The great revival of the Empire in the sixth century was but the first of a long series of revivals which marked the history of the power whose head was at Constantinople down to its latest stages. In its long annals, the successors of Cæsar and Trajan, the men who extend the borders of the Empire over new lands, are far from wholly lacking; the successors of Valentinian and Belisarius, the men who win back the lost lands, are never lacking down to the last generation of the Palaiologoi. But the first and greatest burst of this power of springing to new life was that which came while the Empire still was one, when Belisarius, deliverer of Africa and Sicily, sent the keys of ransomed Rome to her own Emperor. True, as we have seen, a large part of Italy was lost again before the century was out; the Spanish province passed away early in the next century; but the successors of Justinian still ruled at Carthage till the last years of the seventh century; they still ruled, in name at least, at Rome till the last year of the eighth. No confusion can be greater or more misleading than that which looks on the Empire of Tiberius, Maurice, and Heraclius as something strange and anomalous, something to be labelled as Eastern, Byzantine, perhaps Greek, to be called anything in short but its true name of Roman. Never, I would say to all of you, use the words “Eastern” or “Byzantine,” till there is something Western to oppose to them. You may distinguish Nikêphoros as the Eastern Emperor as opposed to the Western Emperor Charles; but never speak of Maurice or Heraclius as anything but the sole Roman Emperor that he was. Still in the days of Heraclius the process begins which was to leave the Empire of Nikêphoros, if not a Greek power, at least a power fast hastening to become Greek. The mightiest of Imperial warriors, he who overleaped the fame of Trajan to renew the fame of Alexander, the deliverer of Rome, the conqueror of Persia, the man who brought back the holiest of Christian relics from its heathen bondage, lived to be the man who saw Syria and Egypt lopped away from his Empire, who saw the Holy City that he had redeemed pass away into the hands of misbelievers yet more terrible than those whom he had overthrown. It may be that the Empire gained even by these fearful losses; it is plain that after its Oriental and its Latin provinces are lost, it begins to put on somewhat of the strength of a national power, even though that power had no thought of its own nationality. It may even be that the great Isaurian Emperors of the eighth century let the remnant of Latin Italy slip from their hands almost without an effort, because they saw that a dominion which was becoming foreign to the great mass of the Empire was no true source of strength. To reign from Hæmus to Tauros, to be lord at Trebizond and at Syracuse, to beat back the Bulgarian in Europe and the Saracen in Asia--it was no mean task, no easy task,