Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/21

 EMPIRE ROMAN, NOT GREEK. 3 empire is usually regarded as the eastern branch of the Empire Ro- Ivoman empire. AVith Basil, however, commences °^'*"- a period when its rulers had turned their attention almost exclusively eastward. Hence the empire is often spok- en of as the Byzantine, rather than the Eastern empire. If the term Byzantine be used, it is important to recall that the em- pire was also Roman. The emperors and people called them- selves Romans, and their countr}-, even by Western writers, "was usually spoken of as Romania. The latter writers some- times indeed speak of the European portion of Romania as Greece, but no inhabitant of Constantinople would have used the term in this sense. The capital was called indifferentl}- Constantinople and N^ew Rome, to distinguish it from what its writers speak of by contrast as the Elder Rome. Through- out the East, Rome was the name which attached most completely to the city, and Roman to the territory which it ruled. The Turks, the Arabs, and the Persians knew the capital by this name only. The people under the rule of the empire were known to them not as Greeks but as Romans. The descendants of these races still call the Greek-speaking population of the empire I-roum, or Romans. The language of the Greek-speaking population of the empire is still known as Romaic. The traces of the ancient name are widespread. The imperial city founded on the borders of Armenia is Er- zeroum. The Turkish province to the north of Constantino- ple is Roumelia. The Patriarch of the Orthodox Church still commonly describes himself as Bishop of the Xew Rome. The language of the capital and of the empire had become, in the time of Basil, Greek. Latin lingered on in certain official formulas, and had supplied many technical words to common speech, but, on the whole, the tri- umph of the language of the great mass of the people had been as great as that of English over the Norman-French, in- troduced into England by William the Conqueror. ■ Under the Basilian dynasty — that is, from 867 to 1057 — the empire of the Xew Rome had attained its most per- Long-contin- -, , i^ i • • /• ued prosper- fect development. Everywhere it £:ave sicrns of ity of empire. *■ "^ . good government and great prosperity.