the purpose of interment. Such limited space is necessarily reserved for members of the hierarchy and persons of a certain rank, who have been beneficiaries of the church or order.[1]
We may here terminate our exploration of the topography of Constantinople, content to leave a multitude of objects, both interesting and important, beyond the limits of our survey. Were I to attempt the description of everything worthy of notice in the city, my exposition would soon resemble the catalogue of a museum, and the reader's attention would expire under the sense of interminable enumerations. Our picture has been filled in with sufficient detail to convey the impression of a vast capital laid out in colonnaded squares and streets, to the adornment of which all that Grecian art could evolve in architecture and statuary has been applied with a lavishness attainable only by the fiat of a wide-ruling despot.
III. Sociology
To make this chapter fully consonant to its title it now remains for us to pass in review the sociological condition of the inhabitants, whilst we try to learn something of their mode of life, their national characteristics, and their mental aptitudes. We have already seen that in the case of the Neo-Byzantines or Lesser Greeks,[2] the path of evolution lay, p. 381, etc. There were, perhaps, over one hundred churches and monasteries in Constantinople at this time, but the Notitia, a century earlier, reckons only fourteen churches; see Ducange's list.]
- ↑ Paspates, [Greek: Byzantinai Meletai
- ↑ Western scholars since the Renaissance have fallen into the habit of applying the diminutive Graeculi to the Byzantines, thereby distinguishing them from the Graeci, their pre-eminent ancestors, who established the fame of the Dorians and Ionians. The Romans, after their conquest of the country, began to apply it to all Greeks. Cicero, De Orat., i, 22, etc.
