"Of that Byzantine Empire the universal verdict of history is that it constitutes, without a single exception, the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilization has yet assumed...There has been no other enduring civilization so absolutely destitute of all the forms and elements of greatness, and none to which the epithet mean may be so emphatically applied...Its vices were the vices of men who had ceased to be brave without learning to be virtuous. Without patriotism, without the fruition or desire of liberty...slaves, and willing slaves, in both their actions and in their thoughts, immersed in sensuality and in the most frivolous pleasures, the people only emerged from their listlessness when some theological subtlety, or some chivalry in the chariot races, stimulated them to frantic riots...They had continually before them the literature of ancient Greece, instinct with the loftiest heroism: but that literature, which afterwards did so much to revivify Europe, could fire the degenerate Greeks with no spark or semblance of nobility. The history of the empire is a monotonous story of the intrigues of priests, eunuchs, and women; of poisonings, of conspiracies, of uniform ingratitude, of perpetual fratricides."