. The story of the ancient nations : a text-book for high schools . eold French law, which was founded on the Roman law. 612. Life in Constantinople.—The vast schemes of Jus-tinian demanded a great deal of money for their burden of taxes aroused the bitter hatred of the Em-peror and his wife, Theodora, in the city. The Empress hadbeen a poor dancing-girl in her youth. Her beauty and hertalents charmed the cold and virtuous Emperor, and hemarried her despite the protests of his nearest her moral life may have been before hermarriage, she proved a helpful partn
. The story of the ancient nations : a text-book for high schools . eold French law, which was founded on the Roman law. 612. Life in Constantinople.—The vast schemes of Jus-tinian demanded a great deal of money for their burden of taxes aroused the bitter hatred of the Em-peror and his wife, Theodora, in the city. The Empress hadbeen a poor dancing-girl in her youth. Her beauty and hertalents charmed the cold and virtuous Emperor, and hemarried her despite the protests of his nearest her moral life may have been before hermarriage, she proved a helpful partner to him in his lifeand work. The commerce of the Eastern Empire flourished underthe protection of Justinian. Constantinople, a city esti-mated to have had, at that time, about a million inhabitants,was the center of the worlds trade. The manufactureof silk goods was kept as a monopoly in the hands of theEmperor himself. The manufacture of weapons and armor,of glazed pottery and cheaper clothing, with the retail trade THE ATTEMPT TO RE-ESTABLISH THE EMPIRE 479. in the necessities of life and its luxuries, busied a multitudeof merchants and laborers. The city lived chiefly upon grainimported from Egypt, and dried fish caught in the BlackSea and salted in the city. So we must picture its life likethat of any great city of to-day, its streets filled withbusy men, its people seeking amusement in the theatersor in the Hippodrome. Justinian strove in every way tobeautify his capital with churches dedicated to the Virginand the saints. The greatest of these, now the Turkishmosque of SaintSophia, stillstands, a magnif-icent memorialof the day andthe work of Jus-tinian. In the chariotraces in the Hip-podrome, thepeople of the citywere divided intothe supporters ofthe Blue and ofthe Green. The factions had developed into rival politicalparties, who carried their hatreds to the point of deadlybrawls in the Hippodrome and in the city streets. At onetime Justinian was all but overthrown
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