Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/363

 1920 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE 355 Maina and leader against the Venetians. The ' first Christian prince of Greece ' had served as a youth in the Venetian fleet ; he had then turned pirate, and had during the Cretan war acted as a Turkish instrument in his native land. He now addressed a proclamation to the Athenian exiles in Salamis and Aegina, bidding them return to their homes and telling them that he was authorized by the sultan to grant them an amnesty, at the same time threatening those who disobeyed his orders with condign punishment at his hands. ^ Under these circumstances they thought it best to come to terms with their former masters. The superstitious among them attributed the plague, the famine, the drought, and the Turkish raids upon their vineyards on the Continent opposite Salamis to the curse of the oecumenical patriarch. To him, therefore, they addressed an appeal, drawn up by the school- master, Argyros Benaldes, describing in high-flown language their pitiable condition and imploring with deep humility his forgiveness,^ The patriarch relented, and, probably owing to his mediation, the Athenian refugees were allowed, in 1690, to return. Several of the principal families, however, remained in voluntary exile, and their property was put up to auction and bought by a group of leading Athenians ; many Athenian Greeks stayed at Nauplia till its recapture by the Turks in 1715. Nor did all the Athenian Turks who had gone to Asia Minor return ; in 1705 the town contained only 300 Turkish families. The population was, therefore, smaller and the material prosperity less than before the Venetian conquest. Great damage had been done during the ' three years ' of exile in Salamis ; most of the houses had fallen, the raiders had burned the trees, and to their fires is attributed the blackening of Hadrian's Porch. In order to facilitate the economic recovery of Athens, the sultan allowed it to be free from taxes for three years ; the fortifications of the Akropolis were repaired, as a pompous Turkish inscription on the old Turkish entrance, dated 1708, long testified, while a small mosque (which collapsed in 1842) was erected within the Parthenon out of the ruins caused by the besiegers' bomb.^ Greek education, which had languished at Athens since Benaldes had been appointed schoolmaster at Nauplia and then at Patras, was revived by the opening of a school in 1714, while the appoint- ment of the learned geographer, Meletios, as metropolitan, gave to Athens a patron of culture. But the reinstated exiles fell to intriguing and quarrelling among themselves over their metro- politan to such a degree that the patriarch of Jerusalem — ^for i. 365. A a2
 * Locatelli, ii. 109, 164, 247 ; Garzoni, Istoriadella Repvbblica di Venezia (ed. 1720)^
 * Kampouroglos, Hlvrjutta, i. 34-6. * Ibid. i. 211 ; Philadelpheus, ii. 62.