Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/357

 1920 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE 349 unconditional surrender, but that Koenigsmark pointed out the importance of having possession of the Akropolis and the proved difficulty of taking so strong a position by force. Accordingly, he unwillingly granted them five days, at the end of which all the Turks were to evacuate the fortress with only what they could carry on their backs, leaving to the victors their horses, arms, Christian slaves, and Moors. To prevent their joining their comrades at Negroponte, they were to proceed to Smyrna at their own expense on board three Ragusan and two French vessels and an English pink, then in the Piraeus. These terms were settled on the 29th. The lion-banner of St. Mark was at once hoisted on the Propylaea, and punctually, on 4 October, about 3,000 Turks, including 500 soldiers, embarked. More than 300 others remained behind and were baptized Christians. Despite Morosini's and Koenigsmark's express orders the exiles were insulted by the officers and soldiers of the auxiliaries on their way down to the Piraeus, and some of their women and children, as well as their bundles, were taken from them. Count Tomaso Pompei ^ was appointed governor of ' the castle ' with a Venetian garrison, while the rest of the Venetians and the auxiliaries were quartered in the town below. Morosini himself was anxious to attack Negroponte at once, while the Turks were still dismayed at the loss of Athens ; but Koenigsmark argued that they had not sufficient forces to take that island. As the Morea was visited by a serious epidemic, it was decided to go back upon the plans fixed in the council at Corinth, and to pass the winter at Athens. To ensure communications with the sea, part of the famous Long Walls was sacrificed to build three redoubts on the way down to the Piraeus, and a wall and ditch were drawn from Porto Leone to the bay of Phaleron, to serve as an entrenched camp in case of need. During these excavations ancient copper coins, vases, and lamps were discovered. Athens had, therefore, become for the third, the Akropolis for the second time, Venetian, for Venice had occupied both town and castle from 1394 to 1402 and the town in 1466, and it is interesting to see what impression the famous city made upon the captors. One of Morosini's officers wrote that he ' fell into an ecstasy ' on gazing upon the magnificence of the Parthenon even in its ruin, and his secretary, Locatelli, devotes ten pages to the antiquities of Athens. Both he and two other officers mention some of the classic buildings by the popular names current for centuries, some of them since the time of the Turkish, some even since that of the Prankish conquest. These descriptions, evidently based on the tales of the local guides, allude to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which then had seventeen
 * Locatelli, ii. 8 ; Morosini's dispatch apvd Laborde, ii. 162.