Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/99

 CHAPTER III. THE BYZANTINES.* The Byzantine Empire, otherwise called the East Roman, the Romaic, the Oriental, the Greek Empire, was created when Theodosius the Great, before his death in 395, divided the Roman Empire between his two sons. In the first days of September, 476, the Occi- dental empire of the Romans ceased to be. When the Roman Empire was dying out, it had the good fortune to be absorbed in the life of Greece, and it derived from that union a re- newed energy which secured for it another mil- lennium of existence. The absorption of the Roman into the Byzan- tine Empire was a blessing to civilization and to mankind. The conquests of Philip and Alexander the Great had had the effect of widely extending Hellenism throughout the East. This extension edge, New York, in March, 1897.
 * Lecture delivered before the Society for Literary Knowl-