Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/519

 I OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 497 gratitude, perhaps he would have acted with pure and zealous fidelity in the service of his pupil. "^^ A guard of five hundred soldiers watched over his person and the palace ; the funeral of the late emperor was decently performed ; the capital was silent and submissive ; and five hundred letters, which Cantacu- zene dispatched in the fii'st month, informed the provinces of their loss and their duty. The prospect of a tranquil minority i,y ^po was blasted by the Great Duke or Admiral Apocaucus ; and, to '^*°'^'" exaggerate his perfidy, the Imperial historian is pleased to mag- nify his own imprudence in raising hiin to that office against the advice of his more sagacious sovereign. Bold and subtle, rapacious and profuse, the avarice and ambition of Apocaucus were by turns subservient to each other ; and his talents were applied to the ruin of his country. His arrogance was height- ened by the command of a naval foi'ce and an impregnable castle, and, under the mask of oaths and flattery, he secretly conspired against his benefactor. The female court of the em- press was bribed and directed ; he encouraged Amie of Savoy to assert, by the law of nature, the tutelage of her son ; the by the em- love of power was disguised by the anxiety of maternal ten- salfoy ""^ ° derness ; and the founder of the Palaeologi had instructed his posterity to dread the example of a perfidious guardian. The patriarch John of Apri was a proud and feeble old man, encom-bythe passed by a numerous and hungry kindred. He produced an obsolete epistle of Andronicus, which bequeathed the prince and people to his pious care : the fate of his predecessor Ar- senius prompted him to prevent, rather than punish, the crimes of an usurper ; and Apocaucus smiled at the success of his own flattery, when he beheld the Byzantine priest assuming the state and temporal claims of the Roman pontiff.'^'' Between three persons so different in their situation and character, a private league was concluded : a shadow of authority Avas re- stored to the senate ; and the people was tempted by the name of freedom. By this powerful confederacy, the great domestic was assaulted at first with clandestine, at length with open, arms. His prerogatives were disputed; his opinions slighted; his friends 25 See the regency and reign of John Cantacuzenus, and the whole progress of the civil war, in his own history (1. iii. c. i-ioo, p. 348-700), and in that of Nice- phorus Gregoras (1. xii. c. i — 1. xv. c. 9, p. 353-492). 26 He assumed the royal privilege of red shoes or buskins ; placed on his head a mitre of silk and gold ; subscribed his epistles with hyacinth or green ink ; and claimed for the new, whatever Constantine had given to the ancient, Rome (Canta- cuzen. 1. iii. c. 36 ; Nic. Gregoras, 1. xiv. c. 3). VOL. VI, 32