Page:Destruction of the Greek Empire.djvu/23

Rh and to defend their country as they had done. At times the people were appealed to as the descendants alike of Greeks and Romans.

As being a continuation of the Roman Empire whose capital was New Rome, the empire is correctly called Roman, and the name has the advantage of always keeping in view the continuity of Roman history. It was the Eastern Roman Empire which declined and fell in 1453. But if we admit that the empire continued to be Roman till 1453, it must be remembered, not only that its characteristics had considerably changed, but that to the men of the West it had come to be known as the Greek Empire. Latin had been as completely forgotten as Norman French was by English nobles in the time of Edward III. Greek had become the official language, as did English in our own country. The inscriptions on the coins since the time of Heraclius are in Greek. The Orthodox Church, which aided as much as even law in binding the inhabitants of the country together, employed Greek, and Greek almost exclusively, as its language, and, although the great defenders of the term Roman as applied to the population are found among its dignitaries, the Church was essentially Greek as opposed to Roman, both in the character of its thought and teaching and in the language it employed. Hence it is not surprising that to the West during all the middle ages, the Empire was the Greek Empire, just as the Orthodox Church was the Greek Church. The Empire and the Church were each alike called Greek to distinguish them from the Empire and Church of the West. It is in this general use of the word Greek that I find my justification for speaking of the capture of Constantinople, and the