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DYNASTIC STRUGGLES IN EMPIRE 85 should resent references to his profligacy and his irregular life was natural enough, but Cantacuzenus cannot justly be blamed because he refused to surrender the government into his hands. Our estimate of the character of Cantacuzenus has to be based mainly on his own writings. But through them we know the man better perhaps than any other emperor. When dealing with events illustrating his own motives and conduct, he is an unconscious hypocrite. He gives us his version of all the principal events of his reign. His despatches and his speeches are reported at weary length, but they usually leave the impression of having been revised and modified by the light of his subsequent experience. His own narrative is confirmed to a considerable extent by that of Ducas, who, however, is open to suspicion as a partisan. His grandfather had belonged to the party of Cantacuzenus and had escaped into Asia Minor to avoid the vengeance of Apocaukus. Ducas describes Cantacuzenus as distinguished by the soundness of his judgment and by his great courage. 1 Cantacuzenus is great m accounting for his failures. Judged by his own narrative, which may be described as an apologia pro vita sua, he appears a respectable ecclesiastically minded man of mediocre talent, seriously desirous of the good of the people whom he governed, but anxious, above all, not only to become emperor but to found an imperial family. The vanity of Cantacuzenus leads him seldom to lose an 1 The History of Nicephorus Gregoras, as written by an enemy, is a useful corrective. Krumbacher in his account of Byzantine literature speaks of Gregoras as ' die Hauptperson des 14. Jahrhunderts ' (p. 19). His narrative is described by Cantacuzenus as stamped with ignorance, partiality, and false- hood. Its chief accusation against him is not merely false but improbable (iv. 24). In his own History Cantacuzenus declares that he has never departed from the truth either on account of hatred or the desire to say pleasant things (iv. concluding chapter). What he finds most fault with in Gregoras is the statement that, even during the lifetime of Andronicus, Canta- cuzenus had become possessed of a burning desire to become emperor, and that he had consulted certain monks at Mount Athos who were supposed to have the power of divination, in order to learn whether he would accomplish his desire. The story, he declares, is absolutely false. It is brought up because he as emperor protected Palamas in his religious controversies where Gregoras took the opposite side.