Situated on the borderland that divided two civilisations, the unchanging Eastern Empire represented the East to the Latins and the West to the Arabs and Turks. During the first half of the tenth century there was a strange contrast between the East Roman state and the rest of the world. [Sidenote: Contrast between the Eastern Empire and the rest of the world.] In the West the Empire of Charles the Great had fallen, and few could yet see that a new order was gradually evolving out of the chaos into which the world seemed plunged. In the East the Caliphate had ceased to represent the political unity of Islam. A process of strife and disintegration had broken up the Mohammedan no less than the Latin world. Between these two seething and troubled regions, the Empire of Constantinople lived on its quiet, self-contained, stationary, orderly life. No vital dangers from without threatened its existence. Catholics and Mohammedans were alike too busy with their own affairs to make serious attacks upon its boundaries. The long-lived dynasty of the Macedonians continued to rule over a state that had little history. The inglorious calm bore witness to a standard of civilisation, order, and prosperity that, with all its faults, could be found nowhere else in the world. [Sidenote: The Macedonian dynasty.] Basil the Macedonian had founded, in 867, the ruling house, which was to reign at Constantinople for a hundred and ninety years. The long reign of his weak and pedantic son, Leo VI., the Philosopher (886–912), had attested the care and stability with which Basil had laid the foundations of the new dynasty. Under Leo’s son Constantine VII., Porphyrogenitus (912–959), the same quietude that had marked Leo’s time continued with hardly a break. [Sidenote: Constantine VII., 912–959.] A boy of seven when he was called to the throne, Constantine VII. showed, as he grew up, such lack of firmness and practical wisdom that his whole reign has been described as a long minority. Co-regents did most of the work of governing. For the first year his uncle, Alexander, Leo VI.’s brother, acted as joint-emperor. For seven years after his death (913–919) a commission of regency ruled, not too successfully, in the name of the little Emperor. Severe defeats from Simeon, king of the Bulgarians, made this rule unpopular. The grand admiral Romanus Lecapenus now became successively the prime minister, the father-in-law, the colleague, the master of Constantine. [Sidenote: Romanus I., 919–945.] In December 919 Romanus, already Cæsar, was crowned joint-emperor with his son-in-law, and for twenty-five years he practically ruled the state as he would. Though aged, weak, and incompetent, Romanus managed to protect himself from numerous court conspiracies, and hoped to secure the permanence of his influence by associating three of his sons as colleagues in the Empire, and procuring for another the patriarchate of Constantinople. But the quarrels of sons