THE NEW ERA 107 



course, of Europe only. Chinese civilization and Hindu 

 civilization were untouched ; but they had by this 

 time settled in their unprogressive phase, and were 

 not destined to add further to the general advance of 

 civilization. Then there was a Greek civilization, 

 with its centre at Constantinople. We saw how 

 Constantine divided the Roman Empire by giving it 

 a second capital. When the Western Empire fell, 

 the Eastern was not overrun by the German bar- 

 barians — to any very dangerous extent — and it lasted 

 for another thousand years. But this also was un- 

 progressive, stagnant, in some respects odoriferous 

 (see my Empresses of Constantinople), It had no 

 cultural rival to stimulate it for some centuries ; and 

 then it was cut off from Europe by a squabble about 

 theological definitions. 



Europe sank appallingly low. The city of Rome 

 itself simply decayed century by century. Before the 

 year 600 a..d. all the glory we described in the last 

 chapter was a deserted ruin. Forty thousand densely 

 ignorant and disreputable Romans huddled in the 

 poorer quarters, instead of the one million people 

 who had at one time filled the Eternal City. The 

 superb buildings rotted year by year. There was 

 now scarcely a school where there had been tens of 

 thousands. By the eighth century even the clerics 

 of Rome wrote barbarous Latin which is full of the 

 grossest grammatical blunders ; and their conduct 

 was not less barbarous. The most fearful murders 

 and outrages and orgies befouled the Papacy itself 

 for long periods. So it was to the eleventh century. 

 We know what England had become before Alfred. 

 Was it civilized? Gaul and Spain and the other 

 provinces were little better. Greek literature was 



