hogs, and seventy thousand sheep: ^24 a precious record of rural
opulence, in the last period of the empire, and in a land, most
probably in Thrace, so repeatedly wasted by foreign and domestic
hostility. The favor of Cantacuzene was above his fortune. In
the moments of familiarity, in the hour of sickness, the emperor
was desirous to level the distance between them and pressed his
friend to accept the diadem and purple. The virtue of the great
domestic, which is attested by his own pen, resisted the
dangerous proposal; but the last testament of Andronicus the
younger named him the guardian of his son, and the regent of the
empire.

[Footnote 21: The noble race of the Cantacuzeni (illustrious from
the xith century in the Byzantine annals) was drawn from the
Paladins of France, the heroes of those romances which, in the
xiiith century, were translated and read by the Greeks, (Ducange,
Fam. Byzant. p. 258.)]

[Footnote 22: See Cantacuzene, (l. iii. c. 24, 30, 36.)]

[Footnote 23: Saserna, in Gaul, and Columella, in Italy or Spain,
allow two yoke of oxen, two drivers, and six laborers, for two
hundred jugera (125 English acres) of arable land, and three more
men must be added if there be much underwood, (Columella de Re
Rustica, l. ii. c. 13, p 441, edit. Gesner.)]
[Footnote 24: In this enumeration (l. iii. c. 30) the French
translation of the president Cousin is blotted with three
palpable and essential errors. 1. He omits the 1000 yoke of
working oxen. 2. He interprets by the number of fifteen hundred.
3. He confounds myriads with chiliads, and gives Cantacuzene no