r
than punish, the crimes of a usurper; and Apocaucus smiled at the
success of his own flattery, when he beheld the Byzantine priest
assuming the state and temporal claims of the Roman pontiff. [26] Between
three persons so different in their situation and character, a private
league was concluded: a shadow of authority was restored to the senate;
and the people was tempted by the name of freedom. By this powerful
confederacy, the great domestic was assaulted at first with clandestine,
at length with open, arms. His prerogatives were disputed; his opinions
slighted; his friends persecuted; and his safety was threatened both in
the camp and city. In his absence on the public service, he was
accused of treason; proscribed as an enemy of the church and state; and
delivered with all his adherents to the sword of justice, the
vengeance of the people, and the power of the devil; his fortunes were
confiscated; his aged mother was cast into prison; [261] all his past
services were buried in oblivion; and he was driven by injustice to
perpetrate the crime of which he was accused. [27] From the review of
his preceding conduct, Cantacuzene appears to have been guiltless of any
treasonable designs; and the only suspicion of his innocence must arise
from the vehemence of his protestations, and the sublime purity which
he ascribes to his own virtue. While the empress and the patriarch
still affected the appearances of harmony, he repeatedly solicited the
permission of retiring to a private, and even a monastic, life. After
he had been declared a public enemy, it was his fervent wish to throw
himself at the feet of the young emperor, and to receive without a
murmur the stroke of the executioner: it was not without reluctance that
he listened to the voice of reason, which inculcated the sacred duty of
saving his family and friends, and proved that he could only save them
by drawing the sword and assuming the Imperial title.

[Footnote 25: See the regency and reign of John Cantacuzenus, and the
whole progress of the civil war, in his own history, (l. iii. c. 1--100,
p. 348--700,) and in that of Nicephorus Gregoras, (l. xii. c. 1--l. xv.
c. 9, p. 353--492.)]

[Footnote 26: He assumes the royal privilege of red shoes or buskins;
placed on his head a mitre of silk and gold; subscribed his epistles
with hyacinth or green ink, and claimed for the new, whatever
Constantine had given to the ancient, Rome, (Cantacuzen. l. iii. c. 36.
Nic. Gre