Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/46

 *mains are unusually scanty, insignificant indeed compared with those of Rome, and few cities, which have been continuously occupied, have suffered so much during the lapse of a few centuries as Constantinople. Political revolution has been less destructive than that of religion, and Moslem fanaticism, much more than time or war, has achieved the ruin of the Christian capital. On this ground, the same calamities which Christianity inflicted on paganism in the fourth century, she suffered herself at the hands of Islam in the fifteenth.

The modern visitor, who approaches Constantinople, is at

Later still comes the monumental CP. Christiana of Ducange (Paris, 1680), a mine of research, by one of those almost mediaeval scholars, who spent their lives in a library. Of contemporary treatises, which are numerous and bulky, I will only mention the following, from which I have derived most assistance: J. Labarte, Le Palais Impériale de CP., Paris, 1871; A. G. Paspates, [Greek: Byzantinai Meletai], CP., 1877, and [Greek: Byzantina Anaktora], Athens, 1885; W. Mordtmann, Esquisses topographiques de CP., Lille, 1891. Among books intended less for the archaeologist than for popular perusal, the only one worthy of special mention is Constantinople, Lond., 1895, by E. A. Grosvenor, a fine work, admirably illustrated, but the author relies too implicitly on Paspates, and he has emasculated his book for literary purposes by omitting references to authorities. The book also contains several absurd mistakes, e.g., "The careful historian who wrote under the name of Anonymos," etc., p. 313. To the above must now be added the important, Byzantine CP., the Walls, by Van Millingen, Lond., 1899, a sound and critical work. Another beautiful work has also been recently issued, viz., Belié, L'Habitation byzantine, Grenoble, 1902. A wealth of authentic illustrations renders it extremely valuable for the study of the subject. This chapter was begun in 1896, and in the meantime scholars have not been idle. As the Bonn Codinus gives inter-*textually all the passages of the anonymous Patria which differ, as well as an appendix of anonymous archaeological tracts, I shall in future, for the sake of brevity, refer to the whole as Codinus simply in that edition.]
 * [Footnote: preserves much of the lost Dionysius of Byzantium, is also valuable.