Art followed much the same course as literature in the period 600-900. It was in a state of decay for the first century and a half, and the surviving works of that time are often grotesquely rude. For sheer bad drawing and bad execution nothing can be worse than a coin of Constans II. or Constantine V.; a Frankish or Visigoth piece could not be much more unsightly. The few manuscripts which survive from that period display a corresponding, though not an equally great, decline in art. Mosaic work perhaps showed less decline than other branches of the decoration, but even here seventh and eighth century work is very rare. In the ninth century everything improves wonderfully. It is most astonishing to see how the old classical tradition of painting revive in the best manuscript illumination of the period; many of them might have been executed in the fifth or even the fourth century, so closely do they reproduce the old Roman style. It seems that the Iconoclastic controversy stimulated painting; persecuted by the emperors, the art of sacred portraiture became respected above all others by the multitude. Several of the most prominent “Iconodule” martyrs were painters, of whom it is recorded that their works were no less beautiful than edifying: those of Lazarus, whom the Emperor Theophilus tortured, are especially cited as triumphs of art as well as sanctity. Though a persecutor of painters, Theophilus deserves a word of mention as the first great builder since Justinian, and as a patron of the minor arts of jewellery, silver work, and mosaic. There is good evidence that these were all in a very flourishing condition in his time. [829-42.] There is one more point in the history of the empire in the ninth century to which attention must be called. This is the unique commercial importance of Constantinople during this and the two succeeding centuries. All other commerce than that of the empire had been swept off the seas by the Saracen pirates in the preceding hundred years, and the only touch between Eastern and Western Christendom was kept up under the protection of the imperial navy. The Eastern products which found their way to Italy or France were all passed through the warehouses of the Bosphorus. It was East-Roman ships that carried all the trade; save a few Italian ports, such as Amalphi and the new city of Venice, no place seems even to have possessed merchant ships. This monopoly of the commerce of Europe was one of the greatest elements in the strength of the empire. So much money and goods passed through it that a rather harsh and unwise system of taxation did no permanent harm. XVIII. MILITARY GLORY.