the Greeks it rapidly developed in skill of execution, until men aspired to perfection in it where perfection was possible; their strong logical sense perceived the necessary limit herein, and checked all attempts on the outside of that limit; and as a consequence they attained the desired perfection at the expense on the one hand of the full possibilities of epic expression, and on the other of architectonic ornament. As the public feeling—the sense of delight in the service of the city—died out, so what life there was in this perfect but limited art died with 1t, and at last a caput mortuum of mere plausible academic art was all that 56 was left, which, however, lasted a long time, until, in fact, Classicism had fallen before Christianity. Then after an interregnum of inferiority at once rude and timid, the new art began, influenced doubtless by the communication with the East. Finally, it becomes obvious to us in the buildings raised by - Justinian, especially St. Sophia at Constantinople, which show a new creation, bearing with it indeed tokens of its birth out of classicism, but yet totally different even as to detail, both in form and spirit. The full weight of the causes which lay behind this transformation will be better appreciated when we come to deal with the art of the fully developed Middle Ages. It is enough here to say that a new style was created, that it only awaited the influence of the barbaric tribes to attain completeness, and that it developed step by step along with the development of the new society in complete accord with all its necessities and aspirations.
The broken fragments of the Roman Empire amidst all this overturn, had to 57 reckon with that element of the change which was at once most formidable on the surface and most potent for the reconstruction of society, to wit, the incursions of the northern barbarian tribes.
The political change was brought about in this way: Gaul and Spain, Northern Africa, Roman Germany, Britain, countries all populated by colonists and Romanised natives, and even part of Italy itself, fell under the domination of the Teutonic tribes, and the ancestral tribal leaders