Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

Learning, literature, science, and art

Page 6

Ducas (Doukas), a Greek of Asia Minor, wrote in slightly polished spoken Greek a history from 1341 to 1462, i.e., from the accession of John V to the conquest of the island of Lesbos by the Turks. In the opening pages of his work he gave a brief chronological introduction beginning with Adam; the reigns of the last three Palaeologi are treated in great detail. Inwardly Orthodox, he accepted the compromise with Rome as the only way to save the perishing Empire. Ducas spent almost all his life in the service of a Genoese ruler of Lesbos, but he did not break with the Greek people. He looked with deep sorrow upon their fatal destiny, and his account of the fall of Constantinople ends with the lament, from which a fragment already has been quoted. Ducas history has been preserved not only in its original Greek text, but also in an old Italian version, which in some places supplements passages lacking in the original Greek. One of Ducas' biographers said: Sober, modest, well-educated, truthful, and, in spite of all his patriotism, comparatively impartial, Ducas serves as an excellent guide for understanding the real situation of persons and events. A more recent biographer of Ducas remarked: Ducas is an author worthy of study; for he was truthful and in several instances an eyewitness - qualities which, in the opinion of historians, far outweigh the barbarism of his style, which so much offended his supercilious editor in the defective Bonn edition.

Laonikos Chalcocondyles (or Chalcocandyles), or in its abbreviated form, Chalcondyles, Athenian by origin, centered his work, not in Constantinople or at the court of the Palaeologi, but in the young and vigorous Ottoman Empire. He wrote a History in ten books, from 1298 to 1463 or, to be more exact, early in 1464; he related not the history of the Palaeologian dynasty but the history of the Ottomans and their rulers. Laonikos was forced to flee from Athens, spent the time up to the Turkish conquest in the Peloponnesus, and then went to Italy, or more probably to Crete, where he composed his work. Following Herodotus and Thucydides, Laonikos was a good example of how a Greek could study the ancient language in the letter, without being able to grasp the spirit. Like Thucydides, he put speeches into the mouths of his characters, which were, of course, works of pure imagination. A good deal of information, often not very exact, is given by Laonikos on the peoples and countries of western Europe. His recent biographer declared, With, an impartiality rare in a part of the world where racial hatred burns so fiercely, he describes the origin, organization, and triumph of his nations' 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 southeastern 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.

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