Nauplion Christmas

This was our Christmas in Nauplion 38 years ago, when my children were younger than my grandchildren are now, and when Greece was an endearingly different world: when most people had little money instead of being attacked by incompetent government, when the old town was full of homes instead of little pink hotels, when the ringing we heard was the hourly bell instead of cell phones, when the voices of children were heard in the streets, and when we met neighbors taking their lunches to be cooked in the bakery ovens. It is a world that has disappeared more completely than Dicken's London, because that world is good for seasonal merchandise and Nauplion of the 70s has had no literary genius.  Greeks will remember a different Christmas: this was ours seen from the culture of Washington, DC.

* * * * * * * *

It rained relentlessly for the first three weeks of December, and during those same three, there was no mail. We felt abandoned.  There were no Christmas carols played in Nauplion stores, no crass commercialization, no blatant attempts to blackmail us into buying presents we did not need, no cranberries, no cider, no fireplaces. No anticipating the Christmas Eve party where the grownups wore evening dress, or Vespers at the cathedral, no driving around the North Capitol Street neighborhood to look at lights. And no Christmas trees.

As far as we had been able to learn, Christmas trees were available only in Athens and there at high prices. Then the younger girls ran up the stairs crying out that one of the tourist hotels had just brought a tree in its front door. At the hotel, the desk clerk said the tree had come from the florist shop in Argos opposite the bus stop. We were on the next bus to Argos. The florist said to come back after 2:30, when his tree delivery was to arrive. We had lunch in one of the venerable old restaurants on the town square, a cavernous grey room, hung with enormous fading photographs of stern Greek royalties. The other patrons seemed to all be very old men who smoked a great deal and watched us closely. We ate hurriedly and went out to see the newest diggings.

It is the misfortune of the residents of Argos to live on a site inhabited without interruption for six thousand years, and given special attention by the Romans. Every time someone wanted to build a house, add an extra room or storage shed, or do something to the garage, they dug up another Roman relic. Legally, all such discoveries were to be reported to the Ephor of Antiquities and the site properly investigated before any more building. A proper investigation might not come for years, and the land could then be appropriated by the government at its own evaluation. Anyone with any sense at all, of course, followed the advice of the Duke of Wellington and buried the damn thing immediately. Still, it did happen that something was embroiled in official attention, and every visit to Argos turned up a dig or two worth looking at.

Just after 2:30, the florist had a load of trees, each of them perfect, each bearing a lead government seal. Christmas trees in Greece came from government plantations. Those approved for sale were marked, and possession of an unmarked tree could mean a year in jail. The previous Christmas, Jorn and Erika, from South Africa, had  suggested we go in their van to a tree plantation and liberate our own trees. We went to a ski resort down in the Peloponnesos on the slopes of Menelaion. It was a splendid day, the snow was knee-deep and the children raced about throwing snowballs with Erika, and watching for approaching traffic. Jorn and I, stumbling with saws and implements hidden in our boots and sleeves, slid into snow-covered crevices looking for trees. Sawing through tree trunks was more difficult than we had anticipated, and after we had slipped into more crevices taking the trees back to the road, we crouched behind rocks until Erika signaled that it was safe to dash to the van with our trees. Crossing the plain of Tripolis coming home, we bought large sacks of potatoes and walnuts. That was last year.

In Argos we selected an elegant silver fir which cost three times what I had ever paid for a tree, and walked it to the bus stop where it waited in line with us for tickets. The other passengers and the passers-by admired it so generously that we began to feel we were performing a social service. The bus driver, however, adamantly refused to put the tree into his empty luggage compartment. Should I have had any doubts on the matter, he explained that he had never transported trees and never would. I shoved the children on the bus where two of them immediately began to cry with a moderate degree of sincerity. In those days Greeks could not abide seeing children cry, especially blond children. The passengers on the bus began shouting at the driver. He shouted at the bystanders on the sidewalk and pointed at me and the tree. I fancied I bore a certain resemblance to Joan of Arc carrying her own stake. The bystanders shouted at each other and the tree and the bus, and I had the hopeful impression that the driver was very close to being lynched. He must have had a similar impression, for he abruptly decided the tree could ride in the luggage carrier on top of the bus.

For the twenty minutes back to Nauplion, I watched the shadow of the tree in the low afternoon light ripple along the side of the road. The shadow rippled over the reed thatch on the roadside stands hung with bunches of oranges, it rippled across the great stones of Tiryns, and it rippled over the yellow prison walls. In Nauplion, we walked our tree home, supporting it with arms through the branches as if it were an unsteady friend, pausing constantly for it to be admired. 

We have always collected decorations, each decoration bearing a memory to be recounted every year during the decorating: a china bell from Irene's godmother; the gold birds from the Christmas I was pregnant with Kathleen; the straw stars made by my father's German POWs; a glass unicorn made one Midsummer's Eve on the Boardwalk at Ocean City; a Robert Kennedy button, Jan's red paper dolls from Denmark (the last remnants above). We added tiny Greek dolls and icons, and Diana Stravouradis brought a dozen sugar mice from Wales. Elias, Arete, Apostolos, Evangelitsa,Yannis, Sophia, Michaelis, Costas, Maritsa, all saw the lights from the street and came up to admire. "Afto inai oreio. Inai kalo." It is beautiful, it is good. Strangers knocked on the door and asked if they might bring their children who had never seen a Christmas tree before. The next day we cycled to the far side of Palamidi – now gnawed up by roads and houses – to collect armfuls of heather, narcissus and pine. We put tall beeswax candles and crêches in the window alcoves – Irene's from Nigeria (still with us this Christmas), Kathleen's from Mexico, Rosalind's from Germany.

Abruptly, Nauplion prepared for Christmas. Soldiers from the local army base set up a life-sized crêche with Byzantine-style figures in the main square, in front of the Venetian armory. Beside it they put a fishing boat hung with colored lights: there was always a competition to have one's boat chosen. Agios Vasilios brings gifts at New Year's in his boat. The windows on the main streets were heaped with sweets in shiny colored papers and boxes. The dark, narrow shops on the side streets smelling of chocolate and oranges – now all become boutiques – were crammed with shiny things piled on the counters and hanging from the ceiling like stalagtites.

The hunchbacked fiddler from across the bay strolled up and down the main streets, fiddling a carol over and over. We went over to him, he said the children were beautiful, then spat to protect them from the Evil Eye. The gypsies came to town.  An aged woman sat near the post office asking for contributions, her grown idiot son sprawled inertly across her lap, the two making a hideous pietà, . A man led a muzzled bear cub about on a rope. When he bashed its feet with a stick, it lifted them up and down: this was dancing. When poked with a stick, it growled: this demonstrated ferocity, and observers squealed. A teen-aged gypsy boy leaned against a pillar of the church porch under our window. He played "St. James Infirmary" on his clarinet in a dozen styles and variations. He was an artist. I wanted to know his name, to hear him play more, but the old man near him spoke sharply and set him to playing a proper carol The old man talked to me for a bit, anxious that I know him to be a "real Christian," that is, one baptized in church, unlike most gypsies. He said the boy was rebellious, and did not know his place.

On December 23, the mail finally arrived. It took three trips to the post office to retrieve all the packages. Phillipa, a graceful Australian, came up the stairs and asked if she could visit. She had been traveling alone for a month and wanted to see someone at Christmas who spoke English. The morning of Christmas Eve, we were awakened by the fire house band, composed mostly of drums, clarinets and tubas. Rosalind ran down to join the horde of small children who danced behind, up and down all the streets of the old town collecting contributions of small change and candy. More packages arrived. The children went out to deliver fruit cakes – I had brought bourbon and pecans for this, and we baked them in the bakery oven next to Evangelitsa's shop (now a bank) – and small gifts to our friends. They returned with more cakes and gifts than they had taken. We made tablecloths from lengths of blue and white material, and set out the silverware, and blue and white china we had brought with us.

The silver had nearly got us into trouble. When we packed to come to Greece, I put household supplies in containers that were carried in the ship's hold, but the sterling I put into my hiking boots in one of the suitcases, thinking we might want to use it before we had access to the containers. We arrived at customs with six suitcases, a trunk, two musical instruments and assorted bags. With stunning intuition, the customs inspector only opened the suitcase with the hiking boots stuffed with silver. No one at customs spoke English, nor did any of us speak Greek. After a long period in a smoke-filled room where several men shouted at each other and at me, I tearfully managed to get one of them to notice the scratches, bent tines and tarnish that might indicate the silver had been in our possession for a while.

We hadn't enough plates to set out all we had cooked, and when guests began arriving with their contributions, there wasn't enough room for all the food, either. Everyone we had invited had found a foreigner who wanted an American Christmas -- two Australian families in the campground, an Irishwoman camping on the beach, an American schoolteacher, a German couple, two Englishwomen who had married Naupliots, several Greeks who had lived in America, and they all brought bottles of drinks and more food. As soon as the first guests appeared, the kitchen sink detached itself from all of its pipes and fell off the wall. We tried to ignore this.

We were interrupted several times by shouts from the Hotel Otto across the street for phone calls from the States, and at the hotel we acquired two solitary salesmen morosely watching television. At midnight, the church bells rang and the ships blew their whistles.

Christmas morning we woke to the bells and incense of Panagia and the warm tones of the priest's chanting. Phillipa breakfasted with us on leftover ham and Roquefort, and then we took the bus to Argos.

Argos has a conical hill crowned with a castle, described in a medieval chronicle as spreading down into the plain like a tent. We climbed up the long way and sat in the arched casements and looked over the snow-covered mountains deep in the Peloponnesos. A troup of merry little boys joined us. They found great amusement in snatching at sweaters and purses and Kathleen's long hair. It seemed best to go back down, but we were looking for what the Blue Guide said was a carving of a Thracian horseman. We had no idea of where to look or what a Thracian horseman might look like. Phillipa asked the boys, but we were saying hippos, which was classical, when we should have said alogos. Phillipa tried sketching a series of men-on-horseback. One of the boys pointed to one and showed us, not ten feet away, a disappointingly small, grubby bas-relief of a man on a horse with a snake. The church on the hill above is a Ag. Georgios. Ag. Georgios is always shown with a dragon. Centuries ago someone thought this carving of a horseman and serpent was he. Bored with archeology, the boys threw stones at us the rest of the way down the hill. Back home at dusk, there was just enough time to start the Franklin stove before we wrapped in blankets and lay across the bed in the firelight to listen to the Queen's Christmas message. We cried a lot and said it was the best Christmas we had ever had. The next morning we were up at six to begin two weeks of being migrant workers picking mandarinis.

 

For Bartolomeo, with love and respect

A book on which I have been working far too long – The Greek Correspondence of Bartolomeo Minio. Vol. 2: Dispacci from Candia, 1500-1502 – has just been published. To have the new book in hand is a pleasure, but this entry is late because I have not known how to bring about the end to this working companionship.  I have nothing more I can write about Bartolomeo Minio. I have not been far from tears as I have autographed books to send out, and as I have tried to write here.

 I discovered Bartolomeo Minio while looking for material on Nauplion at Dumbarton Oaks, long before I thought of graduate school. The 100 pages of his letters from Nauplion became bedtime reading off and on for years.

<They were intensely familiar, of course because of Nauplion, where my house had been attached to the wall he had built, but also because I had grown up in a colonial environment. Minio's constant fatigue and frustration at lack of adequate equipment and money, his isolation, his increasing identification with the local population, all reflected what I had absorbed in my younger years from the adults around me. I found something else, too: the sense of a desperately lonely child, so you can imagine my reaction when I found in Venice a document indicating that his father had remarried when he was two and a half years old. 

He was the youngest child in his family, born in about 1428 and named for his mother's father, and was the only one of his brothers to marry.  His wife was Elena Trevisan. This was normal Venetian practice, and his third son, Francesco, was the only one of his sons to marry.  His oldest son, Marco (born about 1460) , became a prominent Venetian ambassador to the Vatican and Constantinople, and was elected Doge of Crete.  Little is recorded about the second, Alvise (born a year later). There may have been children who did not live. The youngest, Francesco, was born in 1483/4, nine months after Minio returned from his assignment in Nauplion.  Francesco made a fortune in shipping and the transport of pilgrims to the Holy Land, and his wills record a number of houses, including the pretty Ca' da Madoneta on the Rio da Frescada near S. Toma.  The family were all buried at the Franciscan church of S. Francesco dalle Vigne: in several searches I failed to find any tombstones in the hundreds there.

My PhD dissertation was on his letters from Nauplion.  Hans Theunissen from Utrecht published it in his on-line monograph series in EJOS.  One of my dissertation readers, John Melville-Jones from Perth, suggested a published edition of the letters which are preserved in a Minio family copy (written in four different hands, including Bartolomeo's) in the Correr Library in Venice. We published the letters from Nauplion in 2008, and then set to working on another set of his letters, a Minio family copy (by his son Marco) in the Correr, from Candia. This is a total of more than 150 letters written by one man, a very rare inheritance.  

Minio was clearly lonely in Nauplion -- there were probably no patricians there, and I suspect he was acutely class-conscious where Venetians were concerned.  His letters and reports rarely received a response, and supplies were rarely and inadequately sent.  He developed a few very close and protective relationships -- his secretary Eustacio; Antonio Marinato, an Italian commander of foot soldiers, who may have been a part-time pirate, and was kidnapped and sold into slavery; his wife's brother, Piero Trevisan, who commanded a galley occasionally sent to Nauplion; an Ottoman governor who shared all the same problems, and who let him in on a plot to overthrow Mehmed.  

He was a tense man, with neck cramps and migraines.  He had a strong sense of fairness and justice, and though he insisted on following instructions to the letter, he received tremendous loyalty from the Greek and Albanian stratioti, and from the Greek townspeople of Nauplion. He wrote once, in great distress, that he had had to used forced labor at Nauplion for work on the walls.  It was, he said, a hardship for "these poor people," but "I worked with them in person." The Greeks remembered that, and a chronicle records:

At that time, the governor of the place, that is, the Venetian, with all the people of Nauplion, did all the building, and built the walls around, just as they appear today . . . and the governor of the place, the Venetian, gave benefits and many gifts.

Minio died in 1515, in his late 80s.  His failing health is mentioned in several entries in Sanudo's Diarii.  He should have died several other times that we know of: from malaria in Nauplion, from camp fever in the Ferrara war, from pirates in the Bay of Biscay, from pirates off Cyprus, from pneumonia in Crete. In his mid-70s he wrote with pride of his good eyesight, and then rode the length and width of Crete to inspect its fortresses. He was a survivor and a fighter, though I suspect he absolutely hated fighting. Not because of any pacifist leanings, but because it was an indication of disorder, and he did value order above all.

He has been a good companion. I hope he would have liked my work.

The Greek Correspondence of Bartolomeo Minio. Vol. 2: Dispacci from Candia, 1500-1502. Diana Gilliland Wright & John Melville-Jones. Padua: Unipress, 2015.  Orders here.  

Map by Ioannis Xenodochos, Corfu, 1520.

Nauplion's Bavarian remnants

This is the front door of Bettina Schinas' house, opposite. Ag. Giorgios. The door was imported from Trieste, probably just after 1830 -- apparently all the best new houses had doors from Trieste. Bettina and her husband Konstantinos rented the house from Andreas Miaoulis for 1834-35, before they moved to Athens with the Bavarian court.  It is a splendidly carved door.

Photo, Brigitte Eckert, 2010.

Another view of Bettina's house. This deterioration cannot be blamed on the economic crisis. It takes a long time for a house like this to disintegrate. But this house is a significant element in Nauplion's heritage, and it is a disappointment and a shame that no one seems to find it important. Bettina wrote wonderful letters to her family from this house, describing Nauplion and the people she met --Kolettis, Miaoulis, Petro-Bey Mavromichaelis -- and later wrote wonderful letters about Athens. Brigitte Eckert made extensive translations from the letters so Surprised by Time could publish them.

If you stand facing the bus station, and take the first corner to your right, you will come almost immediately to the door with these elegant lion heads (there is a small cafe). Below the lion heads are panels of exceptional carving – swags of leaves and little monster heads on either side of a shell, and then below that, a deeply-inset panel with the head of a Bavarian Green Man. 

 The condition of this door has been developing for a long time: it is not a casualty of the economic crisis.  But the disregard of Nauplion for such an exceptional work of art is another example of the carelessness demonstrated, for example, towards the Venetian staircase and gate to Akro-Nauplion.  I would imagine that there is a lot of experience in Bavaria where preservation and restoration of wood carvings are concerned, and some of the ill feelings of the economic crisis might well be relieved by a Bavarian mission to help restore this shared heritage.

The grandest of the surviving Bavarian houses is just up the street if you take the first left when you are facing the bus station.  Here a classical-style Bavarian door has been built accommodated to the contemporary Greek stonework. The house belonged to the Count von Armansperg, First Minister to the King.  

Photo, Brigitte Eckert, 2010.

This was the first house in Nauplion to have a piano.  Bettina wrote about going to a party there.

"I must report about the evening at the Armanspergs. Beautiful rooms nicely decorated, filled with all kinds of people, diplomats, officers, dressed in Bavarian uniforms, as palikaria or French; also the ladies dressed French or Greek. The countess in mourning because of the Duke von Altenburg’s death. She received me very kindly, complaining there would be no dancing because of the death. The daughters very pretty, very modest and polite, offered me conversation as they noticed I didn’t know anybody. The older played the piano later very skillful. The many rooms were crowded -- tea, ice cream, lemonades were offered. When the Countess saw me speaking with Kolettis, (I was standing up because he is so tall) she came and offered us 2 chairs next to each other so we could speak seated; the daughter played the piano, so we stopped our conversation." 

Photos, DW, November 2014.

Excavations at Nauplion's Castle of the Franks

The Castle of the Franks, Grimani map ca. 1712.

Wall and tower shown below directly in the center.

The Greek Archaeological Service has after many years taken up work again on Akro-Nauplion with large projects in the Castle of the Franks. In November, thanks to Ioanna Christoforaki, I was shown over the sites by archaologist Natassa Basileiou and two of her colleagues.  It could not have been a more inconvenient day for them because of organizational changes, but they were generous with their time and humor and information, and it is a great pleasure to know that these are the people who are the future of the Archaeological Service.

 Archaeologists Eirini Oikonomopoulou,  

Kostis Boundouris,and Anastasia Basileiou. 

Visitors to Akro-Nauplion have a certain familiarity with the great merloned Venetian cross-wall built in 1470 during the Venetian-Ottoman War because there the road is forced to turn abruptly right and go through a narrow bend to gain access to the bell tower and then the hotel further down. Up on the hill behind this Venetian wall is a cross-wall with a large square tower in the center built by the Franks probably 250 years earlier to defend against Greek Nauplion. The Archaeological Service has uncovered the remains of the square tower, and has identified remains of the cross-wall at the bell tower.

The Castle of the Franks, Francis Schaefer, 1936.
Cross-wall and tower, left; central tower with frescoes, right.
Bell tower, top left.

Remains of square Frankish tower. 

                                                                   End of Frankish cross-wall at bell tower.

Inner entrance to tower with frescos.

As part of the restoration project for the tower, the interior fill deposited over the centuries has been removed, and the inner approach to the tower cleared down to the base. I did not ask where Schaefer had found the child sacrifice but it was much on my mind.

View of frescoed chamber with Angel barely visible above

on plaster over arch of Roman brick.

When Francis Schaefer saw the tower frescos in 1956, he thought them in good-enough condition so as to need no restoration work. When I saw them first in 1977 – knowing only that they were “Frankish” – I could make out almost no details. That winter the tower chamber was sealed and the subsequent deterioration was rapid. In the last two years they have been restored to the extent possible -- and the photo above shows how very pale they are now.  None have the color or show the marvelous detail of the small Angel of the Ascension on the overhead arch.  

The photographs below that I was able to take are underwhelming, but they have been much brightened and the colors intensified with Gimp.  The identifications are those made by Francis Schaefer. The frescos are dated between 1291 and 1311, and were probably created by Greek painters for Frankish employers.

Ornamentation shown on right of previous photograph.

Warrior before Gimp.

Warrior after Gimp.

St. Anthony.

 Bishop. 

Saint.

Some information thanks to Monika Hirschbischler, “The Crusader Paintings in the Frankish Gate at Nauplia, Greece,” in Gesta XLVI/1 (2005) 13-30.

Nauplion's fiefs

15^th-century remains of fief boundary wall and tower at Myloi.

It is easier to think about fief churches than fiefs, because with churches you have a definite building in a specific place. For the fiefs of the Frankish and first Venetian occupations, you have in a very few cases the name of a general area. When the Franks divided up the Argolid as of 1212 or so, it is probable that they used the general divisions already used by the Byzantines. The Aragonese version of the Chronicle of the Morea says that two Greeks who knew the whole country helped the Franks with the division of the territory. 

All we find for the Argolid is that the Foucherolle family was given three fiefs or cavallerias in Argos and Corinth, and many others were given one and two cavallarias. It is not clear how much land was involved in a cavalleria but many Greeks received them, as well as Franks. To suggest possible numbers in the Argolid, Passava and Helos each had 12 fiefs, Patras 24, Escorta 22, Arcadia 8, Damala (considered part of Corinth) 6.  A report on fiefs from 1391 gives Clarentza and Kalamata 300 fiefs each, Vostitza 200, and says the despot has 40 in Mani.

For a completely different area, in 1500, Crete was divided into 391 cavallarias. Each fief or cavallaria in Crete had 50 boine or fields. A boina was the amount of land that could be plowed in a day, and each could support two families of villani or paroikoi. There is nothing to let us know whether the Cretan system was applicable in the Morea.

The Frankish system of privatized justice and privatized military fit well with the Byzantine rule in the Morea. We have no idea what shifts might have occurred as the culture of the Franks from north-western France became the culture of Franks from southern Italy during the next 180 years or so. Venice took over the Frankish Argolid in 1394 in a treaty with Theodoros I of Mistra, guaranteeing to protect the traditional rights of the inhabitants. What those traditional rights might have been in relation to the fiefs after 180 years of foreign rule, we have no idea. The significant change Venetian rule brought was that justice and the military came under the control of the governors of Argos and Nauplion, and the fief was a means of collecting taxes which apparently became more stringent.

In the Venetian land system, all the land belonged to the state. There seem to have been several categories of land-holdings. The fiefs which were comparatively large, and were heritable. Then there were large land-holdings that were rented out for 5, 10, or 29 years. My “fief” churches may have belonged to these landholdings as much as to fiefs. There is good evidence for substantial Greek ownership of these. Another division of land came in 40-stremmata plots, plus another 5 of vineyards, which were given to the immigrants Argos needed to repopulate its empty countryside. The 40 stremmata plus 5, allowed a family to make a basic living and pay the taxes required in cash and farm produce.  

Venice tended to make land divisions relate to the productivity of the land: we don't know if the Franks followed this system  in the 13th century.  Another division of land was the territory given to stratioti who were responsible for raising their own food and horses, and we know nothing about amounts of land there. It is unclear whether an appropriate unit of territory was assigned to a particular band of stratioti, or whether land was assigned individually. Argos seems to have assigned plots of land to individual stratioti, but that may have been a special case.

Essentially, we have minimal information about the Venetian land system, but Bartolomeo Minio's letters suggest that he considered the landworkers – villani or paroikoi – hard-pressed. He does give us a little information about fiefs, and what he does say suggests fairly large divisions of land. Given the locations of the fiefs he mentions, I would wonder if the areas farthest from Nauplion were made into fiefs, and lesser divisions of land were closer.

Minio only identifies the fiefs of Kiveri, Thermissi, and Kastri. After two difficult conferences that divided the Ottoman-held territory from the Venetian, Minio writes of “the feudatories who have recovered the lands of their fiefs.” The cumulative information about fiefs gives erratic information about productivity, owners, and local morals. 

The bishop of Nauplion (who never visited his see) held the fief of Thermissi which was administered through a local agent. The bishop had half the profit from the Thermissi salt pans, Venice the other half, from which 900 kilograms of salt was exported annually. There was a fief with a castle at Kiveri (the former name for Myloi) whose primary income was from water mills. The fief's boundary line is shown above. A fief of Kastri, held by Sier Francesco Alberto, had a fortification into which people could come when under threat. Sier Francesco seems to have lived primarily in Nauplion. In Crete, landholders had to have houses in one of the main cities – Candia, Chania, Rethymnon, or Sitia. There is no information as to whether this was the case with the Venetian Morea, though the case of Giovanni Cavaza (below), combined with Sier Francesco, suggests it might have been. 

Giovanni Catello had a half-fief of vineyards. Giovanni Cunia had a fief of 200 stremmata which he was required to plant half in vines and half in grain. He apparently grew linen and was also required to have a beating yard and a machine for smashing linen stalks, for which he had permission to obtain wood and materials from Venice. Damian Agrimi seems to have had a fief (or perhaps a land allotment) near Kastri from which he shipped cheese, as did Zorzi da Londa.

Giovanni Cavaza, who seems to have been doing a little embezzling in his job as castellan of Nauplion, came into possession of one of the Foucherolle fiefs which had been in that family for six generations. At least half the fief was in vines: he also had a solid business in linen and wool. He had a house on Akro-Nauplion, and one outside the walls which he willed to his wife and then his sister. He seems to have died about 1405.

 In 1412 the governor of Nauplion gave half the fief to Manoli Murmuri, from the leading Greek family of Nauplion. After three years of suits and counter-suits, the half-fief was transferred to Giovanni Catello, from the leading Venetian family of Nauplion. This half-fief was apparently worth killing for, and this is where the story gets complicated. 

In 1416, Giovanni's brother Michali, Nicolò Murmuri, and someone's brother named Gregorio tried to kill Giovanni, who was so badly injured that he lost his right hand. Eight years later, in 1424, these conspirators bribed a villano to kill Giovanni when he was out in the vineyards . Again he survived the assault, although he received five wounds. The villano disappeared, but his brother testified against him and Michali, Gregorio, and Nicolò. Giovanni made a complaint to the Venetian Signoria against the three: we have no further information, even though the story has gone on for at least nine years.

Travelling: Light in Nauplion

Oranges, salt pork, and grain

This picture and the one below are from Michael of Rhodes.

In trying to find out how Greeks lived their lives in the fifteenth century, I have come across a few – a very few – references to Greeks in commerce who owned their own ships. Almost all these references come in records from Ragusa (Dubrovnik), where permission is being granted for ships to enter the harbor. There are more references for Greeks from Corfù and Crete, but my focus is the Morea. I am reading a French summary of medieval Latin entries, and I am getting very few indications of types of ship. The ship above may be generously-sized. It is likely that quite a few are like these:

I have one reference from Nauplion in 1450, to an Andreas Fantalouris whose family owned a ship.  Andreas was a large landholder, and may have been involved in a court case with Anonymous of Nauplion who has been a guest of this blog. Otherwise, all the sources I have now are from Ragusa.

Other Naupliots transacted business in Ragusa.  In 1408, Costantinos reported that 20 dozen bread knives were stolen from him while he was drinking in a tavern.  In 1428 a Yannis Canakis brought a ship of merchandise.  In 1435 a Yannis spent 3 1/2 ducats to buy 300 pounds of ship's biscuit for his ship.  These don't give us much information about Nauplion shipping.

There is more for Koroni. In 1428 George arrived in a griparia with salt meat, oranges, and cheese.  Kyriakos Maropoulos brought salt meat, oranges, and cotton.   In 1437 Kosta brought a ship of cheese, barley, fats, and other merchandise to Ragusa.  In 1439 Theodoros brought salt meat.  In 1442 Nikola Mortato brought oranges and merchandise.  In 1443 Maropoulos and Nikolaos brought ships with cheese, lard, and linen.  I've not found ships from Methoni.

In 1441 Nikolaos of Patras brought wheat and salted meat.  There are a number of entries which identify merchants as "Greek" without the name of a port.  If I can assume as does the editor that all the Greeks are from the Morea, that gives me a few more merchants. Yannis arrived with merchandise on his ship in 1446.  In 1428 Greeks brought saindoux, a high-quality rendering from pork fat.   in July 1436 Dino imported 600 steres of millet for which he was to be paid 300 hyperpera. That was 600 cubic metres of grain, perhaps not requiring a large ship, but one larger than the two boats in the picture above.  In 1421 so much grain was offered for sale by a Greek that it was necessary for the grain commissioners to set the prices.

So this is about all I have on Moreote merchants and ships, but it begins to suggest a picture of Greek trade.  I would be delighted if readers could contribute more.

The Ragusan sources are from B. Krekić, Dubrovnik et le Levant au moyen âge. Paris. 1961.

The Wolf of the Argolid

Six months ago I offered a chapter from my unfinished Villehardouin novel. Here is the first chapter of that effort. It is 3-4 times the length of the usual entry, and quite violent.

Acro-Corinth, by Harriet Livathinos

THE WOLF OF THE ARGOLID

The Archon stood on the wall of High Corinth looking out over the precipice. Fists on hips, he glared down at the city of Corinth.

``The Archbishop will submit.''

Wind swept across the snows of Mount Parnassos, whipped waves in the Gulf of Corinth, rushed up the escarpment of High Corinth, flattened his grizzled hair. A cloak lined with wolf fur flailed about his mailed tunic and leggings. A thousand feet below lay the vineyards and mulberry trees of the plains, the city of Corinth, the Isthmus narrow as a grape stem, the glittering ice-blue gulfs that washed the Isthmus on either side. This was the Wolf of the Argolid, Leon Sgouros, the most powerful man in Greece. Leon Sgouros, Archon of Nauplion after his father Theodoros. Lord of Argos, of the Holy Mountain of Agionori, of Nemea, of Agios Basilios. Lord of Athens. Lord of Corinth. The Wolf was in a rage. His face appeared impassive but the grey eyes glistened and the muscles in his face tightened like ropes. As his anger increased, his voice became lower. Only the person nearest him heard.

``True, Archon''.

Nikos Kamateros waved a manicured hand in agreement. He was careful always to be nearest to Sgouros. Kamateros was ambitious but cautious. Behind them, the others moved closer to hear. Here at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Byzantine Empire was rotting. Disasters at sea and on the borders had combined with degeneration in the imperial government until it was clear to everyone, powerful and poor alike, that Constantinople was impotent. In the provinces, archons and landowners competed for local control. Those who found themselves losing joined another archon who was winning. So Kamateros had joined Sgouros after his brother had taken hold of Sparta. Kamateros was accustomed neither to courts nor to wealth, but he had quickly learned the leisurely assured manner of a man born to the best. He dressed in expensive simplicity; his soft leather shoes were lines with silk; his beared was combed, oiled, discretely perfumed; his hair was held in place by a plain gold fillet. His mastery of formal Greek with its grammatical shadings and convolutions was perfect. Sgouros used Kamateros for his polish and patience, as one uses a knife for its sharp edge.

Kamateros spoke in an off-hand manner. ``The city has submitted. The Archbishop will have to follow.''

He shrugged deprecatingly.

``But he simply has no support. He is of no significance.''

The others murmured their agreement.

``He matters.'' Sgouros spit an olive seed out into the wind. ``The boy. Get him.'' He poked a finger into his fistful of olives, then held his hand out.

``Boy, Archon?'' Kamateros carefully took an olive from the pile in Sgouros's gloved hand.

``In the Archbishop's household. You saw him. In the little robe just like the Archbishop.'' Sgouros looked over the olives and picked up a small gleaming one. He turned to Kamateros, a smile glazing his face.

``Bring me the catamite.''

Sgouros started walking along the top of the wall. Kamateros kept up with him, walking alongside. The ground sloped down. Kamateros observed that his face was directly level with Sgouros's boots. He moved as if to pick one of the early spring flowers.

``With respect, Archon, he is not a catamite. The child Michael is his nephew's son. Unfortunately. No one can say that or anything else against the Archbishop. God knows, we have tried to find something.'' Kamateros appeared distressed. ``There is nothing we can get him on. His life is absolutely pure he gives away everything. It is true that he has nearly depleted the treasure of the Cathedral, and we have tried to charge him with embezzlement, but everyone knows he has spent it on the poor. If the monastery did not own his clothes, he would have given them away, too. He has nothing. Only the boy, whom he adores.''

``The nephew's son? That nephew?''

``That nephew.''

Sgouros spit. ``So bring me the boy.''

He jumped down from the wall into the courtyard and walked toward a cistern, oblivious to the scrawny chickens pecking around, the hunting dogs which yawned and scratched and nipped at each other. Several unwashed children sat outside the kitchen door with their morning bread. A dozen men in leather cuirasses scaled with metal and armed with short broad swords, lounged nearby. More armed men sat by the gate with their saddled horses. Two women tended the fire under a large pot.

``Tell the Archbishop,'' said Sgouros, reaching for the rope at the cistern, ``tell the Archbishop I have decided to honor him by making the boy my page.'' He pulled the bucket over the rim of the well, took a mouthful of water, spit itout, splattering the nearest shoes.

``Archon, the Archbishop would give his life for that boy.'' Kamateros raised a hand in warning.

Sgouros slammed down the water bucket. ``Tell him'' he said very quietly, ``that I have no interest in boys. Or girls. None of his flock will lose their virtue, should they have any. Tell him that the Despot of the Morea will be honored to have the boy as the chief ornament of his court. And that I will have him.''

``Despot of the Morea.'' Kamateros raised his eyebrows at the new title. ``Today, Despot, as you desire.'' He bowed.

``Not today,'' said Sgouros. ``Now!''

Four armed men at the gate dashed to the horses, tugged them through the narrow turns of the gate. Kamateros heard the hooves striking on the stones outside.

Sgouros ignored them. He sauntered across the court to the stairs which led to his rooms. He still had the handful of olives. Halfway up the stairs, he noticed the olives, extended his hand and let them drop into the dust. The chickens left off scratching at the kitchen midden and scrabbled pecking for them.

He went on up the stairs to a broad porch supported on stone arches, and went through an arched doorway into a room whose tiled floor was piled with bundles. Two arched windows looked down to the courtyard; opposite them, more windows looked out on the meadow of High Corinth where Pegasus once pastured. At each end of the room were arched fireplaces with hearths large enough to roast a sheep. Sgouros unfastened his cloak, let it fall. Except for the bundles, the long room was sparsely furnished. To one side, a sleeping couch was piled with furs and pillows. A trestle table, chair, several stools stood before one of the fireplaces. Another table spread with pieces of glassware stood under a window. The morning sun shown through the glass, staining the table with deep reds and purples, pale blues and greens. Sgouros carried the glass with him wherever he travelled: it was the only thing for which he had been known to show liking. He stalked across the room, the nails in his boots signaling each step. He picked up a red bowl and looked at it intently, turning it against the sun.

Kamateros picked up the cloak.``Despot of the Morea? Or of the Morea and Athens?'' He spoke casually but the information was of no little importance to him.

``And Athens. Find a title. Make it good.''

Sgouros turned, smashed the bowl against the side of the fireplace. Ruby fragments splintered into the sunlight. Kamateros winced.

``There was a crack.'' Sgouros turned, his voice now reasonable.

``I want a palace to suit the Despot. The Archons of Corinth can make contributions. And the merchants. And the Jews. They will want to be proud of the Despot's house. And the Archbishop. Go to the Glassmaker's Guild.''

``With pleasure, Despot.'' Kamateros bowed, slipped out.

Thus the Archon began his day. During the morning, he accepted the submissions of eight nearby communities. The village gerontes, shabbily dressed, were exhausted after the long trudge up the mountain to High Corinth. When Sgouros had begun his rise to power, the gerontes of the first villages met him shabbily dressed to impress him with their poverty. But after his men ransacked one village, burned another, and left the priest of a third village impaled on his staff, subsequent gerontes dressed shabbily in order to give him the best they had. These brought wine, two wolf skins, antique robes and embroidery, dried fruit, cheeses, several sheep and goats. It was not abundant, but such tribute came daily and presaged regular contributions.

Sgouros went out to the meadow to look at his horses, small Arabians acquired with their groom when his hired pirates intercepted a ship sailing for Sicily. His entourage followed him, furred and muffled, carrying jeweled handwarmers, apeing the court of Constantinople. As close as High Corinth was to the sun, it was no match for the winds of Parnassos.

Ioannis Doukas, an aggressive eager younger son from a too-large family in the north, followed Sgouros holding a second fur-lined cloak selected from that day's tribute. ``Not a bad place, Corinth. Clean. Not a lot of cash about these days, but very few really poor because of the Archbishop.''

Sgouros looked up frowning. Doukas did not notice his expression. ``Of course, the regular tolls from the Isthmus. And the import-export tariffs. The Venetians, of course, pay no tariffs that really should be reconsidered. Then the whorehouses. And the silk. We really must look into the silk industry thoroughly, Archon.''

``We should indeed. You have a new robe,'' said Sgouros abruptly, reaching out to finger the fabric. ``Expensive.''

Doukas stroked the quilted sleeve of his blue and green brocade. ``A gift from the Silkweavers' Guild, Excellency.''

``Yes,'' said Sgouros turning. ``Yes, of course. You could be Port Authority and Inspector of Silks, too.''

He walked on. ``How much?''

Doukas slipped up beside him, too close, too anxious. ``From the tolls on the Isthmus alone, Archon, four hundred gold hyperpers a year.''

Sgouros nodded his head thoughtfully. ``You have all the figures?''

``Naturally.''

The young man laughed and shrugged good-naturedly. Unnoticed by him, Sgouros made a gesture. As the guards closed around Doukas, the other members of the entourage backed away.

``Whip him!'' said Sgouros. He walked off.

Doukas yelled, ``Wait, Archon!''

A scaled glove smashed his mouth. As he grabbed for his bleeding face, two slaves jerked at his clothes, ripping the brocades open, half-strangling him. They threw him face-down on the ground. Doukas struggled to get up. Slaves stepped on either wrist, two others held his ankles, tugged. One of the guards took a whip from his belt, multi-thonged, each thong ending in a piece of metal. He grasped the handle, opening and closing his fingers to get his grip, raised his arms above his head, and then bought the whip whistling down.

Doukas screamed. The nearest horses, disturbed by the sudden movements, bolted toward the far wall rimming the precipice. The guard continued to beat. He was still beating when Doukas stopped screaming. The slaves released their grip, stepped away. When the guard tired, another stepped forward.

Sgouros had his midday meal, drank, slept. In the afternoon he went out to the horses. They were huddled against the far wall of the pasture, pacing back and forth, still nervous at the smell of blood and urine. The wind kept the flies away. Sgouros hardly noticed as he walked by.

* * * * *

The Wolf's father, Archon Theodoros Sgouros of Nauplion, was a rough burly man, hard-drinking, hard-riding, hard-wenching. He had a taste for intrigue, enthusiasm for physical action, and a justified reputation for brutality. Through thoughtfully-placed bribes, given and received, forced loans, torture, disappearances, and a few assassinations, Theodoros extended his control of Nauplion to most of the adjacent villages and coasts: Aria, Asine, Drepanon, Iria, Candia, Myloi, Kiveri. When fate sent a plague of pirates, he wrote the Emperor for aid. The Emperor, needing the tax revenues for which Theodoros was responsible, sent him first a pirate with thirty ships who worked on contract for the government, and then the Grand Admiral, Nauarchos Michael Stryphnos, brother-in-law of the Empress.

The pot-bellied Nauarchos and the stocky Archon found themselves to be men of close sympathies. They scoured out the pirate lairs along the coast of the Argolid and on the islands toward Athens: Salamis, Aegina, Makronesi---dividing between themselves what they took from the pirates. With a certain practicality, they came to terms with two of the larger operators. For half the takings, the pirates were allowed to continue undisturbed, though naturally Nauplion and the coast were off-limits. Then, after reconsideration, Stryphnos and Theodoros took their pirate allies prisoners at a drinking party, blinded them, and abandoned them somewhere on a barren beach on the southern coast of the Peloponnesos. Then they took up where the pirates had left off, and soon made up for their absence. Theodoros build a chapel on a small island in the harbor at Nauplion, dedicated it to his patron saints, the Agioi Theodoroi, warriors both, and stored his gold and plunder there.

Behind the island, the city of Nauplion stood on the cliffs of a short peninsula surrounded by sea and marsh. Its ancient walls of enormous stones had been built by the Titans, the teachers said
"who else could move such stones?''

Successive rulers had added more and higher walls. The city was impregnable. Limited by vertical cliffs, Nauplion's stone houses took up nearly all the space ins de the walls, and where there was no more room to spread out, the houses stretched up and arched over the streets, so that the streets below became tunnels with barely enough room for a donkey with bundles on either side to pass.

His mishandled birth left Leon with a twisted foot. He was late in learning to speak, and when he did, he stuttered. The brawling, hard-drinking Theodoros was irritated by the defects of his one legitimate heir, and when drunk or angry, which was most of the time, he berated the boy for his weaknesses.

``Look at him!'' he would say, slamming his goblet onto the table, the wine sloshing out. He waved a hand crowded with pirated rings toward the stone-faced boy. ``Philip of Macedon had a god for a son and I have a cripple!''

Leon Sgouros grew up in the archondiko which overlooked the small square before the city gate. From its front windows, a watcher could observe nearly everyone who entered or left the city. The archondiko was crowded with his father's henchmen and their newest women; no one particularly cared that the solitary boy spent much of his time crouched by a window, one hand on his crippled foot, watching the gate, watching who went in and out, who went or returned from market, and what they bought or sold, and how often, and with whom each spoke.

In the course of events, Nauarchos Stryphnos was appointed Governor of Athens, a shabby town of mud and stone huts propped up against the marble columns and walls of a happier time. Stryphnos had nothing but contempt for Athens which had offered him only bad wine and worse antipathies, and preferred to live in Thebes where there was a wealthy community of silk merchants, a few foreign traders, poets who couldn't find patrons in Constantinople, and government officials. Thebes was inland, so Stryphnos had no need for ships, unless he was going to the islands for the summer or Constantinople for Easter. He selected what he wanted from the navy food stores, and sold off the rest---the tar and ropes, planks and oars, even whole ships---to pirates, and when they returned to plundering the coasts, Stryphnos plundered the provinces to produce donations he claimed were ``for the ships.''

Nauplion alone resisted him.

Then Theodoros died unexpectedly in his own house in the course of an evening of eating and drinking. The girl who was darting her tongue in and about his ear gasped in horror to feel his neck suddenly rigid, see his florid face abruptly dark, his jaw jut open. Theodoros slumped, thudded against the table, and collapsed on the floor beside the overturned chair, a gobbet of meat in his throat, brocaded robes soaked in wine. The gold fillet on his head fell off. It rattled against the tiles and rolled a few feet away. The drinkers paused with their cups in mid-air, the talkers stopped in mid-word, the flute girls and dancers screeched and clustered at the far end of the room. In the silence, Leon strode through the door with the deliberate hard stalk that concealed his limp.

He did not break the rhythm of his step when he reached over and picked up the coronet and placed it on his own coarse curly hair. Without a glance at his father's sodden body, Leon stood the archon's chair erect and sat on it.

``I am Archon,'' he said to the henchmen, and to the slaves, ``Clean this away.''

By next morning, few of Theodoros's followers were to be seen. Some had taken flight; an equal number had been garroted or blinded. Theodoros' bastards were strangled, their bodies thrown from the walls. The women were sold or drowned. The once-noisy and crowded archondiko was silent and nearly empty. The loudest noise in Nauplion came from the gulls and hooded crows that clustered above the rocks at the water's edge.

Nauarchos Stryphnos had his spies. His wife wrote to her sister, the Empress Euphrosyne, that Leon Sgouros was dangerous. The Empress pushed the Emperor, Alexios III, to take action. Alexios, in turn, ordered Stryphnos to take the imperial fleet against Nauplion. But Stryphnos had no zeal for fighting, the imperial fleet had few ships and those few had rotten saild and worm-eaten planks. The sailors shanghaied in the taverns of Piraeus to man the ships know something of sailing but nothing of fighting when sober. When the tiny make-shift imperial fleet approached Nauplion, Sgouros sent fireships out into its midst, and stationed archers on the rocks beneath the walls to pick off anyone who tried to come ashore. After the first ship burned, the sailors on the other ships mutinied and sailed back for Piraeus. Most of the other ships were taken by pirates. The gulls and crows gathered again. And everyone---Sgouros, peasants, sailors---saw that this was the best the Emperor could do to protect his Empire.

After this. Sgouros quickly obtained the submissions of the next villages: Agios Adrianos, Midea, Chonika, Berbati---and appointed new archons for them. There was little objections. He accepted anyone who offered him allegiance, paid well, and listened to all suggestions and plots. He multiplied the fortune Theodoros had left, and spent only to reward tale-bearers. There were no more flute girls, no more drinking parties. If he took any amusement, it was sometimes after dinner, if he could goad others to fight. His one affection was for glass---clear, hard, gleaming glass: cold amethyst, ruby, sea-green, gold-trimmed, blue-edged glass from Syria or Corinth or Egypt---and those who brought him tribute were careful to bring him another piece or two.

Then Sgouros considered nearby Argos whose two hills he could see from the archondiko: high-pointed Larissa crested with ancient walls and monasteries, and low, shield-shaped Aspis with schools and a hospital. Between the two hills, the walled city spilled onto the plain. Argos controlled the routes across the northern mountains to Corinth, and across the western mountains into the Morea. And control of those routes meant mastery of half the Morea. After that, there were a few other archons to consider---Kamateros in Sparta, Kantakuzenos in Methone, Branas in Kalamata, Voutsarades in Arkadia---but there were only those four and none offered any cause for concern. He considered that he could, in fact, take Methone from the sea---it had no walls---and then go on to Kalamata. Sparta would be easy, and he could starve Voutsarades out. Something would have to be done about Nikos Kamateros once he had Sparta. An accident.

So he set Kamateros to Argos with a well-financed embassy, and on the following day, posted a band of men at the western springs where the Argos aqueducts began. Other armed bands appeared before each of the city gates. Sgouros rode up to the eastern gate. It stood wide open. The Archons of Argos were there with gifts. The two who had earlier sent private gifts he elaborately and publically rewarded, the other two he took as hostages. The next towns and small fortresses---Nemea, Agios Vasilios, Agionori, Angelokastro, Arachneon---sent their archons and gerontes to him within the week.

With Argos secure, Sgouros took his forces up through the mountain passes to the ancient trading city of Corinth. Corinth controlled the Isthmus, by land and by sea. At the Isthmus, ships were docked on one side, unloaded, and dragged on rollers across the six miles of Isthmus. Their cargo was carried across in ox-drawn wagons, and the ships were then relaunched and reloaded on the other side. It was a tedious process for which captains and shippers paid dearly, but for most shippers it took less time and was considerably safer than going the long way around the end of the Peloponnesus and chancing the open waters, the rocks and storms of Cape Malea. Genoese pirates worked out of Methone, Genoese and Arabs sheltered in ports on Crete, there were Greek pirates in Mani and on Cythera. Corinth was cheaper than pirates.

Once Mediterranean ships ported sails and armories stocked tents woven in Corinth; lords and ladies from Constantinople to Champagne wore Corinthian silk and linen and wool; scholars at the Universities of Paris and Toledo used Corinthian paper for their final drafts, and Corinthian glass was prized in courts from the lands of the Hibernians to the lands of the Persians.

But one dawn two generations ago, in 1147, the watchers in High Corinth sighted red sails in the gulf, rimming the horizon as far as they could see. By noon, the dragon-prowed ships were beached and the great, blond Normans were leaping ashore. The Normans came on with clear purpose. The went directly to the workshops of the glassmakers, the embroiderers, the weavers, bound them together in coffles, and drove them onto ships bound for their cities in Sicily. Then the Normans raided the city treasury, the banks, and the churches for the gold and silver plate on their altars.

The Normans brought through the aqueducts, smashed carved fountainheads, stuffed rubble and bodies into wells. They battered holes in wine butts with their spears and topple jugs of olive oil. They looted the graceful small houses, started fires with broken furniture piled around the columns, trampled the gardens, defecated in the pools of water lilies and ornamental fish. They smashed out the stained glass rondels and alabaster panels which illuminated the small Corinthian churches, ripped silver glass lamps down from their chains, snatched golden vessels from the altars. Then they returned to the dragon ships and sailed away.

Corinth rebuilt its import and export businesses, reestablished its weavers and glassblowers and potters. Marble buildings from the Roman conquest, dingy and much repaired and overbuilt, were repaired once again to use for public affairs. But the fashionable had left for Thebes and Salonika, and the city was crowded with refugees who looked to its walls for protection from pirates and bandits.

Over-busy Corinth had as its Archbishop a man whom nearly all admitted to be a saint and, if his example was not much followed, he was deeply respected, particularly by the refugees he fed, the fatherless boys he educated at the Monastery of Ag. Ioannis, the poor girls whose dowries he provided, the sick who were received in his hospitals.

For all of these, he drew from the cathedral treasury and sold off pieces of church property. When his elders and deacons remonstrated with him, he explained patiently, ``Don't you remember what the holy Apostle wrote to us here in Corinth: `So that now your abundance may supply their need, that there may be equality, so that the one who had gathered much had nothing over and the one who had gathered little had no lack.' ''

``Yes, yes, Papa Nikolaos, but don't you think you might have taken that out f context?''

``Not at all,'' smiling guilelessly. ``It is we Corinthians who have lost our context.''

``But Papa Nikolaos,'' they would continue, ``what will happen when you have sold all the land.''

``Then our beloved church will truly be in the image of our Lord.'' He smoothed the front of his much-patched robe.``But, of course you do recall that the Apostle promised He would always make us rich enough to be generous?''

He sold his episcopal ring of gold and amethyst to pay for more medicines and doctors for the poor. And the elders and archons would shake their heads and sigh to one another that Papa Nikolaos just did not understand the realities of the situation.

While the Corinthians waited for Sgouros, Archbishop Nikolaos tried to rally them to resistance. He preached in the public markets, visited the archons and leading merchants individually. ``Think of who we are,'' he pled. ``How can you do nothing? We were not given the spirit of slavery. This city was home to the blessed Apostle! You cannot give it to be plunder for a murderer and a coward---you cannot give our children to be the prey of wolves!''

But most of those who understood the realities of the situation had already made discrete arrangements with Sgouros, as they had earlier understood the realities of the situation with Theodoros and Stryphnos, and with various pirates before them.

``We appreciate your concern, Archbishop,'' they said, ``and Lord knows there's no one whose views we respect more than you, but don't you think you are being over-emotional about this?''

A few did resist. A band of older students from the monastery school and their teachers, led by the Archbishop's nephew, attacked Sgouros' troops deep in the narrow mountain passes they called the Dervenakia. But the students were few and unaccustomed to weapons. Those who were not killed were taken as prisoners back to Corinth, tortured for the names of their accomplices, and given a hasty trial on charges of treason. The next morning the Corinthians found the heads of their young men piled in a pyramid in the marketplace.

The Archbishop adopted his nephew's child, the boy Michael. Entranced to have become the father of this treasure, and at such an age, he prepared the child's food himself, told him tales of the blessed Apostle and Bellerophon, of young Joseph and Alexander, sat beside him singing melodies his own mother had sung to him, took him for walks beside the sea, began teaching him how to write. The boy was slowly brought out of his grief by the old man's tenderness, and followed him devotedly to visit another sick man, take a gift of cloth to a woman with a new baby, persuade a baker to give bread to a needy family, negotiate another land sale with the bankers.

When Sgouros established himself in the fortress of the High City of Corinth, Corinthians eager to prove their good will told him about the Archbishop's preaching, about the nephew. Sgouros listened without reaction, remembered without comment, rewarded them with the gifts Kamateros carefully selected. He bowed to the Archbishop in the street and did nothing.

After Corinth, Sgouros took his army down the narrow bandit-infested coast road to Athens. Megara surrendered after a token demonstration of force. Elefsina and Daphni sent out delegates to welcome him. Then Sgouros met his first setback.

Athens, too, had a notable Archbishop: scholarly, querulous Michael Choniates who had come to Athens thirty years earlier, who loved perhaps the glory of her ancient name even more than he loved his Lord, and who had spent the years grieving over the loss of that glory. In the name of that ancient glory, imbued with the ringing syllables of Perikles, Choniates walked the shabby streets and alleys of the old town speaking to small groups where he found them, cried out in the market places of the outlying villages, tramped across fields whenever he saw a plowman or herdsman, urging each of them to fight.

``Athenians of old showed themselves valiant in action,'' he cried, ``and they by their courage and their virtues have handed Athens to us a free city. Our children know that what has always made her great has been men who know their duty, men who have made up their minds that she should not find them lacking, men who give her the best contribution that they can. Athens comes to her great testing time and we who cannot bear the thought of losing her must nobly fight and, if needs be, must nobly die. We of Athens know the meaning of what is sweet in life and of what is terrible and we go out undeterred to meet what is to come. Ah, my brothers! Fix your heart and mind and eyes on the greatness of this our Athens, and love her, and future ages will wonder at us!''

They listened to him, the farmer and olive growers, the herdsmen and shoemakers, the basketweavers and soapmakers. When Sgouros's army entered the defile after Daphni, the farmers showered down stones and clods of earth on the invaders, flung nets attached to hooks, attacked with rakes and pitchforks, swung pruning hooks and vine root wrenched from the ground. Sgouros broke through, but a number of his men were wounded and he was unnerved by the intensity of the opposition.

Inside the walls of Athens, the same thing happened. Men and women fought together. They hurled tiles, stones, broken pots from the rooftops, flung out dippers of watered lye, built barricades of stones in the streets, and hamstrung his horses, yet they were no real match for the soldiers and had to retreat. Archbishop Choniates brought as many as he could collect up inside the walls of the High City. They had only stones for weapons, but the High City was impregnable.

Sgouros was enraged. He ordered the city burned, and all the farms within a day's ride. His horsemen collected bundles of giant reeds, stuffed into them live coals, and galloped the lanes and paths of Athens and her farms, hurling the smoking bundles into dry grain or thatched roofs. All that night, the exhausted Athenians hiding in caves beneath the High City, on the slopes of Lycabettos, in cisterns, in the rubble of ancient buildings, listened to the clatter of the horses' hooves, watched the glint of fire on armor, the bursts of flame as bundles of reeds were hurled into their homes.

The horsemen road out in every direction. The defenders in the High City watched the ruin spread west to the sea and to the horizon all around, saw the burning ships in the Piraeus, the explosions as stores of grain ignited, the billowing black clouds from the burning oil in the warehouses, the fires streaking the slopes of Hymettos and Pentelikos. And whenever the smoke lifted or the wind changed, the exhausted, begrimed Athenians saw the columns of the High City, gleaming pale golden in the morning sun, unconquered and untouched.

News traveled as fast as the smoke, and farther. In Thebes, Nauarchos Stryphnos, now Dux of Hellas, decided it was time to leave. Constantinople had fallen to French and German and Italian-speaking crusaders from the West; his sister, no longer Empress, was useless. Foreseeing the probable course of events, he left Thebes quietly and went with his immediate suite to the coast where he took a boat for the islands. After reconsideration, he continued to Nicea and then to Trebizond

* * * * *

Sgouros found the boy when he entered his apartment at dusk: a small scrubbed child of about eight in an immaculate white robe, embroidered in blue at the neck and wrist and hem. His eyes and nose were red, and he sniffed a little. Sgouros looked at him and laughed. Catching the cue from him, his retinue began to laugh. The child looked back and forth at them, bewildered.

``Your name, boy?''

``M-M-M-M-Michael, Excellency.''

He bobbed his head.

``Ha. Michael. And why are you here, Michelaki?''

The boy nodded, gulped, rubbed his white sleeve across his face. He took a deep breath and said,
``I am here to s-s-s-s-serve your Excellency.'' He said it quickly.

``Not bad.'' Sgouros looked around. ``Now, Michelaki. What did the Archbishop tell you?''

The boy thought hard. ``Do you m-m-m-mean my uncle, sir?''

``Your uncle.'' Sgouros lowered his voice a little, which made the child feel better. He screwed p his face, trying to remember exactly.

``My uncle told me that I was to---I was to,'' he remembered, ``to love God and s-serve my ruler and n-n-n-never forget what kind of family I come from.''

Sgouros spoke quietly. ``I will see that you never forget what kind of family you come from.''

he boy almost smiled. ``Thank you, s-s-s-sir.''

Sgouros looked hard at him. ``In honor of your family, you will be my page. You will bring me what I want. Quickly. I do not repeat myself. Do you understand?''

The child nodded quickly. ``Yes, s-sir. I un-d-d-d-derstand, s-s-s-sir.''

Sgouros waved at one of his henchmen. ``Michaelis, take the boy. Show him.'' Michaelis guarded Sgouros's back, slept beside his bed. He carried his knife in plain sight, and used it where brass knuckles or bare hands would not serve. The child recoiled instinctively, then tried to stand tall.

Michael learned to serve the Despot of the Morea. Sgouros had not previously had a page and no one of his retinue but Kamateros had any preconceptions about what the position entailed. He was mostly ignored. Sometimes, when Sgouros remembered, he ordered the boy to fetch him wine or find his gloves, bring one of the dogs, or a towel, or more hot water for the bath. The work, in fact, was not difficult. Standing for hours waiting on the Despot's mood was. So were the small deliberate humiliations: the coarse remarks in the latrine when he was too tense to urinate in public, the imitations of his stuttering, the ridicule when he was discovered crying in bed, when he wet the bed.

Every day someone from the city below came to the gate of High Corinth with a clean robe for Michael and a whispered message from the Archbishop. A serving woman handed out the previous day's robe, brought in the new one and slipped it into Michael's pallet where he could find the familiar scent when he was finally allowed to go to bed. The child cried himself silently to sleep, he slept badly and ate little, his stuttering increased. Then one evening when Sgouros was sitting before the fire, Michael spilled some wine.

``Come here, boy,'' said Sgouros in a low voice.

The child went to him. Sgouros bent low toward him and spoke almost inaudibly, ``Where is my wine?''

``O-o-o-o-over --,'' he struggled. He was choking. Someone laughed. He tried to point to the table.

``Bring it,'' said Sgouros, his mouth tight.

The child went back to the table, took up the drinking bowl and set it on a hammered brass tray. It spilled again.

``Now!'' said Sgouros sharply, striking the table. Michael picked up the tray. His hands were shaking. He turned toward the Despot.

He took a step, another step, and dropped the tray. The great drinking bowl of sea-green glass shattered on the tiles. Pale green fragments flecked with gold flashed out across the floor toward the fire. Wine spattered the Despot's shoes, splashed darkly on Michael's white robe. Firelight reflected in small dark pools.

Sgouros lashed out with his fist, striking the child against the side of his head and he fell, blood pouring from beside his eye. He scrambled, trying to stand up. Sgouros kicked out at him. The child fell again, gulping, then Sgouros was over him, kicking methodically, again and again, his face without expression. The men in the room stood still, hands frozen in mid-air. The only sounds came from the olive wood snapping in the fire on the hearth, from the dull thud of Sgouros's books striking again and again.

Sgouros strode out, ordered his bed made up in another room. Someone directed the slave to clean up, but even before the flagstones were scrubbed of their stains, the news had reached the city below. Some few friends slipped through the unlighted streets to the Archbishop's monastery, told him what had happened, sat with him.

A few days later, armed guards hammered on the monastery door: Despot Sgouros commanded the presence of Archbishop Nikolaos at dinner. A sedan chair waited to take the Archbishop up the mountain. To the anxious monks who followed him to the door, the Archbishop said, ``Why are you worried? They may call us dead men, but we will live.''

He reached out to touch the hands of the nearest monks, waved to the rest, and then the curtains of the sedan chair fell down and hid him from their sight.

Sgouros met the Archbishop at the first gate of the High City. He knelt and kissed the Archbishop's ringless hand, then he walked alongside the sedan chair up to the second gate where he helped the old man out and let him up to the small palace newly furnished for the Despot. The Archbishop sat, a servant washed his feet with warm, scented water from a silver bowl, and dried them with an embroidered towel. Other servants presented each of them with a basin of scented water in which to dip their hands, then with more embroidered towels.

The two men dined alone. Neither spoke, neither touched his wine. Most of the dishes were sent away untasted. Finally, Sgouros sat up straight, put both hands on the edge of the table, pushed his seat back.

``So,'' he said. ``Constantinople has fallen. Salonika has surrendered.''

The Archbishop shook his head. ``The shame of it. The City fell to a blind man---Salonika to a man with white hair. Has the Empire no young men with courage?''

They both remembered his nephew; they thought of Athens.

``The real question is,'' Sgouros ignored him,``what to do when the Franks come here? They will.''

``Corinth is a holy city,'' the Archbishop said. It must not happen here, what those godless men did to the Queen of Cities. I have wept for Constantinople---Constantinople, eye of cities---she has drunk to the dregs the cup of trembling. I cannot bear to think of my beloved Corinth in such torment.''

His eyes filled with tears.

``I was a child when the Normans came, but I still remember.''

He bowed his head and put a hand to his eyes.

``How can I protect my people?''

``Your people,'' said Sgouros quietly. ``Yes.'' His mouth tightened.

They sat in silence. Slaves removed plates, set out trays of sweets and fruits for desert. Neither moved. Then Sgouros snapped his fingers toward the door. Two guards stepped in, saluted. Sgouros jabbed his thumb toward the Archbishop. The Archbishop sighed, as if weary from long waiting, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and stood. With his thumb he made the sign of the Cross three times over the table and the slaves and Sgouros. Sgouros had to signal again, and one guard put a hand on the old man's sleeve and turned him toward the door.

It was still daylight outside. Most of the henchmen and servants were clustered near a cookfire in the courtyard talking excitedly. Some jumped up and bowed when they recognized the Archbishop. He raised his hands to greet them, but from behind men seized his arms. He heard somewhere in the distance the sound of a great tumult and then terrible screaming. Two other men, springing from each side, prised apart his eyelids, and he saw Michaelis grinning seize two glowing sticks from the fire, one in each hand, and then the brilliance seared into his eyes.

They took their hands away from him. The distant screaming continued, then stopped abruptly. After the first terrible pain came shock. His eyes, or what used to be his eyes, were impacted with images, white with pain. He swayed, then caught himself and stood quite still. The background noises became louder, moved closer. In the urgency of the voices around him, he heard that of Sgouros, slow and dry. Sgouros stumped around him with deliberation, then turned away.

``Obviously, Archbishop, as a blind man, you are unfit for holy office.''

He waved a hand toward his supported and called out, though his voice broke in mid-word, ``Anaxios!''

Unworthy. He spoke loudly in parody of the service of ordination, when the priest is presented to the people and they cry Axios! to affirm his worthiness.

``Anaxios'' the men around them called, raising their voices a little and forcing the cry. ``Anaxios!''

The Archbishop bowed his head. ``Yes, Archon.'' He spoke with dignity, but his voice trembled from pain.

`Despot'' Kamateros stepped close. ``Not Archon.''

Then turning to Sgouros he said casually, ``He is indeed unfit to be Archbishop, Despot, but perhaps he could be Doge.''

Sgouros began to laugh, a great deep laugh that flooded up from his belly and spilled out, staining everyone in earshot. As if at a signal, the group of men moved toward the Archbishop. He sensed their nearness, drew away from them, hitting the wall.

Kamateros had reminded them of their fears, of the terror of the Franks. Last year when the Franks attacked Constantinople the first time, the men of the City were nearly successful in repelling them. But the golden-prowed galley of the old Doge of Venice---blinded in a City prison, or in a street fight, rumor said, or perhaps it was merely the cataracts of old age---forced its way between the attacking ships to the harbor wall. He stood erect at the prow shouting them on, feet planted far apart, brandishing aloft in both hands the banner of the gold lion of St. Mark. The galley nudged the wall, he shouted again, two sailors swung him up onto the wall of the City where he stood bellowing like a bull, waving the banner, rallying on the attack. Though it was said by the Greeks that he, a blind old man, had leaped alone. And they were ashamed to be afraid of an old man and a blind one at that.

Someone quite hear the Archbishop shouted, ``Make him leap onto the wall.''

More shouts: ``The wall! The wall!''

He was shoved again, fell, and putting out his hand recognized a flight of stairs. He tried to stand up, stumbled and fell again. Rough hands jerked him to his feet, turned him around.``Up, up!''

He lurched, nauseated. The pain hit his eyes with full force. Instinctively, he put his hands up, then jerked them away from the more terrible pain. Two or three were goading him with their javelins. He staggered up step by step.

``Jump, old man. Jump up.''

He tried to jump, fell, felt himself hoisted up, took another step, stumbled, and knew from the rush of wind that we was on the wall, that between him and the precipice there was only wind. He stood up carefully, took some deep breaths, and turned a little, sensing his direction.

The men below him fell quiet. They looked at him, looked to Sgouros who had a half-grin on his face. The Archbishop seemed to gaze intently down at them. Then he turned around. They thought he was saying something, but all they could catch was a phrase, a murmur like, `` . . . nor height nor depth nor any other creature . . .,'' and he was gone. Two of them reached the place where he had stood just in time to see him strike the rocks below. They looked back to Sgouros but he was walking away.