the place. From Durazzo, the Norman duke advanced into the heart of Epirus or Albania; traversed the first mountains of Thessaly; surprised three hundred English in the city of Castoria; approached Thessalonica; and made Constantinople tremble. A more pressing duty suspended the prosecution of his ambitious designs. By shipwreck, pestilence, and the sword, his army was reduced to a third of the original numbers; and instead of being recruited from Italy, he was informed, by plaintive epistles, of the mischiefs and dangers which had been produced by his absence: the revolt of the cities and barons of Apulia; the distress of the pope; and the approach or invasion of Henry king of Germany. Highly presuming that his person was sufficient for the public safety, he repassed the sea in a single brigantine, and left the remains of the army under the command of his son and the Norman counts, exhorting Bohemond to respect the freedom of his peers, and the counts to obey the authority of their leader. The son of Guiscard trod in the footsteps of his father; and the two destroyers are compared, by the Greeks, to the caterpillar and the locust, the last of whom devours whatever has escaped the teeth of the former. ^78 After winning two battles against the emperor, he descended into the plain of Thessaly, and besieged Larissa, the fabulous realm of Achilles, ^79 which contained the treasure and magazines of the Byzantine camp. Yet a just praise must not be refused to the fortitude and prudence of Alexius, who bravely struggled with the calamities of the times. In the poverty of the state, he presumed to borrow the superfluous ornaments of the churches: the desertion of the Manichaeans was supplied by some tribes of Moldavia: a reenforcement of seven thousand Turks replaced and revenged the loss of their brethren; and the Greek soldiers were exercised to ride, to draw the bow, and to the daily practice of ambuscades and evolutions. Alexius had been taught by experience, that the formidable cavalry of the Franks on foot was unfit for action, and almost incapable of motion; ^80 his archers were directed to aim their arrows at the horse rather than the man; and a variety of spikes and snares were scattered over the ground on which he might expect an attack. In the neighborhood of Larissa the events of war were protracted and balanced. The courage of Bohemond was always conspicuous, and often successful; but his camp was pillaged by a stratagem of the Greeks; the city was impregnable; and the venal or discontented counts deserted his standard, betrayed their trusts, and enlisted in the service of the emperor. Alexius returned to Constantinople with the advantage, rather than the honor, of victory. After evacuating the conquests which he could no longer defend, the son of Guiscard embarked for Italy, and was embraced by a father who esteemed his merit, and sympathized in his misfortune.
[Footnote 77: The Romans had changed the inauspicious name of Epi-damnus to Dyrrachium, (Plin. iii. 26;) and the vulgar corruption of Duracium (see Malaterra) bore some affinity to hardness. One of Robert's names was Durand, a durando: poor wit!
(Alberic. Monach. in Chron. apud Muratori, Annali d'Italia, tom. ix. p. 137.)]
[Footnote 78: (Anna, l. i. p. 35.) By these similes, so different from those of Homer she wishes to inspire contempt as well as horror for the little noxious animal, a conqueror. Most unfortunately, the common sense, or common nonsense, of mankind, resists her laudable design.]
[Footnote 79: Prodiit hac auctor Trojanae cladis Achilles. The supposition of the Apulian (l. v. p. 275) may be excused by the more classic poetry of Virgil, (Aeneid. ii. 197,) Larissaeus Achilles, but it is not justified by the geography of Homer.]
[Footnote 80: The items which encumbered the knights on foot, have been ignorantly translated spurs, (Anna Comnena, Alexias, l. v. p. 140.) Ducange has explained the true sense by a ridiculous and inconvenient fashion, which lasted from the xith to the xvth century. These peaks, in the form of a scorpion,