Venice attempted to recover by diplomacy what she had lost by arms.
She possessed in Pietro Zeno, the baron of Andros, a diplomatist of
unrivalled experience in the tortuous politics of the Levant. Both he
and Antonio were well aware that the fate of Athens depended upon the
Sultan; and to his Court they both repaired, armed with those pecuniary
arguments which have usually proved convincing to Turkish ministers. The
diplomatic duel was lengthy; but at last the Venetian gained one of those
paper victories so dear to ambassadors and so worthless to practical men.
The Sultan promised to see that Athens was restored to the Republic, but
he took no steps to perform his promise; while Antonio, backed by the
Acciajuoli influence in Italy, by the Pope, and the King of Naples, held
his ground. Venice wisely resigned herself to the loss of a colony which
it would have been expensive to recover. To save appearances, Antonio was
induced to become her vassal for “the land, castle, and place of Athens,
in modern times called Sythines[110],” sending every year, in token of
his homage, a silk _pallium_ from the Theban manufactories to the church
of St Mark—a condition which he was most remiss in fulfilling.
The reign of Antonio Acciajuoli—the longest in the history of Athens
save that of the recent King of the Hellenes—was a period of prosperity
and comparative tranquillity for that city. While all around him
principalities and powers were shaken to their foundations; while that
ancient warden of the northern March of Athens, the Marquisate of
Boudonitza, was swept away for ever; while Turkish armies invaded the
Morea, and annexed the Albanian capital to the Sultan’s empire; while
the principality of Achaia disappeared from the map in the throes of a
tardy Greek revival, the statesmanlike ruler of Athens skilfully guided
the policy of his duchy. At times even his experienced diplomacy failed
to avert the horrors of a Turkish raid; on one occasion he was forced to
join, as a Turkish vassal, in an invasion of the Morea. But, as a rule,
the dreaded Mussulmans spared this half-Oriental, who was a past-master
in the art of managing the Sultan’s ministers. From the former masters
of Athens, the Catalans and the Venetians, he had nothing to fear. Once,
indeed, he received news that Alfonso V of Aragon, who never forgot
to sign himself “Duke of Athens and Neopatras,” intended to put one
of his Catalan subjects into possession of those duchies. But Venice
reassured him with a shrewd remark that the Catalans usually made much
ado about nothing. On her part the Republic was friendly to the man who
had supplanted her. She gave Antonio permission, in case of danger, to
send the valuable Acciajuoli stud—for, like his father, he was a good
judge of horse-flesh—to the island of Eubœa; and she ordered her bailie
to “observe the ancient commercial treaties between the duchy and the
island, which he would find in the chancery of Negroponte.” But when