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city which as Constantinople has ever after commemorated its famous founder. Magnificently situated on the Bosphorus by the high road between Europe and Asia, this city was naturally the key to the gates of empire in both directions. It was in Europe, not in Asia, as was the case with Nicomedia. We may regard that fact as not without significance. Diocletian, though so alive to the exigencies of the times, looked Eastward and emulated the Oriental despots in his court methods. But although his mother was an Asiatic and although he himself had spent his youth in Asia, Constantine was in sympathy with Greek culture, and Constantinople was a Greek city. From the first and throughout its history till its capture by the Turks, the new city was a centre of Hellenic life and influence. The significance of this fact can hardly be overestimated. The Roman empire in the East was fast degenerating into an Asiatic despotism after the Persian type. Constantine saved it from that fate. Nevertheless he accentuated the most significant line of policy pursued by Diocletian; while preserving the European character of the government, he recognised that the centre of gravity must be in the East and acted accordingly. The consequences were as momentous to the Church as to the empire. Removal from Rome was escape from Roman pagan traditions and Roman aristocratic influences. It was the death-blow to the last lingering influence of the Senate. Henceforth the empire, except in one vital element, was Roman only in name. It was no longer the rule of a city over its conquered provinces; it was the rule of a prince and his colleagues, who might be of any nationality. The one vital element which preserved the integrity of the empire throughout and perpetuated it in the Byzantine rulers was Roman law. Like "the kingdom of God," this vast civilising influence came "without observation." Having its foundations in old civic usages of republican times, and built up by jurists quite unknown to fame from the time of Marcus Aurelius onwards, it was destined to become the basis of the jurisprudence and public ethics of