Our ancestors were barbarians, too, and the barbarians that came from the forests of Germany and the sandy shores of Denmark were capable of cruel destruction. But they were also free and independent, with a gift for self-government and an instinct that told them that one man has just as many rights as another. They even elected their kings, cheering and lifting them on their shields, and the kings they elected were men like Theodoric of Italy, Alfred the Great, and Charlemagne, all men who wanted to absorb the very best of the civilization they had taken over, and not merely tear things down. If, instead of them, men like Attila and Genghis Khan, with their hard-riding, slant-eyed followers, had become the rulers of western Europe, iron discipline and a firm government might have been established a whole lot sooner. But our democratic way of living could never have been born. In other words, the Byzantines defended Europe from the Asiatic hordes and made it possible for Western civilization to develop in its own way. The Byzantines would hardly be worth remembering if they had done nothing more than defend. They also created a civilization of their own, and you can still see its influence in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and even Russia. And there are still traces of it all over Europe and Asia. If a Byzantine had come to life and looked at the coronation of Elizabeth II of England over TV, he would have felt perfectly at home, for in many ways it was a Byzantine ceremony. The fact that this young woman was not only sovereign of the realm but head of the official church was Byzantine, too. She was following in the footsteps of the empresses Irene and Zoe. In the East, even the Turks who finally conquered the Byzantines took over many of their ideas. In its early days the Turkish Empire was very much like the Byzantine Empire, except that it practiced Islam, the religion founded by Mohammed. The Turkish _sanjaks_, or provinces, had almost the same boundaries as the Byzantine _themes_, or provinces. Their grand vizier, or prime minister—but there is a difference, for the vizier’s name means “he who bears burdens,” rather than “accountant”—was practically the same as the Logothete of the Dromos. A Turkish _bey_ was not too different from a Byzantine _strategos_, or governor general. The Turks even used Byzantines to help them rule. A large number of the governors whom they sent out to their conquered territories were Phanariote Greeks, those Greeks who remained in Constantinople after the empire fell. All but twelve of their forty-eight grand viziers were either Byzantines or from former Byzantine provinces such as Albania, Dalmatia, or Greece.