The Ægæan dominion of the citizens of Genoa was longer lived than the Euxine dominion of Genoa herself. ♦Lesbos. 1354-1462.♦ The family of Gattilusio received Lesbos as an Imperial fief in the fourteenth century, and kept it till after the fall of Constantinople. But the most remarkable Genoese settlement in the Ægæan was that of Chios. ♦The Zaccaria at Chios. 1304-1346.
The Maona. 1346-1566.♦ First held by princes of the Genoese house of Zaccaria, the island, with some of its neighbours, passed into the hands of a Genoese commercial company or Maona, a body somewhat like our own East India Company. ♦1566.♦ Samos, Kôs, and Phôkaia on the mainland, came at different times under their power, and Chios did not fall under the Ottoman yoke till the same year as the duchy of Naxos.

One more insular dominion remains, chiefly famous as the possession, not indeed of a commonwealth, but of an order. ♦Revolutions of Rhodes.♦ In a few years of the thirteenth century the island of Rhodes passed through all possible revolutions. ♦1233.♦ In the first moment of the Latin conquest, it became an independent Greek principality, like Epeiros and Trebizond. ♦1246.♦ Then it admitted the overlordship of the Nicene Emperors. ♦1249.♦ Seized by Genoa, it was presently won back to the Empire, till seventy years later it was again seized by the Knights of Saint John. ♦Establishment of the Knights, 1310.
1315.♦ From Rhodes as a centre, the order established its dominion over Kôs and some other islands, and on some points of the Asiatic coast, especially their famous fortress of Halikarnassos. ♦1480.
1522.♦ They beat back Mahomet the Conqueror, but they yielded to Suleiman the Lawgiver forty years later. ♦Their removal to Malta, 1530.♦ Banished from Rhodes, the order received Malta from Charles the Fifth as a fief of his Sicilian kingdom. We are thus brought back to the island which had been lost to the Eastern Empire for seven hundred years. ♦1566.♦ The knights in their new home beat back their former conqueror Suleiman, and kept their island till the times of confusion. ♦Revolutions of Malta.
1814.♦ Held by France, held by England, held, nominally at least, by its own Sicilian overlord, this fragment of the Empire of Leo and of the kingdom of Roger finally passed at the peace under the acknowledged rule of England.

§ 5. The Principalities of the Greek Mainland.

The Greek possessions of Venice, of Genoa, and of the Knights of Saint John, consisted mainly of islands and detached points of coast. The Venetian conquest of Peloponnêsos was the only exception on a great scale. In this they are distinguished from the several powers, Greek and Frank, which arose on the Greek mainland. We have already heard, and we shall hear again, of the Greek despotat of Epeiros, which for a moment grew into an Empire of Thessalonikê. Among the Latin powers two rose to European importance. ♦Duchy of Athens.
Principality of Achaia.♦ These are the duchy of Athens in central Greece—in Hellas, according to the Byzantine nomenclature—and the principality of Achaia or Môraia in Peloponnêsos. ♦Use of the name Môraia.♦ This last name, of uncertain origin,[35] has come, in its Italian shape, to be a modern name of the peninsula itself. But the name of Môraia seems strictly to belong to the domain lands of the principality, and never to go beyond the bounds of the principality, which at no time took in the whole of Peloponnêsos.

Both these powers were founded in the first days of the Latin conquest, and the Turk did not finally annex the territories of either till after the fall of Constantinople. But while the Athenian duchy lived on to become itself the prize of Mahomet the Conqueror, the lands of the Achaian principality had already gone back into Greek hands. ♦Lordship of Athens. 1204-1205.♦ The lordship of Athens, founded by Otho de la Roche, was first a fief of the kingdom of Thessalonikê, then of the Empire of Romania. ♦The Duchy.♦ But it was by the grant of Saint Lewis of France that the title of Great Lord[36] was exchanged for that of Duke. ♦1260.
The Catalan Conquest, 1311.♦ The duchy fell into the hands of the Catalan Great Company, who in central Greece grew from mere ravagers into territorial occupiers. ♦The Sicilian Dukes.♦ They brought with them the Thessalian land of Neopatra, and transferred the nominal title of Duke of Athens and Neopatra to princes of the Sicilian branch of the House of Aragon. Thus the two claimants of the Sicilian crown were brought face to face on old Greek ground. ♦Dukes of the house of Acciauoli.♦ The duchy next passed to the Florentine house of Acciauoli, which already held Corinth, Megara, Sikyôn, and the greater part of Argolis. But their Peloponnesian dominion passed to the Byzantine lords of the peninsula, and Neopatra fell into the hands of the Turk. ♦1390.♦ The Athenian duchy itself, taking in Attica and Boiôtia, lived on, the vassal in turn of the Angevin king at Naples, of the Greek despot of Peloponnêsos, and of the Ottoman Sultan. ♦Ottoman conquest. 1456-1460.
1466.
1687.♦ Annexed at last to the Ottoman dominions, Athens remained in bondage till our own day, save only two momentary occupations by Venice, one soon after the first conquest, the other in the great war of Morosini.

♦Salôna and Bodonitza.

The smaller principalities of Salôna and Bodonitza play their part in the history of the Athenian duchy; but we turn to the chief Latin power of Peloponnêsos, the principality of Achaia. The shiftings of its dynasties and feudal relations are endless; its geographical history is simpler. The peninsula was, at the time of the Latin conquest, already beginning to fall away from the Empire. ♦1205.♦ King Boniface of Thessalonikê had to win the land from its Greek lord Leôn Sgouros. The princes of the house of Champlitte and Villehardouin were his vassals. They had to struggle with the Venetian settlement in Messênia, and with the Greek despot of Epeiros, who, oddly enough, held Corinth, Argos, and Nauplia. ♦1210-1212.♦ These last towns were won by the Latins, and became an Achaian fief in the hands of Otho of Athens. ♦Its greatest extent. 1248.♦ Before the end of half a century, the conquest of the whole peninsula, save the Venetian possessions, was completed by the taking of Monembasia. Things looked as if, now that the Latin power was waning at Constantinople, a stronger Latin power had arisen in Peloponnêsos. A crowd of Greek lands, Zakynthos, Naxos, Euboia, Athens, even Epeiros and Thessalonikê, acknowledged at one time or another the supremacy of Achaia. But Latin Achaia, like Latin Constantinople, had to yield to revived Greek energy. ♦Recovery of lands in Peloponnêsos by the Empire 1262.♦ The Empire won back the three Lacedæmonian fortresses,[37] and presently made Kalabryta in northern Arkadia a Greek outpost. ♦1263.♦ Here the Greek advance stopped for a while.

♦Angevin overlordship. 1278.♦

Before the end of the century the Frank principality lost its independence. It passed into vassalage to the Angevin crown, and was held, sometimes by the Neapolitan kings themselves, sometimes by princes of their house—some of them nominal Emperors of Romania—sometimes by princes of Savoy, who carried the Achaian name into Northern Italy.[38] ♦Dismemberment of the principality. 1337.♦ In the course of the fourteenth century the principality crumbled away. ♦1356.♦ Patras became an ecclesiastical principality under the overlordship of the Pope of the Old Rome. Argos and its port became a separate lordship. ♦1358.♦ Both of these passed for a longer or a shorter time under the power of Venice. Corinth and the north-east corner of the peninsula passed to the Acciauoli. ♦Byzantine advance. 1348-1383.♦ Meantime the Byzantine province grew. For some while, under despots of the house of Kantakouzênos, it might almost pass for an independent Greek state. ♦1381.
1387.
1442.♦ Notwithstanding the inroads of the Navarrese, the second Spanish invaders of Greece, and the first appearance of the Ottoman, the Greek power advanced, till it took in all Peloponnêsos save the Venetian towns. ♦Conquests of Constantine Palaiologos.♦ The last Constantine even appeared as a conqueror at Athens and in central Greece. ♦1458-1460.♦ Then came more Ottoman inroads, dismemberment, Albanian colonization, final annexation by the Turk. ♦Successive Turkish conquests of Peloponnêsos.♦ But the last conqueror has been twice driven to conquer Peloponnêsos afresh. The first revolt under Venetian support was crushed a few years after the first conquest. ♦1463-1540.
1670.
1685.♦ Then the Turk gradually gathered in the Venetian ports, and the whole peninsula was his, save so far as Maina kept on a kind of wild independence almost down to the last Venetian conquest. The complete and unbroken possession of all Peloponnêsos by the Ottoman has never filled up the whole of any one century.