“ This world entrenched behind the bulwarks that stretched from Solway to Nineveh, brooding upon its past, was quickened with but one new thought,—and that was an un-Roman one,—the strange, unworldly, Christian faith. The peoples that had become subjects of Rome were now to own a high allegiance to one whom it had condemned as a Jewish criminal; on the verge of its own destruction the empire became Christian. It is the fashion to decry the evil influences of the environment of early Christianity, but it was the best that human history has ever afforded. ”

“ From the Pyrenees and the Frisian coast to the eastern plains in the valleys of the Danube, the Elbe, and the Oder, from the Eider to the highest peaks of the Apennines stretched the rule of the Franks, grasped in the hands of a single man to whom not only all temporal authorities in this wide realm were subject, but whom the entire clergy must also unequivocally acknowledge as their head. To all previous centuries it had seemed impossible to bring all the tribes of the interior of Germany under one rule, to bend the stubborn love of liberty of all Germans to the authority of a king. ”

“ Until the hordes of Goths, Vandals, and Franks came out from the fastnesses beyond the Rhine and Danube and played their part upon the cleared arena of the empire itself, the history of the world was antique. The history of the later empire is still a part of the continuous but shifting history of the Mediterranean peoples. The civilisation which the legions of Constantine protected was not the product of Rome, it was the work of an antiquity which even then stretched farther back, three times farther, than all the distance which separates his time from ours. ”

“ A sedition, which almost laid Constantinople in ashes, was excited by the mutual hatred and momentary reconciliation of the two factions. In the fifth year of his reign, Justinian celebrated the festival of the ides of January: the games were incessantly disturbed by the clamorous discontent of the greens; till the twenty-second race, the emperor maintained his silent gravity; at length yielding to his impatience, he condescended to hold, in abrupt sentences and by the voice of a crier, the most singular dialogue that ever passed between a prince and his subjects. ”

“ The patriotism of the Persian general was stimulated by his affection for the city of his forefathers; in the hour of victory every peasant became a soldier, and every soldier a hero; and their ardour was kindled by the gorgeous spectacles of beds, and thrones, and tables of massy gold, the spoils of Asia, and the luxury of the hostile camp. A prince of a less malignant temper could not easily have forgiven his benefactor, and the secret hatred of Hormuz was envenomed by a malicious report that Bahram had privately retained the most precious fruits of his Turkish victory. ”

“ In the first and the last years of a long reign, the emperor appears to be the slave of sloth, of pleasure, or of superstition, the careless and impotent spectator of the public calamities. But the languid mists of the morning and evening are separated by the brightness of the meridian sun: the Arcadius of the palace arose the Cæsar of the camp; and the honour of Rome and Heraclius was gloriously retrieved by the exploits and trophies of six adventurous campaigns. ”

“ If the cruel master had not infringed the laws of his nation, this arbitrary execution was not less unjust, than it appears to have been imprudent. The Heruli felt the indignity; they halted: but the Roman general, without soothing their rage or awaiting their resolution, called aloud as the trumpets sounded that unless they hastened to occupy their place they would lose the honour of the victory. His troops were disposed in a long front, the cavalry on the wings; in the centre, the heavy-armed foot; the archers and slingers in the rear. ”

“ The empire was all antiquity, fused into a gigantic unit, and protected by the legions drawn from every quarter of the world, from Spain to Syria. As it grew old its roots sank deeper into the past. When it had taken all that Greece had to offer in art and literature, the tongue of Greece gave free access to the philosophy of the orient, and as its pantheon filled with all the gods of the world, its thought became the reflex of that of the Hellenised east. If Rome conquered the ancient world, it was made captive in return. ”

“ In the love of the arts, the national difference was still more obvious and real; the Greeks preserved with reverence the works of their ancestors, which they could not imitate; and, in the destruction of the statues of Constantinople, we are provoked to join in the complaints and invectives of the Byzantine historian. The brass statues were broken and melted by the unfeeling avarice of the crusaders; the cost and labour were consumed in a moment; the soul of genius evaporated in smoke; and the remnant of base metal was coined into money for the payment of the troops. ”

“ Without regrets, as without foresight, hoping everything from their own good swords, they set about electing a leader who should reign over a people in mourning and a desolated city. The imperial purple had still the same splendour in their eyes, and the throne, though shaken by their arms, was still the object of their ambition. ”

“ While the Goths were inflicting deadly wounds on the very heart of the empire, the distant provinces of Germany and Gaul presented a scene of indescribable confusion. Innumerable hosts of Astingians, Vandals, Alani, Suevi, and Burgundiones threw themselves like robbers upon the prostrate body of imperial Rome, and scrambled for the gems which fell from her costly diadem. In such a storm the Franks could no longer sustain the part of champions of the empire, but doubtless had enough to do to defend themselves and hold their own. ”

“ The public games, such as a Greek ambassador might politely applaud, exhibited a faint and feeble copy of the magnificence of the cæsars: yet the musical, the gymnastic, and the pantomimic arts, had not totally sunk into oblivion; the wild beasts of Africa still exercised in the amphitheatre the courage and dexterity of the hunters; and the indulgent Goth either patiently tolerated or gently restrained the blue and green factions, whose contests so often filled the circus with clamour, and even with blood. In the seventh year of his reign, Theodoric visited Rome, the old capital of the world ”

“ It was as when an unknown terror breaks upon a large number of people in the darkness of night—everything is thrown into a confusion which increases from moment to moment, until the sun shines out in the morning and its beams gild the fields: the confused masses then easily assort themselves, quiet returns, and the world beams again in clear sunshine. Henry’s clear spirit was the sun which turned the night of the German lands into day. ”

“ Across the lake gleam the snows of Mont Blanc,—a sight no traveller forgets when once he has seen it; but the saint, with his cowl drawn over his eyes, sees only his own sin and the vision of the last judgment. So, says Symonds, humanity walked along its way, a careful pilgrim unheeding the beauty or delight of the world around. ”

“ The error of the men of the Renaissance has passed into history and lived there, clothed with all the rhetoric of the modern literatures, and upheld with all the fire of religious controversy. How could there be anything worth considering in an age that on the one hand was void of a feeling for antique ideas and could not write the periods of Cicero, and on the other hand was dominated by a religious system which has not satisfied all classes of our modern world? ”

“ A new crisis in the fate of the Byzantine Empire suddenly presented itself by the arrival of an army of Spaniards, composed chiefly of Catalans and men of Aragon; but this race of strangers, hitherto unknown in the East, soon disappeared from the scene. They came and departed as if they were under the guidance of the destroying angel. In daring courage, steady discipline, and military skill, they were not surpassed by any Greek or Roman army. Their warlike deeds entitled them to rank as a host of heroes; their individual acts made them appear a band of demons. ”

“ For writers and readers alike have turned at this point from the solid story of progress to follow the banners of these wandering knights, to live in the unreal world of chivalry at the hour when the whole society of Europe was forming itself into the nations of to-day, when the renaissance of commerce was building cities along all the highways of Europe, and the schools were crowded with the students of law and philosophy. ”

“ It would have been the greatest possible mistake for Constantine the Great to have chosen either Sardica, Thessalonica, the territory of Ilium or Chalcedon, between which places he hesitated some time, to be the new Rome of the East, for however richly nature may have endowed them all, to elect any one would have seemed but the satisfying of a princely caprice; as Constantinople on the straits of the Bosporus was then and always will be the one natural city commanding the whole of the Balkan peninsula, Asia Minor, and the numerous seas and rivers uniting at this spot. ”

“ Bessas replied, with unfeeling tranquillity, that it was impossible to feed, unsafe to dismiss, and unlawful to kill, the subjects of the emperor. Yet the example of a private citizen might have shown his countrymen, that a tyrant cannot withhold the privilege of death. Pierced by the cries of five children, who vainly called on their father for bread, he ordered them to follow his steps, advanced with calm and silent despair to one of the bridges of the Tiber, and covering his face, threw himself headlong into the stream, in the presence of his family and the Roman people. ”

“ Posterity will not hastily believe that a hero who, in the vigour of life, had disdained the fairest offers of ambition and revenge, would stoop to the murder of his prince whom he could not long expect to survive. His followers were impatient to fly; but flight must have been supported by rebellion, and he had lived enough for nature and for glory. Belisarius appeared before the council with less fear than indignation. After forty years’ service, the emperor had prejudged his guilt; and injustice was sanctified by the presence and authority of the patriarch. ”

“ A spirit was abroad in the world, drawing men away from the graves of a dead faith to the life and light of the Gospel—a spirit which not even the coldest and sternest heart could altogether resist. There was something, too, peculiarly imposing in the attitude of the Christian church at that period. All else in the Roman world seemed dying of mere weakness and old age; the Christian church was still in the vigour of youth, and its professors were animated by indomitable perseverance and boundless zeal. All else fell down in terror before the barbarian conqueror ”

“ It would not be easy to extract from the pages of his greatest admirers the slightest evidence of his possessing any qualities but those which are necessary to a conqueror. In the hands of providence he was an instrument of the greatest good to the country he subdued, inasmuch as he freed it from the curse of division into petty states, and furthered the spread of Christianity in the very heart of Europe. But of any word or action that could make us admire or love the man, there is not a single trace in history. ”

“ We must give full credit to the influence of that new knowledge, that new criterion, and especially to that new and healthy criticism which came with the Italian Renaissance. Its work in the world was absolutely necessary if modern society was to take up properly its heritage of all those splendid ages which adorned the Parthenon and made the Forum the centre of the world. All the intellectual energy which had gone into antique society must be made over into our own. But after all, the roots of our society are Teutonic and Christian even more than they are Roman or antique. ”

“ A being of the nature of man, endowed with the same faculties, but with a longer measure of existence, would cast down a smile of pity and contempt on the crimes and follies of human ambition, so eager, in a narrow span, to grasp at a precarious and short-lived enjoyment.
It is thus that the experience of history exalts and enlarges the horizon of our intellectual view. In a composition of some days, in a perusal of some hours, six hundred years have rolled away, and the duration of a life or reign is contracted to a fleeting moment; the grave is ever beside the throne ”

“ In the execution of this cruel and ignominious treaty, the imperial officers were forced to massacre several loyal and noble deserters, who refused to devote themselves to certain death; and the Romans forfeited all reasonable claims to the friendship of any Scythian people, by this public confession that they were destitute either of faith or power to protect the suppliant who had embraced the throne of Theodosius.
The firmness of a single town, so obscure that, except on this occasion, it has never been mentioned by any historian or geographer, exposed the disgrace of the emperor and empire. ”

“ The reign of Basil II is the culminating point of Byzantine greatness. The eagles of Constantinople flew during his life, in a long career of victory, from the banks of the Danube to those of the Euphrates, and from the mountains of Armenia to the shores of Italy. Basil’s indomitable courage, terrific [244] cruelty, indifference to art and literature, and religious superstition, all combine to render him a true type of his empire and age. ”