Chapter LXIII: Civil Wars And The Ruin Of The Greek Empire.—Part

I.

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 Galata.—Their Wars With The Empire And
City Of Constantinople.

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 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 clamor,
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
forever 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 ardor 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 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 footstool or
foot-cloth 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.

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

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

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 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.

3 (return) [ 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 (return) [ 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. The ingenious
comparison with Moses and Cæsar is fancied by his French
translator, the president Cousin.]

5 (return) [ Nicephorus Gregoras more briefly includes the entire
life and reign of Andronicus the elder, (l. vi. c. 1, p. 96—291.)
This is the part of which Cantacuzene complains as a false and
malicious representation of his conduct.]

After the example of the first of the Palæologi, the elder
Andronicus associated his son Michael to the honors 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
favor 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
favorite; 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
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 ardor of the younger faction.

6 (return) [ He was crowned May 21st, 1295, 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, (oti kai
gnwmh kai pistei kai schkati, kai geneiwn koura kai pasin eqesin
DatinoV hn akraijnhV. Nic. Greg. l. ix. c. 1,) and founded a
dynasty of Italian princes, which was extinguished A.D. 1533,
(Ducange, Fam. Byz. p. 249—253.)]

7 (return) [ We are indebted to Nicephorus Gregoras (l. 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, (l. i. c. 1,
&c.)]

8 (return) [ His destined heir was Michael Catharus, the bastard
of Constantine his second son. In this project of excluding his
grandson Andronicus, Nicephorus Gregoras (l. viii. c. 3) agrees
with Cantacuzene, (l. i. c. 1, 2.)]

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
succor, 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. 89 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 honor nor duty could have armed against
the Barbarians. Such a force might have saved or commanded the
empire; but their counsels 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 limit. 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 burdens
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 favorites and maxims were of other
times. The youth of Andronicus had been without spirit, his age
was without reverence: his taxes produced an unusual 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 favorite was not
destined to be the savior 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 the 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 maintaining a thousand hounds, a
thousand hawks, and a thousand huntsmen, was sufficient to sully
his fame and disarm his ambition.

89 (return) [ The conduct of Cantacuzene, by his own showing, was
inexplicable. He was unwilling to dethrone the old emperor, and
dissuaded the immediate march on Constantinople. The young
Andronicus, he says, entered into his views, and wrote to warn
the emperor of his danger when the march was determined.
Cantacuzenus, in Nov. Byz. Hist. Collect. vol. i. p. 104, &c.—M.]

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

Let us now survey the catastrophe of this busy plot, and the
final situation of the principal actors. 10 The age of Andronicus
was consumed in civil discord; and, amidst the events of war and
treaty, his power and reputation continually decayed, till the
fatal night in which the gates of the city and palace were opened
without resistance to his grandson. His principal commander
scorned the repeated warnings of danger; and retiring to rest in
the vain security of ignorance, abandoned the feeble monarch,
with some priests and pages, to the terrors of a sleepless night.
These terrors were quickly realized by the hostile shouts, which
proclaimed the titles and victory of Andronicus the younger; and
the aged emperor, falling prostrate before an image of the
Virgin, despatched a suppliant message to resign the sceptre, and
to obtain his life at the hands of the conqueror. The answer of
his grandson was decent and pious; at the prayer of his friends,
the younger Andronicus assumed the sole administration; but the
elder still enjoyed the name and preeminence of the first
emperor, the use of the great palace, and a pension of
twenty-four thousand pieces of gold, one half of which was
assigned on the royal treasury, and the other on the fishery of
Constantinople. But his impotence was soon exposed to contempt
and oblivion; the vast silence of the palace was disturbed only
by the cattle and poultry of the neighborhood, 101 which roved
with impunity through the solitary courts; and a reduced
allowance of ten thousand pieces of gold 11 was all that he could
ask, and more than he could hope. His calamities were imbittered
by the gradual extinction of sight; his confinement was rendered
each day more rigorous; and during the absence and sickness of
his grandson, his inhuman keepers, by the threats of instant
death, compelled him to exchange the purple for the monastic
habit and profession. The monk _Antony_ had renounced the pomp of
the world; yet he had occasion for a coarse fur in the winter
season, and as wine was forbidden by his confessor, and water by
his physician, the sherbet of Egypt was his common drink. It was
not without difficulty that the late emperor could procure three
or four pieces to satisfy these simple wants; and if he bestowed
the gold to relieve the more painful distress of a friend, the
sacrifice is of some weight in the scale of humanity and
religion. Four years after his abdication, Andronicus or Antony
expired in a cell, in the seventy-fourth year of his age: and the
last strain of adulation could only promise a more splendid crown
of glory in heaven than he had enjoyed upon earth. 12 121

10 (return) [ I follow the chronology of Nicephorus Gregoras, who
is remarkably exact. It is proved that Cantacuzene has mistaken
the dates of his own actions, or rather that his text has been
corrupted by ignorant transcribers.]

101 (return) [ And the washerwomen, according to Nic. Gregoras,
p. 431.—M.]

11 (return) [ I have endeavored to reconcile the 24,000 pieces of
Cantacuzene (l. ii. c. 1) with the 10,000 of Nicephorus Gregoras,
(l. ix. c. 2;) the one of whom wished to soften, the other to
magnify, the hardships of the old emperor.]

12 (return) [ See Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. ix. 6, 7, 8, 10, 14,
l. x. c. 1.) The historian had tasted of the prosperity, and
shared the retreat, of his benefactor; and that friendship which
“waits or to the scaffold or the cell,” should not lightly be
accused as “a hireling, a prostitute to praise.” * Note: But it
may be accused of unparalleled absurdity. He compares the
extinction of the feeble old man to that of the sun: his coffin
is to be floated like Noah’s ark by a deluge of tears.—M.]

121 (return) [ Prodigies (according to Nic. Gregoras, p. 460)
announced the departure of the old and imbecile Imperial Monk
from his earthly prison.—M.]

Nor was the reign of the younger, more glorious or fortunate than
that of the elder, Andronicus. 13 He gathered the fruits of
ambition; but the taste was transient and bitter: in the supreme
station he lost the remains of his early popularity; and the
defects of his character became still more conspicuous to the
world. The public reproach urged him to march in person against
the Turks; nor did his courage fail in the hour of trial; but a
defeat and a wound were the only trophies of his expedition in
Asia, which confirmed the establishment of the Ottoman monarchy.
The abuses of the civil government attained their full maturity
and perfection: his neglect of forms, and the confusion of
national dresses, are deplored by the Greeks as the fatal
symptoms of the decay of the empire. Andronicus was old before
his time; the intemperance of youth had accelerated the
infirmities of age; and after being rescued from a dangerous
malady by nature, or physic, or the Virgin, he was snatched away
before he had accomplished his forty-fifth year. He was twice
married; and, as the progress of the Latins in arms and arts had
softened the prejudices of the Byzantine court, his two wives
were chosen in the princely houses of Germany and Italy. The
first, Agnes at home, Irene in Greece, was daughter of the duke
of Brunswick. Her father 14 was a petty lord 15 in the poor and
savage regions of the north of Germany: 16 yet he derived some
revenue from his silver mines; 17 and his family is celebrated by
the Greeks as the most ancient and noble of the Teutonic name. 18
After the death of this childish princess, Andronicus sought in
marriage Jane, the sister of the count of Savoy; 19 and his suit
was preferred to that of the French king. 20 The count respected
in his sister the superior majesty of a Roman empress: her
retinue was composed of knights and ladies; she was regenerated
and crowned in St. Sophia, under the more orthodox appellation of
Anne; and, at the nuptial feast, the Greeks and Italians vied
with each other in the martial exercises of tilts and
tournaments.

13 (return) [ The sole reign of Andronicus the younger is
described by Cantacuzene (l. ii. c. 1—40, p. 191—339) and
Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. ix c. 7—l. xi. c. 11, p. 262—361.)]

14 (return) [ Agnes, or Irene, was the daughter of Duke Henry the
Wonderful, the chief of the house of Brunswick, and the fourth in
descent from the famous Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and
Bavaria, and conqueror of the Sclavi on the Baltic coast. Her
brother Henry was surnamed the _Greek_, from his two journeys
into the East: but these journeys were subsequent to his sister’s
marriage; and I am ignorant _how_ Agnes was discovered in the
heart of Germany, and recommended to the Byzantine court.
(Rimius, Memoirs of the House of Brunswick, p. 126—137.]

15 (return) [ Henry the Wonderful was the founder of the branch
of Grubenhagen, extinct in the year 1596, (Rimius, p. 287.) He
resided in the castle of Wolfenbuttel, and possessed no more than
a sixth part of the allodial estates of Brunswick and Luneburgh,
which the Guelph family had saved from the confiscation of their
great fiefs. The frequent partitions among brothers had almost
ruined the princely houses of Germany, till that just, but
pernicious, law was slowly superseded by the right of
primogeniture. The principality of Grubenhagen, one of the last
remains of the Hercynian forest, is a woody, mountainous, and
barren tract, (Busching’s Geography, vol. vi. p. 270—286, English
translation.)]

16 (return) [ The royal author of the Memoirs of Brandenburgh
will teach us, how justly, in a much later period, the north of
Germany deserved the epithets of poor and barbarous. (Essai sur
les Murs, &c.) In the year 1306, in the woods of Luneburgh, some
wild people of the Vened race were allowed to bury alive their
infirm and useless parents. (Rimius, p. 136.)]

17 (return) [ The assertion of Tacitus, that Germany was
destitute of the precious metals, must be taken, even in his own
time, with some limitation, (Germania, c. 5. Annal. xi. 20.)
According to Spener, (Hist. Germaniæ Pragmatica, tom. i. p. 351,)
_Argentifodin_ in Hercyniis montibus, imperante Othone magno
(A.D. 968) primum apertæ, largam etiam opes augendi dederunt
copiam: but Rimius (p. 258, 259) defers till the year 1016 the
discovery of the silver mines of Grubenhagen, or the Upper Hartz,
which were productive in the beginning of the xivth century, and
which still yield a considerable revenue to the house of
Brunswick.]

18 (return) [ Cantacuzene has given a most honorable testimony,
hn d’ ek Germanvn auth Jugathr doukoV nti Mprouzouhk, (the modern
Greeks employ the nt for the d, and the mp for the b, and the
whole will read in the Italian idiom di Brunzuic,) tou par autoiV
epijanestatou, kai?iamprothti pantaV touV omojulouV
uperballontoV. The praise is just in itself, and pleasing to an
English ear.]

19 (return) [ Anne, or Jane, was one of the four daughters of
Amedée the Great, by a second marriage, and half-sister of his
successor Edward count of Savoy. (Anderson’s Tables, p. 650. See
Cantacuzene, l. i. c. 40—42.)]

20 (return) [ That king, if the fact be true, must have been
Charles the Fair who in five years (1321—1326) was married to
three wives, (Anderson, p. 628.) Anne of Savoy arrived at
Constantinople in February, 1326.]

The empress Anne of Savoy survived her husband: their son, John
Palæologus, was left an orphan and an emperor in the ninth year
of his age; and his weakness was protected by the first and most
deserving of the Greeks. The long and cordial friendship of his
father for John Cantacuzene is alike honorable to the prince and
the subject. It had been formed amidst the pleasures of their
youth: their families were almost equally noble; 21 and the
recent lustre of the purple was amply compensated by the energy
of a private education. We have seen that the young emperor was
saved by Cantacuzene from the power of his grandfather; and,
after six years of civil war, the same favorite brought him back
in triumph to the palace of Constantinople. Under the reign of
Andronicus the younger, the great domestic ruled the emperor and
the empire; and it was by his valor and conduct that the Isle of
Lesbos and the principality of Ætolia were restored to their
ancient allegiance. His enemies confess, that, among the public
robbers, Cantacuzene alone was moderate and abstemious; and the
free and voluntary account which he produces of his own wealth 22
may sustain the presumption that he was devolved by inheritance,
and not accumulated by rapine. He does not indeed specify the
value of his money, plate, and jewels; yet, after a voluntary
gift of two hundred vases of silver, after much had been secreted
by his friends and plundered by his foes, his forfeit treasures
were sufficient for the equipment of a fleet of seventy galleys.
He does not measure the size and number of his estates; but his
granaries were heaped with an incredible store of wheat and
barley; and the labor of a thousand yoke of oxen might cultivate,
according to the practice of antiquity, about sixty-two thousand
five hundred acres of arable land. 23 His pastures were stocked
with two thousand five hundred brood mares, two hundred camels,
three hundred mules, five hundred asses, five thousand horned
cattle, fifty thousand hogs, and seventy thousand sheep: 24 a
precious record of rural opulence, in the last period of the
empire, and in a land, most probably in Thrace, so repeatedly
wasted by foreign and domestic hostility. The favor of
Cantacuzene was above his fortune. In the moments of familiarity,
in the hour of sickness, the emperor was desirous to level the
distance between them and pressed his friend to accept the diadem
and purple. The virtue of the great domestic, which is attested
by his own pen, resisted the dangerous proposal; but the last
testament of Andronicus the younger named him the guardian of his
son, and the regent of the empire.

21 (return) [ The noble race of the Cantacuzeni (illustrious from
the xith century in the Byzantine annals) was drawn from the
Paladins of France, the heroes of those romances which, in the
xiiith century, were translated and read by the Greeks, (Ducange,
Fam. Byzant. p. 258.)]

22 (return) [ See Cantacuzene, (l. iii. c. 24, 30, 36.)]

23 (return) [ Saserna, in Gaul, and Columella, in Italy or Spain,
allow two yoke of oxen, two drivers, and six laborers, for two
hundred jugera (125 English acres) of arable land, and three more
men must be added if there be much underwood, (Columella de Re
Rustica, l. ii. c. 13, p 441, edit. Gesner.)]

24 (return) [ In this enumeration (l. iii. c. 30) the French
translation of the president Cousin is blotted with three
palpable and essential errors. 1. He omits the 1000 yoke of
working oxen. 2. He interprets the pentakosiai proV diaciliaiV,
by the number of fifteen hundred. * 3. He confounds myriads with
chiliads, and gives Cantacuzene no more than 5000 hogs. Put not
your trust in translations! Note: * There seems to be another
reading, ciliaiV. Niebuhr’s edit. in loc.—M.]

Had the regent found a suitable return of obedience and
gratitude, perhaps he would have acted with pure and zealous
fidelity in the service of his pupil. 25 A guard of five hundred
soldiers watched over his person and the palace; the funeral of
the late emperor was decently performed; the capital was silent
and submissive; and five hundred letters, which Cantacuzene
despatched in the first month, informed the provinces of their
loss and their duty. The prospect of a tranquil minority was
blasted by the great duke or admiral Apocaucus, and to exaggerate
_his_ perfidy, the Imperial historian is pleased to magnify his
own imprudence, in raising him to that office against the advice
of his more sagacious sovereign. Bold and subtle, rapacious and
profuse, the avarice and ambition of Apocaucus were by turns
subservient to each other; and his talents were applied to the
ruin of his country. His arrogance was heightened by the command
of a naval force and an impregnable castle, and under the mask of
oaths and flattery he secretly conspired against his benefactor.
The female court of the empress was bribed and directed; he
encouraged Anne of Savoy to assert, by the law of nature, the
tutelage of her son; the love of power was disguised by the
anxiety of maternal tenderness: and the founder of the Palæologi
had instructed his posterity to dread the example of a perfidious
guardian. The patriarch John of Apri was a proud and feeble old
man, encompassed by a numerous and hungry kindred. He produced an
obsolete epistle of Andronicus, which bequeathed the prince and
people to his pious care: the fate of his predecessor Arsenius
prompted him to prevent, rather than punish, the crimes of a
usurper; and Apocaucus smiled at the success of his own flattery,
when he beheld the Byzantine priest assuming the state and
temporal claims of the Roman pontiff. 26 Between three persons so
different in their situation and character, a private league was
concluded: a shadow of authority was restored to the senate; and
the people was tempted by the name of freedom. By this powerful
confederacy, the great domestic was assaulted at first with
clandestine, at length with open, arms. His prerogatives were
disputed; his opinions slighted; his friends persecuted; and his
safety was threatened both in the camp and city. In his absence
on the public service, he was accused of treason; proscribed as
an enemy of the church and state; and delivered with all his
adherents to the sword of justice, the vengeance of the people,
and the power of the devil; his fortunes were confiscated; his
aged mother was cast into prison; 261 all his past services were
buried in oblivion; and he was driven by injustice to perpetrate
the crime of which he was accused. 27 From the review of his
preceding conduct, Cantacuzene appears to have been guiltless of
any treasonable designs; and the only suspicion of his innocence
must arise from the vehemence of his protestations, and the
sublime purity which he ascribes to his own virtue. While the
empress and the patriarch still affected the appearances of
harmony, he repeatedly solicited the permission of retiring to a
private, and even a monastic, life. After he had been declared a
public enemy, it was his fervent wish to throw himself at the
feet of the young emperor, and to receive without a murmur the
stroke of the executioner: it was not without reluctance that he
listened to the voice of reason, which inculcated the sacred duty
of saving his family and friends, and proved that he could only
save them by drawing the sword and assuming the Imperial title.

25 (return) [ See the regency and reign of John Cantacuzenus, and
the whole progress of the civil war, in his own history, (l. iii.
c. 1—100, p. 348—700,) and in that of Nicephorus Gregoras, (l.
xii. c. 1—l. xv. c. 9, p. 353—492.)]

26 (return) [ He assumes the royal privilege of red shoes or
buskins; placed on his head a mitre of silk and gold; subscribed
his epistles with hyacinth or green ink, and claimed for the new,
whatever Constantine had given to the ancient, Rome, (Cantacuzen.
l. iii. c. 36. Nic. Gregoras, l. xiv. c. 3.)]

261 (return) [ She died there through persecution and
neglect.—M.]

27 (return) [ Nic. Gregoras (l. xii. c. 5) confesses the
innocence and virtues of Cantacuzenus, the guilt and flagitious
vices of Apocaucus; nor does he dissemble the motive of his
personal and religious enmity to the former; nun de dia kakian
allwn, aitioV o praotatoV thV tvn olwn edoxaV? eioai jqoraV.
Note: The alloi were the religious enemies and persecutors of
Nicephorus.—M.]