He was quoting — a point he emphasized several times — the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, from a dialogue with an unnamed Persian Muslim. But this selection can hardly have been accidental. Manuel II was the father of Constantine XI, the last Byzantine Emperor, a brave and pious man who died on the wall of the great city when the Turks finally overran it. Manuel also undertook a fateful journey in the early 14th century to the courts of Europe, a journey that amounted chiefly to beggary: he needed aid from the West or his city (for he was an emperor with no empire) would fall. More humiliating than even this — and the tragic enmity between Greek and Roman churches in that age should not be underestimated — was another event, before Manuel’s ascension to the imperial throne: as a subject of the sultan, owing him tribute, Manuel and his army were obliged to join the Turks in the reduction and conquest of the last free Greek city in Anatolia, Philadelphia.

It would be difficult be discover in history two more tragic figures than Manuel and his son, the men who ruled when the dying embers of Rome, once pagan, now Christian, once Italian, now Greek, were finally trod out.