Long and stern indeed was the strife which the Romans of the East had to wage to guard Tauros against the Saracen, while they had to wage a strife no less abiding to guard Hæmus against the Bulgarian. But as long as the Saracen alone had to be striven against, the work was done. Then came the day of reconquest, the days of Nikêphoros Phokas, of John Tzimiskês, of the awful Basil himself. The eleventh century begins as the greatest century of Byzantine history; before its end a new enemy has come; the Asiatic side of the Eternal Question has passed to a new champion; what the Arab failed to do, the Turk has begun to do indeed. The Romania of Asia has ceased to be a Christian land of the Empire; but a Roman land it seems hardly to cease to be, while Nikaia, birthplace of Christian orthodoxy, destined in after times to be the seat of the most vigorous of Eastern survivals of the Roman power, holds the throne of a Mussulman, the throne of a Turk, but a Mussulman and a Turk whose style is Sultan of Rome. * * * * * Hurried indeed is the glance that is all that we can take of the Empire thus split asunder between two rivals. The true power and greatness of both come to an end in the great age of creation and destruction, the thirteenth century of our æra. In the West, the Roman Empire and the German kingdom do not indeed come to a formal end, but they lose their ancient place beside the grave of Frederick the Second. In the East, the Empire, as a local power, gains a new lease of national strength, but it loses its œcumenical position when the Latin reigns at Constantinople, when the Ῥωμαῖος, however we translate his name, reigns beyond the Bosporos at Nikaia. Thus far we have had still to deal with the true and ancient substance of the Empire, even if parted asunder into two bodies. We shall have next to speak of powers which kept on its name and its traditions, but which in sober truth we can hardly look on as more than its shadows and survivals. LECTURE V. SURVIVALS OF EMPIRE.