If you had been a Byzantine, you would have trotted off to your classes accompanied by a pedagogue—in the old days, he was a slave—who carried your books and saw to it that you obeyed your teachers. Until you were ten, you would have studied reading, writing, and spelling. The last was very important because the way words were pronounced was always changing, although the spelling remained the same. After this you would have studied what the Byzantines called grammar. But it was not exactly like our grammar. It was more like literature. For instance, you would have had to learn Homer by heart and been able to explain everything he had written word by word. You were in trouble if you weren’t able to do this. The teacher merely nodded to the pedagogue, who always had a rod in his hand. After grammar, you would have studied rhetoric, and to pass your rhetoric courses you had to be able to discuss eloquently anything from a fable by Aesop to the pictures on the walls of the city council. Finally, and this was especially important if you were going to be a churchman or go into the government, you would have gone on to a university. That was the case only if you were a boy. Although many Byzantine women were as well educated as the men, everything they learned was in the home. None of them went to college or even to grammar school. Besides giving us great art, keeping alive Greek culture and civilization, and seeing to it that there was at least one place in the world where everyone who wanted to be was educated, the Byzantines protected and preserved the Christian faith. Long before the word “crusader” was ever heard, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius was fighting the Saracens in Damascus, Homs, Jerusalem, and Antioch just as the crusaders did in the days of Richard the Lion-Hearted 500 years later. Almost every Byzantine emperor who followed him did the same. Among the caliphs whom they fought, but could not defeat, was Harun al-Rashid, the hero of _The Arabian Nights_. They did defeat many another Moslem leader, however, and so although the Arabs often advanced through the empire, they were never able to pour into the Balkans as they had poured into France and Spain. But the Byzantines did more than just battle the enemies of Christianity, and they also did more than argue over the fine points of religion. They tried to practice Christianity as well as preach it. They believed that _philanthropia_—from which our word “philanthropy,” or “love of mankind” is derived—was the first duty of those who were rich or had power. There were no people before the Byzantines, and only a few since, who believed so sincerely that every man was really and truly his brother’s keeper. And by being his brother’s keeper they meant taking care of him in every kind of need. In the Byzantine Empire there were homes for travelers and pilgrims. There were homes for orphans. There were homes for the sick. There were homes for foundlings. There were old-age homes.