THE BYZANTINES. 1 2/ knees before the memory of the three hundred of Thermopylae when they celebrate their liberty. 'Att' ra KdKKoka '6ya?i/j,evj} Twv 'E/l/l//v6>v TO. iepd Kat 'oav Trptora avdpeLUfievrj Xatpe tj ! x^^P' '^^£v6epia O liberty, descended from the Greeks of old and on fire with the ancient valor, hail, all hail! And after all, alongside of the incomparable glory of the old Hellas, there lives in the grate- ful memory of Hellas to-day the glory of the Byzantine Greeks. The Greece of Heraclius, of Nikophorus, and of the Komnenes was in a more difficult situation than the Greece of Miltiades and Themistocles. After Marathon and Salamis Athens was delivered from the barbarians. Constantinople during ten centuries was con- stantly under arms against invasions. A Xerxes more terrible than the one of Herodotus ap- peared in every century. Athens could not have erected the Parthenon, built the long walls, applauded Sophocles, heard Pericles and Demos- thenes, if Plataia had not established security for two centuries. The Greeks of to-day are bound to feel affection for the old empire. It fought long, and did not fall without glory. The devotion of the last of the Palaeologs — in our time
