174 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. The Greeks appealed to the West as the de scendants of the old Hellenes, in the name of her historic past, and as Christians with the tradi- tions of the Byzantine empire. The empire of Rome had been absorbed by Hellenism. The Greek language, Greek civiliza- tion, the profession of a common Christianity had united the Romans with the Greeks. The im- perial Byzantine tradition went on in the Church after the fall of the empire, after the fall of Constantinople. Her calendar of fasts and fes- tivals still celebrates year by year the commem- oration of events in Byzantine history. All these things tended to bring the empire home to the Greek revolution, and with that recollec- tion to combine the hope of the resurrection of the Greek empire. The schemes for a restora- tion of the empire from Charles VHI. to Catha- rine II. had been incentives to this dream of a new Byzantium. Alongside of this dream the thought of old Hellenism brightened more and more clearly. In a foregoing chapter it has been shown why the Greeks, with all their love for the memory of the Komnenoi and Palaeologoi, hold still more sacred the memory of their ancient heroes. Fifty years before the war of independence
