Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/481

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 459 The cruelty of the emperor Avas exasperated by the pangs of sickness, the approach of a premature end, and the suspicion of poison and magic.^^ The lives and fortunes, the eyes and limbs, of his kinsmen and nobles were sacrificed to each sally of pas- sion ; and, before he died, the son of Vataces might deserve from the people, or at least from the Court, the appellation of tyrant. A matron of the family of the Palaeologi ^^ had pro- voked his anger by refusing to bestow her beauteous daughter on the vile plebeian who was recommended by his caprice. Without regard to her birth or age, her body, as high as the neck, was inclosed in a sack with several cats, who were pricked with pins to irritate their fury against their unfortunate fellow- captive. In his last hours the emperor testified a wish to for- give and be forgiven, a just anxiety for the fate of John, his son and successor, who, at the age of eight years, was con- demned to the dangers of a long minority. His last choice Minority of entrusted the office of guardian to the sanctity of the patriarch ad. 1259 A • 1 1. J.1- i? /-I A r 1 .1. [1258], August Ai'senms, and to the courage 01 (jeorge Muzalon, the great m domestic, who was equally distinguished by the royal favour and the public hatred. Since their connection M'ith the Latins, the names and privileges of hereditary rank had insinuated them- selves into the Greek monarchy ; and the noble families ^^ were provoked by the elevation of a worthless favourite, to whose t influence they imputed the errors and calamities of the late reign. In the first council after the emperor's death, Muzalon, from a lofty throne, pronounced a laboured apology of his con- duct and intentions : his modesty was subdued by an unanimous assui'ance of esteem and fidelity ; and his most inveterate ene- mies were the loudest to salute him as the guardian and saviour of Nicephorus Gregoras. [Among some unpublished works of this remarkable monarch, Theodore Lascaris, is an encomium on George Acropolites. There is also a rhetorical estimate of his contemporary Frederick II. , a work which ought to have been published long ago. George Acropolites made a collection of his letters ; some of these are e.xtant but not yet printed. Professor Krumbacher desig- nates Theodore II. " as statesman, writer, and man, one of the most interesting figures of Byzantium, a sort of oriental parallel to his great contemporary Frederick li. ; a degenerate, no doubt ; intellectually highly gifted, bodily weak, without moral force, with a nervous system fatally preponderant " {o/>. cit. p. 478). On his theological productions cp. J. Draseke, Byz. Zeitschrift, iii. p. 498 sqq^ 11 [He seems to have suffered from a cerebral disease, and to have been sub- ject to fits of epilepsy. Cp. MeliarakSs, op. cit. p. 479.] i-[A sister of Michael Palseologus. ] 12 Pachymer (1. i. c. 21) names and discriminates fifteen or twenty Greek families, <tai oO"ot aAAoi, ols t) neyoAoyei'i)? atXpa. Kal pv<n <rvy»t6icpdTT)T0. DoeS he mean, by thiS decoration, a figurative or a real golden chain? Perhaps both.