Note 85 — BOOK X.

The army was no longer to be dreaded by the emperors as it had been in the early days of the empire; but it was no more an object of fear to its enemies than to its master. A modern historian, M. Sismondi, finds in the government of the Greek empire a complete and incontestable evidence of the natural and necessary effects of the worst of governments. The ancients were acquainted with scarcely any medium between liberty and despotism. The government of Constantinople had retained, up to the middle of the middle ages, all which characterized the despotism of the ancients, although we must allow that this despotism was sometimes tempered by religion and the influence of the patriarchs of Byzantium.