Excerpt from The Great Thousand Years: Written in the Year 1908, and First Printed in Pax, the Magazine of the Benedictines of Caldey, in December, 1910, to Which Is Added a Brief Commentary Written in January, 1918, and Called Ten Years After Years, the beginning of another destined to equal duration. Hellenism lasted through two quite distinct phases, almost to the Birth of Christ. Rome for an equal period until five centuries after. Then came five hun dred years while the Eastern Empire was going through its first and greatest epoch (later to be followed by an equal space of time marked by a desperate and hopeless struggle for existence), while the races of the North were in France and Germany and England laying deep the foundations of their great future, and while the South was hidden in the gloom Of the Dark Ages; a shrouding cloud of horror and despair that only opened now and then to show working dimly - the beginnings of the great epoch Of Mediaevalism that began with the year 1000, and ended five centuries later with the dawn of our own epoch, that may be neither estimated nor named until its term, which is due to fall before the close of the present century. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.