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126 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. milder, more Christianlike, more chaste than those of the contemporary Occident. "The Byzantines," says Bikelas, "have, during peace and war, virtues which would have been ornamental even to old Greece. In rendering justice to these virtues which have been calum- niated, in revenging their memory which has been insulted, we must confess that their noble deeds never will inflame our hearts to the same degree as will the deeds of Marathon and Plataia ; our admiration for the Byzantine heroes and sages will never be that felt for the great men of an- tique Hellas. Is it because the Parthenon is more beautiful than St. Sophia, or because Athens was the great place of JEschylus and Thucydides, while Byzantium gave us only Photius ? No ; it is because Byzantium does not elevate our soul, does not inflame our hearts to the same degree as ancient Greece, because it had not the double love for country and liberty ^ Herein lies the difference between the two worlds which otherwise present so many anal- ogies. Greece of to-day always has its eyes upon the glory of the Greece of the past. The national song does not invoke Constantine the Great, nor Heraclius, nor the Komnenes, nor the last of the Palseologes: the Greeks bend their