Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/503

I I OF THE ROMAN EMPIEE 481 he raised the sieo^e of Philadelphia, and deserved the name of^^'^ ^^^ the deliverer of Asia. But, after a short season of prosperity, the cloud of slavery and ruin a^ain burst on that unhappy pro- vince. The inhabitants escaped fsavs a Greek historian) from the smoke into the flames : and the hostility of the Turks was less pernicious than the friendship of the Catalans. The lives and fortunes which they had rescued, they considered as their own : the willing or reluctant maid was saved from the race of circumcision for the embraces of a Christian soldier ; the ex- action of fines and supplies was enforced by licentious rapine and arbitrary executions ; and, on the resistance of Mag- nesia, the Great Duke besiea^ed a city of the Roman empire. ^^ These disorders he excused bv the wrongs and passions of a victorious army : nor would his ovm authoritv or person have been safe, had he dared to pimish his faithful followers, who were defrauded of the just and covenanted price of their ser- vices. The threats and complaints of Andronicus disclosed the nakedness of the empire. His golden bull had invited no more than five hundred horse and a thousand foot soldiers ; yet the crowd of volunteers, who migrated to the East, had been enlisted and fed by his spontaneous bounty. ^'Tii]e his bravest allies were content %vith three byzants, or pieces of gold, for their monthly pay, an ounce or even tAvo ounces of gold were assigned to the Catalans, whose annual pension woixld thus amount to near an hundred pounds sterling ; one of their chiefs had modestly rated at three hundred thousand crowns the value of his future merits : and above a million had been issued from the treasurv for the maintenance of these costly mercenaries. A cruel tax had been imposed on the corn of the husbandman : one third was retrenched from the salaries of the public officers ; and the standard of the coin was so shamefully debased that of the fonr-and-twenty parts onlv fi^'e were of pure gold.^^ At the summons of the emperor, Roger evacuated a "2 Some idea may be formed of the population of these cities, from the 36,000 inhabitants of Tralles, which, in the preceding reign, was rebuilt by the emperor, and ruined by the Turks fPachymer, 1. vi. c. 20, 21). "• I have collected these pecuniary circumstances from Pachymer (1. xi. c. 21 ; 1. xii. c. 4, 5, 8, 14, 19), who describes the prosressive degradation of the gold coin. Even in the prosperous times of John Ducas Vataces. the byzants were comoosed in equal proportions of the pure and the baser metal. The poverty of Michael Paloeologus compelled him to strike a new coin, with nine parts, or carats, of gold, and fifteen of copper alloy, .'^fter his death the standard rose to ten carats, till in the public distress it was reduced to the moiety. The Prince was relieved for a moment, while credit and commerce were for ever blasted. In France, the gold coin is of twentv-two carats {one-twelfth alloy), and the standard of England and Holland is still higher. VOL. VI. 31