we in the West have hardly heard of;
it was the emblem of official ovations.

When Heracleius rode homewards from the rout of Ispahan With
the captives dragged behind him and the eagles in the van.

That is the rigid reality that still underlay the light mastery
of the Arab rider; that is what a man sees, in the patchwork pavilion,
when he grows used to the coloured canvas and looks at the walls
of stone. This also was far too great a thing for facile praise
or blame, a vast bureaucracy busy and yet intensely dignified,
the most civilised thing ruling many other civilisations.
It was an endless end of the world; for ever repeating its rich finality.
And I myself was still walking in that long evening of the earth;
and Caesar my lord was at Byzantium.

But it is necessary to remember next that this empire was not
always at its evening. Byzantium was not always Byzantine.
Nor was the seat of that power always in the city of Constantine,
which was primarily a mere outpost of the city of Caesar.
We must remember Rome as well as Byzantium; as indeed
nobody would remember Byzantium if it were not for Rome.
The more I saw of a hundred little things the more my mind revolved
round that original idea which may be called the Mediterranean;
and the fact that it became two empires, but remained one civilisation,
just as it has become two churches, but remained one religion.

In this little world there is a story attached to every word;
and never more than when it is the wrong word. For instance,
we may say that in certain cases the word Roman actually means Greek.
The Greek Patriarch is sometimes called the Roman Patriarch;
while the real Roman Patriarch, who actually comes from Rome, is only
called the Latin Patriarch, as if he came from any little town in Latium.
The truth behind this confusion is the truth about five hundred
very vital years, which are concealed even from cultivated Englishmen
by two vague falsehoods; the notion that the Roman Empire was merely
decadent and the notion that the Middle Ages were merely dark.
As a fact, even the Dark Ages were not merely dark.
And even the Byzantine Empire was not merely Byzantine.
It seems a little unfair that we should take the very title
of decay from that Christian city, for surely it was yet
more stiff and sterile when it had become a Moslem city.
I am not so exacting as to ask any one to popularise such a word
as "Constantinopolitan." But it would surely be a bett