Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/143

 THE EASTERN EMPIRE 131 failed altogether to hold back the Teutonic flood ; it still had to stand as the bulwark of Europe against Slavonic and Mongolian barbarians on the Danube, and the aggressive Persian Empire on the Euphrates ; an empire soon to be replaced by a still more dangerous Asiatic foe. But it was not only the bulwark of Europe, it was also the depository of the old European civilisation and culture ; the civilisation and culture corrupted by the oriental admixture, but not shattered, as it had been in the west, by new forces whose civilisation and culture were in a very elementary state. What should astonish is not that the empire fell, but that it endured for a thousand years after the west had been swept from its grasp by the Teutons. Justinian had made a great and even for the moment a successful effort to stem the barbarian tide in the west. But the success passed. In the long-run its chief Justinian effect was to destroy, for a good deal more than a 527-565. thousand years, the possibility of Italy being built up into a single united state ; she became instead, as we shall see, merely a collection of disunited fragments. But if the victories of Belisarius were barren, the name of Justinian remains famous for his great work in codifying the Roman law; that is, in putting into a permanent and authoritative shape the masses of laws and of judicial interpretations of the law which had been accumulating for centuries. The code of Justinian became the basis of law over the greater part of Europe, England forming almost the only exception. In the later years of the century the Emperor Maurice successfully held in check the Persian advance. But Slavonic tribes gradually forced their way over the Danube and down the western half of the Balkan peninsula, penetrat- Slavg ing Greece, though they submitted to the Byzantine Mongols, supremacy. After them pressed Mongol hordes; and Persians, the Avars, who had perhaps absorbed the Huns, but were driven off beyond the line of the Danube ; and the Bulgars, who gradually settled themselves in the Danube basin. When Maurice was murdered the Persians advanced on the east; they inundated Syria; they swept into Egypt; they captured