OF THE HOMAN EMPIRE.

185

terest, of the Greeks. No sooner had he re- chap.passed the Hellespont , than he issued a man- LXVUIdate to suppress their pension, and to expel theirofficers from the banks of the Strymon: in thismeasure he betrayed an hostile mind; and thesecond order announced, and in some degreecommenced, the siege of Constantinople . Inthe narrow pass of the Bosphorus , an Asiaticfortress had formerly been raised by his grand-father: in the opposite situation, on the Eu-ropean side, he resolved to erect a more formid-able castle ; and a thousand masons were com-manded to assemble in the spring on a spotnamed Asomaton, about five miles from theGreek metropolis." 1 Persuasion is the resourceof the feeble; and the feeble can seldom per-suade: the ambassadors of the emperor attempt-ed, without success, to divert Mahomet from theexecution of his design. They represented thathis grandfather had solicited the permission ofManuel to build a castle on his own territories;but that this double fortification, which wouldcommand the strait, could only tend to violatethe alliance of the nations; to intercept the La-tins who traded in the Black sea , and perhaps toannihilate the subsistence of the city. “ I form“ no enterprise,” replied the perfidious sultan,

“ against the city ; but the empire of Constan-

The situation of the fortress, and the topography of the Bospho-rus , are best learned from Peter Gyllius (de Bosphoro Thracio, 1. ii,e. 13). Leuuclavius (Pandect, p. 445), and Tournefort (Voyage dan>le Levant, tom. ii, lettre xv, p. 443, 414); but I must regret the map,or plan, which Tournefort sent to the French minister of the marine.

The reader may turn hack to vol. iii, ch. 17, of this history