Krokodeilos Kladas, whose family migrated from Epirus to the Peloponnese, was born in Koroni in 1425; his father was the Greek military chief Theodore Kladas. When the OttomanSultan Mehmed II took the Morea in 1460, Kladas handed over his castle of Saint George and was given in exchange the castle of Vardounia in Upper Mani and the territory of Elos. By 1465, the Kladas brothers, Krokodeilos and Epifani, were leading bands of stratioti on behalf of Veniceagainst the Turks. They put Vardounia and their lands into Venetian possession, for which Epifani then acted as governor. The Kladas brothers were frequently complimented by Venetian officials, and received generous Venetian gifts. Krokodeilos Kladas and his followers stood as rebels against Mehmed, but the Venetian-Ottoman peace settlement, while giving them a full pardon, also returned territorial boundaries to what they had been in 1463, so this put the Venetian-Kladas land holdings back into Ottoman possession. Kladas moved to Venetian-held Koroni. On October 9, 1480, Kladas led stratioti from Koroni to attack Ottoman holdings in Mani. Both the Ottomans and the Venetians put a price on his head; the latter, specifically, "put a bounty of 10,000 hyperpyrai from the mint of Methone on Kladas' head." This revolt was joined in December by stratioti from Nafplion led by Theodore Bua. An army sent by the Sultan was defeated between Passavas and Oitylo in February 1481. Later that month, a larger force under Mohammed Bey drove Kladas to Porto Kagio where he was taken on board a Neapolitan galley, leaving his revolt to wither in his absence. A peaceful settlement of the revolt was negotiated by the Ottoman governor of the Morea and Venetian official Bartolomeo Minio. Meanwhile, Kladas went with a Neapolitan army to Albania to aid an anti-Ottoman revolt there. It is not known when he returned to Mani. He was captured in battle near Monemvasia in 1490 and flayed alive.
Family
The Kladas family is known in records from the Morea since 1296 when a "Corcondille" managed to capture a Frankish-held castle for the Byzantines. Members of the family made donations to a monastery at Mistra in 1366 and 1375. A Krokodeilos is identified as one of the rebels against the Emperor Manuel II in 1415. The "Crocodile" pun made there is a single appearance and never appears in contemporary documents relating to this Krokodeilos Kladas. The carved inscription on a donation to a church in Karytaina with the name transliterated as "Krokontēlos" is probably not related to him, and the carving is dated to the mid-14th century. He and his brothers are strongly praised in Venetian sources. Kladas had been awarded a Venetian knighthood just before the 1480 revolt. Members of the family moved to Kefalonia and continued to lead stratioti in Venetian service for at least another hundred years.
