The period which ensued after the Conquest of Persia and Syria in the East, and of Spain in the West, is called by Milman the ‘Golden Age of Judaism’; but the title does not suit very well with the circumstances of the case. It was not, as the Golden Age of legend is represented to have been, a peaceful and happy beginning, which the crimes of men gradually embittered and corrupted. It rather resembled a succession of cool showers on a burning summer day, when the fierce heat of the morning is tempered during the midday hours, but only to break out with more intolerable oppression as the afternoon comes on. The contrast which this lull in the storm of injustice and cruelty presented to the savage fury of preceding, as well as after times, is indeed most striking. Everywhere the flames of persecution sank down; and what had been a consuming fire smouldered on, with only a feeble flicker here and there, to show that it was not quite extinct. In the Byzantine empire we are told singularly little of the condition and actions of the Jews during this period. The emperors who filled the throne were, for the most part, men of very ordinary ability. Nor were there among their subjects men of greater mark. ‘On the throne, in the camp, and in the schools,’ says the historian Gibbon, ‘we search, perhaps with fruitless diligence, for names and characters that deserve to be rescued from oblivion.’ This may in itself explain why so little is heard of the Jews. Occupy high positions in Church or State we know they could not, or openly interfere with the direction of public affairs; and what private influence they might exercise in these would be carefully kept secret. As for attacks upon them, we have already seen that their numbers, their rare intelligence, and their ever increasing wealth, rendered them a dangerous body for any but a powerful ruler to assail; and assuredly the weak and incompetent occupants of the imperial throne at that era would be but little inclined to make the experiment. What little has been recorded goes to prove that the emperors were anxious to conciliate them. Nicephorus, who received the purple A.D. 793, is said to have shown them particular favour, probably because of their acquiescence in his iconoclastic views; and Michael the Stammerer, whose reign dates from 821, was reviled by his enemies as being half a Jew.[84] When we remember how Constantinople was at this period distracted at once by civil and religious factions, and that the Jews—however little they might seem to be personally interested in the question at issue—were always ready to throw their weight into the one scale or the other, we shall cease to wonder that they remained wholly unmolested.