The Popes of Rome, with characteristic insight, recognised the value of a common official language as a bond of unity, and an instrument of maintaining universal rule. The use of the Latin in the services and administration of the Roman Church is a master-stroke of political genius. But when partly by the estrangement of the two portions of the Empire, and partly by the Fall of the Empire in the West, the need of a common speech ceased to exist, the stream of tendency in the East was left free to follow its natural bent.

Within the period under review we see, of course, only the early symptoms of the Greek bias to gain ascendency, but though these symptoms are comparatively slight, they are the proverbial straws that indicate the direction of the wind. While Latin alone glitters in the inscriptions upon the Golden Gate, Greek also is allowed a place in the legends which celebrate the elevation of the obelisk upon its pedestal in the Hippodrome. The pedestal adorned by the statue of the Empress Eudoxia likewise bore a bilingual inscription. The extraordinary energy displayed by the Prefect Con-stantine in the erection of the outer Theodosian.

Wall is lauded, on the Gate of Rhegium, in both languages. Probably the same was the case in the record of that splendid achievement put upon another gate of the fortifications—the Gate Xylo- kerkou—although the historian, owing doubtless to his ignorance of Latin, has preserved only the Greek version. But the balance inclines in favour of Greek, when, at the University of Constantinople, there are more professors attached to the studies in that language than to the studies in the tongue of the elder Rome. At the same time also, the Prefect Cyrus introduced the custom of publishing decrees in Greek instead of in Latin wooden workmanship byzantium. And along with this preference for Greek in speech, there is a marked growth of what was Greek in spirit.

Goverment of Constantinople

Thus in the relations between the Empire and Persia, as well as in the relations between the Empire and the barbarians, the Goverment of Constantinople depends now for success rather upon the devices of diplomacy than upon the force of arms. The negotiations between the Court of Theodosius II. and Attila are a remarkable chapter in the history of the diplomatic art—not of the noblest character. When Marcian replied to the demand of Attila for an increase of the tribute paid to the chief of the Huns by the Government of Constantinople, in the haughty terms, "We give gold to our friends, and steel to our enemies," words were spoken that had become somewhat unfamiliar, while the first Greek Emperor, as Theodosius II. has been styled, sat upon the throne.

Furthermore, it is the Greek spirit, not the Roman, that appears in the theological speculations of the Eastern Church, in the stress laid on correct thinking, and in the philosophical development of Christian dogma. After making every allowance for the vast difference between the splendid genius of Ancient Greece and the mental life that flourished in New Rome, it does not seem too much to say, that the old intellectual temperament of Hellas survived and prevailed in the capital of the East There was undoubtedly, at all times, enough and to spare of ignorance, superstition, and narrowmindedness in Constantinople but no period in the history of the Byzantine world quite corresponds to the Dark Ages in Western Europe. As in the Parthenon on the Acropolis of the city with the violet crown, so, under the dome of S. Sophia, beside the blue waters of the Bosporus, men agreed that the highest attribute of the Divine, and the ideal of human attainment, is Wisdom.

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