This conversion of the Slavs was as important to the Byzantines as a victory by their army or by their diplomats, and indeed it was a victory. For although they still fought with the Serbs and with the Russians and particularly with the Bulgarians, these people were gradually drawn into the Byzantine way of life and became more and more friendly. Thus the flanks of the empire were protected. It was, of course, far more lasting than any military victory. The Byzantine Empire came to an end more than 500 years ago, but if you were to go into the Balkans or Greece today, you would find that the work done by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius still remains. Even after forty years of communism, you might find that the seeds of Christianity, and particularly Greek Orthodox Christianity, which had been sown by Vladimir’s conversion, were still living in some Russian communist hearts. [Illustration: Coin] GOLDEN BEZANTS It took a lot of money to be able to do all these things—to pay the expenses of the emperor and his court and government, and of the army, the navy, and the church, to say nothing of bribing foreign rulers and their ambassadors. And this money did not come from conquering fabulously rich lands and then making them hand over their treasures as tribute or as booty. This method was the way the old Roman Empire had become wealthy. In fact, the famous Roman statesman Cicero, who had a rich province to govern, boasted to his friend Atticus that the natives loved him because he did not make them give him a well-furnished palace in every city where he spent the night. They thronged from every village and hamlet to cheer him because he did not force them to borrow money and then pay him back with forty-eight per cent interest! But in Byzantine days there were very few fabulously rich countries left to conquer, and the Byzantines had to find some other source of wealth. They had to rely on hard work and on their own skill and cleverness. They supported themselves on the little farms that nestled in every Balkan valley and the huge estates that sprawled over Thrace and Anatolia (the Asiatic part of modern Turkey). They earned a living, sometimes even amassing treasure, in the many industries that were found in every Byzantine city. They became wealthy from their world-wide foreign trade. Nobody can say today just how wealthy they were. One historian says that the Byzantine state had an annual budget of one hundred and twenty million dollars in gold, but another says that it was only twenty million.