became at once more stringent and more regular—a combination peculiarly objectionable to the Oriental mind—and the re-assessment of their burdens every fifteen years led the people to calculate time by the “Indictions,” or edicts in which, with all the solemnity of purple ink, the Emperor fixed the amount of the imposts for this new cycle of taxation. That the ruler himself became conscious of the inequalities of his subjects’ contributions was evident half a century later when Valentinian I allowed the citizens of each municipality to elect an official, styled _Defensor_, whose duty it was to defend his fellow-citizens before the Emperor against the fiscal exactions of the authorities. The transference of the capital to Constantinople, enormous as its ultimate results have proved to be, was at first a disadvantage to the inhabitants of Greece. We are accustomed to look on the centre of the Byzantine Empire as a largely Greek city, but it must be remembered that, at the outset, it was Roman in conception and that its language was Latin. Almost immediately, however, it began to drain Greece of its population, attracted by the prospects of work and the certainty of “bread and games” in the New Rome. In the days of Demosthenes Byzantium had been the granary of Athens; now Attica, always unproductive of wheat, began to find that Constantine’s growing capital had to import bread-stuffs for its own use, and the Athenians were thankful for an annual grant of corn from the Emperor. The founder wanted, too, Greek works of art to adorn his city, and 427 statues were placed in Sta Sophia alone; the Muses of Helikon were carried off to the palace of the Emperor; the serpent column, which the grateful Greeks had dedicated at Delphi after the battle of Platæa, was set up in the Hippodrome, where one of its three heads was struck off by the battle-axe of Mohammed II.