Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/240

 218 THE DECLINE AND FALL Romania with a fleet and anny, and reduced many castles and cities to the obedience of the king of Sicily. The Greeks ^*'* accuse and magnify the wanton and sacrilegious cruelties that were perpetrated in the sack of Thessalonica, the second city of the empire. The former deplore the fate of those invincible but unsuspecting warriors, who were destroyed by the arts of a vanquished foe. The latter applaud, in songs of triumph, the repeated victories of their countrymen on the sea of Marmora or Propontis, on the banks of the Strymon, and under the walls of Durazzo. A revolution, which punished the crimes of An- dronicus, had united against the Franks the zeal and courage of the successful insurgents : ten thousand were slain in battle, and Isaac Angelus, the new emperor, might indulge his vanity or vengeance in the treatment of four thousand captives. Such was the event of the last contest between the Greeks and Nor- mans : before the expiration of twenty years, the rival nations were lost or degraded in foreign servitude ; and the successors of Constantine did not long survive to insult the fall of the Sicilian monarchy. wuiiami., The sccptrc of Roger successively devolved to his son and ofsiciiy. AD. (rrandson : they might be confounded under the name of 1154 Fe'o 26 ■ J <^ -A.D. 1166, William ; they are strongly discriminated by the epithets of the had and the good ; but these epithets, which appear to describe the perfection of vice and virtue, cannot strictly be applied to either of the Norman princes. When he was roused to arms by danger and shame, the first William did not degenerate from the valour of his race ; but his temper was slothful ; his manners were dissolute ; his passions headstrong and mischiev- ous ; and the monarch is responsible, not only for his personal vices, but for those of Majo, the great admiral, who abused the confidence, and conspired against the life, of his benefactor. From the Arabian conquest, Sicily had imbibed a deep tincture of Oriental manners ; the despotism, the pomp, and even the harem, of a sultan ; and a Christian people was oppressed and in- sulted by the ascendant of the eunuchs, who openly professed, or secretly cherished, the religion of Mahomet. An eloquent 144 By the failure of Cinnanius, we are now reduced to Nicetas (in Andronico, 1. i. c. 7, 8, 9, 1. ii. c. i. in Isaac. Angclo, 1. i. c. 1-4), who now becomes a respectable contemporary. As he survived the emperor and the empire, he is above flattery ; but the fall of Constantinople exasperated his prejudices against the Latins. For the honour of learning I shall observe that Homer's great Commentator, Eustathius, archbisliop of Thessalonica, refused to desert his (lock. [For Eustatliius and his work on the siege of Thessalonica see Appendi. i.]