with common sense always do,
the lines of least resistance. The way through Gaul and Spain
was quite open; the way into Italy nearly so;--but the way into
Asia was blocked by Constantinople. That city is naturally one
of the strongest in the world, in a military sense; and, you
would say, inevitably the capital of an empire. If Dardanus had
had a little more intuition, and had founded his Troy on the
Golden Horn instead of on the Dardanelles, Anax andron Agamemnon
and his chalcho-chitoned Achaeans, I dare say, would have gone
home to Greece much sadder and wiser men;--or more probably, not
at all. But Troy is near enough to that inevitable site to argue
the strong probability of its having been, perhaps long before
Priam's time, a great seat of empire, trade, and culture. If one
dug in Constantinople itself, I dare say one should find the
remains of cities that had been mighty. Events of the last seven
years have shown how difficult it is to attack, how easy to
defend. Since its foundation by Constantine it has been besieged
nine times, and only twice taken by foreign enemies. When the
Turks took it, they had already overflowed all the surrounding
territories; and they were the strongest military power in the
world, and the Byzantines were among the weakest.--So it stood
there in the fifth century to hold back the hordes of northern
Europe from the rich lands of Asia Minor and Syria: a strength
much beyond the power of those barbarians to tackle; while all
Europe west-ward was being trampled to death.

Further, the peace imposed on Jovian by Shah Sapor in 364 lasted,
with one small intermission of war, and that successful for the
Romans, for a hundred and thirty-eight years; during which time,
also, the powers that were at Constantinople ruled mainly wisely
and with economy. They were generally not the reigning emperor,
but his wife or mother or aunt, or someone like that.

So then, in the year 400 we find the world in this condition:--
western Europe going

"With hideous ruin and combustion down
To bottomless perdition;"

--the Eastern Empire weakish, but fairly quiet and advancing
towards prosperity: in pralaya certainly, and so to remain for
thirteen decades (395 to 527) from the death of Theodosius to
the accession of Justinian;--Persia, under an energetic and
intelligent Yazdegird II (399 to 420), a strongish military
power: Yazdegird held his barons well in hand, and even made a
brave