Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/469

 OF THE EOMAX EMPIRE 447 his sword. The proudest famiHes are content to lose, in the darkness of the middle ages, the tree of their pedigree, which, however deep and lofty, must ultimately rise from a plebeian root ; and their historians must descend ten centuries below the Christian ajra, before they can ascertain any lineal succession by the evidence of surnames, of arms, and of authentic records. With the first i-ays of light ^^ we discern the nobility and opu- lence of Atho, a French knight : his nobility, in the rank and title of a nameless father ; his opulence, in the foundation of the castle of Courtenay, in the district of Gatinois, about fifty-six miles to the south of Paris. From the reign of Robert, the son of Hugh Capet, the barons of Courtenay are conspicuous among the immediate vassals of the crown ; and Joscelin, the grandson of Atho and a noble dame, is enrolled among the heroes of the first crusade. A domestic alliance (their mothers were sisters) attached him to the standard of Baldwin of Bruges, the second i. The counts count of Edessa : a princely fief, which he was worthy to receive, ad. iira.1152 and able to maintain, announces the number of his martial fol- lowers ; and, after the departure of his cousin, Joscelin himself was invested with the county of Edessa on both sides of the Euphrates. By economy in peace his territories were re- plenished with Latin and Syrian subjects ; his magazines with corn, wine, and oil ; his castles with gold and silver, with arms and horses. In a holy warfare of thirty years he was alternately a conquei'or and a captive ; but he died like a soldier, in an horse-litter at the head of his troops ; and his last glance beheld the flight of the Turkish invaders who had presumed on his age and infirmities. His son and successor, of the same name, was less deficient in valour than in vigilance ; but he sometimes forgot that dominion is acquired and maintained by the same arts. He challenged the hostility of the Turks, without securing the friendship of the prince of Antioch ; and, amidst the peace- ful luxury of Turbessel, in Syria,-'- Joscelin neglected the defence of the Christian frontier beyond the Euphrates. In his absence, Zenghi, the first of the Atabeks, besieged and stormed his capital, Edessa, which was feebly defended by a timorous and disloyal a monk of Fleury, who wrote in the xiith century. See his Chronicle, in the His- torians of France (torn. xi. p. 176). ^Turbessel, or as it is now styled Telbesher, is fixed by d'Anville four and twenty miles from the great passage over the Euphrates at Zeugma. [Tell Basher, now Saleri Kaleh, " a large mound with ruins near the village of Tulbashar," two days' journey north of Aleppo (Sir C. Wilson, note to Baha ad-DIn, p. 58). j
 * ' The primitive record of the family is a passage of the Continuator of Aimoin,