History of art . Constantinople Chapter V. BYZANTIUM. YZANTIUM carried along the world ofantiquity to the end of the MiddleAges. As it guarded the gates of thetwo continents and the two seas, as itwas at the center of the eddies of thefallen civilization, it fed its violent andtroubled life with the slow death struggles of theancient peoples. For a thousand years it defended,against the human inundations from the north, theeast, and the west, the spirit of law that was Rome,the habits of trade, of politics, and of speculation ofthe Greeks, and the cruel luxury of the monarchies ofthe Orient. T
History of art . Constantinople Chapter V. BYZANTIUM. YZANTIUM carried along the world ofantiquity to the end of the MiddleAges. As it guarded the gates of thetwo continents and the two seas, as itwas at the center of the eddies of thefallen civilization, it fed its violent andtroubled life with the slow death struggles of theancient peoples. For a thousand years it defended,against the human inundations from the north, theeast, and the west, the spirit of law that was Rome,the habits of trade, of politics, and of speculation ofthe Greeks, and the cruel luxury of the monarchies ofthe Orient. The cult of wisdom would doubtless not have feltitself very much at ease under the cupola of SaintSophia; Athens would not have recognized, in the stifiidols that decorated that church, the freedom of herreligious naturalism, nor her respect for the living formin the atrocious mutilations that Byzantine justiceinflicted on the condemned. The uncompromising 208 MEDIAEVAL ART realism of Assyria would have found no savor in theimages of the books of pra
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectart, bookyear1921
