Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/506

 484 THE DECLINE AND FALL r^D i20£- of Athens and Thebes was assigned to Otho de la Roche, a noble warrior of Burgundy,^^ Avith the title of Great Duke,"*^ which the Latins understood in their owti sense, and the Greeks more foolishly derived from the ape of Constantine."^ Otho followed the standard of the marquis of Montferrat ; the ample state, which he acquired by a miracle of conduct or fortune, "^ was peaceably inherited by his son and two grandsons,^^ till the family, though not the nation, was changed, by the marriage of an heiress, into the elder branch of tire house of Brienne. The [AD. 1308] son of that marriage. Walter de Brienne, succeeded to the duchy of Athens : and. with the aid of some Catalan mercenaries, whom he invested with fiefs, reduced above thirty castles of the vassal or neighbouring lords. But. when he was informed of the ap- ^"'^or'^ proach and ambition of the great company, he collected a force A d'°i5io°°'' ^^ seven hundred knights, six thousand four hundred horse, and March] eight thousand foot, and boldly met them on the banks of the river Cephisus in Boeotia."* The Catalans amounted to no more than three thousand five hundred horse and four thousand foot; but the deficiency of numbers was compensated by stratagem and order. They formed round their camp an artificial inun- ''■^ He is twice mentioned by Villehardouin with honour (Xo. 151. 235); and under the first passage Ducange observes all that can be known of his person and family. ^ From these Latin princes of the xinh century. Boccace, Chaucer, and Shake- speare have borrowed their Theseus Duke of Athens. [And Dante, Inferno, 12, 17.] An ignorant age transfers its own languaee and manners to the most distant times. [Otto de la Roche had not the ducal title. He called himself sire (not grand sire) or dominus Athenarum. The title is u.4ync K^'^r, in the Chronicle of Morea. The ducal title was first assumed by Guy I. in 1260 with permission of I.ouis IX. of France. Megara v ent along with Athens as a pertinence (cum pertinentia Megaron, in the Act of Partition).] ■^ The same Constantine gave to Sicily a king, to Russia the ma^nus dapifer of the emnire, to Thebes the trimicerius : and these absurd fables are properly lashed by Ducange fad Nicephor. Greg. 1. vii. c. 5). By the Latins, the lord of Thebes was styled, bv corruption, the Megas Kurios, or Grand Sire ! [See last note. He took his title from Athens, not from Thebes.] '- Quocfam miraculo, says Alberic. He was probably received by Michael Choniates, the archbishop who had defended Athens against the tyrant Leo Sgurus ..X). 1204] (Nicetas in Baldwmo [p. 805, ed. Bonn]). Michael was the brother of the historian Nicetas : and his encomium of Athens is still extant in Ms. in the Bodleian Library (Fabric. Bibliot. Grsec. tom. vi. p. 405). [See above, p. 418, note 15. It is supposed that Archbishop Akominatos made conditions of surrender Nvith Boniface. The Western soldiers sacrilegiously pillaged the Parthenon church. Akominatos left Athens after its occupation by De la Roche.] ■^^ FThis should be : nephew, two grand-nephews, and a great -grand-nephew, Guy II. A.D. 1287-1308. Guv TI.'s aunt Isabella had married Hugh de Brienne; Walter de Brienne was their son.] '*[See Ramon Muntaner, chap. 240.]