Essays on the Latin Orient

by William Miller

Piracy was then, as so often, the curse of the islands and the deeply indented coast of Greece. We learn from the English Chronicle ascribed to Benedict of Peterborough, which gives a graphic account of Greece as it was in 1191, that many of the islands were uninhabited from fear of pirates, and that others were their chosen lairs. Cephalonia and Ithake, which now appears under its mediæval name of Val di Compare—first used, so far as I know by the Genoese historian, Caffaro, in the first half of the twelfth century—had a specially evil reputation, and bold was the sailor who dared venture through the channel between them. Near Athens, the island of Ægina was a stronghold of corsairs, who injured the property of the Athenian Church, and dangerously wounded the nephew of the Metropolitan. Yet the remedy for piracy was almost worse than the disease. Well might the anxious Metropolitan tell the Lord High Admiral, that the Athenians regarded their proximity to the sea as the greatest of their misfortunes.

Besides the Byzantine officials and the pirates, the Greeks had a third set of tormentors in the shape of a brood of native tyrants, whose feuds divided city against city and divided communities into rival parties. Even where the Emperor had been nominally sovereign, the real power was in the hands of local magnates, who had revived, on the eve of the Frankish conquest, the petty tyrannies of ancient Greece. Under the dynasty of the Comneni, who imitated and introduced the ways of Western chivalry, feudalism had already made considerable inroads into the East. At the time of the Fourth Crusade, local families were in possession of large tracts of territory which they governed almost like independent princes. Of all these archontes, as they were called, the most powerful was Leon Sgouros, hereditary lord of Nauplia, who had extended his sway over Argos “of the goodly steeds,” and had seized the city and fortress of Corinth, proudly styling himself by a high-sounding Byzantine title, and placing his fortunes under the protection of St Theodore the Warrior. The manners of these local magnates were no less savage than those of the Western barons of the same period. Thus, Sgouros on one occasion invited the Archbishop of Corinth to dinner, and then put out the eyes of his guest, and hurled him over the rocks of the citadel. The contemporary historian Niketas has painted in the darkest colours the character of the Greek archontes, upon whom he lays the chief responsibility for the evils which befell their country. He speaks of them as “inflamed by ambition against their own fatherland, slavish men, spoiled by luxury, who made themselves tyrants, instead of fighting the Latins.” The Emperor and historian, John Cantacuzene, gives much the same description of their descendants a century and a half later.

Such was the condition of Greece, when Boniface and his army emerged from the vale of Tempe and marched across the plain of Thessaly to Larissa. He bestowed that ancient city upon a Lombard noble, who henceforth styled himself Guglielmo de Larsa from the name of his fief. Velestino, the ancient Pheræ, the scene of the legend of Admetos and Alcestis, and the site of the modern battle, fell to the share of Berthold von Katzenellenbogen, whose name must have proved a stumbling-block to his Thessalian vassals. The army then took the usual route by way of Pharsala and Domoko—names familiar alike in the ancient and modern history of Greek warfare—down to Lamia and thence across the Trachinian plain to Thermopylæ, where Sgouros was awaiting it. But the memories of Leonidas failed to inspire the archon of Nauplia to follow his example. Niketas tells us that the mere sight of the Latin knights in their coats of mail sufficed to make him flee straight to his own fastness of Akrocorinth, leaving the pass undefended. Conscious of its strength—for Thermopylæ must have been far more of a defile then than now—Boniface resolved to secure it permanently against attack. He therefore invested the Marquess Guido Pallavicini, nicknamed by the Greeks “Marchesopoulo,” with the fief of Boudonitza, which commanded the other end of the pass. Thus arose the famous Marquisate of Boudonitza, which was destined to play an important part in the Frankish history of Greece, and which, after a continuous existence of over two centuries, as guardian of the Northern marches, has left a memory of its fallen greatness in the ruins of the castle and chapel of its former lords, of whose descendants, the Zorzi of Venice, there are still living—so Mr Horatio Brown informs me—some thirty representatives in that city. Following the present carriage-road from Lamia to the Corinthian Gulf, Boniface established another defensive post at the pass of Gravia, so famous centuries afterwards in the War of Independence, conferring it as a fief on the two brothers Jacques and Nicholas de St Omer. At the foot of Parnassos, on the site of the ancient Amphissa, he next founded the celebrated barony of Salona, which lasted almost as long as the Marquisate of Boudonitza. Upon the almost Cyclopean stones of the classic Akropolis of Amphissa, which Philip of Macedon had destroyed fifteen centuries before, Thomas de Stromoncourt built himself the fortress, of which the majestic ruins—perhaps the finest Frankish remains in Greece—still stand among the cornfields on the hill above the modern town. According to the local tradition, the name of Salona, which the place still bears in common parlance, despite the usual official efforts to revive the classical terminology, is derived from the King of Salonika, its second founder. The lord of Salona soon extended his sway down to the harbour of Galaxidi, and the barony became so important that two at least of the house of Stromoncourt struck coins of their own, which are still preserved.

Boniface next marched into Bœotia, where the people, glad to be relieved from the oppression of Sgouros, at once submitted. Thebes joyfully opened her gates, and then the invaders pursued their way to Athens. The Metropolitan thought it useless to defend the city, and a Frankish guard was soon stationed on the Akropolis. The Crusaders had no respect for the great Cathedral. To these soldiers of fortune the classic glories of the Parthenon appealed as little as the sanctity of the Orthodox Church. The rich treasury of the Cathedral was plundered, the holy vessels were melted down, the library which the Metropolitan had collected was dispersed. Unable to bear the sight, Akominatos quitted the scene where he had laboured so long, and, after wandering about for a time, finally settled down in the island of Keos, whence he could at least see the coast of Attica.

Thebes with Bœotia and Athens with Attica and the Megarid were bestowed by the King of Salonika upon his trusty comrade in arms, Othon de la Roche, who had rendered him a valuable service by assisting to settle a serious dispute between him and the Emperor Baldwin, and who afterwards negotiated the marriage between Boniface’s daughter and Baldwin’s brother and successor. Thus, in the words of a monkish chronicler, “Othon de la Roche, son of a certain Burgundian noble, became, as by a miracle, Duke of the Athenians and Thebans.” The chronicler was only wrong in the title which he attributed to the lucky Frenchman, who had thus succeeded to the glories of the heroes and sages of Athens. Othon modestly styled himself Sire d’Athènes, or Dominus Athenarum in official documents, which his Greek subjects magnified into “the Great Lord” (Μέγας κύρ), and Dante, who had probably heard that such had been the title of the first Frankish ruler of Athens, transferred it by a poetic anachronism to Peisistratos. Half a century after the conquest, Othon’s nephew and successor, Guy I, received, at his request, the title of Duke from Louis IX of France—and Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Chaucer in The Knight’s Tale have by a similar anachronism conferred the ducal title of the De la Roche upon Theseus, the legendary founder of Athens. Contemporary accounts make no mention of any resistance to the Lord of Athens on the part of the Greeks. Later Venetian authors, however, actuated perhaps by patriotic bias, propagated a story, that the Athenians sent an embassy to offer their city to Venice, but that their scheme was frustrated “not without bloodshed by the men of Champagne under the Lord de la Roche.”

We naturally ask ourselves what was the appearance and condition of the most famous city of the ancient world at the time of Othon’s accession, and the voluminous writings of the eminent man who was Metropolitan at that moment, which have been published by Professor Lampros of Athens, throw a flood of light upon the Athens of the beginning of the thirteenth century. The only Athenian manufactures were soap and the weaving of monkish habits, but the ships of the Piræus still took part in the purple-fishing off the lonely island of Gyaros, the Botany Bay of the Roman Empire. There was still some trade at the Piræus, for the Byzantine Admiral had found vessels there. It was then guarded by the huge lion, now in front of the arsenal at Venice, which gave the harbour its mediæval name of Porto Leone, and on which Harold Hardrada, afterwards slain at Stamford Bridge, had scratched his name nearly two centuries before. We may infer, too, from the mention of Athens in the commercial treaties between Venice and the Byzantine Empire that the astute Republicans saw some prospect of making money there. But the “thin soil” of Attica was as unproductive as in the days of Thucydides, and yielded nothing but oil, honey, and wine, the last strongly flavoured with resin, as it still is, so that the Metropolitan could write to a friend that it “seems to be pressed from the juice of the pine rather than from that of the grape.” The harvest was always meagre, and famines were common. Even ordinary necessaries were not always obtainable. Akominatos could not find a decent carriage-builder in the place; and, in his despair at the absence of blacksmiths and workers in iron, he was constrained to apply to Athens the words of Jeremiah: “the bellows are burnt.” Emigration, still the curse of Greece, was draining off the able-bodied poor, so that the population had greatly diminished, and the city threatened to become what Aristophanes had called “a Scythian wilderness.”

Externally, the visitor to the Athens of that day, must have been struck by the marked contrast between the splendid monuments of the classic age and the squalid surroundings of the mediæval town. The walls were lying in ruins, the houses of the emigrants had been pulled down, the streets, where once the sages of antiquity had walked, were now desolate. But the hand of the invader and the tooth of time had, on the whole, dealt gently with the Athenian monuments. The Parthenon, converted long before into the Cathedral of Our Lady of Athens, was almost as little damaged, as if it had only just been built. The metopes, the pediments, and the frieze were still intact, and remained so when, more than two centuries later, Cyriacus of Ancona, the first archæologist who had ever visited Athens during the Frankish period, drew his sketch of the Parthenon, which is still preserved in Berlin and of which a copy by Sangallo may be seen in the Vatican library. On the walls were the frescoes, traces of which are still visible, executed by order of the Emperor Basil II, “the slayer of the Bulgarians,” nearly two centuries earlier. Over the altar was a golden dove, representing the Holy Ghost, and ever flying with perpetual motion. In the cathedral, too, was an ever-burning lamp, fed by oil that never failed, which was the marvel of the pilgrims. So widespread was the fame of the Athenian Minster, that the great folk of Constantinople, in spite of their supercilious contempt for the provinces and their dislike of travel, came to do obeisance there. Of the other ancient buildings on the sacred rock, the graceful temple of Nike Apteros had been turned into a chapel; the Erechtheion had become a church of the Saviour, or a chapel of the Virgin, while the episcopal residence, which is known to have then been on the Akropolis, was probably in the Propylæa. The whole Akropolis had for centuries been made into a fortress, the only defence which Athens then possessed, strong enough to have resisted the attack of a Greek magnate like Sgouros, but incapable of repulsing a Latin army. Already strange legends and new names had begun to grow round some of the classical monuments. The Choragic monument of Lysikrates was already popularly known as “the lantern of Demosthenes,” its usual designation during the Turkish domination, when it became the Capuchin Convent, serving in 1811 as a study to Lord Byron, who from within its walls launched his bitter poem against the filcher of the Elgin marbles. But, even at the beginning of the thirteenth century, many of the ancient names of places lingered in the mouths of the people. The classically cultured Metropolitan was gratified as a good Philhellene, to hear that the Piræus and Hymettos, Eleusis and Marathon, the Areopagos and Kallirrhoe, Salamis and Ægina were still called by names, which the contemporaries of Perikles had used, even though the Areopagos was nothing but a bare rock, the plain of Marathon yielded no corn, and the “beautifully-flowing” fountain had ceased to flow. But new, uncouth names were beginning to creep in; thus, the partition treaty of 1204 describes Salamis as “Culuris” (or, “the lizard”), a vulgar name, derived from the shape of the island, which I have heard used in Attica at the present day.

Of the intellectual condition of Athens we should form but a low estimate, if we judged entirely from the lamentations of the elegant Byzantine scholar whom fate had made its Metropolitan. Akominatos had found that his tropes, and fine periods, and classical allusions were far over the heads of the Athenians who came to hear him, and who talked in his cathedral, even though that cathedral was the Parthenon. He wrote that his long residence in Greece had made him a barbarian. Yet he was able to add to his store of manuscripts in this small provincial town. Moreover, there is some evidence to prove that, even at this period, Athens was a place of study, whither Georgians from the East and English from the West came to obtain a liberal education. Matthew Paris tells us of Master John of Basingstoke, Archdeacon of Leicester in the reign of Henry III, who used often to say, that whatever scientific knowledge he possessed had been acquired from the youthful daughter of the Archbishop of Athens. This young lady could forecast the advent of pestilences, thunderstorms, eclipses, and earthquakes. From learned Greeks at Athens Master John professed to have heard some things of which the Latins had no knowledge; he found there the testaments of the twelve Patriarchs, and he brought back to England the Greek numerals and many books, including a Greek grammar which had been compiled for him at Athens. The same author tells us, too, of “certain Greek philosophers”—that is, in mediæval Greek parlance, monks—who came from Athens at this very time to the Court of King John, and disputed about nice sharp quillets of theology with English divines. It is stated, also, though on indifferent authority, as Mr F. C. Conybeare of Oxford kindly informs me, that the Georgian poet, Chota Roustavéli, and other Georgians spent several years at Athens on the eve of the Frankish conquest.

Othon de la Roche showed his gratitude to his benefactor, the King of Salonika, by accompanying him in his attack upon the strongholds of Sgouros in the Peloponnese. The Franks routed the Greek army at the Isthmus of Corinth, and while Othon laid siege to the noble castle above that town, Boniface proceeded to the attack on Nauplia. There he was joined by a man, who was destined to be the conqueror and ruler of the peninsula.

It chanced that, a little before the capture of Constantinople, Geoffroy de Villehardouin, nephew of the quaint chronicler of the Fourth Crusade, had set out on a pilgrimage to Palestine. On his arrival in Syria, he heard of the great achievements of the Crusaders, and resolved without loss of time to join them. But his ship was driven out of its course by a violent storm, and Geoffroy was forced to take shelter in the harbour of Methone on the coast of Messenia. During the winter of 1204, which he spent at that spot, he received an invitation from a local magnate to join him in an attack on the lands of the neighbouring Greeks. Villehardouin, nothing loth, placed his sword at the disposal of the Greek traitor, and success crowned the arms of these unnatural allies. But the Greek archon died, and his son, more patriotic or more prudent than his father, repudiated the dangerous alliance with the Frankish stranger. But it was too late. Villehardouin had discovered the fatal secret, that the Greeks of the Peloponnese were an unwarlike race, whose land would fall an easy conquest to a resolute band of Latins. At this moment, tidings reached him that Boniface was besieging Nauplia. He at once set out on a six days’ journey across a hostile country to seek his aid. In the camp he found his old friend and fellow-countryman, Guillaume de Champlitte, who was willing to assist him. He described to Champlitte the richness of the land which men called “the Morea”—a term which now occurs for the first time in history, and which seems to have been originally applied to the coast of Elis and thence extended to the whole peninsula, just as the name Italy, originally a part of Calabria, has similarly spread over the whole of that country. He professed his readiness to recognise Champlitte as his liege lord in return for his aid, and Boniface consented, after some hesitation, to their undertaking. With a hundred knights and some men-at-arms, the two friends rode out from the camp before Nauplia to conquer the peninsula.