Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/370

 312 Outlines of European History Futile effort to maintain the unity of the Empire There were often two emperors, but only one Empire before the death of Diocletian, however, there was a tendency for the eastern and western portions to drift apart. Constantine had established his sole supremacy only after a long struggle with his rivals. Thereafter there were often two emperors, one in the west and one in the east, but they were supposed to govern one empire conjointly and in " unanimity." New laws were to be accepted by both. The writers of the time do not speak of two states but continue to refer to " the Empire," as if the administration were still in the hands of one ruler. Indeed, the idea of one government for all civilized mankind did not disappear but continued to influence men during the whole of the Middle Ages. The foundation of Constantinople and the establishment of a western emperor at Rome left the venerable city dangerously isolated ; it was a fatal step toward the surrender of Rome and the West to the barbarians, who were already gaining possession of the Empire by peaceable migration (p. 305). From the bar- barism which engulfed it in the fifth century a.d. the Roman west did not emerge for centuries. The Roman Empire sur- viving at Constantinople belonged, as we have seen, to the East and was essentially an oriental state. This was the outcome of the long struggle of civilization in the Mediterranean. Its finest fruits — democracy, free citizenship, creative art, and independent thought unshackled by theology — had perished. Although it was in the eastern part of the Empire that the barbarians first got a permanent foothold, the emperors at Constantinople were able to keep a portion of the old posses- sions of the Empire under their rule for centuries after the Germans had completely conquered the West. When at last the eastern capital of the Empire fell, it was not into the hands of the Germans, but into those of the Turks, who have held it ever since 1453 (Fig. 130). There will be no room in this volume to follow the history of the Eastern Empire, although it cannot be entirely ignored in studying western Europe. Its language and civilization had