Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/362

 354 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July of Justinian. The poorest went to Corinth, while the leading families were scattered about the Morea, the Benizeloi at Patras, the Limponai at Coron, Peroules at Nauplia, and Dousmanes at Gastouni in Elis. The last-named received for his services to Venice several grants of land and the title of Cavaliere di San Marco ; his family subsequently became counts and migrated to Corfii, where fifty years ago one of them published an Italian account of Gladstone's famous mission. To other Athenian notables, who had been specially useful to them, the Venetians also gave money or titles, a pension to the ex-metropolitan Jacob as compensation for his punishment by the patriarch, the title of count to the schoolmaster Benaldes, to another scholarly Athenian, Joannes Macola, the translator of Ovid's Metamorphoses and Justin's History, to Taronites for his sub- sequent services at the siege of Nauplia, and to Venizelos Rhoides. Indeed, so well were these Athenian refugees treated, that a geographical shibboleth was devised to discriminate between the genuine and the pseudo-exiles from Athens.^ To the 662 Athenian families which entered the Morea, the Venetian authorities assigned lands, vineyards, olive-trees, houses, shops, and gardens in proportion to the supposed requirements of the four classes into which Athenian society was then divided. An official Venetian report of 1701 praises their industry in trade, but remarks that ' not even the common folk among them were inclined to work on the land', and extols their 'subtle intelligence', adding that they desired to return to Athens, although the town was once more under Turkish rule, while at the same time retain- ing their Moreote property.^ Athens was the climax of Morosini's Greek career. On board his galley at Poros he received the news of his election as doge, but his first ducal enterprise, the siege of Negroponte, not only failed, despite the rising of northern Greece against the Turks, but cost the lives of Koenigsmark by fever and of Peter Gaspari, leader of the Athenian volunteers. This was the last big event of the war. The German auxiliaries left Greece ; Morosini, recalled home by fever and the duties of his new office, left to his successor, Cornaro, the task of completing the conquest of the Morea by starving out the impregnable rock of Monemvasia in 1690 ; meanwhile a military revolution at Constantinople had placed a weak sultan on the throne and a strong minister, the third of the Kiuprili dynasty, in power. The latter's first act was to conciliate the Christians, and to appoint a Mainate, Liberakes Gerakares, then a prisoner in the arsenal, as bey of ' Mateses, loc. cit. ; Locatelli, ii. 50; Kampouroglos, Mrjjufta, i. 189, 296 ; 'laropia, i. 343 ; iii. 266, » AtKriov, V. 457 ; Lamproe, 'laropucci McXcnj/uxTxi, p. 217.