[Footnote 362: Prof. Mahaffy (_Greek Life and Thought_, p. 112) attributes the same sense of superiority to the men of the period of the earlier successors of Alexander. This could well be, and such a feeling would serve to inspire the great art works of the period in question. Cp. Thirlwall (vii, 120) as to the sense of new growth set up by the commercial developments of the Alexandrian world.] [Footnote 363: Finlay. _History of Greece_, i. 186. Cp. p. 185.] [Footnote 364: D. Bikélas. _Seven Essays on Christian Greece_, translated by the Marquess of Bute, 1890.] [Footnote 365: Work cited, p. 103.] [Footnote 366: Work cited, pp. 97-98; Finlay, _History of Greece_, iv, 351-52. That this was no Christian innovation becomes clear when we compare the status of women in Egypt and imperial Rome. Cp. Mahaffy, _Greek Life and Thought_, pp. 173-74. And see his _Greek World under Roman Sway_, p. 328, as to pre-Christian developments.] [Footnote 367: Bikélas, p. 104.] [Footnote 368: Ch. 53, Bohn ed. vi, 233. Cp. Finlay, ii, 4, 217, as to the internal forces of routine.] [Footnote 369: _De bello Gothico_, i, 3. Cp. Gibbon, ch. 47, note, Bohn ed. v, 243; and Prof. Bury's App. to his ed. of Gibbon, iv, 516.] [Footnote 370: Finlay, _History of Greece_, i, 224-25; Gibbon, ch. 43, end.] [Footnote 371: "The degrading feature of the end of the seventh century ... was the ignorant credulity of the richer classes" (Bury, _History of the Later Empire_, ii, 387). Cp. Gibbon, ch. 54, Bohn ed. vi, 235.] [Footnote 372: Cp. Bury, as cited, ii, 521.] [Footnote 373: Bury, App. 12 to ed. of Gibbon, v, 531.] Chapter II THE SARACENS While Byzantine civilisation thus stagnated, the Saracen civilisation for a time actually gained by contact with it, inasmuch as Byzantium possessed, if it could not employ, the treasures of old Hellenic science and philosophy. The fact that such a fructification of an alien civilisation could take place while the transmitting community showed no similar gain, is tolerably decisive as to _(a)_ the constrictive force of religious systems under certain conditions, and _(b)_ the nullity of the theory of race genius. Yet these very circumstances have been made the ground of a preposterous impeachment of the "Semitic" character in general, and of the Arab in particular.