The Venetian Company

My New Mission and Bits of a Family History

June 12 1548

My two uncles in Crete have pointed out repeatedly that someone has written that one is permitted to put down some words about his or her life if they have attained the age of 40, providing the person has done something interesting or endured some unusual fate. I believe this is the first time in recorded history my uncles have gotten the jump on me with a literary reference, and I don't know who wrote that piece of advice – but whoever it was, they must be silenced. But seriously, shortly after my 42rd birthday I realized I would have to capitulate when even my sister Diana – who has gone through life complaining that I have been given too much attention – suggested that I get on with it. "Or else we shall have no peace. And anyway, their sons are in this now too." Referring to my two cousins now working in La Serenissima, the Most Serene Republic, Venice. "Just be sure you tell everyone – "

"That you too were exceptional?"

"Good brother."

So I have dedicated myself to my new mission. But it hasn't been easy. The other day I showed my Tunisian commercial colleague, Gazi – more on him later – some pages I had written while sitting in the Rio Del Vin taverna with the gondoliers and he laughed out loud. He suggested that raving about how our people were the Romans and we wouldn't forget our lost empire might not be the most effective opening to a recounting of our lives in Venice. Italians would be puzzled – after all, aren't they also the descendants of the Romans? In truth all of us are – probably including Gazi, since his birthplace was at one time a province of Rome and later of New Rome. And Greek friends in Venice and in Crete already know that they have lost the empire; they don't need to be reminded of it and aren't delighted with those who drone on about the subject. So I should refrain from literary temper tantrums.

Gazi is a good judge of such things and I may have gotten carried away. Perhaps I shall rip-up those pages.

So keeping calm and giving this another attempt, my uncles insist that I include a few words about our ancestors, even though we are not of the nobility. Yes, the eastern empire had families that could trace their names back five hundred years, but those families are mostly dispossessed now and our state has perished. Nevertheless, I will mention that in our home town of Xania in Crete we have the record, copied several times, of the life and campaigns of one Timon – named after an ancient philosopher who hated men – who in the reign of Heraclius in the 7th century of Our Lord was an officer in the army of New Rome. He fought the Arab invasions in North Africa and reputedly lived to an old age. This Timon came from the area called the Argolid in the eastern Peloponnesos, specifically from the small city of Nauplion, which still exists to this day. Furthermore, he was allegedly the author of a small tome called "Gazetteer of the Argolid" – this has been lost -- describing famous places around his home city, which included the city of Agamemnon of the Trojan War, the amphitheatre of Epidauros, and the site of Tiryns, where Hercules performed one of his twelve labors. Family lore has it this old soldier was our ancestor, and I suppose he may have been, because otherwise why would our family keep dragging around and recopying the moth-eaten manuscript? One odd detail about this Timon is that he supposedly married an Italian woman, which, if true, would show yet again how the destinies of Greece and Italy are frequently intertwined – as they are again in the stories of my father and myself.

In the 11th century there was one ancestor named Myrmidon (an antique name: myrmidons were the members of the warrior band of Achilles) who reportedly came from Iraklion, so you can see the family had for some reason moved to Crete. Myrmidon was a soldier in the army of our great emperor Basil II, who died in 1025. There are some hazy stories of this person – he does not appear to have been an officer – participating in the reconquest of Sicily and even holding some official post in Italy. But the stories about Myrmidon are foggy and I do not see any way to clear up the contradictory fragments. Let us leave him.

Later in the 11th century – these are all family stories and I will not try the reader's patience with too many of them – we purportedly had an ancestor named Zeno who was a merchant residing in Smyrna. Our defeat at Manzikert which began our long and fatal interaction with the Turkish people took place in 1071, and this Zeno did not take part in it, but he did participate in some minor military actions against Turkish forces moving westward after the battle. Probably, if our Zeno took part in any such actions at all, they must have been defensive ones. He perished in a clash with the invaders in his fifties.

We have some more family lore after the temporary fall of the Eastern Empire in 1204 to our supposed allies the western knights, with I'm sorry to say the Venetian former Doge Dandalo leading the charge; but I'll stop there. In 1212 Crete fell under the rule of La Serenissima, and we know that in this period our ancestors resided in the western part of the island. Apparently the clan was seen no more in capital of Crete, which has had various names throughout history, Candia, Iraklion, and Megalo Castro ("the Big Castle"). Iraklion has a population of Armenians, Jews, and other peoples, but in our little town of Xania I must admit cannot recall ever having met an Armenian – although my uncles insist that we have some living in Xania. And I never met a Jewish person till I came to Venice. I think we have to admit that Xania is a rather rustic place. It is also a fact that slavery is practically unknown on our island -- but I don't presume to say this is because of any great virtue on our part. Yes, there is a general agreement that such bondage is not in accord with the teachings of Christ, but it may also simply be that the practice is impractical in our island locale with its smallholdings of property. I did as a child sometimes see dark-skinned Africans working on some of the ships in the harbor, but whether these men were slaves or simply members of the crew, I do not know. Our town did, however, have a modest money economy and we paid for local goods in Venetian denarii – a debasement of the Roman word denarius; and soldi – from solidus. The silver Venetian lira, worth 20 soldi, I never saw until arriving in Venice at age 15.

Bear with me, soon we'll be in modern times. I'm a little doubtful of some of these family stories, but we do actually have the text written by Timon. In the 15th century we come to my grandfather, Kekavmenos – also the name of a famous military author – or Keko. This person we certainly know existed, for we have his diaries. Kekavmenos was born in 1428 and passed to his just reward in our city of Xania in 1497. He led a private company of 100 men to aid in the defense of Constantinople in 1452 and was the captain or kentarch of the company. He even met the last emperor, Constantine IX. When the city fell he lived to tell the tale and somehow got most of his men out as well. How he did this would require a whole book and perhaps I will write of the matter another time. Everyone in the family has read his diaries. Most of his entries are still legible and the book is in my mother's house. Kekavmenos' writing is simple but clear, the writing of a soldier.

If there is any common thread which runs through all these accounts of our family it is that we were usually merchants of some kind, and occasionally soldiers – and sometimes both. We do not seem to have had a great enthusiasm for the agricultural life. My two uncles, who are both farmers in western Crete, are the exceptions.

Finally we come to my father, Nearchos. All his life he was a merchant here in Xania. As far as I know he was never involved in any army or militia, and in fact when he was a young man the military was not really thought to be a likely career for a Greek. Our island is garrisoned by Venetians and mercenaries. From Venice we now have the Proveditor General, Sindace and Inquistor – all of these have a somewhat ominous ring – who lord it over our land.

I have already mentioned Nearchos' two brothers, my uncles, who were farmers and are living to this day. Their small landholdings are near Xania. Up to his middle age it would be fair to say the trading house of my father – which had other partners and was not his sole domain – was one of the foremost financial concerns of Xania. My father also had some relations – no one is quite clear on how deep these went, but certainly they were longstanding – with the Zorzi trading family in Venice.

I was born in September of the year of Our Lord 1505. I am not certain why I have the name 'Julian', which is not even Greek – as several priests have pointed out to me in disapproval. My father may have been thinking of the old Roman Julii clan – but why? Or he may have been thinking of the pagan Emperor Julian who lived in the 4th Century. If he had the latter in mind, this would seem to indicate a somewhat rebellious and provocative frame of mind – which is in contrast to the somber man I remember in his later years.