Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/108

 through a series of historical vicissitudes in which there was more of artificial forcing than of the insensible growth essential to the formation of a homogeneous people. Owing to its geographical position it was perhaps inevitable from the first that Byzantium should become a cosmopolitan town, whose population should develop little political stability or patriotic coherence. In addition, however, it happened that the Megareans, their chief progenitors, had gained an unenviable notoriety throughout Greece; they were generally esteemed to be gluttonous, slothful, ineffective, and curiously prolific in courtesans, who, for some reason which now escapes us, were peculiarly styled "Megarean sphinxes." Once established on the Golden Horn the Byzantines seem to have found life very easy; their fisheries were inexhaustible and facile beyond belief; whilst the merchants trading in those seas soon flocked thither so that port dues furnished an unearned and considerable income. As a consequence the bulk of the populace spent their time idling in the market-place or about the wharves, each one assured of meeting some visitor to whom for a valuable consideration he was willing to let his house and even his wife, whilst he himself took up his abode in the more congenial wine-shop. So firmly did this dissolute mode of life gain a footing, that when the town was besieged the citizens could not be rallied to defend the walls until the municipal authorities had set up drinking-booths on the ramparts. Law was usually in*