§ 3. CHAP. V. acquaintance with the duties of the individual citizen, in his every-day relations to the public, can ever be gained, unless he be trained to practise them by constant discipline. It is, doubtless, far more difficult to educate good rulers than good subjects; but even the latter is not an easy task. No laws can alone produce the feeling of selfrespect; and where the sense of shame is wanting, the very best laws are useless. The education that produces susceptibility of conscience is more valuable than the highest cultivation of legislative, legal, and political talents. The most important, and in general the most neglected, part of national education, in all countries, has been the primary relations of the individual to the commonwealth. The endless divisions and intense egoism that arose out of the Hellenic system of autonomy, where every village was a sovereign state, disgusted the higher classes with the basis of all true liberty and social prosperity. Despotism was lauded as the only protection against anarchy, and it often afforded the readiest means of securing some degree of impartiality in the administration of justice. But despotism has ever been the great devourer of the wealth of the people. The despotism of the Athenian democrats devoured the wealth of the free Greek cities and islands of the Egean. The Roman empire of despots annihilated the accumulated riches of all the countries from the Euphrates to the ocean. The empires of Byzantium and of Trebizond were mild modifications of Roman tyranny, on which weakness had imposed a respect for order and law that contended with the instincts of the imperial government. Yet, with all the imperfections of its society, and all the faults of its government, it is probable that the two centuries and a half during which the empire of Trebizond existed, contributed to effect a beneficial change in the condition of the mass of the population over the East. That change, however, was developed in the general condition of mankind, and must be traced in a more enlarged view of society than falls within the scope of the History of Trebizond. Catherine II. of Valois, married to Philip of Tar entum, Philip II. of Tarentum, Robert of Tarentum, prince of Achaia, Philip III. of Tarentum, 1273 1273 1286 12861308 13081346 1313 - 1332 1346 James de Baux or Balza, 1364 1364 1373 The descendants of Baldwin II. became then extinct. Boniface III., marquis of Montferrat, (the Giant,) William ceded the title to the Byzantine 1222 .1227 12271254 1254-1284 William dalle Carceri, signor of Negrepont, married a daughter of King Demetrius, and assumed the title of King of Saloniki, which he bore in 1243.1 The house of Burgundy received a grant of the kingdom of Saloniki from Baldwin II. in 1266, when he was only titular emperor of Romania. Hugh IV. of Burgundy, Robert, Hugh V., Louis, prince of Achaia, Eudes IV., duke of Burgundy, sold his royal title III. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE DESPOTS OF EPIRUS, THE EMPERORS Despots of Epirus. Michael I., Angelos Comnenos Ducas, Theodore, became emperor of Thessalonica 1204 to 1214 1214 1 Rainaldi, Annales Eccles., ann. 1243, tom. xxi. p. 298. |