Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/24

 without moral or political stability. Lastly, in the hands of the Turk its growth has been fettered by the prejudices of a nation unable to free itself from the bondage of an effete civilization.

I.

The first peopling of the site of Constantinople is a question in prehistoric research, which has not yet been elucidated by the palaeontologist. Unlike the Roman area, no relics of an age of stone or bronze have been discovered here; do not, perhaps, exist, but doubtless the opportunities, if not the men, have been wanting for such investigations. That the region seemed to the primitive Greeks to be a wild and desolate one, we learn from the tradition of the Argonautic expedition; and the epithet of "Axine," or inhospitable,, pp. 95, 140), we are made aware of the difficulties the topographical student has to encounter in the Ottoman capital, where an intruding Giaour is sure to be assailed in the more sequestered Turkish quarters with abuse and missiles on the part of men, women, and children.]