INTRODUCTORY. 



indeed during the Persian invasion the independence 

 of Greece was almost lost owing to the selfish neu- 

 trality or active treachery of several Greek states. It 

 is evident, therefore, that the want of cohesion between 

 a collection of small states carried with it an element 

 of danger, and that the chances were that they would 

 fall a prey sooner or later to foreign conquest. In 

 the case of the Roman Empire we are dealing with a 

 political organisation which has a place in the world's 

 history only second in importance to that of the 

 British Empire. In its growth, maturity and fall, we 

 do not trace the history of any particular race, for it 

 bound together nearly all the ancient world. It is 

 said that when Constantine removed the seat of 

 government from the Tiber to the Bosphorus, there 

 were no Romans of pure blood in Rome itself, and the 

 inhabitants of Rome, who migrated with Constantine, 

 and took up their residence in Constantinople, soon 

 lost even the Latin tongue, and Greek became the 

 language of the Eastern Roman Empire. But this 

 organisation of Greeks, Thracians, Persians, Egyptians 

 and Hellenized Asiatics lasted till Constantinople 

 was taken by the Turks in 1453, and here the climax 

 was due to other causes than those resulting from in- 

 ternal racial decay. Constantinople, the gate of the 

 East, was by its position the richest and the most 

 powerful city of the Eastern world, and while this was 

 so, the organisation of which it was the centre re- 



