valleys of the Hermus, the Caister, and the Mæander." Theodore Lascaris died in 1222, leaving no son, and John Dukas Vatatzes, or Vataces as his name is written by some historians, a man of eminent abilities and high qualities, who had married Theodore's daughter, was elected to the vacant throne. He was saluted as John III.—assuming a continuity from the Byzantine to the Nicæan series of emperors. In a reign of thirty-three years, this prudent and capable emperor, as Gibbon expresses the fact, "rescued the provinces from national and foreign usurpers, till he pressed on all sides the imperial city [Constantinople], a leafless and sapless trunk, which must fall at the first stroke of the axe." He did not live to apply that blow nor to witness the fall of the coveted capital of the East. But the event occurred only six years after his death, and owed nothing to the energy or the capability of his successors. His son, Theodore II., reigned but four years, and left at his death, in 1258, a son, John IV., only eight years old. The appointed regent and tutor of this youth was soon assassinated, and Michael Paleologos, an able officer, who had some of the blood of the imperial Angelos family in his veins, was made in the first instance tutor to the young emperor, and soon afterwards raised to the throne with him as a colleague. In 1260 the new emperor made an attack on Constantinople and was repulsed. But on the 25th of July in the next year the city was taken by a sudden surprise, while 6,000 soldiers of its garrison were absent on an expedition against Daphnusia in the Black Sea. It was acquired almost without resistance, the Latin emperor, Baldwin II., taking promptly to flight. The destruction of life was slight; but the surprising party fired a considerable part of the city, to cover the smallness of its numbers, and Constantinople suffered once more from a disastrous conflagration. On the recovery of its ancient capital, the Greek empire ceased to bear the name of Nicæa, and its history is continued under the more imposing appellation of the Greek empire of Constantinople. _G. Finlay, History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires, from 716 to 1453, book 4, chapter 1 (volume 2)._ ALSO IN: _E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 62._ GREEK EMPIRE OF TREBIZOND. See TREBIZOND: A. D. 1204-1461. GREEK FIRE.