Islamic community. In the meantime, the
Ottomans drove into Arabia and Persia,
overthrew Mamluk dynasties in Syria and
Egypt, and fielded the most powerful navy
in the Mediterranean.
The Ottoman government controlled
its far-flung domains through a system of
vassalage, in which local rulers paid an an-
nual tribute in gold or in goods in ex-
change for their limited independence.
Ottoman’s governors oversaw the adminis-
tration of these territories, paying princely
sums in bribery for their lucrative posts
and exacting heavy taxes from the popu-
lace. During the Renaissance in Europe,
the Ottoman Empire posed a most serious
foreign threat to Europe’s Christian states
and rulers. The disunited Christian states,
however, were unable to rally an effective
striking force to counter Turkish control
of the Balkans. The calls for further cru-
sades to the east went unheeded, while in
the 1530s the French king Francis I struck
up an alliance with the sultan against the
Habsburg dynasty. Ottoman armies arrived
twice at the gates of Vienna, and Turkish
corsairs raided European ports and ship-
ping, taking treasure and slaves back to
the Barbary Coast ports in North Africa.
Piracy in the Mediterranean finally in-
spired a united effort on the part of the
Habsburgs and Venetians, who gathered a
powerful naval force and defeated the Ot-
toman navy at the Battle of Lepanto in
1571.
A decline began in the late seventeenth
century. The succession to the throne,
which was not limited to the eldest son of
the sultan, brought about constant palace
intrigue and frequent assassinations.
Grand viziers governed the state and a
military caste known as the Janissaries,
who had originated as a company of
Christian slaves converted to Islam and
trained as elite warriors, posed a constant
threat to the sultan’s authority, while the
sultans themselves lived in luxury and in-
dolence, completely cut off from their sub-
jects and unable to exercise effective con-
trol over their domains. The last siege of
Vienna was turned back in 1683, and in
1699 the Turks surrendered Hungary to
the Habsburg dynasty. The empire grew
weaker under a succession of corrupt and
incapable rulers, and after long and ex-
pensive wars with Russia and the Hab-
sburgs.SEEALSO: Fall of Constantinople; Mehmed
II; MuslimsOvid ...............................................
(43B.C.–178A.D.)
Roman poet whose works were revived
and widely admired during the Renais-
sance. Born Publius Ovidius Nao in the
town of Sulmo, he was trained as a lawyer
and educated by leading rhetoricians, who
taught the craft of making persuasive and
eloquent speeches. Ovid traveled widely as
a young man but returned to Rome at the
urging of his father. Finding the life of a
public official not to his taste, Ovid began
writing poetry and soon attracted notice
and a circle of admirers. He collected his
first short love poems into a volume called
Amores, in which he wrote of an unattain-
able love by the name of Corinna, and
some fictional letters intoHeroids.
Metamorphosesis an epic written in
fifteen books of hexameters, the same po-
etic form used by Virgil in his epicThe
Aeneid. Considered Ovid’s masterpiece,
Metamorphosesdescribes myths that have
the common theme of physical transfor-
mation. The stories come from the Greeks
as well as the Romans, from the time of
the Creation down to Julius Caesar, the
Roman general and statesman who wasOvid