XLVII. his son Walter de Brienne, the titular Duke of CHAP. 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. state of Athens, though no more than the shadow of her Present former self, still contains about eight or ten thousand Athens. inhabitants; of these, three-fourths are Greeks in religion and language; and the Turks, who compose the remainder, have relaxed, in their intercourse with the citizens, somewhat of the pride and gravity of their national character. The olive-tree, the gift of Minerva, flourishes in Attica; nor has the honey of Mount Hymettus lost any part of its exquisite flavour: but the languid trade is monopolized by strangers; and the agriculture of a barren land is * The modern account of Athens, and the Athenians, is extracted from Spon (Voyage en Grece, tom. ii. p. 79-199), Wheeler (Travels into Greece, p. 337-414), Stuart (Antiquities of Athens, passim), and Chandler (Travels into Greece, p. 23-172). The first of these travellers visited Greece in the year 1676, the last 1765; and ninety years had not produced much difference in the tranquil scene, CHAP. abandoned to the vagrant Walachians. The AtheXLVII. nians are still distinguished by the subtlety 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 servitude and aggravates their shame. About the middle of the last century, the Athenians chose for their protector the Kislar Aga, or chief black eunuch of the seraglio. This Æthiopian 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 use 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: 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 prede cessors. СНАР. XLVII. -1320. The long reign of Andronicus the elder is chiefly Andronicus, memorable by the disputes of the Greek church, the A. D. 1282 invasion of the Catalans, and the rise of the Ottoman power. He is celebrated as the most learned and virtuous prince of the age: but such virtue, and such learning, contributed neither to the perfection of the individual, nor to the happiness of society. 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 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 *Pachymer in seven books, 377 folio pages, describes the first twenty-six years of Andronicus the Elder. + 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. Nicephorus Gregoras more briefly includes the entire life and reign of Andronicus the Elder (1. vi. c. 1, p. 96-291). This is the part of which Cantacuzene complains, as a false and malicious representation of his conduct. CHAP. which they inflict or suffer is celebrated as the spontaneous effect of reason and virtue. XLVII. First disputes be tween the elder and younger After the example of the first of the Palæologi, the elder Andronicus associated his son Michael to the honours of the purple; and from the age of Andronicus. eighteen to his premature death, that prince was A. D. 1320. acknowledged, above twenty-five years, as the second ; emperor of the Greeks. 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 introduced by that nominal resemblance. The blossoms of wit and beauty increased the fondness of the elder Andronicus; and, with the common vanity of age, he expected to realize in the second, the hope which had been disappointed in the first, generation. The boy was educated in the palace as an heir and a favourite; and the oaths and acclamations of the people were formed by the names of the father, the son, and the grandson. But the younger Andronicus was speedily corrupted by his infant greatness, while he beheld with puerile impatience the double obstacle that hung, and might long hang, over his rising ambition. It was not to acquire fame, or to diffuse happiness, that he so eagerly aspired: wealth and impunity were in his eyes the most precious attributes of a monarch; and his first indiscreet demand was the sovereignty of some rich and fertile island, where he might lead a life of independence and pleasure. The emperor was offended by the loud and frequent intemperance which disturbed his capital: the sums which his parsimony denied were supplied XLVII. by the Genoese usurers of Pera; and the oppressive CHAP. debt, which consolidated the interest of a faction, could be discharged only by a revolution. A beautiful female, a matron in rank, a prostitute in manners, had engaged the younger Andronicus in love: but he had reason to suspect the nocturnal visits of a rival; and a stranger, passing through the street, was pierced by the arrows of his guards, who were placed in ambush at her door. That stranger was his brother, prince Manuel, who languished and died of his wound; and the emperor Michael, their common father, whose health was in a declining state, expired on the eighth day, lamenting the loss of both his children *. However guiltless in his in tention, the younger Andronicus might impute a brother's and a father's death to the consequence of his own vices; and deep was the sigh of thinking and feeling men, when they perceived, instead of sorrow and repentance, his ill-dissembled joy on the removal of two odious competitors. By these melancholy events, and the increase of his disorders, the mind of the elder emperor was gradually alienated; and, after many fruitless reproofs, he transferred on another grandson his hopes and affection. The change was announced by the new oath of allegiance to the reigning sovereign, and the person whom he should appoint for his successor; and the acknowledged heir, after a repetition of insults and complaints, was exposed to the indignity of a public trial. Before the sentence, which would probably have condemned him to a dungeon or a cell, the emperor was informed that the palace courts were filled with the armed followers of his grandson; the judgment was softened to a treaty of reconciliation; and * We are indebted to Nicephorus Gregoras (1. viii. c. 1.) for the knowledge of this tragic adventure. |