his son Michael to the honours dronicus, A. D. 1320. of the purple, and from the age of

knowledged, above twenty-five years, as the second
emperor of the Greeks.f At the head of an army,
he excited neither the fears of the enemy, nor the
jealousy of the court; his modesty and patience
were never tempted to compute the years of his
father; nor was that father compelled to repent of
his liberality either by the virtues or vices of his son.
The son of Michael was named Andronicus from
his grandfather, to whose early favour he was intro-
duced by that nominal resemblance. The blossoms
of wit and beauty increased the fondness of the elder
Andronicus; and, with the common vanity of the
age, he expected to realize in the second, the hope
which had been disappointed in the first, generation.

The ingenious comparison with Moses and Cæsar, is fancied by his
French translator, the president Cousin.

e Nicephorus Gregoras more briefly includes the entire life and reign of Andronicus the Elder, (1. vi. c. 1. I. x. c. i. p. 96-291.) This is the part of which Cantacuzene complains as a false and malicious represen

tation of his conduct.

f He was crowned May 21st, 1295, and died October 12th, 1320. (De cange, Fam. Byz. p. 239.) His brother Theodore, by a second marriage, inherited the marquisate of Montferrat, apostatized to the religion and manners of the Latins, (ότι και γνωμη και πίζει και σχηματι, και γενει κουρα και πασιν εθεσιν Λατινος την ακραιφνης. Nic. Greg. 1. ix. e and founded a dynasty of Italian princes, which was extinguished A. D. 1533. (Ducange, Fam. Byz. p. 249-253.)