Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/229

 OF THE KOMAN EMPIEE 207 were superior ; but in the third the Normans obtained a final and complete victory.^^^ The light brigantines of the Greeks were scattered in ignominious flight ; the nine castles of the Venetians maintained a more obstinate conflict ; seven were sunk, two were taken ; two thousand five hundred captives implored in vain the mercy of the victor ; and the daughter of Alexius deplores the loss of thirteen thousand of his subjects or allies. The want of experience had been supplied by the genius of Guiscard ; and each evening, when he had sounded a retreat, he calmly explored the causes of his repulse, and invented new methods how to remedy his own defects and to baffle the advantages of the enemy. The winter season sus- pended his progress ; with the return of spring he again aspired to the conquest of Constantinople ; but, instead of traversing the hills of Epirus, he turned his arms against Greece and the islands, where the spoils would repay the labour, and where the land and sea forces might pursue their joint operations with vigour and effect. But, in the isle of Cephalonia, his projects were fatally blasted by an epidemical disease; Robert himself, ms death, in the seventieth year of his age, expired in his tent; and ajuiyiv ' suspicion of poison was imputed, by public rumour, to his wife, or to the Greek emperor. ^ This premature death might allow iw William of Apulia (1. v. p. 276) describes the victory of the Normans, and forgets the two previous defeats, which are diligently recorded by Anna Comnena (1. vi. p. 159, 160, 161 [c. 5"). In her turn, she inventsor magnifies a fourth action, to g^ve the Venetians revenge and rewards. Their own feelings were far different, since they deposed their doge, propter e.xcidium stoli (Dandulus in Chron. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Italicarum, torn. xii. p. 249). Ill The most authentic writers, WiUiam of Apulia (1. v. 277), Jeffrey Malaterra (1. iii. c. 41, p. 589), and Romuald of Salerno (Chron. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. torn, vii.), are ignorant of this crime so apparent to our countrymen William of .Vlalmesbury (1. iii. p. 107) and Roger de Hoveden(p. 710 in Script. postBedam), and the latter can tell how the just Alexius married, crowned, and burnt alive, his female accomplice. The English historian is indeed so blind that he ranks Robert Guiscard, or Wiscard, among the knights of Henry I. who ascended the throne fifteen years after the duke of .Apulia's death. TWhen he died, Robert was on the point of sailing to Cephalonia, but he did not die in the island. He died (where he had made his winter quarters) at Bundicia on the river Glykys, on the coast of Epirus. Heinemann {op. cit. p. 401-3) treats the question in an acute appendix, and makes it probable that this Glykys is to be connected with the taukus i.>i.tv, the name given by Strabo to the bay into which the Acheron flows — now called the bay of Phanari. He conjectures that Bundicia is the ancient Pandosia. The Chronicon breve Nortmannicum, sub ann., states that Guiscard died in Cassiopi and Romuald of Salerno says apud insulam Cassiopatn ; hence it has been sup- posed that the place was Cassiope, on the north side of the island of Corfu. Heinemann would connect " Cassiopa " with Cassopia in Epirus. The statement that he died in Cephalonia is due to .Anna Comnena (vi. 6) and Anon. Bar. sub ann., but is irreconcilable with the rest of the story.]