214 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. Eoraan or Greek spirit. Canning and intrigue had come to be recognized as the highest statesmanship. Treaties had been made with foreign states in order to put them off their guard and make them more easy to be attacked. Diplomacy meant dissimulation, and perfidy was substituted for courage. Government existed as machinery for squeezing money out of the provinces. The natural results ensued among the people. The old ideal of Rome as existing for the good of the public had disappeared. E-everence for law and equity as sj^nony- mous with justice had perislied. The Greek ideal of compact states seeking the benefit of the whole community had been lost. Asiatic influences had filled the governing classes with the same lying and vainglorious spirit which has ever been the fault of all Eastern courts, and made the people regard such classes as the public enemy. With the effeminacy which may fairly be attributed to Asi- Prevaience of ^^^^ influences there existed an amount of supersti- Biiperstiiiou. ^j^j^ which, with somo hesitation, I should attribute in great part to the same source. Talismans were almost uni- versally used. 'No important expedition of state was under- taken without reference to the astrologers. If their predic- tions turned out correct, they were held in honor; if they failed, recourse was had to others, but the belief in the possibility of discerning future events by reading the stars remained un- shaken. Faith in magic was yet strong; the statues about the city were all regarded as exercising an occult influence on per- sons or events. The figure of Minerva, which appeared to be beckoning towards the West, was destroyed by the mob on the approach of the Crusaders under the belief that it had ex- ercised some kind of influence in brinn^ins: them to Constanti- nople. The Empress Euphrosyne, the wife of Alexis the Third, ordered the bronze statue of the boar struggling with the lion, one of the most famous groups in the city, to be mutilated in order to secure the success of her divinations. During the reign of Manuel a statue on the Arch of Triumph in Constan- tinople, representing a Eoman, fell down just after the declara- tion of war against Hungary, while another near it, represent- ing a Magyar, remained standing. Manuel was proof against
