History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0177/01770.txt

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$Unique_ID{how01770}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
Part I.}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Gibbon, Edward}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{andronicus
footnote
emperor
cantacuzene
younger
gregoras
first
own
thousand
years}
$Date{1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
Book:        Chapter LXIII: Civil Wars And The Ruin Of The Greek Empire.
Author:      Gibbon, Edward
Date:        1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)

Part I.

     Civil Wars, And Ruin Of The Greek Empire. - Reigns Of Andronicus, The
Elder And Younger, And John Palaeologus. - 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 Palaeologi,
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.

[Footnote 1: 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.]

[Footnote 2: 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 Caesar, 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.

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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 eight last years of the elder Andronicus.
The ingenious comparison with Moses and Caesar is fancied by his French
translator, the president Cousin.]

[Footnote 5: 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 Palaeologi, 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.

[Footnote 6: 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, (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.)]

[Footnote 7: 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.)]

[Footnote 8: 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. ^* 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.

[Footnote *: 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.]

[Footnote 9: 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, ^*
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 ^*

[Footnote 10: 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.]

[Footnote *: And the washerwomen, according to Nic. Gregoras, p. 431 - M.]

[Footnote 11: 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]

[Footnote 12: 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.]

[Footnote *: 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.

[Footnote 13: 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.)]

[Footnote 14: 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.]

[Footnote 15: Henry the Wonderful was the founder of the branch of Gruben
hagen, 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.)]

[Footnote 16: 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 Moeurs, &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.)]

[Footnote 17: 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. Germaniae
Pragmatica, tom. i. p. 351,) Argentifodinae in Hercyniis montibus, imperante
Othone magno (A.D. 968) primum apertae, 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.]

[Footnote 18: Cantacuzene has given a most honorable testimony. The praise is
just in itself, and pleasing to an English ear.]

[Footnote 19: Anne, or Jane, was one of the four daughters of Amedee 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.)]

[Footnote 20: 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
Palaeologus, 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 Aetolia 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.

[Footnote 21: 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.)]

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

[Footnote 23: 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.)]

[Footnote 24: 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 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.  Niebuhr's edit. in los. - 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 Palaeologi 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; ^* 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.

[Footnote 25: 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.)]

[Footnote 26: 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.)]

[Footnote *: She died there through persecution and neglect. - M.]

[Footnote 27: 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.

     Note: They were the religious enemies and persecutors of Nicephorus.]