88 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. of neglecting material interests. It is not his- tory alone, however, that tells of the supremacy of the Greek world throughout the whole of the Middle Ages in matters which insure the well- being of a state, but the ruins of public works, ruins which savagery has left, show us that the subjects of this empire had no ground for casting on their rulers the reproaches which Western European writers so persist- ently repeat. The history of nation?, as that of states, as a rule represents epochs of decadence and of greatness, and thus it is with the Byzantines. For us Americans it is especially interesting to study the history of a state which, like our own republic, was not built upon a national basis. The empire presented since Justinian a multiform mixture of different Latin and Greek colonists alongside a strong body of real Greeks ; in addition to these came the descendants of the old Egyptians, and quite imposing numbers of Semites and Berbers. Empress Irene, an Athenian, excepted, we find, until the end of the Basilides — i.e,, until the middle of the eleventh century — Latin, Asiatic, and Graeco-Slavic emperors wielding the sceptre at the Golden Horn. Only the last dynasties of
