could avail against the mindless superstition of the ignorant mass, rich[371] and poor, on whom the clerical majority relied for their existence. A Moslem conqueror, with outside force to fall back upon, might have succeeded; but Leo was only shaking the bough on which he sat.[372] It seems clear that the Iconoclastic emperors were politically as well as intellectually progressive in comparison with the orthodox party. The worshipped images which they sought to suppress were artistically worthless, and they aimed at an elevation of the people. "If the Iconoclastic reformers had had their way, perhaps the history of the agricultural classes would have been widely different. The abolition of the principle which the first Christian emperors had adopted, of nailing men to the clod, was part of the programme which was carried out by the Iconoclastic emperors and reversed by their successors."[373] Thus did it come about that Christian Byzantium found the rigid intellectual equilibrium in which it outlasted, at a lower level of mental life, the Caliphate which sought its destruction, but only to fall finally before the more vigorous barbarism of the Turks. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 319: Whistler, _The Gentle Art of Making Enemies_, 1890, pp. 138, 139.] [Footnote 320: Cp. Prof. Burrows, _The Discoveries in Crete_, 1907, ch. xi; Bury, _History of Greece_, 1906, p. 65. "The supreme inspiration," says Bury, "came to their minstrels on Asiatic soil."] [Footnote 321: E. Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, ii. 533-36; A.R. Hall, _The Oldest Civilisation of Greece_, 1901, pp. 31, 32. Cp. the author's _Short History of Freethought_, i, 122-27; and Von Ihering's _Vorgeschichte der Indo-Europäer_, Eng. trans. ("The Evolution of the Aryan"), p. 73. Von Ihering's dictum is the more noteworthy because it counters his primary assumption of race-characters.] [Footnote 322: Cp. Galton. _Hereditary Genius_, ed. 1892, p. 329. The contrast between the policy of Athens, before and after Solon, and that of Megara, which boasted of never having given the citizenship to any stranger save Hercules (Wachsmuth, Eng. tr. i, 248), goes far to explain the inferiority of Megarean culture.] [Footnote 323: "No other Greek city possessed so large an immediate territory" [as distinct from subject territory, like Laconia] "or so great a number of free and equal citizens" (Freeman, _History of Federal Government_, ed. 1893, p. 22, _note_). And the number was greatly swelled "after Athens had in 477 taken the lead in the Delian Maritime League" (Maisch, _Greek Antiquities_, § 28), so that in 451 it was felt necessary again to limit citizenship to men born of Athenian parents.] [Footnote 324: Cicero (_in Verrem_ ii, 59) testifies to the zeal of Greek cities in buying paintings and statues in his day, and their unwillingness to sell.]