It may seem at first as if, in exalting the achievements of the Middle Ages, we have undervalued the work of the humanists. It would not be in accord with the attempted scientific judicial attitude which it is now our ambition to attain, if this charge were to be admitted. We must give full credit to the influence of that new knowledge, that new criterion, and especially to that new and healthy criticism which came with the Italian Renaissance. Its work in the world was absolutely necessary if modern society was to take up properly its heritage of all those splendid ages which adorned the Parthenon and made the Forum the centre of the world. All the intellectual energy which had gone into antique society must be made over into our own. But after all, the roots of our society are Teutonic and Christian even more than they are Roman or antique. We must learn to date our modern times not merely from the literary revival which witnessed the recovery of a long-lost pagan past; but from the real and splendid youth of Europe when it grappled with the earnest problems of law and order and put between itself and the Viking days the barriers of the national state,--king and people guarding the highways of the world for the protection of the caravans that made the cities. It is as essential for us to watch those boats that ascended the Rhone and the Rhine, and the merchants whose tents were pitched at the fairs of Champagne, as it is to know who discovered the proper derivation of _agnus_. BOOK I THE LATER ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST _INTRODUCTION_ THE SCOPE, THE SOURCES, AND THE CHRONOLOGY OF LATER ROMAN HISTORY IN THE EAST The period upon which we are now entering presents peculiar difficulties for the historian. The body politic under consideration is in some respects unique. Historians are not even agreed as to the name by which it should properly be designated. It is an empire having its capital at Constantinople; an empire not come suddenly into being in the year 395, at which point, for the sake of convenience, we are now taking up this history; but which is in reality nothing more or less than the continuation of that Roman Empire in the East, the affairs of which we left with the death of Theodosius. That emperor, as we have seen, held sway over an undivided Roman commonwealth. On his death the power that he had wielded passed to his two sons, one of whom nominally held sway in the East, the other in the West. The affairs of the Western division of the empire under Honorius and his successors have claimed our attention up to the time of the final overthrow of Rome in the year 476. We are now returning to follow the fortunes of Arcadius, the other heir of Theodosius, and his successors.