OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 417 undertook to reduce and maintain. And thus it was that the family of Sanut acquired the duchy of Naxos, which involved the greatest part of the Archipelago. For the price of ten thou- sand marks the republic purchased of the marquis of Mont- ferrat the fertile island of Crete, or Candia, with the ruins of an hundred cities ; ^^ but its improvement was stinted by the proud and narrow spirit of an aristocracy ; ^^ and the wisest senators would confess that the sea, not the land, was the treasury of St. Mark. In the moiety of the adventurers, the marquis Boniface might claim the most liberal reward ; and, besides the isle of Crete, his exclusion from the throne was compensated by the royal title and the provinces beyond the Hellespont. But he prudently exchanged that distant and difficult conquest for the kingdom of Thessalonica, or Macedonia, twelve days' journey from the capital, where he might be supported by the neigh- bouring powers of his brother-in-law the king of Hungary. ^^ His progress was hailed by the voluntary or reluctant acclama- tions of the natives ; and Greece, the proper and ancient Greece, again received a Latin conqueror,^'* Avho trod with indifference that classic ground. He viewed with a careless eye the beau- ties of the valley of Tempe ; traversed with a cautious step the 11 Boniface sold the isle of Candia, Aug. 12, a.d. 1204. See the acts in Sanuto, P- 533 i but I cannot understand how it could be his mother's portion, or how she could be the daughter of an emperor Alexius. [Boniface's Refutatio Cretis is printed in Tafel u. Thomas, Urkunden, 512, and in Buchon, Recherches et Mat^- riaux, i. 10. Crete had been formally promised him by the young Alexius. He seems to have claimed Thessalonica on the ground that his brother had been created king of Thessalonica by Manuel, see above, p. 372. The erection of the kingdom of Thessalonica was by no means agreeable to Baldwin ; it threatened, weakened, and perhaps ruined the Empire of Romania. It was nearly coming to war between Baldwin and Boniface, but the Doge persuaded Baldwin to yield.] 12 In the year 1212, the doge Peter Zani sent a colony to Candia, drawn from every quarter of Venice. But, in their savage manners and frequent rebellions, the Candiots may be compared to the Corsicans under the yoke of Genoa ; and, when I compare the accounts of Belon and Tournefort, I cannot discern much difference between the Venetian and the Turkish island. I [He married Margaret, widow of Isaac Angelus.] !•* Villehardouin (No. 159, 160, 173-177) and Nicetas (p. 387-394) describe the expedition into Greece of the marquis Boniface. The Choniate might derive his information from his brother Michael, archbishop of Athens, whom he pamts as an orator, a statesman, and a saint. His encomium of Athens, and the description of Tempe, should be published from the Bodleian Ms. of Nicetas (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 405), and would have deserved Mr. Harris's inquiries. [The works of Michael Akominatos have been published in a full edition by S. Lampros (1879-80, 2 vols.). The dirge on Athens had been already published by Bois- sonade in .- ecdota Graeca, 5, p. 373 sqq. (1833). Gregorovius in his Ges'ch. der Stadt Athcn im Mittelalter (where he draws a most interesting sketch of Akomina- tos in caps. 7 and 8) gives specimens of a German translation of the dirge, p. 243-4] VOL. VI. 27
