When, in the spring of 1388, Nerio Acciajuoli found himself master of “the Castle of Setines,” as the Franks called the Akropolis, his first care was to conciliate the Greeks, who formed by far the largest part of his subjects, and who may have aided him to conquer the Athenian duchy. For the first time since the day, nearly two centuries before, when Akominatos had fled from his beloved cathedral to exile at Keos, a Greek Metropolitan of Athens was allowed to reside in his see, not, indeed, on the sacred rock itself, but beneath the shadow of the Areopagos. We may be sure that this remarkable concession was prompted, not by sentiment, but by policy, though the policy was perhaps mistaken. The Greek hierarchy has in all ages been distinguished for its political character; and the presence of a high Greek ecclesiastic at Athens at once provided his fellow-countrymen with a national leader against the rulers, whom they distrusted as foreigners and he hated as schismatics. He was ready to call in the aid of the Turks against his fellow-Christians, just as in modern Macedonia a Greek bishop abhorred the followers of the Bulgarian Exarch far more than those of the Prophet. Thus early in Florentine Athens were sown the seeds of the Turkish domination; thus, in the words of the Holy Synod, “the Athenian Church seemed to have recovered its ancient happiness such as it had enjoyed before the barbarian conquest[103].” Nor was it the Church alone which profited by the change of dynasty. Greek for the first time became the official language of the Government; Nerio and his accomplished daughter, the Countess of Cephalonia, used it in their public documents; the Countess, the most masterful woman of the Latin Orient, proudly signed herself, in the cinnabar ink of Byzantium, “Empress of the Romans”; even Florentines settled at Athens assumed the Greek translation of their surnames. Thus, a branch of the famous Medici family was transplanted to Athens, became completely Hellenised under the name of Iatros, and has left behind it a progeny which scarcely conceals, beneath that of Iatropoulos, its connection with the mediæval rulers of Florence. There is even evidence that the “elders” of the Greek community were allowed a share in the municipal government of Florentine, no less than in that of Turkish, Athens.