Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/364

 366 THE VENETIAN REVIVAL IN GREECE July the Holy Sepulchre had many possessions in Attica during the Turkish period and still possesses property near the so-called Anaphidtika at Athens — wrote to them, congratulating them on having so wise and noble a hierarch, and bidding them for the honour of their famous city cast out scandals from their midst.^ Meletios was especially anxious to keep out of a quarrel between his flock and the representative of the voivode, at that time an absentee, whose exactions provoked an Athenian deputation to Constantinople in 1712, headed by Demetrios Palaiologos, a local notable skilled in Turkish, a rare accomplishment among the Athenian Christians, for most of their Turkish fellow citizens spoke Greek. The chief of the black eunuchs, to whom Athens still belonged, not only deposed his voivode, but, taking from his secretary's girdle his silver ink-horn, handed it to Palaiologos with the words, ' Take this ink-horn and from to-day I appoint thee voivode of Athens.' This was the first and last occasion on which a rayah was made voivode of Athens. The local Turks and the local Christian notables alike were furious at being governed by a Christian, and the former assassinated him in the house of his kinsman, Palaiologos Benizelos.^ Monemvasia was the last durable acquisition of Venice during the war. In 1691 the island fortress of Grabusa, off the north- western extremity of Crete, was betrayed by two Neapolitan officers in the Venetian service ; next year an attempt to take Canea was frustrated by the old Venetian fortifications, once erected against the Turks. Liberakes raided the Morea, but the Moreote Greeks did not rise, as he had led his Turkish patrons to expect, and the fear of being cut off by the disembarkation of a Venetian force at the isthmus made the raiders soon retire. In 1693 Morosini resumed the command, but his only acts were to refortify the castle of Aegina, which he had demolished during the Cretan war in 1655, the cost of upkeep being paid, as long as the war lasted, by the Athenians, and to place it and Salamis under Malipiero as governor.^ This led the Athenians to send him a request for the renewal of Venetian protection and an offer of an annual tribute. His death at Nauplia in 1694 caused the appointment of Zeno, then governor of the Morea, as his successor. Zeno easily accomplished the capture of the rich island of Chios, but in the following year the island was abandoned. The Greek population was more favourable to the Moslems than to the catholic Venetians, especially as the presence of the archbishop of Naxos on board the fleet was interpreted as an intention to ' Kampouroglos, Wtnjftfta, ii. 339 ; Konstantinides, 'laropia tSv 'rivSjv (ed. 2), p. 494, n. 1. • J. Benizelos, 'laropia rStv 'AOrjySjy apxtd Philadelpheus, ii. 273. • Oanoni, L 432-4, 509-10 ; AcXtiV, v. 526.