Volume 6 Part 12 (2/2)
[Footnote 497: Andronicus paid the Catalans in the debased money, much to their indignation.--M.]
[Footnote 498: According to Ramon de Montaner, he was murdered by order of Kyr (kurioV) Michael, son of the emperor. p. 170.--M.]
[Footnote 499: Ramon de Montaner describes his sojourn at Gallipoli: Nous etions si riches, que nous ne semions, ni ne labourions, ni ne faisions enver des vins ni ne cultivions les vignes: et cependant tous les ans nous recucillions tour ce qu'il nous fallait, en vin, froment et avoine.
p. 193. This lasted for five merry years. Ramon de Montaner is high authority, for he was ”chancelier et maitre rational de l'armee,”
(commissary of _rations_.) He was left governor; all the scribes of the army remained with him, and with their aid he kept the books in which were registered the number of horse and foot employed on each expedition. According to this book the plunder was shared, of which he had a fifth for his trouble. p. 197.--M.]
[Footnote 50: The Catalan war is most copiously related by Pachymer, in the xith, xiith, and xiiith books, till he breaks off in the year 1308. Nicephorus Gregoras (l. 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 Ossona, may imitate Caesar or Sall.u.s.t; 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. * Note: Ramon de Montaner, one of the Catalans, who accompanied Roger de Flor, and who was governor of Gallipoli, has written, in Spanish, the history of this band of adventurers, to which he belonged, and from which he separated when it left the Thracian Chersonese to penetrate into Macedonia and Greece.--G.----The autobiography of Ramon de Montaner has been published in French by M.
Buchon, in the great collection of Memoires relatifs a l'Histoire de France. I quote this edition.--M.]
After some ages of oblivion, Greece was awakened to new misfortunes by 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 mult.i.tude 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 [51] would argue a strange ingrat.i.tude to the first and purest school of liberal science and amus.e.m.e.nt. In the part.i.tion of the empire, the princ.i.p.ality of Athens and Thebes was a.s.signed to Otho de la Roche, a n.o.ble warrior of Burgundy, [52] with the t.i.tle 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 duchy of Athens; and, with the aid of some Catalan mercenaries, whom he invested with fiefs, reduced above thirty castles of the va.s.sal or neighboring 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 Botia. 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 t.i.tular duke of Athens, the tyrant of Florence, and the constable of France, lost his life in the field of Poitiers Attica and Botia 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.
[Footnote 51: See the laborious history of Ducange, whose accurate table of the French dynasties recapitulates the thirty-five pa.s.sages, in which he mentions the dukes of Athens.]
[Footnote 52: He is twice mentioned by Villehardouin with honor, (No.
151, 235;) and under the first pa.s.sage, Ducange observes all that can be known of his person and family.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 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. l.
vii. c. 5.) By the Latins, the lord of Thebes was styled, by corruption, the Megas Kurios, or Grand Sire!]
[Footnote 55: _Quodam miraculo_, says Alberic. He was probably received by Michael Choniates, the archbishop who had defended Athens against the tyrant Leo Sgurus, (Nicetas urbs capta, p. 805, ed. Bek.) Michael was the brother of the historian Nicetas; and his encomium of Athens is still extant in MS. in the Bodleian library, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec tom.
vi. p. 405.) * Note: Nicetas says expressly that Michael surrendered the Acropolis to the marquis.--M.]
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 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 flavor: [57] but the languid trade is monopolized by strangers, and the agriculture of a barren land is abandoned to the vagrant Walachians. The Athenians are still distinguished by the subtlety and acuteness of their understandings; but these qualities, unless enn.o.bled 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 aethiopian 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 n.o.ble families cannot trace their pedigree above three hundred years; but their princ.i.p.al members are distinguished by a grave demeanor, 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 colored: 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 debas.e.m.e.nt of their character, that they are incapable of admiring the genius of their predecessors. [59]
[Footnote 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, pa.s.sim,) 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.]
[Footnote 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.)]
[Footnote 58: Ducange, Glossar. Graec. Praefat. p. 8, who quotes for his author Theodosius Zygomalas, a modern grammarian. Yet Spon (tom. ii.
p. 194) and Wheeler, (p. 355,) no incompetent judges, entertain a more favorable opinion of the Attic dialect.]
[Footnote 59: Yet we must not accuse them of corrupting the name of Athens, which they still call Athini. From the eiV thn 'Aqhnhn, we have formed our own barbarism of _Setines_. * Note: Gibbon did not foresee a Bavarian prince on the throne of Greece, with Athens as his capital.--M.]
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