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(51) 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,(52) with the title of great duke,(53) which the Latins understood in their own sense, and the Greeks more foolishly derived from the age of Constantine.(54) Otho followed the standard of the marquis of Montferrat; the ample state which he acquired by a miracle of conduct or fortune,(55) 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 dutchy 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 foot, and boldly met them on the banks of the river 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.

Athens,(56) though no more than the shadow of her former self, still contains about eight or ten thousand 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

(51) 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.

(52) 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.

(53) From these Latin princes of the xivth century, Boccace, Chaucer, and Shakspeare, have borrowed their Theseus duke of Athens. An ignorant age transfers its own language and manners to the most distant times.

(54) The same Constantine gave to Sicily a king, to Russia the magnus dapifer of the empire, to Thebes the primicerius: and these absurd fables are properly lashed by Ducange (ad Nicephor. Greg. 1. vii. c. 5). By the Latins, the lord of Thebes was styled, by corruption, the Megas Kurios, or Grand Sire!

(55) 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 brother 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).

(56) The modern account of Athens, and the Athenians, is extracted from Spon (Voyage en Grece, tom. ii. p. 79-199,) and 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,

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:(57) but the languid trade is monopolized by strangers; and the agriculture of a barren land is abandoned to the vagrant Wallachians. The Athenians 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 have 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 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.(58) 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.(59)

CHAPTER LXIII.

Civil wars, and ruin of the Greek empire-Reigns of Andronicus, the elder and younger, and John Palæologus-Regency, revolt, reign, and abdication of John Cantacuzene-Establishment of a Genoese colony at Pera or GalataTheir wars with the empire and city of Constantinople.

[A. D. 1282-1320.] THE long reign of Andronicus(1) the elder is chiefly memorable by the disputes of the Greek church, the 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. 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

(57) 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.)

(58) Ducange, Glossar, Græc. Præfat. p. 8, who quotes for his author Theodosius Zygomalus, a modern grammarian. Yet Spon (tom. ii. p. 194,) and Wheeler (p. 355), no incompetent judges, entertain a more favourable opinion of the Attic dialect.

(59) Yet we must not accuse them of corrupting the name of Athens, which they still call Athini. From the Es Tv Aŋvny, we have formed our own barbarism of Setines.

(1) Andronicus himself will justify our freedom in the invective (Nicephorus Gregoras, 1. i. c. 1,) which he pronounced against historic falsehood. It is true, that his censure is more pointedly urged against calumny than against adulation.

state; the heads of the Greek church were ambitious and fanatic monks: and their vices or virtues, their learning or ignorance, were equally mischievous or contemptible. By his intemperate discipline, the patriarch Athanasius, (2) excited the hatred of the clergy and people; he was heard to declare that the sinner should swallow the last dregs of the cup of penance; and the foolish tale was propagated, of his punishing a sacrilegious ass that had tasted the lettuce of a convent garden. 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, as 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-chamber, 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 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 footstool or footcloth of his throne, which they secretly replaced with the decoration of a satirical picture. The emperor was painted with a bridle in his mouth, and Athanasius leading the tractable beast to the feet of Christ. The authors of the libel were detected and punished; but as their lives had been spared, the Christian priest in sullen indignation retired to his cell; and the eyes of Andronicus, which had been opened for a moment, were again closed by his successor.

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,(3) Cantacuzene,(4) and Nicephorus Gregoras,(5) 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

(2) For the anathema in the pigeon's nest, see Pachymer (1. ix. c. 24,) who relates the general history of Athanasius (1. viii. c. 13-16. 20-24, 1. x. c. 27-29. 31-3, 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.

(3) Pachymer, in seven books, 377 folio pages, describes the first twenty-six years of Andronicus the elder; and marks the date of his composition by the current news or lie of the day (A.D. 1308). Either death or disgust prevented him from resuming the pen.

(4) 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 last eight years of the elder Andronicus. The ingenious comparison with Moses and Cesar is fancied by his French translator, the present Cousin.

(5) 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.

years extend from the revolt of the younger Andronicus to his own abdication of the empire; and it is observed, that, like Moses and Cesar, 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.

[A. D. 1320.] 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 eighteen to his premature death, that prince was acknowledged, above twenty-five years, as the second emperor of the Greeks.(6) 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 the 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 in the oaths and acclamations of the people, the august triad was 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 by the Genoese usurers of Pera; and the oppressive 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 instructed the younger Andronicus in the rudiments of 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. (7) However guiltless in his intention, 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(8) his hopes and affection. The

(6) He was crowned May 21st, 1995, and died October 12th, 1320 (Ducange, 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 γνώμη και πίςει και σχηματι, και γενειων κερα και πασιν έθεσιν Λατινος ην ακραιφνης. Nic. Greg. I. ix. c. i.), and founded a dynasty of Italian princes, which was extinguished A. D. 1593. (Ducange, Fam. Byz. p. 249-253.)

(7) We are indebted to Nicephorus Gregoras (1. viii. c. 1,) for the knowledge of this tragic adventure; while Cantacuzene more discreetly conceals the vices of Andronicus the younger, of which he was the witness, and perhaps the associate. (1. i. c. 1, &c.)

(8) His destined heir was Michael Catharus, the bastard of Constantine his second son. In this

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 the triumphant escape of the prince encouraged the ardour of the younger faction.

Yet the capital, the clergy, and the senate adhered to the person, or at least to the government, of the old emperor; and it was only in the provinces, by flight, and revolt, and foreign succour, that the malecontents could hope to vindicate their cause and subvert his throne. The soul of the enterprise was the great domestic John Cantacuzene: the sally from Constantinople is the first date of his actions and memorials; and if his own pen be most descriptive of his patriotism, an unfriendly historian has not refused to celebrate the zeal and ability which he displayed in the service of the young emperor. That prince escaped from the capital under the pretence of hunting; erected his standard at Adrianople, and, in a few days, assembled fifty thousand horse and foot, whom neither honour nor duty could have armed against the Barbarians. Such a force might have saved or commanded the empire; but their councils were discordant, their motions were slow and doubtful, and their progress was checked by intrigue and negotiation. The quarrel of the two Andronici was protracted, and suspended, and renewed, during a ruinous period of seven years. In the first treaty, the relics of the Greek empire were divided: Constantinople, Thessalonica, and the islands were left to the elder, while the younger acquired the sovereignty of the greatest part of Thrace, from Philippi to the Byzantine limits. By the second treaty, he stipulated the payment of his troops, his immediate coronation, and an adequate share of the power and revenue of the state. The third civil war was terminated by the surprise of Constantinople, the final retreat of the old emperor, and the sole reign of his victorious grandson. The reasons of this delay may be found in the characters of the men and of the times. When the heir of the monarchy first pleaded his wrongs and his apprehensions, he was heard with pity and applause; and his adherents repeated on all sides the inconsistent promise, that he would increase the pay of the soldiers and alleviate the burthens of the people. The grievances of forty years were mingled in his revolt; and the rising generation was fatigued by the endless prospect of a reign, whose favourites and maxims were of other times. The youth of Andronicus had been without spirit, his age was without reverence: his taxes produced an annual revenue of five hundred thousand pounds; yet the richest of the sovereigns of Christendom was incapable of maintaining three thousand horse and twenty galleys to resist the destructive progress of the Turks.(9) "How different," said the younger Andronicus, "is my situation from that of the son of Philip! Alexander might complain, that his father would leave him nothing to conquer: alas! my grandsire will leave me nothing to lose." But the Greeks were soon admonished, that the public disorders could not be healed by a civil war; and that their young favourite was not destined to be the saviour of a falling empire. On the first repulse, his party was broken by his own levity, their intestine discord, and the intrigues of the ancient court, which tempted each malecontent to desert or betray the cause of rebellion. Andronicus the younger was touched with remorse, or fatigued with business, or deceived by negotiation; pleasure rather than power was his aim; and the license of

project of excluding his grandson Andronicus, Nicephorus Gregoras (1. viii. c. 3,) agrees with Cantacuzene (1. i. c. 1, 2).

(9) See Nicephorus Gregoras, 1. viii. c. 6. The younger Andronicus complained, that in four years and four months a large sum of 350,000 byzants of gold was due to him for the expenses of his household (Cantacuzen. I. i. c. 48). Yet he would have remitted the debt, if he might have been allowed to squeeze the farmers of the revenue.