Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/164

14:6 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. gous to that which took place in England, after the conquest in 1066, between !Norman-French and English. During such time the Italian, or, to use the older and more appropriate term, the Latin, element in Constantinople was continually being recruited b}^ settlers and merchants from Italj. Asiatic Greeks, that is, Greek-speaking inhabitants from Syria and Asia Minor, likewise flocked in large numbers into the capital. Armenians always constituted an important element in its population. Many of them rose to high office in the empire. From the time of Nerses, the famous successor of Belisarius, to our own day, when another of the same name has been the patriarch of his Church, and, as the Armenians express it, chief of his nation, there is no time in Constantinopolitan history when they have not had a considerable share in its making. Waring or Ilussians and other races from the North or from Central Asia have never been, during many centuries, without colonies on the shores of the Bosphorus. So long as the empire remained strong the existence of these various colonies was completely overshadowed by the rule of the emperor. When, however, the empire became weak, and especially when, during the twelfth century, the drain of men and money necessary to fight the Seljukian Turks and the other enemies wlio were attacking the empire increased, the part played by foreigners became more important. The pro- portion of foreigners to the subjects of the empire became larger. Their power from various causes increased even more than their numerical proportion would lead one to suppose. Towards the latter part of the twelfth century they formed a more important element in the population of the capital than they had ever done before. Against the 60,000 Latins of whom Eustathius speaks in 1182, there might be put, perhaps, in our own day, at the outside 25,000. Foreigners had been admitted to settle in Constantinople from a very early period. Let me attempt to trace ers were ruTed liow tlicy wcro rulcd. Tlic laws of the Elder Rome had at first made a great distinction between the jus civile, or law applicable to those who had the privileges of Roman citizenship, and the jus gentium, which was the prod-