Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/248

 XLI The Byzantine and Sassanid Empires THE Greek-speaking eastern half of the Roman Empire showed much more political tenacity than the western half. It weathered the disasters of the fifth century a.d., which saw a complete and final breaking up of the original Latin Roman power. Attila bulHed the Emperor Theodosius II and sacked and raided almost to the walls of Constantinople, but that city remained intact. The Nubians came down the Nile and looted upper Egypt, but lower Egypt and Alexandria were left still fairly prosperous. Most of Asia Minor was held against the Sassanid Persians. The sixth century, which was an age of complete darkness for the West, saw indeed a considerable revival of the Greek power. Justinian I (527-565) was a ruler of very great ambition and energy, and he was married to the Empress Theodora, a woman of quite equal capacity who had begun hfe as an actress. Justinian recon- quered North Africa from the Vandals and most of Italy from the Goths. He even regained the south of Spain. He did not limit his energies to naval and military enterprises. He founded a university, built the great church of St. Sophia in Constantinople and codified the Roman law. But in order to destroy a rival to his university foundation he closed the schools of philosophy in Athens, which had been going on in unbroken continuity from the days of Plato, that is to say for nearly a thousand years. From the third century onwards the Persian Empire had been the steadfast rival of the Byzantine. The two Empires kept Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt in a state of perpetual unrest and waste. In the first century a.d., these lands were still at a high level of civilization, wealthy and with an abundant population, but the con- tinual coming and going of armies, massacres, looting and war taxa- tion, wore them down steadily until only shattered and ruinous cities remained upon a countryside of scattered peasants. In this melan- 228