As 324 years elapsed before another emperor was crowned at Rome,
and as the political headship of Europe after that happy restoration
remained upon the German soil to which the events of the eighth century
had shifted it, nothing could seem more natural than the habit which
historians once had, of saying that the mighty career of Rome had ended,
as it had begun, with a Romulus. Sometimes the date 476 was even set up
as a great landmark dividing modern from ancient history. For those,
however, who took such a view, it was impossible to see the events of
the Middle Ages in their true relations to what went before and what
came after. It was impossible to understand what went on in Italy in
the sixth century, or to explain the position of that great Roman power
which had its centre on the Bosphorus, which in the code of Justinian
left us our grandest monument of Roman law, and which for a thousand
years was the staunch bulwark of Europe against the successive
aggressions of Persian, Saracen, and Turk. It was equally impossible to
understand the rise of the Papal power, the all-important politics of
the great Saxon and Swabian emperors, the relations of mediaeval England
to the Continental powers, or the marvellously interesting growth of the
modern European system of nationalities.
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