drawn to yet another sombre mass of masonry, peculiar in design, for it has the appearance of two towers joined together. They differ in structure, for whereas one is built of carefully cut stones, and shows courses of brickwork, the other is less regular, and from it here and there marble pillars project like cannon. These are the towers of Anemas and Isaac Angelus, and a counterfort, corresponding in structure to that of the twin towers, juts out in front of them amid the long grass and tangled undergrowth.
Isaac Angelus and his pathetic history are already known to us. Anemas gave his name to the second tower because he is said to have been the first prisoner confined within these gloomy walls. He was the descendant of a Saracen Emir, who defended Crete against Nicephorus Phocas, and was taken prisoner. Treated with unusual leniency for those times, he was granted large estates in the neighbourhood of the capital. His son, Anemas, was converted to Christianity, and distinguished himself in the campaign of John Zimisces against the Russians, to fall in a personal encounter with Swiatoslav, the Russian king.
But Michael Anemas, a scion of this family, was drawn into a conspiracy against the Emperor Alexius Comnenus, and imprisoned in this tower. Anne Comnenus the historian, and her mother, induced Alexius to remit the sentence which condemned Michael Anemas and his brother to loss of eyesight, and after some years they regained their liberty.
A formidable dungeon, this Tower of Anemas, with its narrow, vaulted cells of enormous strength and its narrower passages. Others whom we know languished here in chains, among these the Emperor Andronicus Comnenus, who left this prison to die at the hands of his infuriated subjects.
Another whom we have met, Andronicus, the son of John VI Palæologus, was confined here by his father. He effected his escape, and in turn imprisoned his father and his brothers Manuel and Theodore. Perhaps the best that can be said of this rebellious son is that he did not act on the advice of Bajazet and put his prisoners to death.
A gloomy history this strong Tower of Anemas tells us. A tale of civil war, of tyranny, of deadly family feuds and the endless misery of human weakness when it is invested with some transient semblance of external power.
In strong contrast stands out that more rugged Tower of Isaac Angelus. Here it is said the Varangians, Cæsar’s bodyguard, had their head-quarters, and through all the gloom that envelopes the history of the later Greek empire, the conduct of those troops
