The Last Athenian Historian: Laonikos Chalkokondyles

Author(s): William Miller

Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 42, Part 1 (1922), pp. 36-49
Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/625934
Accessed: 05-09-2016 07:55 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Cambridge University Press, The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies are
collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Hellenic Studies

This content downloaded from 194.27.125.37 on Mon, 05 Sep 2016 07:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

THE LAST ATHENIAN HISTORIAN: LAONIKOS CHALKOKONDYLES

FROM the Roman to the Turkish conquest of Greece, a period

centuries, Athens produced only three historians: Dexippos, Pra

Laonikos Chalkokondyles. Of the two first only meagre frag

come down to us; indeed, of the three treatises of Praxagoras, T

Athens, composed when he was only nineteen, his History of Co
Great, written at the age of twenty-two, and his maturer study
King of Macedon, only a summary of the second, amounting to

has been preserved by that omnivorous reader, Photios, in

Such juvenile histories cannot, however, have had much greater

prize essays, conspicuous rather for their correctness of style t
seasoned judgment. But we may regret that only thirty-five pa

three works of Dexippos, The Events after the Death of Alexander, T

Epitome, which went as far as the time of Claudius II. in 268, and
Affairs, have survived.1 For Dexippos was an author of a very dif
a man of affairs as well as of letters, the type of historian of w
familiar examples in England in Grote and Macaulay, in Clarendo
A worse writer, but a better general, than his model, Thucydides

the Goths when they invaded Athens, on which occasion a G

urged the sparing of the Athenian libraries, in order that the Ath
unfit themselves for the arts of war by much study of books !
two historians, who flourished, Dexippos in the third, and Praxa
fourth centuries, no Athenian took their place till, in the second
fifteenth, Laonikos Chalkokondyles composed the extant ten bo
history, one of the most interesting and valuable productions of t

Greek intellect.

Laonikos, or Nicholas, Chalkokondyles, was, as he tells us in a sentence

imitated from Thucydides, 'an Athenian,' and a member of the leading Greek
family in the Athens of his day. Unlike the modern diarist, he talks little
about himself; but on July 30 and August 2, 1447, the famous archaeologist
and traveller, Cyriacus of Ancona, mentions meeting at Mistra, the mediaeval
Sparta, then capital of the Greek principality in the South of the Morea, of

which Constantine Palaiologos (subsequently the last Greek Emperor) was

then ruler, the young Athenian, Nicholas Chalkokandyles, son of George,
' egregie latinis atque grecis litteris eruditum.' 2 This can have been none other
than the future historian, of whose surname there were several forms : Chalko-

kandyles (' the man with the brazen candlestick '), Chalkokondyles (' the
2 Miscellanea Ceriani (Milano, 1910),

1 Historici Graeci Minores, i. 165-200,

438-40; Photios, Bibliotheca, codd. 62, 82.

36

pp. 203-4.

This content downloaded from 194.27.125.37 on Mon, 05 Sep 2016 07:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

THE LAST ATHENIAN HISTORIAN 37

man with the brazen pen '), and an abbreviated v

dyles, corrupted in the vernacular into Cha

Athenian optimate,' was, as the historian infor

Melissen4, the Duchess of Athens, wife of its F
Acciajuoli, and therefore connected with one of
families. For the Duchess' father, the lord of A
historic places in the Morea, was great-grandso
had recovered Constantinople from the Latins in
been mentioned as early as 1082. When, in 1435
the ambitious Duchess sent the elder Chalkokond
asking that the government of Athens might b

relative, and offering a large sum as bakshis

have rivals, and in this case the normal rival
antipathy. The Florentine party at Athens an

hostile to Chalkokondyles enticed the Duchess, d

Akropolis and proclaimed a young scion of the A
Duke of Athens. The expulsion of the family o
native city and the marriage of the Dowager D

Duke restored peace to Athens. Meanwhile, G

fared badly at the Porte. The Sultan, despite the

declined to accept the Greek envoy's proposa

demanded the unconditional surrender of the D

to escape to Constantinople, leaving his retinue
behind him. But on the voyage from Constantin
in the Peloponnese, he was captured by an Ath
the Sultan, who pardoned him. This was not hi
Turkish diplomacy. Eleven years later he went o
Constantine to Murad, who imprisoned him at
his son, the historian, was evidently an eye-wi
upon the Hexamilion, or Six-mile Rampart, wh
Corinth.5 But a later writer, Theodore Spandou
in our text of Chalkokondyles, when he describ

Murad II. and as present at the fatal battle o

which he composed his history can be approxim

which he mentions is the capture of Lemnos by
As he speaks of the Venetians as still holding Eu

the Turks in 1470, he must have written be

might perhaps infer from his mention of the Teut

Prussia, that he wrote before 1466, when the secon

them to cede West Prussia to Poland and to hold

The appendix, which exists in some editions, car

1565, is, of course, not his, nor is there any author

that he lived till 1490 or later. If we may belie

3 P. 320 (ed. Bonn).

4 P. 343.

5 P. 344, 8Oeaoa'de9a.

6 Apud Sathas, MvY7ueCza 'EAAhlhrlY cs 'Icrropias,

ix. 261.

7 Pp. 132, 208, 565.

This content downloaded from 194.27.125.37 on Mon, 05 Sep 2016 07:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

38

WILLIAM

the

Greek

most

other

MILLER

doctor,
Greek

Antonios

scholars,

Kalo

left

Gr

was no longer the seat of a Greek

probably in that case have settled

knowledge,

in

the

and

where

revival

of

Demetrios,

learning.

Invi

chair of Greek at Florence, he th

exercised indirectly a profound

his

Medici, Politian mentions him,

out a volume of Questions there, the father of ten children. Even

Grocyn

and

Linacre

were

after the Turkish conquest, however, the family still resided at Athens.

In 1545 a 'Demetris Charkantyles' is mentioned in an inscription in

a convent-farm of the famous monastery of Kaisariane, which was traditionally connected with that family, and the, in Turkish times, far more
prominent Benizeloi. Spon,9 who visited Athens in 1675, found it, however,
'of modest fortune.' ' Stamati Calcondili,' whom he describes as' a descendant
of the historian,' was a small tradesman, who 'had a house under the Castle,'

but 'generally resided at Mistr&.' Still, the Chalkokondylai were long

reckoned among the twelve oldest Athenian families, and belonged to the

Archontes-the first of the four classes into which the Athenians were divided

in Turkish times. The French traveller, Linguet, visited three members of

the family in their 'humble workshop' at Athens in 1729, and a Nicholas

Chalkokondyles was living there in 1883, while a modern street preserves the

surname of the last Athenian historian.10

Chalkokondyles differs from all other Byzantine historians in the choice

of his theme. While they wrote of the Greek Empire, which in his day came
to its end, he wrote of the rise and progress of the young and vigorous Turkish

Empire which had taken its place. He is, in fact, the mediaeval Herodotus
-the historian of that centuries-old duel between Europe and Asia-Graecia
Barbariae lento collisa duello-which began at Troy, was checked at Marathon
and Salamis, renewed on the field of Kossovo and on the ramparts of Constantinople, continued in our time at the battles of Sarantaporon, Kumanovo

and Lil16 Bourgas, and almost finished by the treaty of S'vres. With an

impartiality rare in a part of the world where racial hatred burns so fiercely,
he describes the origin, organisation and triumph of his nation's great enemy,
while he extends his narrative beyond the borders of the Greek Empire, to
the Serbs, the Bosniaks, the Bulgarians and the Roumanians, with interesting
and curious digressions, quite in the style of Herodotus, about the manners
and customs of countries beyond South-Eastern Europe-Hungary, Germany,

Italy, Spain, France and England. This great variety justifies the remark

of a critic, that 'he has the gift of arousing our attention, by inspiring us
with curiosity, and of not letting us fall asleep over his book.'
8 Apud Hopf, Chroniques grico-romanes,
10 Kampouroglos, Mv7ye7a r17s 'Io-roplas
p. 243.
jFy 'A7Ypaloo (ed. 2), i. 305-8; 'AOrn'ar'icb

9 Voyage, [Ital. trans.], p. 425.

'ApXoroA47dov, 11.

This content downloaded from 194.27.125.37 on Mon, 05 Sep 2016 07:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

THE LAST ATHENIAN HISTORIAN 39

Chalkokondyles remarks in his introduction

is about to relate are inferior in importance to
a prophet, for the entry of the Turks into Eu
first permanent settlement in 1353, exactly o
capture of Constantinople, not only completel
peninsula, but created for Western Europe th
which has set nation against nation, caused dir
our modern wars, and still, like a Sphinx, pro

and diplomatists, which none can solve, beca

his narrative with speculation upon the origin

describes how, early in the thirteenth centur
Oghuz, fleeing before the Mongols from its h
Armenia, and ultimately settled on the then fr
in Asia Minor, at Eski-shehr, the ancient Dory
had won a famous victory in 1097 on their wa

where the Greek troops have now established thei

and at Sugut (' the willow '), where Osman, the

race, was born. Thence the Turks spread over
in 1326 and became their capital; Nicaea, the se

the refuge of the Greek Emperors during the Lati

became Turkish in 1330; and the quarrels of t

against Greeks, Serbians against Bulgarians, G
and facilitated the expansion of the young an
Europe.
The historian here dwells upon the prowess of the great Serbian Tsar,
Stephen Dushan, the dominating personality of the Balkan peninsula in the
middle of the fourteenth century, a legislator as well as a conqueror, whose
people he pronounces to be ' the oldest and greatest of the nations of the earth,'

but whose vast and heterogeneous empire, like all Balkan creations, made
too rapidly and too forcibly to be assimilated, was the work of one man and

died with him. There follow the transference of the Turkish capital to
Adrianople and the two fatal Serbian defeats on the Maritza in 1371 and on
the historic field of Kossovo in 1389, with which the first book appropriately
ends. The last fragment of Bulgaria nine years later was completely annihilated and Bulgaria disappeared from the map for nearly five centuries, till
the sword of Russia and the pen of Gladstone called it into existence again in
1878, only to demonstrate in the late war the truth of Bismarck's cynical
saying, that 'liberated nations are not grateful but exacting.' A tributary
Serbian principality lingered on for seventy years after Kossovo on the Danube
by the sufferance of the Sultans; a divided Bosnian kingdom continued to
exist, after the death of its great king, Tvrtko, combining, like Jugoslavia
to-day, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs, Slavs of the interior and a Latin
population in the coast towns, and undermined by the Bogomil heresy, which
preferred the Turk to the Catholic, and by the Slavonic law of succession, which,

by excluding primogeniture, created rival candidatures to the throne at every

vacancy, and surrounded a weak monarch with a too powerful aristocracy.

This content downloaded from 194.27.125.37 on Mon, 05 Sep 2016 07:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

40

WILLIAM

MILLER

Beyond the Danube the Turkis

Wallachia became a tributary pr

attempt

of

impetuosity

Europe

of

the

to

drive

French,

in

th

the

and his new Crusaders at Nikopol

vich, struck the decisive blow f
In vain the Greek Emperor, Man
for the speech which Shakespeare

'As far as to the sepulchr

Forthwith a power of En
remained

pious

wish,

like

that

should 'compound a boy, half F

stantinople [not yet Turkish]
cannot

agree

with

Stubbs,

that

eve

in 'staying the progress of the

honour, like Peter I. of Cyprus n
to Froissart, Edward III. had reg
on the red cross, but must leave
last King of Cilician Armenia, t

of
and

?1000.
the

But

French

the
war

House
from

of

Lan

renewing

in the Holy Land.

The defeat and capture of Bay
ensuing civil war between his so
much space, deferred the comple
the Christians a respite of twen

followed

by

the

further

expa

Joannina became Turkish in 1430

tively, and the tardy Greek rec
expense not of the Turks but of
of Hellenism in its classic home
figure, Hunyad, 'the white knig
Turkish victory at Varna in 144
which the perjured Christians ha
earlier. Another attempt by Hu
fatal field of Kossovo by Rouma
selfishness and mutual jealousy
Hamid II. to divide, and so rule
We have now reached the even

temporary,

and

his

narrative

his aid and our later knowledge,

was the position in the Near Eas

throne.

Our

author

11

has

II P. 8.

This content downloaded from 194.27.125.37 on Mon, 05 Sep 2016 07:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

defin

THE LAST ATHENIAN HISTORIAN 41

H UN GA R

BELGRADE,\\

I + ++s

I
3

++

iTurkish
[:1

Empire

3Venetian

Coloniess

S3a Venetian Families or Dependencies ARCHI PELAGO9 '

Genoese
Chartered
54a
M Knights
of Rhodes
oCerigottoCompany(Maona)
6 1Duchy of Athens (Florerne)Ca

3 C

7 M Neapolitans (Tocco Family)

8 * Albanians (Skanderbeg) 3 K

910 Bosnian Kingdom -

II 0 Duchy of St.Sava (The Herzegovina)

13 t Principality of Wallachia Sca

14F The Zeta(Montenegro) 2p. 2p

I Republic of Ragusa.

THE NEAR EAST IN 1451.

This content downloaded from 194.27.125.37 on Mon, 05 Sep 2016 07:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

42

WILLIAM

eve

of

its

MILLER

fall.

That

once

vast

and a small strip of adjacent ter

Black Sea and Herakleia (the mo
more than that left to Turkey
islands of Imbros and Lemnos (th

war),

which

Sporades,

command

were

all

that

the

mo

remained

and the most important portion w

for the four Venetian colonies of M
the south-west and of Argos and N

Thermisi)

in

the

east.

The

rest

Frankish. Athens was the seat

Venetian, Duchy-for even the
'were glad to be regarded as Ven
treaty of peace with the Turks,
been acquiring insular baronie
dependencies of Butrinto, Str
Phanari), Aegina (just acquired
continental outposts of Lepant
respective mouths of the Gulfs

colonies. Cerigo was partly a Ven

in the Venetian family of Venie
of the Venetian Viari; Paxo, reck
under

the

formed

Islands;

supreme

the

and

jurisdiction

barony

of

Euboea,

one

still

of

of

th

nomi

instituted at the time of the Fra

the Venetian bailie at Chalkis, wh
tive of their suzerain. The Genoe

Thasos,

Samothrace,

the

Thrac

Phocaea) in Asia Minor; the Geno

tered Chios, Samos, Psara and Fo
Bank of St. George (whose palace
Genoa Conference) owned Famag

governed Ikaria. The rest of C

Lusignan. The Neapolitan fami

islands with the three points of

opposite continent; the King of
or 'Castel Rosso,' as it was then
Pope, which the treaty of Sevres
occupied by Italy since 1912, t
belonged to the two Venetian fa
Leipso were practically the un
while Rhodes and the other seven
on the mainland of Asia one cas
the modern Budrum. One indepe

This content downloaded from 194.27.125.37 on Mon, 05 Sep 2016 07:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

THE LAST ATHENIAN HISTORIAN 43

famous for the beauty of its princesses, still su

of the Black Sea, where in our own time a moveme

of an autonomous Greek state of Pontus, and

colonies at Samsun and Samastri.

Such is a picture of the Greek-speaking world two years before the fa

of the Byzantine Empire. Outside those limits a tributary Serbian pri

cipality, already once absorbed but allowed to re-exist till it pleased the Sulta
to end it, lingered on the Danube, and still stretched as far as Podgoritza i
Montenegro. But Belgrade had been ceded to Hungary, and Serbia no longe

possessed an outlet on the Adriatic; the Serbian capital was the castle

Semendria, which still reminds the traveller down the Danube of old George
Brankovich and the last days of mediaeval Serbia. Of the other Slav states,
the Bosnian kingdom, in frequent strife with Serbia over the possession of
the frontier towns, was divided against itself by the King's conversion to

Catholicism and persecution of the Bogomils, who flocked into what ha

recently become 'the Duchy of St. Sava '-the modern Herzegovina, through
the assumption of the ducal title by the powerful noble, Stephen Vuktchich
but what Chalkokondyles calls 'the land of Sandales,' 12 from Vuktchich's
uncle and predecessor, Sandalj Hranich, and whose inhabitants he describes

as Koudougeroi, or Bogomils. The latter half of this word (used also by

the Patriarch Gennadios) is perhaps a translation of the Serbian Staratz (' old

man ')-the title of a Bogomil official. Montenegro was just beginning i

glorious, but now ended, career under Stephen. Crnojevich; Skanderbeg sti
held out in Albania,. where Venice maintained colonies at Alessio, Drivasto,

Dagno, Satti, Scutari, Durazzo, Antivari and Dulcigno. Practically all th

Dalmatian coast was Venetian, broken only by the independent Republ

of Ragusa, while the smaller Slavonic Republic of Poljica was under Venetia
protection. Ragusa excited the admiration of the Athenian by its excellent
aristocratic government and the fine buildings which adorned the city, ' obscure

perhaps in glory, but a good nursing-mother of shrewd men.' Ragusa was,

indeed, called 'the Slavonic Athens.'
Chalkokondyles gives us a long and graphic account of the capture of Constantinople, of the block at the gate of St. Romanos, of the massacre in St
Sophia; he is sufficiently superstitious to repeat the popular conviction tha
its fall was a punishment for that of Troy, and wonders that some people
disbelieve the Sibylline oracle, which omitted from the list of Emperors and
Patriarchs the last Constantine and Joseph II., who died during the Counci
of Florence and whom he erroneously calls Gregorios. He describes at great
length, as is natural in one intimately acquainted with the country and the
people, and who, as in the case of the massacre at Leondari, had his account
from eye-witnesses, the final destruction of the Greek rule over the More
and of the Florentine Duchy of Athens; he narrates the end of the Empire
of Trebizond (the memory of which lingered on in Rabelais 13 in the next
century and in Pdrez Gald6s in the last) and of the domain of the Gattilus
12 Pp. 248-49, 531, 533, 534, 540, 543.

13 Bk. i. ch. 33; P6rez Gald6s, Trafalgar,

p. 5.

This content downloaded from 194.27.125.37 on Mon, 05 Sep 2016 07:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

44

WILLIAM

MILLER

the annihilation of all that remai

And he puts into the mouth of C
against the Turks in 1463, in whi
the Republic for not having help

having

assisted

the

Despots

of

abandonment of them one after

disgrace to us among other Euro
of the same religion as ourselves
These words might have been ad
thirty years to certain Great Po

populations
"affairs.'

of

Such

Athenian

Turkey

was

closed

the

his

may

be

gloomy

history.

sit

resurrection. Writing, probably

foresaw the day when a Greek k
loins should rule over 'no mean k
should gather together and gover
in a manner to secure happiness a
Greek kingdom, established in 1
but four times enlarged since th

last

Athenian

historian's

rema

April the massacre of Chios conv

no longer live under the Turks.

Chalkokondyles

had

carefully

helped the Turks to conquer thei

of the Turkish financial system
He considers the Turks as the on
commissariat in time of war; he m

that a Roumanian
Constantinople; he

religion;

he

was Mohamm
shows no trac

alludes

great

speed

of

the

travel

from

the

to

the

Sultan's

Morea

to

fata

messe

Adrianop

and says that in the art of rope

does he show the least Chauvinis
Greek soil. He mentions the Slavs
of the Roumanians beyond the D
their rulers,' he truly says that
so corrupt that Italians would un
idea of their origin. But he writ

prince,

Vlad

'the

Empaler,'

wh

the admiration of Mohammed II.

and he celebrates the prowess of
baffled

In
14 P. 549.

him

as

dealing,
15 P. 4.

so

many

others.

therefore,

16 Pp. 361, 383, 435, 504.

with

17 Pp. 35, 319.

This content downloaded from 194.27.125.37 on Mon, 05 Sep 2016 07:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

the

THE LAST ATHENIAN HISTORIAN 45

There is in him none of that vehement hatred of the Latins which characterises

the pages in which Niketas, with whom in point of interest he may be compared, displays his hatred for the Latin conquerors, masquerading as Crusaders,
who seized and sacked Constantinople. This is all the more creditable, because
his family had been expelled from Florentine Athens, just as Niketas had had
to flee from Latin Constantinople. There is more objectivity in his narrative
than in that of his contemporary, Phrantzes. He lacks the vanity of Anna
Comnena, nor is his history an apologia pro vitd sud, like that of Cantacuzene.
The lack of theological discussions and digressions marks him off from Nikephoros Gregoras and most of the other Byzantine historians. And the period
in Balkan history of which he wrote was the most thrilling known except.
our own.

Like a modern Athenian, this fifteenth-century sc

interested in 'Europe.' Before our author the only me
who had treated of our country was Procopius, nine
whom the British isles were a mythical country, as un
Blest. He describes England as the abode of departe
from the opposite coast by fishermen, who, instead of

melancholy office. Julian the Apostate, two centu

had described, from personal residence, a severe wint

blocks of ice in the Seine, the lack of central heating
the walls which filled his head with fumes when a fire
a contemporary of Chalkokondyles, whose daughter,
the curious novel of Neale, is represented as marryin
alludes to the British as practising polygamy.
The visit of the Emperor Manuel II. to France and
1401, in the hope of obtaining aid against the Turks,
excuse for digressions on the manners and customs of
upon information brought back by some one in the E
handed down orally to the next generation. He des

the time of Henry IV. as 'a numerous and strong r

and rich cities and very many villages.' He know

excelling in power all the cities in this island, and in

things second to no city of the West, and in courage and

to its neighbours and to many other Western cities,' is th

to which 'not a few principalities are subject; for the

deprive any of these princes of his principality, nor do
the king contrariwise to their customs; and in this i
not a few disasters, when the princes came into disag
and with one another '-an accurate summary of the r

Crown and the feudal baronage during the Planta

dynasties. England, he adds, produces no wine nor, in

wheat and barley and honey. Its wool is the best in t
in manufacturing large quantities of clothing; the lan
resembles none other; their dress, manners and mod
as those of the French. There follows a passage about

This content downloaded from 194.27.125.37 on Mon, 05 Sep 2016 07:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

46

WILLIAM

owing

to

MILLER

mistranslation

in

th

scandalised English readers who t

hand from Burton or Gibbon. Bu
and a gentleman, has shown 18 th
two verbs in the text, and has v
brought against them. According
as follows: 'Their treatment of t
France), so that throughout the
friend's house, the lady of the ho
mark of welcome. And in the str
wives to their friends. And it is
daughters to be kissed.' That this
proved by two passages, one of th
England in 1545, and who wrote

and

absence

of

jealousy

in

their

those who are of the same family

salutations and embraces, but eve

And

to

themselves

this

appears

who first visited England in 14

custom which cannot be too mu

visit the girls all kiss you. They k

you go away; and they kiss you a
it is all kisses; and, my dear Faus
fragrant those lips are, you would
of social life, even so innocent a c
acquaintance met on a walk, wou
ordinary, owing to the complete

and

others,

Byzantine

women

places in Greece where the women

only in Greece that the independe
Saxon girl arouse the occasional su
The Athenian writer admits th
with a great opinion of themselve
Western nations. They claim to be
be; but have given up somewhat o

their territory and besieged Pa

England and France he has some

Calais by Edward III. in 1347, and

he supposes to have died in war.
evidently conceals the battle of A
and mistook for Chagrincourt.21

of Corcyra
(Ed. dtudes
Cramer, J. A., grecqu
18 Sp. Moraitis in Nucius
Revue
des
London, 1841),
p. 10.
(1888), i. 94-98, who
shows
that Kaoavr
20 Epist.
65. To Anderlin (Ed.
Froude,
aorist participle of
icwVevi
('to
kiss ')
1895).
K;eeaL
passive
infinitive
of
KVerL
(als
kiss ').
19

The

second

21 P. 91, rp Xtr7ns 7rEir..

book of the travels

This content downloaded from 194.27.125.37 on Mon, 05 Sep 2016 07:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

of

Nican

THE LAST ATHENIAN HISTORIAN 47

Italian; he speaks of the wealth of Paris, and

the wonderful bridge of Avignon.

Germany he considers the best governed of
countries, and invincible, if it were unanimou
prophecy falsified by recent events. The Germa

at mechanical work, and some think that th

heard of the prevalence of duelling among them

Order of Knights in Prussia. Prussia, he has

'very beautiful and well-ordered cities.' He
Hungarians, whose language, he finds, 'resemb
are foreigners, as they, in fact, had been since

of Arpid in 1301. About the Bohemians he t

only recently ceased worshipping the sun and fire

to Capistran, the famous Franciscan, who play

defending Belgrade against the Turks in 1456,
had converted the Georgians. This may perhap

rising of the Bohemian Taborites, a Hussite

mountain which they called Tabor, reached th

Slovak Minister to the Quirinal, M. Kybal, hims
informs me that there is no foundation for this
among his countrymen.
Of all Western countries the author devotes

which he had collected much information either first-hand or from his brother

and others. Venice, whose constitution he describes, excels all Italian cities
in the magnificence of the palaces and in their construction on the sea. After
Venice the richest Italian city is Florence, being both a commercial and an agri-

cultural centre; while its inhabitants are thought to surpass all other Italians in
intelligence and its women in beauty. Bologna, even in those days, before
the conflicts of Communists and Fascisti, had a reputation for turbulence, but
also for learning. Genoa, whose name he derives not from genu (owing to
the formation of the coast), but from janua, as being 'the door' of Italy, he
defines as neither a democracy nor an aristocracy, but a mixture of the two.
The two great local families are the Doria and Spinola, but the rulers are
usually either an Adorno or a Fregoso. He realises the weakness of mediaeval

Genoa-its division into rival parties, one French, one Italian. He was

specially well-informed about Milan, although it requires some ingenuity to

recognise in the dynasty of the Mariangeloi the Visconti, whose representative

then bore the names of Filippo Maria, whereas we easily discover in the
Klimakioi of Verona a Greek translation of the Scaligeri. His translation
of Fortebraccio as Bpaxv`, (' short') is less successful. He has heard much
about the Papacy. He believes the legend of Pope Joan, which one of his
modern compatriots, Roides, has made the subject of perhaps the best-known
Greek novel; and he alludes to the prophecies of a certain sage, named Joachim.
about the Popes, meaning the Calabrian Abbot, Gioacchino de Flore, who lived

in the thirteenth century. He gives a curious account of a Conclave: the

22 Pp. 133, 419, 425, 468. English Historical Review (1892), vii. 235-52.

This content downloaded from 194.27.125.37 on Mon, 05 Sep 2016 07:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

48

WILLIAM

MILLER

' grand electors' to the Papacy a

and the Orsini, but the Cardina

an

outsider

and

upon election
the elect. But

Ghibellines.

therefore

he regards as a si
he is baffled by t

Nor

is

he

always

Calixtus III. 'Eusebios.' Of Cardinal Bessarion he remarks, that in natural

intelligence he excelled all the Greeks, that his judgment was excellent, and
that he was second to none in Greek and Roman learning. Thus, the Turkish
history of Chalkokondyles is really a survey of Europe from the Greek standpoint

shortly after the fall of Constantinople. Like all universal historians, the
author was variously informed according to the nearness or remoteness of
the country described. He is a first-hand authority for Greece, shows great
knowledge of Serbian, Bosnian and Turkish affairs, and has a fair acquaintance
with nations farther afield, especially with Italy.
Of his predecessor, Dexippos, it was remarked by Photios that he was

'a second, but a somewhat clearer, Thucydides'; of our author it may be

said that he was a mediaeval Herodotus, although he does not write in the
Ionic dialect. Like most Byzantine historians, he writes in the literary, not

the vulgar, language, and has the tiresome and pedantic habit of calling
mediaeval races by ancient names, the Bulgarians ' Moesians' and the Serbs

' Triballians'; but his reader must at times throw classical syntax to the

winds. With that premise, his language is not difficult, but there is no writer
in the Bonn edition of Byzantine historians who has suffered so much from

the infamous Latin translation appended to the text. The Bonn edition of
Chalkokondyles bears the great name of Immanuel Bekker, but the translator
was not only ignorant of some of the easiest Greek words, but was totally
devoid of any knowledge of Balkan history and, therefore, unable to identify
many of the Slav proper names which lurk beneath the Greek declensions of
the classically minded Athenian, just as in the modern Greek newspaper it
requires some knowledge of foreign politics to make out the names of Western
statesmen and publicists, like Mr. Bonar Law, or the late J. D. Bourchier, in
their Greek dress, or to realise that the Tribuna is the B4za and the Morning
Post the'EwOw6Lv TaXv3pd6'ov. A new edition of Chalkokondyles with historical

notes by some one familiar with Balkan history would throw much light upon

a period of history which, if for the Greek Emnpire be substituted the Turkish,

presents a striking similarity with our own. For the Greek and Slav states, of

which Chalkokondyles witnessed the fall, have arisen to fresh life, while Turkey,

whose triumph he described, has for most practical purposes retired to that
continent whence she came to encamp-for it was only a long encampment-

in the Balkan peninsula now since 1919, and the disappearance of Austria
from Bosnia and the Herzegovina recognised as belonging exclusively 'to the
Balkan peoples,' just as the Iberian to the Spanish and Portuguese, and the

Italian to the Italians.

Following the practice of Herodotus and Thucydides, Chalkokondyles

fond of putting speeches, sometimes of considerable length, into the mou

This content downloaded from 194.27.125.37 on Mon, 05 Sep 2016 07:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

THE LAST ATHENIAN HISTORIAN 49

of historical characters. These orations, given

reports of what passes within a papal conc

Supreme Council by special correspondents; t
pleasing, no doubt, to the reader, who likes to
person, but not true. They have, however, t
to journalists, of enabling the author to put
policy through the medium of some importan
mands respect, just as it is usual to attribute
(in many cases incapable of having told them

is humbler.

For us to-day the last of the Athenian historians has a message, and it is

this: that the discord of the Eastern Christians and the selfishness of the

Great Powers brought the Turks into Europe and kept them there; and tha
to use their own phraseology, it was 'fated' that one day they should quit
it for their own continent. As the late Lord Salisbury once said, Christia
territory, once emancipated from Turkey, cannot be restored to it, becau
the Turkish Government has shown that it cannot govern, as some others c
govern, races of another religion. The history of every Balkan State tells
that tale; and on every occasion when diplomacy with its half-measures a
its stop-gap compromises which please no one, neglects the eternal process
of history, the latter has been proved to be right.
WILLIAM MILLER.

J.H.S.-VOL.

XLII.

This content downloaded from 194.27.125.37 on Mon, 05 Sep 2016 07:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms