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 The Byzantine and Sassanid Empires 229 choly process of impoverishment and disorder lower Egypt fared perhaps less badly than the rest of the world. Alexandria, like Constantinople, continued a dwindhng trade between the east and the west. Science and political philosophy seemed dead now in both these warring and decaying Empires. The last philosophers of Athens, until their suppression, preserved the texts of the great literature of the past with an infinite reverence and want of understanding. But there remained no class of men in the world, no free gentlemen with bold and independent habits of thought, to carry on the tradi- tion of frank statement and enquiry embodied in these writings. The social and political chaos accounts largely for the disappearance of this class, but there was also another reason why the human in- telligence was sterile and feverish during this age. In both Persia and Byzantium it was an age of intolerance. Both Empires were religious empires in a new way, in a way that greatly hampered the free activities of the human mind. Of course the oldest empires in the world were religious empires, centering upon the worship of a god or of a god-king. Alexander was Pli^to : S bah ijr ^o.ullier- THE CHURCH (NOW A MOSQUE) OF S. SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE The obelisk of Theodosius is in the foreground