The first impression conveyed by this geographical description is that the Eastern Empire had now become a power rather Asiatic than European. It is only in Asia that any solid mass of territory is kept. ♦Nature of its European possessions.♦ Elsewhere there are only islands and fringes of coast. ♦Maritime supremacy of the Empire.♦ But they were almost continuous fringes of coast, fringes which contained some of the greatest cities of Christendom, and which gave their masters an undisputed supremacy by sea. If the Mediterranean was not a Byzantine lake, it was only the presence of the Saracen, the occasional visits of the Northman, which hindered it from being so. Then again, the whole history of the Empire, if a history of losses, is also a history of recoveries, and before long the Roman arms again became terrible by land. The picture of Constantine Porphyrogennêtos shows us the Empire at a moment when neither process was actually going on; but the times before and after his reign were times, first of loss and then of recovery. ♦Loss and recovery of Crete. 823-960.♦ Early in the ninth century _Crete_ was suddenly seized by Saracen adventurers from Spain; about the same time began the long and slow Saracen conquest of _Sicily_. ♦Loss of Sicily. 827-878. | Advance in Italy, Dalmatia, and Greece. c. 802.♦ But, almost at the moment when Sicily was lost, the Imperial province in Italy was largely increased, and the Imperial influence in Dalmatia was largely restored. About the same time Peloponnêsos was won back from the Slaves. ♦Recovery of provinces in the East. 964-976.♦ In the latter half of the tenth century Crete was won back; so were Kilikia and part of Syria, with the famous cities of Tarsos, Edessa, and Antioch on the Orontes. ♦Conquest of Bulgaria. 981-1018.♦ Presently Basil the Second overthrew the _Bulgarian_ kingdom in Europe and the _Armenian_ kingdom in Asia; the lands at the foot of Caucasus admitted the Imperial supremacy, and the Byzantine rule was carried round the greater part of the Euxine. ♦Loss of Cherson. 988.♦ Cherson indeed was lost; the old Megarian city passed into the hands of the Russian. At the other end of the Empire, the recovery of Sicily was actually begun, and, if the Saracen was not driven out, his power was weakened in the interest of the next set of invaders. ♦The Eastern Empire under Basil the Second.♦ Early in the eleventh century the Eastern Rome was again the head of a dominion which was undoubtedly the greatest among Christian powers, a dominion greater than it had been at any time since the Saracenic and Slavonic inroads began. § 3. _Origin of the Spanish Kingdoms._