Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/486

 464 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Jan., A.D. 1260] Michael Falsolopus Emnerof. A.fi. 1260, Jaji. 1 Eecovery of Constanti- nople. A.D. 1261, July 25 merits, and the second place in the Roman monarchy. It was afterwards agreed that John and Michael should be proclaimed as joint emperors, and raised on the buckler, but that the pre- eminence should be reserved for the birth-right of the former. A mutual league of amit}- was pledged between the royal part- ners ; and, in case of a rupture, the subjects were bound, by their oath of allegiance, to declare themselves against the aggressor : an ambiguous naine, the seed of discord and civil war. Palaeolo- gus was content ; but on the day of his coronation, and in the cathedral of Nice, his zealous adherents most vehemently urged the just priority of his age and merit. The unseasonable dispute was eluded by postponing to a more convenient opportunity the coronation of John Lascaris ; and he walked with a slight diadem in the train of his guardian, who alone received the Imperial cro^-n from the hands of the patriarch. It was not without ex- treme reluctance that Arsenius abandoned the cause of his pupil; but the ^ arangians brandished their battle-axes ; a sign of assent was extorted from the trembling youth ; and some voices were heard, that the life of a child should no longer impede the settle- ment of the nation. A full harvest of honours and employments was distributed among his friends by the grateful Palaeologus. In his own family he created a despot and two sebastocrators ; Alexius Strategopulus was decorated Avith the title of Caesar ; and that veteran commander soon repaid the obligation, by re- storing Constantinople to the Greek emperor. It was in the second year of his reign, while he resided in the palace and gardens of Nymphaeum,-^ near Smyrna, that the first messenger arrived at the dead of night ; and the stupendous intelligence was imparted to Michael, after he had been gently Avaked by the tender precaution of his sister Eulogia. The man was unknown or obscure ; he produced no letters from the vic- torious Caesar ; nor could it easily be credited, after the defeat of Vataces and the recent failure of Palseologus himself, that the capital had been surprised by a detachment of eight hundred 25 The site of Xymphseum is not clearly defined in ancient or modern geography. [Turkish Nif ; it lay on the road from Smyrna to Sardis. Cp. Ramsay, Asia Minor, p. io8.] But from the last hours of Vataces (Acropolita, c. 52) it is evident the palace and gardens of his favourite residence were in the neighbourhood of Smyrna. Nymphasum might be loosely placed in Lydia (Gregoras, 1. vi. 6). [Pachymeres says that Michael was at Nymphasum when he received the glad tidings ; but Gregoras says Nicaea, and Acropolites says Meteorion. As Acro- polites was with Michael at the time, we must follow him (so Meliarakes, p. 509). Meteorion " must have been in the Hermos valley, and may possibly be the purely Byzantine fortress Gurduk Kalesi, a few miles north of Thyateira, near the site of Attaleia " (Ramsay, o^, cit. p. 131).]