ens. Their sally was bold and
successful; the strangers embarked, the rebels submitted, and the glory
of the day was ascribed to a phantom or a stranger, who fought in the
foremost ranks under the character of St. Andrew the Apostle. The shrine
which contained his relics was decorated with the trophies of victory,
and the captive race was forever devoted to the service and vassalage
of the metropolitan church of Patras. By the revolt of two Sclavonian
tribes, in the neighborhood of Helos and Lacedaemon, the peace of the
peninsula was often disturbed. They sometimes insulted the weakness, and
sometimes resisted the oppression, of the Byzantine government, till at
length the approach of their hostile brethren extorted a golden bull
to define the rites and obligations of the Ezzerites and Milengi, whose
annual tribute was defined at twelve hundred pieces of gold. From
these strangers the Imperial geographer has accurately distinguished a
domestic, and perhaps original, race, who, in some degree, might derive
their blood from the much-injured Helots. The liberality of the Romans,
and especially of Augustus, had enfranchised the maritime cities from
the dominion of Sparta; and the continuance of the same benefit ennobled
them with the title of _Eleuthero_, or Free-Laconians. In the time of
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, they had acquired the name of _Mainotes_,
under which they dishonor the claim of liberty by the inhuman pillage of
all that is shipwrecked on their rocky shores. Their territory, barren
of corn, but fruitful of olives, extended to the Cape of Malea: they
accepted a chief or prince from the Byzantine praetor, and a light
tribute of four hundred pieces of gold was the badge of their immunity,
rather than of their dependence. The freemen of Laconia assumed the
character of Romans, and long adhered to the religion of the Greeks.
By the zeal of the emperor Basil, they were baptized in the faith of
Christ: but the altars of Venus and Neptune had been crowned by these
rustic votaries five hundred years after they were proscribed in the
Roman world. In the theme of Peloponnesus, forty cities were still
numbered, and the declining state of Sparta, Argos, and Corinth, may be
suspended in the tenth century, at an equal distance, perhaps, between
their antique splendor and their present desolation. The duty of
military service, either in person or by substitute, was imposed on the
lands or benefices of the province; a sum of