Eastern Empire, name given to the Roman Empire when Constantine, driven by vanity to build a new city with his name, relocated the throne to Bizantium. Subsequently, Rome moved almost entirely to the orient ; the powerful took their slaves there- meaning almost the entire population, and thus was Italy deprived of her inhabitants. By the scepter's division, the wealth went to Constantinople and the Western Empire was ruined. The Barbarians nations consecutively invaded it as, bit by bit, it fell from decadence to sudden collapse under Arcadius and Honorius.

Justinian did re-conquer Africa and Italy with the help of Belisarius but lost them no sooner than they were subjugated. Besides, Justinian alienated his subjects through excessive taxation, wasted the provinces, and believed to have increased the number of faithful when he really reduced the number of his subjects. By the destruction of the Samaritans alone, Palestine became a desert. Through his zeal for Religion, Justinian weakened the Empire precisely in those regions where, several reigns later, the Arabs would penetrate and destroy it.

Shortly thereafter, the paths leading to the throne lay cleared: a named Phocas attained it through regicide. Others employed omens; the army; the clergy the Senate; the peasants; the people of Constantinople, cities, and provinces; by brigandage; in a word, by all sorts of crimes.

The Empire's misfortunes increasingly daily; people naturally attributed defeat in war and the dishonorable peace treaty to the behavior of their rulers. Revolutions generated revolutions and effects became their own cause. As the Greeks had witnessed so many different dynasties, they were attached to none in particular; and fortune having taken Emperors in all circumstances, no birth was so low, no merit so slim, as to inhibit ambition.

Héraclius came from Africa and killed Phocas amidst this tenuous confusion: he found the provinces invaded and the legions destroyed.

Tenuously situated in this confusion; Héraclius who from Africa and killed Phocas. He had found the provinces invaded and the legions destroyed.

No sooner had he remedied these deficiencies than the Arabs left their country to spread the religion and empire that Mohammed had founded in a single stroke. Conquering apostles like their leader had been; zealously motivated by their religion, toughened by the hardships of war, sober by habit, belief, and organization, they led, under the standard of their prophet, enthusiastic troops eager for carnage and loot against peoples who were poorly governed, softened by luxury, given to all the vices engendered by opulence, and exhausted by the continual wars of their sovereigns. Never was such progress made more rapidly than under the first successors of Mohammed.

In the end, around 1300, an unforeseen tempest fell upon the whole of Greece. Similar to the storm-cloud observed by the Prophet, though small at its inception, quickly filled the sky, the Turks, contemptible in their original appearance, descended like a tornado upon the Greek emperors' states, crossed the Bosphorus, became the masters of Asia, and further extended their conquests into the best regions of Europe. But, it is sufficient here to say that Mohammed II took Constantinople in 1453, turned the church of Saint Sophia into a mosque, and put an end to the Eastern Empire that had lasted 1123 years. Such is the revolution of states.