. The emperor half
unsheathed his cimeter; but his more deliberate rage reserved Acropolita
for a baser punishment. One of the first officers of the empire was
ordered to dismount, stripped of his robes, and extended on the ground
in the presence of the prince and army. In this posture he was chastised
with so many and such heavy blows from the clubs of two guards or
executioners, that when Theodore commanded them to cease, the great
logothete was scarcely able to rise and crawl away to his tent. After a
seclusion of some days, he was recalled by a peremptory mandate to his
seat in council; and so dead were the Greeks to the sense of honor and
shame, that it is from the narrative of the sufferer himself that we
acquire the knowledge of his disgrace. [7] The cruelty of the emperor was
exasperated by the pangs of sickness, the approach of a premature end,
and the suspicion of poison and magic. The lives and fortunes, the eyes
and limbs, of his kinsmen and nobles, were sacrificed to each sally of
passion; and before he died, the son of Vataces might deserve from the
people, or at least from the court, the appellation of tyrant. A matron
of the family of the Palaeologi had provoked his anger by refusing to
bestow her beauteous daughter on the vile plebeian who was recommended
by his caprice. Without regard to her birth or age, her body, as high
as the neck, was enclosed in a sack with several cats, who were
pricked with pins to irritate their fury against their unfortunate
fellow-captive. In his last hours the emperor testified a wish to
forgive and be forgiven, a just anxiety for the fate of John his son and
successor, who, at the age of eight years, was condemned to the dangers
of a long minority. His last choice intrusted the office of guardian
to the sanctity of the patriarch Arsenius, and to the courage of George
Muzalon, the great domestic, who was equally distinguished by the royal
favor and the public hatred. Since their connection with the Latins, the
names and privileges of hereditary rank had insinuated themselves into
the Greek monarchy; and the noble families [8] were provoked by the
elevation of a worthless favorite, to whose influence they imputed the
errors and calamities of the late reign. In the first council, after
the emperor's death, Muzalon, from a lofty throne, pronounced a labored
apology of his conduct and intentions: his modesty was subdued by a
unanimous assurance of esteem and fidelity; and his mos